Dr. Jahangir Alom (Letters, November 17) raises an important issue regarding health checks in midlife. He rightly points out that people (particularly men) from certain cultural backgrounds not engaging in essential NHS checks is a problem that needs to be solved. However, I wonder how many other people in their late 60s, who like me live in East London, have just found out about these health checks from the Guardian’s letters page. Could it be that many of those not involved in the process simply haven’t been told that there is a process they can engage with?
Name and address provided
I don’t remember ever being invited for a health check at the age of 85. When I went to get my Covid jab, I asked if I would be offered one and was told: “If you don’t bother us, we won’t bother you.”
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife
Tourists are known in Cornwall as emmets, not grockles (‘Light a fire and enjoy complete solitude’; a magical winter cottage in Cornwall, November 19). The word comes from the Cornish dialect of Old English æmete, from which the modern English word ant is derived.
Ruth Hits
Falmouth, Cornwall
Like Birmingham and Manchester, we have had enough of our overpriced, overcrowded and overlong Christmas markets (‘It’s overpriced tat’: Christmas markets divide opinion in the UK, November 18). We call it the Barn Show.
Julia Edwards
Winchester
In what other “sport” do competitors regularly die (Cheltenham in somber mood as three horses die on one race day, November 17)?
Jenny Haynes
Barton on Humberside, Lincolnshire