Mr FWC Parkhouse, from Brighton, points out an error in our Turf Talk column the Friday before last.

It said stable lad and work jockey Ken Carey's first ride was on the 1946 Derby winner Dante.

Mr Parkhouse says the winner that year was not Dante but 50-1 bet Airborne, who was named after the airborne divisions in action during the Second World War, owned by Mr JE Ferguson, trained by R Perryman and ridden by T Lowrey.

The race was the first to be run at Epsom since Blue Peter's victory in 1939 because the Derby was run at Newmarket from 1940 to 1945, the final race there being won by, you guessed it, Dante.

My thanks to Mr Parkhouse, who last featured in this column in 2001 (also on the subject of racing), and adds: "I am avid reader of The Argus, which is delivered daily, and I love your crosswords and nonagrams which I always do."

My humblest apologies to Mrs DM Lacey, from Ringmer, and her mother who were upset at a misprint in the obituary for her father, Ronald Dyson, on Thursday last week.

It said donations should be sent to the Prentensions Society instead of the Parkinson's Disease Society. A corrected version was published last Friday and, at Mrs Lacey's request, we have made a donation to the society by way of apology and as a gesture of goodwill.

She says: "I would like to think in future when dealing with such a distressing time perhaps more care could be taken to ensure obituaries appear to read correctly." Quite.

While on the subject of the births, marriages and deaths page, Paula Woolven, from Telscombe Cliffs, was reluctant to mark her father's 60th birthday in his favourite local paper because the birthdays section is next to the deaths and in memoriam notices.

She asks if there could be a gap in between the happy and sadder sections, adding: "I think he would take it as too much of a reminder that on his birthday he would one day (hopefully far away!) be in the 'sadly missed' section.

"So, very sorry, advertising sales department, my credit card details won't be winging your way unless there becomes a gap in the two sections." Over to you, sales.

Kathleen Hogbin, from Brighton, read in Saturday's paper that the new Alias Hotel Seattle at Brighton Marina would be open for public tours over the weekend but when she - "and many other people" - went there they found it was not.

"It looked more like a deserted building," she says. "Please get your facts right before going to press."

Apologies for the error. What the story should have said was that hotel officials would be touring the city centre over the weekend offering people a chauffeur-driven trip to and sneak preview of the hotel before it opened on Monday.

Now a Spicer (courtesy of Gerald Spicer, from Portslade), who asks why we cap down abbreviations for organisations like his beloved Royal Air Forces Association (Rafa).

"The biggest insult was when the shuttle Columbia broke up on re-entry and you wrote Nasa instead of NASA," he says.

Well, Gerald, our style is to cap up abbreviations that don't sound a bit like words, such as RSPCA, and to cap down those that do, such as Rospa and the two you mention. The reason is they are much easier to read that way, having fewer syllables.

And finally, apologies for the headline on Tuesday last week above a story about a charity fashion show staged by pupils at Littlehampton College.

It said: "Students show their flare at charity fashion event." It should, of course, have said "flair" - special ability as opposed to a brief burst of bright flame.