Dear Mary

Your problems solved | 11 February 2016

Q. I recently rediscovered a wonderful 22-year-old godson. He came to shoot for the first time and was a marvellous guest — impressing others to the extent of even receiving a potential job offer. He has wonderful manners but although he thanked us profusely while under our roof, he has not as yet written his

Your problems solved | 4 February 2016

Q. My husband-to-be and I both work full time. We are getting married from his family HQ and his kind mother has effectively done all the planning. She’s done it all with superb taste and efficiency so I am loath to be critical about the one thing I don’t like. She has ordered laminated name

Your problems solved | 28 January 2016

Q. For the past two New Year’s Eves we have ducked an annual party given by some acquaintances, who are very nice although the husband is a bore. His wife has recently been unwell and they have decided to corral us New Year refuseniks for a curry supper, date to be confirmed when all are

Dear Mary | 21 January 2016

Q. We have two granddaughters working hard and happily at university. It is our pleasure to give them some cash at regular intervals for books, rooms, foreign travel and, we hope, a lively social life. But we have just learned that they have each come under the influence of a new political leader, to whose

Your problems solved | 14 January 2016

Q. What can be done when more people than you can cater for accept an invitation? We are giving a two-hour 21st-birthday drinks party for our daughter. Our Chelsea cottage will hold a maximum of 70 but, adhering to the immutable law of party-giving, which is that a third of those you invite will be

Your problems solved | 7 January 2016

Q. Although I have met most of the fellow occupants of my building at residents’ meetings, we don’t socialise. However our newest neighbour, a Canadian, has now emailed all the other women in the building offering to open up her own flat for a bonding evening of drinks and nibbles and where we would watch

Dear Mary | 31 December 2015

I have been alone in the country this festive season as my adult children and most of my friends are abroad until the second week of January. I have been perfectly happy to have avoided all the fuss about food, to have got on with some work, and to have walked my dog. My grown-up

Dear Mary | 19 November 2015

Q. I work in the London art market. Often, when I run into a fellow dealer and ask how they are in a friendly way, I get a reply along the lines of ‘It’s been totally mad. I’ve just come back from New York and I’m about to go to Hong Kong, then it’s Dubai

Dear Mary on cheering up an ageing Adonis….

Q. The other night, as I arrived at the John James exhibition on Fulham Road, I stopped to say hello to an old friend standing outside. We had exchanged only a few words when the man next to him suddenly addressed me in sneering tones: ‘Are you having a senior moment?’ It is true I

Dear Mary: How can we make our dinner guests go?

Q. Many of our best and oldest friends have done so well they have stopped work. Meanwhile my husband still does a 50-hour week. Our friends must have forgotten what it’s like to have to get up at six because they’re always amazed when we try to leave their dinner parties at a reasonable hour.

Dear Mary: Another way to deal with a maddening blackhead

Q. Might I suggest an alternative solution to E.B. of London’s problem (3 October) about the person sporting a ‘maddening’ blackhead at a poolside party? Surely a more tactful way of drawing the man’s attention to the blackhead would have been for E.B. to pretend she thought it was an insect that had landed. On

Your problems solved | 1 October 2015

Q. A friend of mine is performing a recital in Dublin and has sent round an email advertising the time and date and asking if people will come to hear him play. I’ve already seen him performing once and it was pretty dire the first time round. Now I feel pressure is being put on

Dear Mary | 24 September 2015

Q. I am an impoverished artist living in a famously cheap European city, largely for reasons of economy. I love it when friends and family relieve the monotony of lonely days in my garret by coming to stay, but every time anyone does they want to go to all the museums and galleries, which represents

Your problems solved | 17 September 2015

Q. Some years ago, while appearing as a barrister before a bench of three magistrates in the youth court, I encountered a problem. As I rose to address the chairman of the bench I found myself looking at an entirely androgynous figure with short brown hair, soft features and any physical indications of sex obscured