DISMAL SIGHT: The ponds in Priory Park are a dismal sight. I believe they are normally sourced by artesian groundwater. Lack of any prolonged rainfall periods since last summer together with the heavy extraction at the Thames Water pumping station at the junction of Tower Road and Sevenoaks Road has helped to lower the ground water table well below what is needed to create the artesian conditions needed to fill the ponds. If Thames Water could be persuaded to cut back pumping rates at Orpington and if we get a good period of heavy rainfall in the next few weeks chances are that the ponds will fill up quickly and all the wonderful wildlife we love will return to normal.

C L Chowdhury Address supplied

NO SURPRISE: A correspondent asks where has all the water gone from the ponds in Orpington? Surely it is not difficult to understand three dry winters and a near drought last summer have caused the lack of water. What is more it will be much worse this year unless we have a large amount of rain in the next four weeks. Rainfall between April and October will do nothing to raise the level of ground water and an enormous increase in use and misuse of water will be apparent to all of us in the south east. Hosepipe bans were not brought in when they should have been.

Mrs C Mawson South Hill Road

LOVE IS STILL LOVE: Your correspondents are quite right gay marriage does not exist in Britain at the present time, but gay love does exist. It can be just as deep, strong and caring as heterosexual love, with the same desire for permanence. Gay people can make their vows to each other in public in just the same way as heterosexuals, they may not do so in church and they may not call it marriage but what's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

Heather Barfoot Orpington

MOVING FORWARD: Gay men or women who choose to form a committed relationship can call it a marriage, civil partnership, union or whatever they like. Whose business is it but theirs? To deny this is simply a pathetically transparent attempt to keep them as second-class citizens.The world has moved on, if people such as Colin Fairclough and Leticia Edison choose to get left behind well frankly, do the rest of us really care?

P Davis Bromley