A crash course in life skills for students | Brief letters

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A crash course in life skills for students

Cooking lessons | Resident chef | Instant mash | Location tracking | Despairing of humanity

Regarding teaching children life skills (Letters, 14 September), in the 1990s I worked as a student accommodation manager. A mother phoned me devastated that her son had not been allocated catered halls. “He can’t cook,” she pleaded. Close to the end of my tether with hundreds of students to house, I retorted brusquely: “You’ve got three weeks, teach him.”Helen BarneyMumbles, Swansea

Some 28 years ago, my son went to university armed with fundamental cooking skills. After making a bolognese sauce for eight, he became the chef and never had to buy food or do the washing up in his entire first year.Jan MayDeal, Kent

My university friends in the 1970s credit me with saving them from starvation by sharing my discovery of instant mashed potato.John RushtonBridge of Weir, Renfrewshire

Re location-tracking apps (Location-tracking apps have turned me into a gibbering wreck – but I just can’t look away, 16 September), I promised my adult kids that I would only check their whereabouts in emergencies. Now I find myself looking to see which supermarket they’ve gone to so I can ask them to pick up some exotic fruit I’ve just found in a recipe. They must rue the day they asked me to get the app so they could check I was safe on solo camper van trips. Penny KayLancaster

If you had £36m rattling around in your pocket, think of the good you could do – schools, hospitals, housing the homeless. But no, you give it to Nigel Farage (Report, 12 September). Sometimes I despair.Keith LangtonKirkcudbright, Dumfries & Galloway

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Source: www.theguardian.com