Q. In order to raise money for a worthwhile cause, I have agreed to open my garden for the first time and provide a sit-down lunch for 30. My problem is that there are certain local people who I really don’t want to come and snoop around, but I fear that once they see the advertisement they will be the first to buy tickets and thereby displace slower-off-the mark locals whose company I would genuinely enjoy. Can you help, Mary?
– Name and address withheld
A. Insert a codicil at the end of the advertisement warning: ‘Places are limited and will be balloted.’
Q. How do you reply to summer invitations which are sent out many weeks in advance when you cannot predict whether you will even be in the country at the time? It is so rude not to reply promptly when the host is clearly trying to organise something extravagant and wants to know whom he can sit next to whom, but I don’t want to accept and then find I have a better invitation to go abroad on the date in question.
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