Social humour

Q. While renting in Rock last week, I ran into an acquaintance who invited me to join her large house party for supper the next night. Looking back, the group of ten or so did seem oddly surprised to see me when I arrived. Then, during the pudding course, I looked discreetly down at an incoming text and saw the reply to my own earlier text saying I was looking forward to seeing her later. It announced that she was sorry, but dinner was cancelled that night as none of her house party would be in. The mobile signal in Rock is very bad and the message had only just

Q. I socialise in Shropshire every weekend and regularly give dinners which end at 2 a.m., but it’s a different matter in London, where I have to leave the house by six every morning. My problem is that I owe dinner to a lot of people, but I now baulk at how late they will stay, since no matter how heavily I hint, people seem to stay beyond midnight every time. Even if I invite them to come for an ‘early dinner’ at 7 p.m, they are still there at midnight. These are mainly neighbours or fellow parents from my son’s school, i.e. not lifelong buddies of the sort you could just

Q. Since recycling was introduced in our village, the wall at the end of our drive has become the depositing point for some neighbours as well as for us. Unfortunately their detritus is not sophisticated and while our green boxes are filled with wine bottles of respectable appellations, theirs is crammed with cheap lager tins. The recycling lorry comes before our friends are up so I’m not concerned about them, but more distant acquaintances on their way to work inevitably see the boxes, and we can’t invite them all to dinner to establish our credentials. How can we persuade our neighbours to keep their empties to themselves? — J.C., Taunton,

Q. A scholarly book of great importance to me appears to have gone missing from my library. It was heavily annotated so it is irreplaceable. I lend books all the time and I have a strong feeling I have lent it to someone, but I just cannot remember to whom. I can remember the last time I saw it and have emailed all those who signed the visitors’ book since, asking whether by any chance they have borrowed it — but it seems that none of them has. I feel it would be a tad accusatory/Alzheimery to send a round robin to all friends and colleagues to ask whether they

Q. An architect is overseeing some builders at my house. She is a perfectly nice woman but has a maddening habit of lowering and fluttering her eyelids when talking to me. I like to be able to look into someone’s eyes when discussing important details about permanent changes to my house but it seems rude to ask her to stop, even though I know she can, since she does not do it when talking to the bricklayers or carpenters. How should I tackle this? — M.W., Gatwick A. This body language suggests the architect finds you maddening and prefers to shield her vision when talking to you. Sidestep the problem by

Q. My son was invited, both verbally and via Facebook, to a schoolfriend’s 16th birthday party. However, when I met the girl’s parents at school and thanked them they said, ‘Oh, doesn’t he know he’s been culled?’ They said they had to be away during that exeat, so they’d told the girl to cull the numbers right back and just have a dinner for ten with takeaway pizzas and Netflix. Now my son says the girl has told everyone (150 people) to come anyway. She says it’s the only date everyone’s free before exams start and it will ‘ruin her life’ if she can’t have it. Besides the parents won’t