AS an 80-year-old male I look back on my life and believe that I have been fortunate to live in the most fortunate generation in history. I have never been required to fight in foreign wars and the NHS has been there since 1947 to meet my health needs.

During the 1940s, growing up in Glasgow, times were hard for my parents with rationing of food and living in an impoverished country trying to reduce the massive debt of the war.

By the 1960s things had really improved and my wife and I took our first foreign holiday on a seven-day package trip to Italy on a twin-engine propeller plane out of Luton( I could not believe the heat in Milan), the following year we drove to Austria with our baby son.

Later the European Community was established, bringing peace and prosperity, and eventually the UK joined in the 1970s.

I loved being a European, not only for holidays, but business took me all over Europe as I developed relationships and sales for the small Scottish manufacturing company that I part-owned. I found the German, Swedish, French, Spanish and others lovely, fair and honest people to do business with.

I am so sad that we are giving up this relationship, which has been so important in creating peace, friendship and trade, in a few weeks.

We will all be losers with the changes affecting travel, education, reciprocal health cover and cost of living.

John Ewing, Ayr.

TRACING THE HORSES

THE main picture of High Street ("Those were the days", The Herald, October 7) is actually of West Nile Street. Trace horses can be seen while a passing number 13 tram heads south towards Cathcart and Clarkston. Trolleybuses replaced the 13 tram in West Nile Street, but not until 1953, although their introduction in the city in 1949 did leave High Street without trams.

The first general manager of the fledgling Glasgow Tramways Department in 1894 came from the Cleansing Department, whose experience of managing a huge stable of horses was invaluable.

Stuart Little, Milngavie.

ALL GREEK TO ME

ANENT the discussion on the meaning of "Odeon" (“James Bond has failed so who will save cinema?”, The Herald, October 6 and Letters, October 7), Stuart Neville makes a valid point in his understanding of the word being derived from " Nickelodeon", admission to American cinemas of that name being a nickel, or five cents.

I prefer to think that the word "Odeon" is simply derived from the Greek word meaning a theatre for musical contests. My basic keyboard skills prevent my typing the word in Greek.

David Miller, Milngavie.

SOHO, SO WHAT?

ON the occasion of Dennistoun being named the eighth-coolest neighbourhood on the planet (" Playing it cool earns Dennistoun a place on world list of top areas", The Herald, October 7), the BBC's West of Scotland website trumpeted: "Soho in Central London has been voted as the world's 31st coolest neighbourhood."

It took them until paragraph four to admit: "It was beaten by Glasgow's Dennistoun which ranked as the eighth coolest..."

London-centric? The BBC? Surely not.

Steve Brennan, Coatbridge.