Dear Mary: Help! My friend’s home is filthy

Q. What should I do if my housekeeper refuses to clean my nanny’s bedroom and bathroom? I am worried they will turn into a tip.

– M.C., London

A. Today’s competent London nannies are so highly paid that yours may have developed delusions of grandeur. Your housekeeper is quite right to refuse. Why not tell your nanny that you want to get the children into the habit of associating cleaning with fun at an early age? Suggest she supervise them tackling her bedroom and bathroom each day and you will come up to inspect and award stars for good work.

Q. My family and I were dismayed when we heard that a woman who moves in the same (literary) circles has bought a house near our remote cottage in Cornwall. She is by no means a soulmate – although, since we use the cottage primarily as a retreat from our over-social London lives, it would be even worse if she were.