Q. Please can you tell me the correct etiquette about signing the visitors book after you are married? Obviously you don’t sign your parents’ one before marriage — but your fiancé does. After you are married do you both sign — even if you have lived in the house all your life?
— Name and address withheld
A. There is no reason for any former child of a house to feel offended if the parent (or step-parent) asks them to sign the visitors book after marriage. It is not a veiled insult or a signal that ‘this is no longer your home’. The visitors book is a matter of record, which will be kept for decades, even for generations. Thus both members of the partnership should sign. After all, years later, there may be over-interpretation of why a husband or wife appeared to have visited alone, whether it was their childhood home or not. Almost more reason for both to sign.
Q. I live in a blessedly peaceful rural area which, in recent weeks, has seen much more footfall as ‘strangers’ have flooded in to take their permitted exercise. I am always cheerful and friendly and say ‘Good morning’ to those I pass in the lanes, but am I right to feel annoyed when many of these respond ‘All right?’ with looks of genuine concern on their faces? Frankly, Mary, it’s none of their business whether I am all right or not. Moreover if I were not all right, I wouldn’t wish to enlarge on my state of well-being with random strangers. How should I reply?
— K.F.G., Wiltshire
A. Those familiar with the countryside code know that only non-committal platitudes are exchanged with those we come across in the Great Outdoors.
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