Q. I would like to return the hospitality of a senior member of the royal family but my wife insists that an invitation is not expected and would only embarrass as we could not match the standards. Meanwhile I have heard that a friend of a friend of a friend has had this senior royal to stay, more than once, in very modest converted farm buildings in the West Country. What do you recommend?
— Name and address withheld
A. You need not issue a direct invitation — just a strongly hinting overture that he would be more than welcome. If and when top royals want to come and stay or visit you in your own home, and can square it with security costs, they will give an indication themselves. They will do this either verbally, through a mutual friend who is a better friend than you, or through the appropriate official, who can negotiate a diary date.
Q. Unlike one of my very best friends, I am not at all competitive by nature. Over the many years she has been boasting to me, I have never minded her being thinner, richer, better connected than me. But 40 years on, she has become competitive about which of us has the better memory. During our daily phone call, she often calls me ‘Alzy’, as in Alzheimer’s. She says, ‘But Alzy, I told you that/we discussed that’ or similar, when I am pretty certain it is the first time I have heard of it. I don’t think either of us is losing our memory — yet. I just think she wants to crow about having a sharper memory and is trying to undermine my confidence. How should I tackle this?
— Name and address withheld
A. This behaviour is unacceptable. It is reminiscent of George Cukor’s psychodrama Gaslight, in which a husband tries to make his wife doubt her sanity. Punish your friend by responding to these accusations, in affectionate tones, as follows: ‘I promise it’s not that you have become boring and I stopped listening. I must have just been distracted when you told me. But I swear it’s not that you are becoming boring.’ Once she learns to conflate her bids to undermine you with a personal anxiety that she has become a bore, you should see a reversion to a less harmful type of rivalry.
Q. I know it is more healthy, at a drinks party, to offer olives and crudités, and that crisps are fattening, but I also know I always really want crisps and my instinct is to give people what they want.
— M.B., Firle, Sussex
A. You are correct — with the proviso that cocktail snacks should be offered in individual bowls or in some other format which deters scrabbling by multiple fingers. There is a particularly unpleasant three-week cough going around and it would be a breach of hospitality to promote its spreading.
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