He was dressed in a short-sleeved black shirt with matching slacks and had kicked off the heavy running boots that were his regular footwear in camp. Apart from a slight bruise beneath his right eye and some flecks of blood surrounding the iris, he was unmarked.
Later he would rant from one press conference to the next. It was early in the afternoon, not yet eight hours since Muhammad Ali won, and he had probably not slept half that time. The tumult detonated by his defeat of George Foreman had briefly subsided and he lay back on the cushions of an easy chair in his villa alongside the swollen Zaire River. Why exactly should we stop now?ALED ELWYN JONES AberystwythSir: Ms Tennant suggests Welsh-speakers “convert” to speaking Welsh when an English person is present.

Perhaps they wouldn’t feel the need if English people weren’t snooping around eavesdropping on their conversations?JAMES FALLOWS LiverpoolSir: I appreciate that the English may have special powers denied to us lesser breeds, but I’m still puzzled how they know which language was being used when they were not present.RHION PRITCHARD Bangor, Gwynedd. I look forward to you further broadening your sports section with coverage of the Basque Pelota Championships and the exciting climax of the Danish Handball League (haandboldligaen), where Kolding IF, GOG and Arhus GF are currently on equal points at the top of a very competitive division.KEVIN CUMMINS London SW16 Welsh retorts Sir: Maddeleine Tennant (letter, 29 October) repeats the old myth of Englishmen walking into a pub in Wales to find the locals who had been conversing in English suddenly start speaking Welsh. In fact we’ve been toasting “iechyd da” since the time when the English were still drinking in the forests of northern Germany. I’m sorry to disappoint, but we’ve been speaking Welsh in our pubs since long before they were frequented by visitors from over Offa’s Dyke.

Not only can it be used for keeping everything from coffee to cornflakes fresh, it can also hold down the pages of your recipe book, thus removing any need for the hopeless perspex bookstand, which of course prevents you turning the pages.ALASTAIR CASSELS London SW13 Sporting interest Sir: I applaud your attempts to generate interest in minority sports, with two pages devoted to baseball, a sport barely played outside the USA (29 October). Lift the crate out of the trolley and into the back of your car. What could be simpler than that?MIKE CARTER Nottingham Peg of my heart   Sir: Annalisa Barbieri (“The Ten Best Baking Essentials”, 26 October) has ignored the most essential kitchen item of all, the clothes peg. At the checkout, place the heavier items on the conveyor belt first and finish with the lighter items Put the items back into the crate, which is in your trolley Wheel your trolley to the car park. He was obviously aware of the “hobbit” and its diet.MEURIG WILLIAMS Bagshot, Surrey Crate ideas Sir: There is a very simple solution to the problem of plastic supermarket bags discussed in your leading article (29 October).

Don’t use them!For years now I have been taking a folding plastic crate to put my supermarket shopping into. It works like this: you unfold your plastic crate and put it into your trolley Place the items you want in the crate. Bright little people!Professor LIONEL MARCH Stretham, CambridgeshireSir: Lucia Nixon protests (letter, 29 October) at your use of mankind rather than humankind in your report on Homo floresiensis. Leaving aside whether she should have advocated hupersonkind, she should realise that for most people “man” and “mankind” in such contexts have no sexual connotation and do not promote the male sex. In seeking greater fairness for women in our society she might do better not to waste her powder and shot on such trivialities.PHILIP N O’DONOGHUE New Barnet, HertfordshireSir: Lucia Nixon gives you a ticking-off for the “macho” overtones in your story about Homo floresiensis or Flores Man If only we could have a rest from political correctness. If you had shown a picture of Flores Woman you would probably have been accused of using the story as an excuse to show a naked female.ADRIAN DURRANT Eastbourne, East SussexSir: No wonder Sherlock Holmes said that the story of the giant rat of Sumatra was one for which the world was not yet prepared. The gods had requested an altar twice the size of the existing one The Delians doubled the lengths of the sides.

“No”, the gods protested, “you have made the new altar eight times the size of the old. If we are to teach religion in schools, we owe it to children to put to them all faith positions, including atheism, but also the reasons why some people are agnostic. Why? Because it is intellectually honest.JOHN CLINCH London EC2Sir: Philip Hensher is quite right to criticise the lazy argument that belief in evolution etc requires the same kind of faith as the belief in God, but it is unfortunate that he falls into making a similarly lazy argument himself.It cannot be the case that atheism “just means that you don’t see the necessity for a deity”, because many people who do believe in God don’t see the necessity for a deity either. Instead, Ms Flores, proportional to her height, had a brain two and two-thirds the capacity of ours, or up to four times that of her taller contemporary, Homo erectus.