Mary Killen

Q. Is it acceptable to admit that you don’t ‘do’ anything? Or should one pretend to be writing a book or attending a course at the V&A or some such? I am afraid I just play bridge all day and sometimes I even go abroad to do it. — Name and address withheld A. So

Q. With just a month to go of training as a primary school teacher, I am relieved and excited to have been offered a job. Now it has been a few weeks since I last spoke to one of my good friends in our PGCE cohort. I have many lively stories to tell of weird

Q. On two recent occasions I have noted that women I know professionally are pregnant, although neither referred to it. Should one offer congratulations or wait until the pregnancy is mentioned? I have taken two approaches, congratulating the one I know reasonably well, and saying nothing to the one I know less well. Your advice please,

Q. It is occasionally necessary for me to pretend to be asleep. What technique do actors use, when feigning death or sleep, to ensure their eyeballs are still and their eyelids do not flutter? — Name withheld, Hampshire A. To pre-empt fluttering, let the actual eyeballs look downwards behind the closed lids.  Q. Your correspondent

Q. My godmother owns a house in a great part of London. She does not come up very often and she is very kindly allowing me to move in for a year with three university friends. I will be landlady and collect the very low rent she will charge us. It is amazingly kind of

Q. My literary agent has failed to return my emails and phone calls and it has been six weeks since we last talked. I don’t want to appear desperate but all I think about each day is — is my book going to be published, or not? Any suggestions? — Name and address withheld A.

Q. Flowers have arrived, allegedly from my boyfriend — but the bunch includes begonias and gloxinias, foliage tonged into ringlets, sheaths of cellophane and a large acetate ribbon. I am fairly certain the culprit is his new personal assistant. As they are in my country house, he won’t see them, so how can I, without

Q. Last week on a plane from Heathrow I sat next to a very attractive man. We started talking and I could tell he liked me too. Unfortunately, although we established that we both live in London, the flight was not quite long enough to warrant an exchange of telephone numbers. Unfortunately he lives in

Q. I live in Bombay and seem to attract a large number of house guests, notably friends’ daughters on their gap year. I am lucky in having an excellent maid and driver who go out of their way to take them around town, feed them up and do what they call ‘madam duty’, which is

Q. How to stop parents chatting throughout school chapel services? Your advice to the organist at the leading public school will not work. I know because my son attends just such a school and services like confirmations and carol concerts are recorded. The parents are reminded that this will be happening but it does not

Q. My mother lives in a fine old house in Jersey and has a lovely garden. Unfortunately her Portuguese gardener has contrived to make the place look as though it belongs to the seafront in Llandudno. He has placed a large plastic owl on top of a bush in the centre of what was once

Q. We entertain a lot and are used to coping with requests from guests who are vegetarian or have an allergy, etc. However, recently a guest replied that he would like to attend a dinner (given to enable discussion of a political matter) and he would like to eat either a 600g salmon steak or

Q. I am the organist at a leading public school. We work hard to ensure that the boys are quiet and respectful in Chapel, which they attend every day. The behaviour of their parents, however, when they come for confirmation and carol services is appalling. They talk through the hymns, they talk through the anthem,

Q. My mother has had a minor physical setback which means it is currently too difficult for her to go out and see people. People consequently come to her, which is wonderful, but because she is so popular, they come in their hordes. It is not so much the provision of food and drinks which

Q. Every morning I walk to work and stop to pick up a cappuccino from a local café outside which is invariably sitting a (handsome) man, alone apart from his dog, having breakfast. We always say hello and I sense that he likes at least the look of me, but there is no opportunity to

Q. I would like to return the hospitality of a senior member of the royal family but my wife insists that an invitation is not expected and would only embarrass as we could not match the standards. Meanwhile I have heard that a friend of a friend of a friend has had this senior royal

Q. A friend, well known for having a dusty wallet, brought a bottle of champagne to our house. We were pleasantly surprised but, though it looked exactly like a real bottle of Oudinot Epernay, it did not feel quite heavy enough. On closer inspection, we saw that our friend had somehow picked up an empty

Q.  My husband, aged 56, mutters constantly that he is not well.  He has a variety of symptoms and I suspect hypochondria, yet he will not put his mind (or mine) at rest by making an appointment with a doctor.  How can I make this happen? — A.O.T., London SW11 A. The way to make

Q. I understand that a free version of Eton will be opening in a village near Windsor next year. One of my boys is already at School, but for financial reasons I would like to get him moved across if the educational and aspirational standards at Freeton are the same. How do I get his

Q. Having recently relocated to my company’s Russian office, I now report to an uncouth Homo sovieticus. Knowing he’s the product of a society that had no time for so-called ‘bourgeois niceties’, I try not to judge when he slurps or speaks with his mouth full or places his knife and fork away from himself