For years I have used a WI friend’s recipe for chutney (The power of pickles: a guide to preserving almost everything – from jam-making to chutneys, 28 April) – equal weights of onions, apples (eaters or cookers), dates, sultanas and brown sugar, chopped up into a bowl and covered with vinegar for 24 hours, stirred and put into jars. No stinking the house out with boiling, no freezing or refrigerating, and delicious chutney. Even easier than making marmalade with tins of prepared fruit.
Helen Keating
Gatehouse of Fleet, Kirkcudbrightshire
• It may be unseasonal, but I’ve just made lockdown lime marmalade. Truly a labour of love. If the three jars were costed at an hourly rate, they’d be declared priceless!
Susan Gregory
Burton in Lonsdale, Lancashire
• Father Jack Hackett, in Father Ted, was the only person I know to follow Trump’s medical advice (Suzanne Moore, 27 April). His regular ingestion of Toilet Duck did not seem to do him any favours. Feck indeed!
Mark Robertson
East Boldon, Tyne and Wear
• Please remember, a small m means milli or a thousandth, so 3.9m miles is about 7 yards; 3.9 million miles should be shortened to 3.9M miles. I nearly had a panic attack when I read your headline (Mile-wide asteroid set to pass within 3.9m miles of Earth, 29 April).
Margaret Billing
Garforth, Leeds
• If you feel uneasy about clapping for the NHS on Thursdays, thereby taking the focus off the government’s failures in supplying frontline staff with the protection they need, try to clap dot-dash-dash-dot, dot-dash-dash-dot, dot – morse code for PPE.
Marcus Cleaver
Malvern, Worcestershire
