Cloth face covering fails the smell test | Brief letters

FFP2 face masks | English idioms | Price of daffodils | Trident

Re Linda Geddes’ piece on face coverings (Is it time to ditch cloth face masks for FFP2 or next-generation alternatives?, 28 January), I pass on this observation. My partner and I were on a bus the other week. I was wearing an FFP2 respirator, my partner a cloth face covering. A woman at the front of the bus sprayed herself with perfume. My partner smelt the perfume and I only smelt ethanol. Vapours (ethanol) will pass through an FFP2 respirator, but most particles and droplets (perfume) won’t. The cloth face covering is really to protect other people from you, not you from others. She wears an FFP2 now.
Mike Williams
Swindon

• Re English idioms (Letters, 28 January), I recall some salty gems from my 1950s childhood in south Lincolnshire: “She’s all Queen Anne front and Mary Anne back”; “He’s as odd as Oliver’s arse”; “His eyes stood out like chapel hat pegs”; “He tears round the place like a closet with the lid off”; “She’s as airy-fairy as a fart in a colander”.
Tom Jones
Birmingham

• My friend once said to me when I was extolling the virtues of Bruce Springsteen: “He does as much for me as a corpse in the next room.”
Helen Romaine
Melksham, Wiltshire

• On Friday I bought a bunch of British daffodils at my local Aldi for 89p and my sister in Germany bought a bunch of British daffodils at her local Aldi for 67 cents. Could this be another of those great trade deals set up by Liz Truss?
Gale Carruthers
Norwich

• Would now be a good time to ask whether Trident really is such a great deterrent against Russian aggression?
Dr Charles Smith
Bridgend

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