Q. We had our son’s fiancée and her family to stay recently. After dinner, expecting conversation, we were shocked to see them all slumped in our drawing room staring at their ‘tablets’ and, I presume, playing on the internet. What should my wife and I have done? I was tempted to do the crossword or
Q. I travel internationally two or three times per month for work, often with one or two colleagues. While the working day and the evenings inevitably involve prolonged contact with these colleagues, at breakfast-time I wish for a little ‘alone time’ to eat and read the paper, without company, but also without remaining in my
Once again Mary has invited some of her favourite figures in the public eye to submit personal queries for her attention. From Sir Les Patterson Q. I am a distinguished Australian diplomat and happily married man, and I recently had a discreet liaison with a lady of oriental descent who was married to a newspaper
Q. Six years ago a rather glamorous man bought the house opposite me. Although he always responds to requests for contributions to the residents’ committee, he has yet to attend a meeting or garden party. We know he lives alone and, according to his otherwise discreet servant, there are no other visitors to the house.
Q. My egregious mother-in-law turns 80 this December. She is not short of a bob but for one of my birthdays (the big one) she sent me a card with the equivalent of A$20 (£12). This is normally what your children receive from their grandparents, not what a mature adult expects. I normally do not
Q. A friend generously hosts an annual Christmas party in London where we see many old friends we have been missing since we moved to Dorset five years ago. However, for the past two years she has ‘taken over’ and will not allow any people who already know each other to chat. She barges into
Q. Walking at a local beauty spot the other day, I passed a handsome young man. We exchanged a few words and both laughed. Afterwards I wished there had been a way of getting in touch again. How can I ensure that such opportunities for romance do not go wasted in future? — Y.P., Malvern, Worcs
Q. One of our daughter’s godmothers has given very generous presents but never with any regularity. She was unable to attend the recent 18th birthday party but said on the telephone she hoped our daughter would like the present she was sending. No present has arrived. What is the protocol re thanking for something which
Q. I am no interior decorator, but we have a couple of rather subtle paint colours in the house that I picked out of a Dulux colour sheet and they have both been a success. I would be grateful if you could suggest a slight put-down to those visitors who ask which Farrow and Ball
Q. One of my oldest and best friends, who has lived up north for years, begged me to let her daughter move in with us as a paying guest for her second year of university in London. The daughter was literally homeless and staying in a Premier Inn. She promised the girl would be good
Q. I spent a week in a house party abroad, with an elderly and extremely polite friend of mine and his wife among my fellow guests. Our hostess really pulled out the stops for us — I have never been so well looked after in my life. While I was exchanging emails with her after the
Q. Is it acceptable to deal with time-critical online business while attending church? Some matters just won’t wait — Glastonbury tickets when they went on sale last Sunday, for example, or online airline check-in. Maybe you could suggest the types of church service when use of a smartphone could be permitted. Weddings (unless you are getting married?)
Q. Towards the end of last year, I began three months of treatment for a knee replacement. During one consultation the surgeon and I chatted about a mutual interest, the pleasure of cigar smoking. In fact I ceased smoking some time ago, but still had a quantity in my humidor and was pleased to make
Q. I am working on becoming a member of the Chipping Norton set. Should I be pronouncing the excellent open-air swimming pool as lee-doh or lie-doh? — P.W., by email A. You might as well pronounce it correctly — lee-doh — but which Chipping Norton set are you aiming to join? The set made up
Q. Some years ago, on holiday in Egypt, we found ourselves in the company of a couple who wanted to see us when we got home. Out of politeness we agreed and we have now fallen into a rut of reciprocal dinners. It has become a bore — perhaps for them as well. How can
Q. What to do when you are an unwilling eavesdropper in a train carriage in which people you know assume they are alone and start talking very indiscreetly about someone else you know and you have left it too late to alert them to your presence? — Name and address withheld A. Ideally you will
Q. In response to correspondence re. wedding gifts: there is no need for a couple to have a list at John Lewis, and then translate gifts bought into vouchers — they should simply ask for John Lewis vouchers in the first place. This will save them the inconvenience of flogging around the store and, in their
Q. I have organised a city break to Florence with a particularly easygoing bunch of friends. We have one spare room in the flat that we have hired and a friend of a friend has come forward to suggest himself. Everyone else going is very unqueeny and unfussy but I suspect this man may be
Q. Is there a polite way of halting a wannabe novelist from reading his oeuvre aloud to an unwilling audience? A neighbour on the residents’ committee happened to be leaving as friends were arriving for drinks and I felt I should invite him to join us. It was all going swimmingly until he told someone
Q. My boyfriend, an artist, is driving himself and others mad by his inability to keep track of his mobile. This he keeps putting down randomly on any old surface of his disorganised cottage, even though he knows there is signal only in certain places, so he can’t depend on locating it by hearing it