How raising a glass can make you an ass

So a sea eagle has chosen to live in Oxfordshire (Report, 18 January). It is not the first time. Archaeologists digging near Oxford have discovered sea eagle bones on bronze age and Anglo-Saxon sites. And the name of the village Earley, on the Thames near Reading, means “eagle wood” – probably because of the presence there of sea eagles’ nests over 1,000 years ago. Let’s hope this magnificent bird finds a mate and stays around.
David Miles
Retired chief archaeologist, English Heritage

• Weekends can be very lonely (The curse of weekend loneliness, G2, 16 January) so on Sunday why not go to a service at the local church? Most serve coffee afterwards and there are lovely people to meet. Maybe even go again the following week!
Carolyn Charlesworth
Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

• Re your article (My life in sex. The man who was circumcised as an adult, 18 January), my father also developed a phimosis, in his late 70s, and had to undergo circumcision. He wrote to me from his hospital bed, and quoted “There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how he will” (Hamlet, act 5, scene 2).
Nicholas Jones
Stroud, Gloucestershire

• When he was teaching English in Germany many years ago (Letters, 21 January), for the final lesson my son decided to introduce his students to useful English expressions for social occasions, including the toast “bottoms up”. After the lesson, he and his students went to a pub, where one student confidently raised his glass and cried “up your bottoms”.
Mary McKeown
Biddenham, Bedfordshire

• “Men should be able to donate their sperm after death, say ethicists” (Report, 21 January)? I’m not sure that I’ll have the energy.
Michael Cunningham
Wolverhampton

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