Your letters
14:24 UK time, Wednesday, 27 December 2006
Re - my mother has never been able to smell apart from petrol and Yardley's Bond Street Perfume. As a child I was forever being asked to smell this or that to see if it was still fresh (I still cringe when I have to smell milk) but it's made me aware of how often people take smell for granted. A smell isn't just a smell, it paints a picture and stirs emotions, awakens memories and even spurs ideas. Smell is incredibly important to me and without realising it I've passed this onto my children - my mother is disgusted that we smell everything before eating and that the children are obsessed with smelling the pages of a book, their hands when they've just washed them, and new shoes. Mum, it's because they smell good.
Sarah, Yorkshire
I realised I had lost my sense of smell about three months after I had noticed that breaking wind (strangely) no longer had any unpleasantness attached to it. Imagine my embarrassment when I realised what the real problem was. A course of steroid drops temporarily reminded me of what I'd been missing (but what everyone else had been suffering).
Tony C, Lancaster, UK
In , there was no injury, no damage, and if Mr Blair was not on the plane, it would not have been news. Move along, nothing to see here.
Ernest Winston, Maidenhead, Berkshire, UK
Re . I was greatly amused by the Dubya bowling pic - and caption. But Mr Bush so lends himself to the cap comp that it must have been nigh on impossible to pick just that one. How best to pick one's favourite? Mine has to be the one of him holding the drill... no, the crying baby... no, the cricket one. Shesh! Anyone out there more decisive than me?
Howard, Bakewell
The 
