Vacuum-packed rashers

Sir, – I don't know much about Nietzsche or "amor fati", love of fate, ("Accepting a situation does not mean you have to stay there", Laura Kennedy, Life, June 5th), but I can assure a droll Eugene Tannam (Letters, June 6th) that he is not the only mortal who finds the task of opening vacuum-packed rashers exceedingly problematic.

Any time I attempt the onerous exercise, I almost invariably make a pig’s ear of it.

To slightly paraphrase a well-known idiom: “Nietzsche abhors a vacuum”. – Yours, etc,

PAUL DELANEY,

READ SOME MORE

Dalkey,

Co Dublin.

Sir, – I sympathise greatly with Eugene Tannam in the difficulties he experiences in preparing his breakfast.

However, I urge him to persist with the task and rather than turn to Nietzsche, instead consider a different philosopher perhaps more apt for the problem with his vacuum-packed rashers, Francis Bacon. He opined: “There is no comparison between that which is lost by not succeeding and that which is lost by not trying”. – Yours etc,

DEAGLÁN

MacGIOLLAPHÁDRAIG,

Castlemacadam,

Avoca,

Co Wicklow.