Dear Mary | 26 November 2011

Q. Is it on to invite friends to a birthday dinner and, with no pre-arrangement, expect them to fork out for their meal? An acquaintance — let’s call him Ralphie — has done this for years. Responding to his always effusive invitation (‘I’d really like YOU to be there’), one arrives bearing a gift and, at the end of a convivial evening in a posh restaurant, with appropriate fine wines and liqueurs, the bill is divided between the guests, some of whom, being unprepared, cough up with fixed smiles. Those who pay cheerfully are Ralphie’s pals who, like him, are associated with boats. Ralphie is skipper of a millionaire’s ocean-going yacht so he is himself not short of a bob or two. Tell me, Mary, is this going Dutch — so reminiscent of hard-up student days — perhaps an accepted practice among sea-farers and yachties?
— T.D., Majorca

A. No it is not accepted practice in the wider world.