Going on a summer holiday? Good luck!

Photograph: Alamy

When I told my adult education class that I wouldn’t be able to attend the next meeting because my husband and I were going on a short break to the Isle of Wight, instead of my colleagues uttering the more usual “Have a good time”, a couple of fellow students wished me “Good luck” instead. Will this be the new form of holiday good wishes in these strange times?
Kathrine Pattrick
Woodford Green, Essex

• One of the joys of lockdown and retirement is watching garden birds through the window. This morning’s joy was a pair of goldfinches on the lawn; then one bird flew nearer, pecking our wild forget-me-nots. After a small struggle, it detached a stem and flew off, carrying its blue bouquet as if presenting flowers to loved one. Not just any flower, but one with symbolic meaning – to humans at least.
Susan Treagus
Manchester

• I admire 92-year-old Gordon McCulloch’s advocacy of self-publication (Letters, 11 May). My own self-published autobiography, The Rising Son, was a sellout. This is an incontrovertible fact, as I bought all 50 copies myself. What’s more, I read each one.
James Kelso
Watlington, Oxfordshire

• I, too, have the “enemy alien registration” document of my late mother, who was an Irish citizen living in Oldham (Letters, 12 May). Despite my late father, also Irish, volunteering for the RAF, she was not allowed to remain there and was sent back to Dublin under escort.
Sue Gold
London

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