Q. Like a lot of my friends, my husband is selectively hard of hearing. He loves his garden and I spend ages calling him when it is lunchtime/someone has turned up etc. There is no mobile signal in the garden so I can’t ring him and by the time I have found him I am usually cross and hoarse from shouting. Mary, how can I make my life easier?
– A.E., Pewsey, Wiltshire
A. Get a pair of walkie-talkies and attach one to his belt. All men love going back to their childhood days and having the chance to say ‘Over and out’ and ‘Roger’. Walkie-talkies usually work within a two-mile radius. There are several well-known brands that market kits with three handsets for under £40.
Q. I live in Bermuda and a friend (who also lives there) recently allowed my wife and me to make use of their duplex in an East Coast US city at either end of a holiday to Vermont. We had intended to book a hotel and using their flat saved us several thousand dollars.
There is a particular red wine that they like which retails for $15 a bottle (we left two bottles behind). I was reluctant to buy a case for fear of it looking as though I thought we had cleared our obligation for less than 5 per cent of the money we saved. Besides the standard handwritten thank-you note, which I will deliver when I return the keys, what else would you suggest? The friend is about 15 years older than us, highly accomplished and sits on the board of my company, but, as we are a start-up, has been doing that without renumeration.
– J.R., Bermuda
A. You have blurred the lines between friendship and business.
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