SIR — I write to say how much I sympathize with your correspondent who wrote to draw our attention to the iniquities of the aged inhabitants of North Hill.

Since taking up residence on North Hill in 1953, I have noted a marked deterioration in the behaviour of my neighbours.

In those days we were all respectable citizens - paying our taxes, living quiet lives, spending the bulk of our disposable income down in Greater Minehead to help provide a decent living for the shopkeepers, service providers, builders, skilled craftsmen, carers and honest toilers of both sexes in West Somerset.

And now what do we see? The devil is indeed in the detail.

In fact I would go further and suggest that the Devil himself is in our midst.

Your correspondent should, when walking his dog, take a closer look behind those sinister gated communities; he doesn't know the half of it.

What about those wild alcohol and prescription drug fuelled parties with loud music keeping us all awake into the small hours?

The clandestine meetings behind closed curtains of small groups of U3A subversives? The lewd open air theatrical performances for invited audiences in secret gardens?

The helicopters delivering the weekly shopping from Fortnum and Mason? The boy racers on their mobility vehicles terrorizing the neighbourhood?

The ambulances blocking the road for hours on end as their elderly customers shuffle painfully from their doors? Where will it all end?

If I write with tongue in cheek it is because I take the charitable view that your correspondent's offensively ageist comments were written in the same vein.

I hope so, for I do not need to remind him that like death and taxes that are always with us, old age will eventually catch up with him as well.

Roger Grove Smith,

North Hill,

Minehead.