Your Letters
17:08 UK time, Thursday, 21 January 2010
Did anyone else raise an eyebrow at , "there was no oral treatment for erectile dysfunction"?
Peter, Swindon, UK
I'm waiting for the MoD, with its equality legislation, to insist that secular gunsights are also available. Perhaps even atheist sights, too. Can Dawkins abbreviate?
Fee Lock, Hastings, East Sussex
Paper Monitor talks about "sex addition". Will Friday's tell us how to be fruitful and multiply?
Rob Foreman, London, UK
Monitor note: A spot of mistyping I'm afraid. Or a Freudian slip?
It's still a though.
Tom Webb, Surbiton, UK
0/7 on the ? Obviously the four years at university were wasted.
Marie, London
I for one would buy chocolate far more frequently if the wrappers .
Sue, London
Knock knock?
Who's there?
Ahmed.
Ahmed who?
Ahmed the Swedish apple cake, and it was really quite good (Wednesday letters).
(Awful joke = sure way to get into the letters page. Right? Right? ......Wrong?)
Katherine, Canberra
I made it last Friday evening, but found it took 30 minutes rather than 15. It tasted fantastic though, very light and moist. I'll definitely be making it again.
Rebecca, London
Re cooking quantities (Wednesday letters), I have a measuring spoon labelled "1 pinch".
Susan, Newcastle, UK
I didn't make the Swedish apple cake - but I did drink something that involved apples called last night - and it was awesome.
PB, London
As an IT professional of 30+ years standing (no need to fetch my anorak at the end of this - I'm already wearing it) I know HTML (and dozens of other languages) and I can categorically state that in a decade or so of enthusiastic and highly successful internet surfing, I have never ever used HTML (letters passim). Broadly, HTML can be used to develop web pages, but it really is not needed to enjoy them. If one more stretched metaphor is needed, then if surfing the web is like travelling by train, then knowing HTML is like, ummm, being able to print your own timetables. Or something.
John Marsh, Washington DC, US
Oooohhh! I wonder if I did this :) the lovely Monitor would make it magically turn in to a little yellow smiley person? Or if this :P would miraculously turn in to a little yellow sticky-outy-tongue person?
Jaz, Bath, UK
Monitor note: As a point of principle, absolutely not.
To throw my voice into the Paper Monitor gender debate (Wednesday letters), I can assure you that although I do know who three out of four of these people are (although only after a certain amount of rereading the text then checking the pictures and going "aah! Of course!") to my eyes "Joan-from-Mad-Men" is wearing peach, not pink. To call it pink is definitely a male indicator.
Sarah, Colchester
Monitor note: Pink-ish?
You don't need to know the celebrities - all the info is in the article.
Penelope Cruz: mermaidy frock, black Spanish number (only black dress in the lot)
Drew Barrymore: sparkly squirrels at shoulder and hip (more like sparkly fungus, only one with fungus at hip)
Sandra Bullock: purple confectionery (only shiny purple dress)
Hence last one remaining is Mad Men Joan (the least supported of the lot).
There! No need to have ever bought Heat, which is NOT read exclusively by women. And you can pinch it, sneak off and read it, as happens at my work.
Anni, Bristol, UK
Monitor note: Dentists' waiting rooms, friends' toilets...
Regarding the pronunciation of fuchsia (Wednesday letters), I've always wondered how "fewsha" was arrived at. The plant was named after the 16th Century German botanist Leonhart Fuchs, pronounced, like the polar explorer Sir Vivian, "fooks" and not "few". Here it's (correctly) called "fooksia".
Graham, Purmerend, Netherlands
Charles (Wednesday letters), that my post-date activities involved Google had nothing to do with my attire but more to do with:
1) I am a gentleman. Or at least that's what I've been told;
2) my date had to finish off an essay before uni the next day; and
3) The Rules dictate that one should not enter into rumpy pumpy an embrace before the third date, after which the pair should also decide if they are officially "seeing each other".
Basil Long, Nottingham
The 
