Dear Mary | 18 October 2018

Q. My fiancé and I spend many great weekends with another couple. I am a vegetarian and quite particular about certain food textures and I cannot stand slimy foods like overcooked mushrooms or undercooked eggs. The husband of our good friends prides himself on the brunches he rustles up on the Sunday of these weekends, presenting the others with full English breakfasts and me with scrambled eggs on toast. I don’t quite know what he does to these eggs but they appear in front of me in a semi-liquid form, soaking into the toasted bread. I really need to figure out a way to stop this without offending our hosts. We’ve got to the point where I am presented with a mountain of this gloopy mess without being asked. I cannot request just toast the night before. How do I overcome this predicament?
— Name and address withheld

A. No one over 35 would hesitate to make the straightforward request: ‘May I just have toast today?’ In your generation, however, hypersensitivity about giving offence has become something of a new religion.