Wanted: elusive non-slip shoes for icy weather

SIR – Public Health England advises us to wear non-slip shoes in snow and ice.

Where, pray, is this elusive footwear to be found? I am on a slippery slope here and have yet to find any that will prevent me from head-butting the pavement again.

Patrick Tracey

Carlisle, Cumbria

SIR – We are constantly told to “drive carefully” in this cold weather.

Does this mean that we should drive carelessly during normal conditions?

William Rusbridge

Tregony, Cornwall

SIR – The “Beast from the East” has arrived in Scone. I am 72 and I don’t know how to panic. Should I be euthanised?

Joy Knight

Scone, Perthshire

SIR – The name Emma for the storm generated by the warm air from Spain does not have quite the foreboding as the “Beast from the East”. Surely the Met Office could have come up with something a bit more threatening, such as “La Bestia de Valencia”.

Adrian Buck

Wantage, Oxfordshire

SIR – Southern Sweden has been hit with much more snow than Britain in recent days, but life goes on.

No schools are closed and wintertyred traffic doesn’t skid about on the roads.

Alan G Barstow

Onslunda, Skåne, Sweden

SIR – One night in December 1981 the temperature in Oxfordshire dropped to minus 20C.

At six the next morning I drove to an appointment at the US base at Upper Heyford and commented to the man in the sentry box: “Cold, isn’t it?”

“Man,” he replied, “you ain’t seen nothing. Where I come from, it goes down to minus 30 and stays there for three months.”

Needless to say, the base was fully operational.

Duncan Rayner

Sunningdale, Berkshire