Dear Mary

Dear Mary | 25 January 2018

Q. Several friends have reached an age and wealth that means they take unreasonably long holidays or even entire gap years. I enjoy being in regular touch with them when they are at home and am sad they will be away for so long. But should one stay in touch? And how, without the intrusive

Dear Mary | 18 January 2018

Q. I will be 80 in March and all my friends will expect to be asked to the celebration. My problem is that our dining-room table only fits 16, and everyone is too old for a buffet as we will spill the stuff down ourselves. How can I avoid offending the uninvited friends? — M.D.,

Dear Mary | 11 January 2018

Q. Should the lady or the gentleman have the banquette in a restaurant? I’ve been brought up to believe that the lady has the banquette for her more delicate bottom — and for her handbag. She has the view of the room; the gentleman has only eyes for her. My fiancé says that a modern couple

Dear Mary | 4 January 2018

Q. At my son’s school the boys keep a clandestine leatherbound book known as ‘The Bible’, a sort of Rogues Gallery which, inter alia, keeps a detailed account of various misdemeanours and advice on how to circumvent school regulations. It is handed down from year to year, and one of my son’s friends was caught

Celebrity Dear Mary | 13 December 2017

From Sir Vince Cable MP Q. I have an unfulfilled ambition to win a national title for ballroom dancing in my age group. But this leadership thing gets in the way of my training. What’s more important — Parliament’s squabbling schoolroom or Blackpool’s twinkle-toes ballroom? A. What’s all this either/or business? These days the only

Dear Mary | 7 December 2017

Q. My wife and I were having lunch in our local bistro. A boy of about two was wandering around the restaurant and after a while began to scream loudly, with no remonstration by his parents. At this point my wife asked them if they could make the child desist. This brought a diatribe of

Dear Mary | 30 November 2017

Q. We have reached the age when we are receiving invitations from our friends for Golden Wedding celebrations. All the invitations clearly state no presents please. It feels dreadful to arrive without a gift, especially as others have obviously ignored the hosts’ request and arrived with presents. What to do? — M & D., Somerset

Dear Mary | 23 November 2017

Q. I was recently at an informal dinner given by two dear friends, but returned home seething with rage against one of their two guests. The odd thing was that for at least half of the dinner I had liked her; she had seemed soothing and articulate and had a pretty face. Her true colours

Dear Mary | 16 November 2017

Q. My husband, who used to be away on business most of the time, now works from home and has become bossy and dictatorial. He spends a good deal of his day advising me how the house could be better run. This is bringing tensions into our previously harmonious relationship. How can I put a

Dear Mary | 9 November 2017

Q. We have a family friend we don’t see nearly as much as we’d like. This is because he’s so near perfect — clever, funny, civilised, and also single with an interesting job — that he’s in great demand as a guest. When we do bag him before somebody else does we adore his company

Dear Mary | 2 November 2017

Q. Twice in one week I have been found unready for my guests. Occasion one: in the garden, finishing my lunch. A knock at the front door. Standing there, smiling expectantly, a groomed guest to play bridge at 2 p.m. The time was 1.40 p.m. Occasion two: upstairs, changing for a 2 p.m. meeting at my

Dear Mary | 26 October 2017

Q. What is the etiquette of hospital visiting? A friend in his fifties is about to spend six weeks in a London hospital recovering from a heart operation. He will be in a private room. He is going to be fine but he will feel a bit fragile, so can you advise me how long

Dear Mary | 19 October 2017

Q. A newish friend who has very good manners lent me a DVD of his grandfather at the Olympics. I forgot to watch it. Now, a year later, he has asked for it back but I can’t find it! It is unique and irreplaceable. I feel rather guilty but did not ask to borrow the

Dear Mary | 12 October 2017

Q. A well-known television mogul,whom I had met only once, came to dinner at my house. I was on good culinary form and though I say it myself, the food and wine were exceptional. For various reasons it turned into an almost bespoke dinner for the mogul, in that the other guests were all people

Dear Mary | 5 October 2017

Q. We have moved from London into a rural area where we are preparing for the first visit of a lifelong friend who has become a self-invented countryman. I know that he will insist on foraging for mushrooms, but none of my family wants to go on kidney dialysis machines as a result of being

Dear Mary | 28 September 2017

Q. How can I avoid becoming seen as an ‘Instagram creeper’? My well-meaning niece tells me that I’m in danger of qualifying for this insult. Apparently it means a sort of Peeping Tom who views other people’s postings but never contributes any herself. I joined Instagram a year ago to promote a fundraising event, and it’s

Dear Mary | 21 September 2017

Q. Last year my husband and I stayed with a much-loved, but slightly airy-fairy friend in her house in Tuscany. Flights, tips, presents, a hire car and house-sitters were already costing us rather a lot, but she insisted we went out to (quite expensive) local restaurants for lunch four days out of five to experience

Dear Mary | 14 September 2017

Q. My partner and I recently had two close friends — one a Peer, the other a former Member of the Scottish Parliament — over for lunch. During the course of an otherwise splendid meal, our friend from the House of Lords took a ten-minute call from a former prime minister, remaining at the table for

Dear Mary | 7 September 2017

Q. Some rather flashy new neighbours of ours — I won’t mention their names as his will be familiar to a lot of your readers — asked my wife and me to lunch last week in their new barn as a dummy run for the cook they’ve employed for the shooting season. They were very

Dear Mary | 31 August 2017

Q. Our best friends own a house in Morocco which sleeps about ten. They rent it out but go two or three times a year themselves and always invite as many people as they can cram in. They have much more social stamina than we have, so whenever they invite us, we beg that it