Dear Mary: What do I say to the neighbour who comments on my daily exercise?

Q To your correspondent with a guest whose table manners offend (2 May), you suggest screening him off with a well-positioned vase of flowers. Mary, this may work for lockdown but whether or not his peers say that ‘table manners aren’t a thing anymore’, they certainly are still a thing among the sort of people who might give him a job. Someone needs to upset him, in the short term, for his own good in the long. I write as a parent whose daughter’s likeable but slobbish-at-the-table boyfriend will re-enter our orbit when this blessed holiday comes to an end.
— Name and address withheld

A. The clue is to approach the issue from a humanitarian, rather than a snobbish, perspective. You might take a tip from one family, in the same position as yourself, who conveyed the instructions re civility via a proxy. It involved the collusion of the daughter.