Barbecues needn’t cost you a sausage | Brief letters

A barbecue for £4,500 (The rise of the luxury barbecue: the UK’s new outdoor cooking obsession, 19 June)? For years I have barbecued for family and friends using an upturned metal milk crate, a paving stone on top, four bricks and an old grill rack, with only the charcoal costing anything – and not a burnt sausage in sight. Maintenance free, it all stacks neatly behind the shed waiting for the next heatwave.
Andrew Keeley
Warrington, Cheshire

I agree with Simon Jenkins that an end to sanctions on Iran would be a good outcome of the war (Trump thinks his freshly signed ceasefire deal is a victory. It is – for Iran, 18 June). As he says, opening up the country to the outside world is far more likely to dilute the regime’s grip on society than continued bombing. The same logic applies to Afghanistan.
Brendan O’Brien
London

If the US says the strait of Hormuz is open but Iran says it is closed, does it exist in a state of quantum uncertainty, or is this question resolved simply, in terms that even Donald Trump can understand, by reflecting that Iran holds all the cards (Report, 21 June)?
Mark de Brunner
Burn Bridge, North Yorkshire

My grandmother’s only joke was about a journey in South Shields ( Letters, 18 June). She was on a horse-drawn open charabanc. A new passenger got on. The driver asked: “Are you f’Harton?”, to which they replied: “Na, it wasn’t me, it must’ve bin the horse!”
Phil Bloomfield
Wotton-under-Edge, Gloucestershire

“The next station is Wapping”, but apparently it has short platforms, so it can’t be all that big.
Phil Wainwright
London