Believe me, a stadium with literally everyone dancing and spinning around, and the pleasure on people’s faces, is a truly awesome sight.And now we all feel a little bit alone, as though the great big freight train chugging along, pulling us with it, just suddenly disappeared and we’re all left standing there, not quite sure what to do with ourselves or where to go next.There’ll never be another show again And there’s nothing even vaguely similar to replace it. A place where you could smoke, trip, or not, dance like a freak, and generally have the best time for a few hours or so. It was all about the “scene”, and the incredible warmth and energy that went with it.There really was something magic about a Dead show It was because of the two halves. The music, at times just plain groovy, as in “Shakedown Street”, at others delicate and beautiful, as in “Terrapin” And the crowd. The next tour was but a few months away, and while young upstart bands (in fact, whole genres) would come and go, and the Stones and Pink Floyd just got more and more corporate slick, the Dead didn’t budge.
It was the grown-ups’ circus It really was. It was incredibly reassuring – that there was something constant out there, that had been around for longer than most of us had been alive, that simply wouldn’t do what rock stars are supposed to do, but kept coming back.

Living in America, the thing about the Grateful Dead was that you always knew they’d be back. From Mr Tom Hopkinson

Sir: So Jerry’s gone (“Dead heads mourn passing of rock legend”, 10 August) Captain Trips has taken the big one. It is one of the peculiar characteristics of performance-related pay systems that those who advocate them so fervently for others never think that they can be applied to themselves.Perhaps performance pay based on the volume of constituency correspondence, or on the number of MPs’ surgeries held, or on interventions on behalf of constituents with ministers, would meet the case? And that is without even looking at attendances in the House itself.Those MPs who are currently indulging in righteous indignation about their pay have only themselves to blame for having recognised sauce for the goose without taking into account that there would be ganders, too.Yours sincerely,Elizabeth SymonsGeneral SecretaryThe Association ofFirst Division Civil ServantsLondon, SW19 August. If MPs such as Jerry Hayes wish to “keep to the spirit of the formula that MPs voted on”, they are going to have to bite the bullet of performance-related pay. From Ms Elizabeth Symons

Sir: Having just negotiated the pay for senior civil servants and, in effect, for MPs themselves, at a basic increase in the pay bill of 2.7 per cent, may I make one or two points to the “outraged” MPs mentioned in your report (” `Cheated’ MPs’ anger over pay”, 7 August).
Unlike MPs, no senior civil servant is getting an automatic pay rise All pay rises will be performance-linked.

I do hope that Mr Hartston did not suffer from this complaint as well, since his life would have been a double misery with incessant two-way traffic.Yours faithfully,Dan BarkerOxford. From Mr Dan Barker

Sir: William Hartston (Health, 9 August) describes the traumas he has endured with a week of almost uninterrupted hiccups, but the caption to the accompanying photograph describes him as “the eructating author”.
The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines eructation as “the act or an instance of belching”, an event very different from – indeed almost diametrically opposed to – a hiccup. All leaders, along with the rest of us, need a group of intimates with whom to interact, apart from other affiliations.
When politics is the issue, what we need to fear are not chummy leaders but the ones who are egotistical and isolated, such as Stalin and Hussein.Yours sincerely,James HemmingTeddington, Middlesex. On most Arab maps, Israel simply does not exist.Mr Fisk’s criticism of Israeli reluctance to include “Palestine” in its official maps of the region may be valid. But it is his failure to castigate the Arabs for doing the same with Israel that speaks volumes.Yours faithfully,Bernard JosephsDiplomatic EditorJewish ChronicleLondon, EC4. From Dr James Hemming

Sir: In attacking Tony Blair for having a bunch of buddies (“Tony’s friends: the group that guides a leader”, 11 August) Richard Burden, Labour MP for Birmingham Northfield, is showing an extraordinary ignorance of history and humanity. No doubt when the peace process is completed this error will be put right.
However, I am puzzled that he should at the same time omit any mention of the fact that for the past 47 years, no map produced by any Arab country (with the exception of Egypt, which concluded peace with Israel in 1979) has either mentioned or suggested that there is an independent Jewish state in existence between Jerusalem and the Mediterranean.Despite years of negotiations towards peace, the situation has changed little.