Let me wear shorts
SIR: Liz Hodgkinson (‘Farewell to frumps’, Spring issue) can take a proverbial running jump.
I am having to spend increasing amounts of good weather seeing rolls and rolls of appalling fat waddling along the street, just about encased in strapless gowns, on the backs of monumentally obese women of all ages.
If in those circumstances, she objects to a slimmish 78-year-old like me wearing shorts, tough!
Yours truly,
Edward Thomas, Eastbourne, East Sussex
Alcoholic: a definition
SIR: Professor John Sutherland (‘I used to be well read’, July issue) is no doubt an expert on 19th-century literature, but he sadly misquotes 20th-century poet Dylan Thomas, whose definition of an alcoholic is widely agreed to be ‘An alcoholic is someone you don’t like, who drinks as much as you do,’ which seems more witty.
Perhaps the Professor is confusing the anonymous definition ‘An alcoholic is someone who drinks more than his doctor.’ (Dr) David Syme, Killin, Perthshire
