It’s a pity the English language hasn’t also adopted the word mitfreude (“with joy”) from the German, but only its negative opposite – schadenfreude (‘The pleasure of a chancer unmasked’: why we are living in the age of schadenfreude, 16 February). Mitfreude is the joyful emotion we experience when we delight in others’ good news, happiness or joy. How strange that we don’t seem to have a word for it.
Martina Crowther-Menn
Cambridge
Arwa Mahdawi refers to the Adam Smith Institute’s proposals (Privatising the moon may sound like a crazy idea but the sky’s no limit for avarice, 17 February), but this is not new. The influential sci-fi author Robert A Heinlein published The Man Who Sold the Moon in 1950, describing predatory late capitalism trying to do just that.
John Wilson
London
Interesting to read suggestions of gigs that changed music (Letters, 18 February), but I am upset by your error in saying Buddy Holly was the first rock’n’roll act to tour the country when we had rocked and rolled to Bill Haley a year earlier.
Valerie Gidlow
Faversham, Kent
Having had a childhood in rural Wales, it was always amusing when visiting my widowed mother – who was living away from Wales – that we took our shoes off by the front door and wiped the soles with disinfectant (Letters, 18 February). My mother was keen to keep well living on her own – she died at 96.
Helen Evans
Ruthin, Denbighshire
I look to the shoes and slippers to see who’s home.
Lucie Galvin
Balboa Island, California, US
