A reader recalls moving to Herefordshire in 1992 and asking a primary school headteacher about the new Sats exams. He replied: “It doesn’t matter how many times you weigh a pig, it still weighs the same.” The reader was glad to send her children to his school; all three later graduated from university without being “weighed”.
Another letter references Annie Ross’s vocalisation of Wardell Gray’s tenor saxophone solos on the tune Twisted, which includes the line: “Don’t you let them laugh at me / When I refused to ride on all those double-decker buses / All because there was no driver on the top.”
A correspondent notes that this year marks the 50th anniversary of the last prime minister from the north of England, Harold Wilson, and suggests it would be good to mark the milestone with a second northern PM.
One reader objects to the Guardian’s use of “bunches” to describe roads and great art, calling for it to stop, lest “a bunch of fives” be called for.
Finally, a reader wonders which department a deer stuck on an escalator at Marks & Spencer in Norwich was heading for, adding that one can only “ruminate”.
