Long live Rowntree Fruit Gums and KitKat! – letter

AS the years roll by there is always something in memory that leaps out and allows one to digest the beauty of those years.

Entering my 83rd year I am blessed with memories as far back as the 1940s.

Born in Northallerton to a well-known family in the town in 1944, it seemed everyone knew everyone else.

Such it was with the Gills. My father, Captain Charles Gill MBE, had served in a number of countries in the Second World War and at the end was attached to The Green Howards in York.

Backwards and forwards to York, his HQ, every day Rowntree’s was not out of his way in York.

Rationing was also in play at that time. My father knew that but it appeared to be the case that the military was exempt from certain products.

The Rowntree’s factory of the chocolates and gums was part of my young life.

Rowntree Fruit Gums and KitKat were also second nature to my diet.

And so it is today – no matter what part of the world I am in.

I left the UK in 1970 and have lived in such wonderful places as Malaysia, Trinidad and Canada, the latter perhaps being my final home.

My family know well what delights are expected on my birthdays and they never miss.

I do of course share some of my gifts.

Long live Rowntree Fruit Gums and KiKat!

Alan Gill,

Canada

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Christian celebrations have become ‘non-existent’

I WAS brought up to believe that England was a Christian country, tolerant of all and every other religion but still a “Christian country”.

I have an interest in all history and recently noticed that historically events and artifacts have commonly been aged in BCE or CE instead of BC (Before Christ) or AD (Anno Domini , in the year of the Lord).

Apparently the new dating is supposed to be “neutral with no religion” and as such BCE stands for Before Common/Current Era and CE is Common Era.

The dates/years remain the same as such, but, to me, by removing any religious meanings amounts to reducing the thing that makes us English.

All other religions in this country celebrate their main religious days, but the Christian celebrations have become non-existent.

Christmas has become a commercial time of Santa rather than the birth of Jesus.

Easter a time of bunny rabbits and chocolate rather than crucifixion and resurrection.

I have no problem whatsoever with people celebrating their religion but ours is being degraded by the push to be over neutral and gushing to others.

D M Deamer,

Penleys Grove Street,

Monkgate,

York

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Sad omens for new Archbishop of Canterbury

WE have just appointed our first female Archbishop of Canterbury but sadly the omens for a bright progressive future are not good, apparently she agrees with her predecessor that the Church of England should be paying out £100m in reparation for the church’s involvement in the slave trade.

Whose conscience are they satisfying, it can only be those with weak, woke, detached views currently in charge, it certainly isn’t that of the average parishioner struggling to keep his/her church alive, but when did their view have any impact on the so-called “intellectuals”?

Peter Rickaby,

Moat Way,

Brayton