Sir, - Louise East (Out and About, May 9th) asks "when will people learn to switch off the mobile phone and leave the box of Roses for the interval"?
I have been observing audiences at the National Concert Hall, theatres and cinemas. In general, apart from the odd polite cough, concert-goers sit quietly and always know when to applaud. Theatre-goers are slightly more restless and furtively open boxes of sweets.
Contrast these with a cinema audience. Buckets of popcorn are munched throughout the show and washed down with gallons of soft drinks. When the last tasty morsel of popcorn has been eaten they start on the big noisy bag of sweets.
My visits to the theatre and concert hall now far outnumber my visits to the cinema. It seems, like Eliot, "I grow old . . . I grow old". - Yours, etc., Margaret Riordan,
Palmerstown, Dublin 20.