How delightful to read Edward’s description of a moonbow in Reeth, Swaledale (Young country diary, 25 January). On 20 November 1996, the Guardian published my response to a Notes and Queries question: “Do rainbows occur at night?” Like Edward and his family, I had seen a moonbow in Swaledale and I suggested that further confirmation of their existence could be seen at the Tate in Turner’s painting of a moonbow in the Lake District. Have moonbows been seen only by northern folk (and Turner)?
Delphine Ruston
Richmond, North Yorkshire
• One of my school reports reads: “Mainly satisfactory apart from maths, from which he appears to have retired” – which is ironic given that I worked for 40 years as a VAT officer, examining figures every day (Letters, 27 January).
Ian Arnott
Peterborough
• Gaby Hinsliff may have trouble dissociating Chris Whitty from Covid (Opinion, 31 January). My trouble is more basic: I cannot disentangle his appearance from that of Death in Ingmar Bergman’s film The Seventh Seal.
Margaret Squires
St Andrews, Fife
• Re the Germans’ best word for weak coffee (Letters, 28 January): my friend told me about Blümchenkaffee. So weak that you can see the roses painted in the bottom of the cup.
Theresa Graham
Clevedon, Somerset
• Do you have a photograph you’d like to share with Guardian readers? If so, please click here to upload it. A selection will be published in our Readers’ best photographs galleries and in the print edition on Saturdays.
