A chara, – Bravo to your correspondent John Fleming on his article "Tourist-depleted Madrid is a strange place in the demonic August heat" (World, August 21st). He conjured up a wonderful range of vivid images of a bakingly hot Madrid afternoon from his vantage point inside a cafe-bar. The 40 degree heat outside is, he says, "like an assassin training a hairdryer on your head." I could almost taste his chilled wine and salted clams as he scoffed them while gazing out on the Plaza de Cascorro. He even managed to throw in references to Daliesque melting clocks, Cervantes, and Howard Hughes in his very enjoyable piece. Later he leaves us at the Café Moderno, as he is perched under "twin sun protection of green awning and two-table parasols that intersect like Venn circles." Reading his column while drinking my own pint of Guinness in a Dublin bar, I could picture him there, straw hat and white linen jacket, while his "ice cubes struggle to stay in shape and the Modern name gradually melts into the similar name of a vaccine."
Well done. – Is mise,
Dr VINCENT KENNY,
Knocklyon,
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Dublin 16.
Sir, – Reading John Fleming’s piece brought to mind an old Spanish saying regarding Madrid: Nueve meses de invierno y tres meses de infierno. It is a play on words and translates as, Nine months of winter and three months of hell. – Yours, etc,
KATHLEEN MAURER,
Booterstown,
Co Dublin.