Mary Killen

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 and he clearly enjoys ours. My gripe is that I’ve realised he’s been coming to stay with us for 30 years, either in houses we’ve rented abroad, in Scotland or just as a weekend guest at home, yet has never invited us to lunch, the cinema or even for a walk. This is nothing to do with a return of hospitality; he’s not in a position to ask us back and he’s generous with presents.

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 home. A knock at the front door. I let my two guests in, still wearing my dressing gown. The time: 1.40 p.m. Your ruling, please. Is there a too-early time for someone to arrive? — Aggrieved hostess, Chichester A. No one should arrive even one minute early.

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 I should stay, what I should bring, and, since I am one of his closest friends, whether I should organise a rota so that people don’t overlap? He is a very popular (and newly eligible) man, so he will have no shortage of visitors. — S.B., London W6 A.

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 DVD and why on earth did he wait a year to ask for it back? — E.S., Sussex A. If the man is old enough to have a grandfather who performed at the Olympics then he is old enough to be able to judge a friend’s ability with chaos control. The fact that he foisted the DVD on you therefore almost amounts to entrapment.

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 he had been desperate to meet, and so one way or another he became the guest of honour. He even struck some sort of deal with one of them. In any case we had a great evening and he thanked me profusely as he left. The next day I opened the door to find someone with an unimpressive bunch of flowers together with a card from the mogul. They looked like the sort of flowers in cellophane that one might pick up at a petrol station.

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 forced to eat them. None of us (including him) are mushroom experts. Much as we love our friend, he is something of a bully. What should we do Mary? — Name and address withheld A. Buy in a store cupboard supply of dried chanterelles, ceps etc, and rehydrate them prior to his visit. Feign enthusiasm for making a risotto or omelette using his foraged harvest. Knock this up while his back is turned and present it as a fait accompli, after hiding his foraged mushrooms.

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 the regional cuisine. She let my husband pay each time. I felt this was overdoing it, especially as we had to pay for her, her husband and her three adult children, and they have had plenty of hospitality when staying with us in England. Mary, can you rule? Moreover how can we avoid it happening again when we join them later this year? — Name and address withheld. A. Your friends should have drawn the line at two lunches paid for by your husband.

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 enthusiastic about her cooking, but the steak and kidney pie was served with a perfect circle of puff pastry beside the meat on our plates. We agreed once back in the car and alone again that this was not the form, as a proper shoot lunch would have had it all cooked together. Were we mean not to mention it to them? — Name and address withheld A.

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 can be just the four of us. They agree but always renege at the last minute and invite others on the grounds that it will be ‘much jollier’. We just want time alone with them in their undiluted company and we find big house parties mentally exhausting. But it’s not our house so we can’t lay down the law. Next time, Mary, how can we ensure we are the only guests? —S.R., Haddington, East Lothian A. Enquire whether you can rent the house yourself for a special occasion.

Q. I am in my seventies and my husband is in his nineties. The other night we had two couples to dinner. However, when they arrived (separately), we both realised we had forgotten their names, so when I brought the second couple into the drawing room I was incapable of introducing everyone to each other — they were meeting for the first time. This set the evening off to a terrible start, but our memory failure was no reflection of our affection for our guests or of our general brain power. Mary, what would you have done in these circumstances? — Name and address withheld A.

Q. Mary, I am what you would probably call a Sloane Ranger. I have great numbers of close friends and I’ve always attended confirmations, weddings, christenings and funerals without even thinking about whether it was convenient. But at my age a lot of friends’ parents are going downhill fast, and I now work. Many funerals will be out of London and require a whole day off to attend. I just can’t do it every week but neither can I let down my close friends. — S.C., London SW11 A. You won’t be the only person who is needed at work and can’t be in two places at once. But you can be the only person who gives a dinner in London to cheer up the bereaved in compensation for your absence.

Q. I was brought up to stick rigidly to any invitation accepted and never to ‘chuck’ when a better one came along. Recently, therefore, when invited to lunch at Boisdale to meet my favourite actor on the same day as a long-standing invitation to lunch at White’s with an old friend, I didn’t chuck the first invitation for the ‘better’ (because unrepeatable) one. Later, I wondered if it is ever acceptable to play Invitation Trumps — to just be honest and say: ‘I’ve had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet X on the same day as I’m meeting you. Would you mind if we postponed our lunch?’ What is the protocol, Mary? — Name and address withheld A.

Q. I’m shortly to host a very large family gathering. Everyone will be related to the same ancestor, so we will have at least one subject to talk about — but then what? We will be a disparate group, hailing from different places, professions, generations and walks of life, and with nothing much in common apart from our lineage. Most of us will not have met before. I am worried that the conversation will run dry as we cannot bang on about our ancestor for three full days. —Name and address withheld A. I note you live within driving distance of Bishop Auckland, so during August you can give your extended family another shared conversational reference.

Q. Last summer a friend of my brother-in-law’s house-sat for us while we were in Greece for a week. We paid him £25 a day and all he had to do was look after our dog and water the garden when necessary. I left food for him, including fruit, in our fridge. Mary, I say including fruit because, to my annoyance, when we got back we found he had stripped my raspberry canes of every single raspberry and eaten most of our figs. Because we couldn’t find anyone else he is returning this year and it might sound feeble but I just can’t tell him not to help himself. What can I do? — C.J., Chagford, Devon A. Buy a harmless food dye in navy blue and spray the produce before you go. Leave notices adjacent announcing: ‘Fungicide trial in place. Do not disturb fruit.

Q. Is there an etiquette regarding security gates? My wife and I were invited to dinner by new neighbours who have bought a house formerly owned by lifelong friends of ours. In the old days, any visitor would have just swung in off the road through the open stone gates and made their way up the drive to the house. On arrival this time, we were depressed to find black metal security gates barring our way. We waited for the sensor to open them but nothing happened. I then had to get out of the car and stand in the rain pressing buttons on an electronic panel. I waited a good minute for someone to speak and another one for the gates to open. Surely this sort of behaviour is not just pretentious, Mary, but also quite at odds with the spirit of hospitality?

Q. ‘Alfred’ is a friend of 30 years’ standing who has just married for the first time. Alfred retains all his charms but his wife is a horror show who carps and criticises our beloved friend in front of us. The only plus is that she is often away on business. Alfred has a country house to which he usually invites us over the summer. How can we tactfully arrange to be invited during one of his wife’s absences? — Name and address withheld A. Ring Alfred to synchronise diaries and find a time when they can come to stay with you. Keep saying the weekends he suggests are no good for you until you have compiled a list of dates when the wife is out of the country. Finally set a date for their visit.

Q. We have friends to stay each year in Scotland and it’s always a pleasure. Guests know there is signal only in my dressing room, and that they should clear their decks electronically before coming. Yet every year, due to poor planning, people need to commandeer our laptop. The problem is they leave business flotsam and jetsam behind, when I feel they should leave it as they found it. A bossy notice is not in keeping with holiday spirit, so how can one make this point? — N.M., Oxford A. If this happens every year, it’s time for you to stop fretting. Simply order a cut-price spare laptop to serve guests’ purposes, put a password on your own, and let them fight about the flotsam and jetsam among themselves. Q.