Still youthful enough to do the bench press | Brief letters
Disappearing pitmatic | Appearing in the Guardian | King Canute v tide | Horse/car priority on roads | Wakes weeks and potato pies | Spelling test cancellationI only speak to animals while out walking (Notebook, 19 April) if there are no people within earshot. However, I have found that the salutations between people in County Durham have changed over the past 30 years. No more pitmatic "What fettle?" or "What cheer?" and an increase in the prosaic "Alreet?", which is used as both greeting and response. With the pits long gone and pitmen as rare as nightingales, so their language disappears too.
Tom Oliphant
Craghead, County Durham
" The photo in Monday's Guardian of my wife, Frances Hill, and me came as rather a surprise. The article alongside it is about people living to 100. Not us, not yet. We are, alas, sitting on a bench. But on the plus side, how could one keep more mentally alert than, as my wife is, by reading the Guardian? And at least I am perusing the Paris edition of the New York Times.
Leon Arden
London