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SIR – While living in Riyadh in the Eighties, I attended an appointment at King Saud Medical City.

The women’s waiting room was lined with rows of chairs occupied by anxious-looking mothers and their children. To soothe my own nerves I took out my knitting (Letters, March 15).

Soon, all the chairs had been pushed aside and I was surrounded by a semi-circle of laughing, chattering Saudi women, enthralled by a craft they weren’t familiar with.

Nothing like knitting to calm an atmosphere. Sue Howes

Scorton, Lancashire