A taste of freedom

SIR – I tasted a kind of freedom on Monday and toasted all those scientists who made it possible to sit in the garden of my favourite pub and drink a pint in the sunshine. Thank you. Graham White

Cambridge

SIR – I walked over to my local, the Angel, to celebrate freedom. They could give me a seat, but could only take my order by app. Apparently this is a government regulation for Test and Trace. So an elderly person like me, who only has a 20-year-old Nokia with no apps, cannot have a drink. David Walters

Corbridge, Northumberland

SIR – Like Susan Wood (Letters, April 12), I am eagerly awaiting the opening of charity shops – but in my case it is to deposit the 56 books I have gathered during the various lockdowns.

Susan Shields

Kingswood, Gloucestershire

SIR – If anyone had said to me 15 months ago that bliss was having a haircut, I would have declared them bonkers.

John M Overton

Buxton, Derbyshire

SIR – Throughout this pandemic we have seen many orderly, calm, controlled queues outside supermarkets, bakers and the like, with only given numbers allowed into the premises at a time.

Now we are told there is to be a “crackdown on queuing” (report, April 13). Who do these petty council officials suddenly think they are? John Tilsiter

Radlett, Hertfordshire

SIR – I would suggest that, in the interests of fair play, these officials should also apply the same standards to shops in the high street. Monday night’s news showed that the queues at Primark and other shops far exceeded those outside the pubs.

Tim Twist

Matlock, Derbyshire

SIR – Every phone call that I have had to make to businesses or services over the past few weeks resulted in a message telling me they were very busy and giving the time I’d have to wait for an operator. Covid gets the blame, although the actual problem lies with lockdown and the fact that they are all understaffed. This even goes for the fraud department of my bank, where the wait was 50 minutes.

Is this going to be the “new normal”? Victoria Back