WE HAVE four large steps from our kitchen to the yard and, as I have to use elbow crutches, negotiating them is easier when I can hold the rail and descend backwards.

The other day, I was doing this as my six-year-old granddaughter, Lindsay, and her twin, Daniel, had gone ahead of me to my car at the bottom of the yard.

Lindsay watched and waited until I got to the bottom of all the steps and then said: "Grandad, it would be easy for you to get up and down these steps if they weren't there."

Meantime, Diane, aged nine, the eldest of the three grandchildren, had gone shopping with my wife, after which I picked them up in the car.

My wife had bought some crab sticks at a stall where there was a notice -- "Crab sticks, 10p each -- 12 for a pound."

Diane looked at the notice and said to the chap behind the stall: "Excuse me, that's wrong. How can they be 10p each if you get 12 for a pound?"

ALBERT J MORRIS, Clement View, Nelson.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.