Q. One of the most characteristic aspects of being a member of the British middle class ‘nouveau pauvre’ is finding it embarrassing to take action when things we used to take for granted as a free service are now very expensive. I have paid over £3,000 to our (private) dentist for our younger son to
Q. I have had a boyfriend, of whom I am very fond, for some time now. There is, however, one slight problem. On special occasions when he comes to visit my family, he always dons his best pair of shoes of which he is extremely proud. Unfortunately these are not of the gentlemanly variety. They
Q. I will be celebrating a ‘milestone’ birthday this summer and marking the event with a cocktail party for 60 one evening and a dinner for 100 on another. Having lived in various parts of the globe over the years (now New York), a large number of guests are flying in from far-flung lands to
Q. Over the past three years a small birthday lunch party has been given for me by the mother of my daughter’s best friend at school. She invites a handful of other school mothers, and as we leave for the school run she says, ‘Same time, same place, next year!’ It is so sweet of
Q. I have always had snaggle teeth but seem to have got away with it so far. They have given me no trouble and my husband says they are one of my most endearing features. Now, however, a new dentist has suggested that I have the whole lot straightened. This will involve months in braces
Q. My best friend is widely admired by those few men who have the opportunity to meet her. She wants a boyfriend but her work brings her into contact with virtually no single heterosexual men and she has exhausted the potential in our social circle. Her brother and I want her to change her job
Q. I have a close, dear girlfriend of many years standing. She is extremely glamorous and quite youthful but is nevertheless a Suffolk housewife, the mother of five children and the wife of an extremely conservative and highly respected member of White’s. My quandary is how to confront her about her reckless and inappropriate pursuit
Q. A young man from Oz, the son of a friend of my wife, has been staying for several weeks. He walks into the house and helps himself to a beer or a banana or a toasted cheese sandwich. This is what they do in American soaps, opening the fridge without even saying hello, but
Q. Please can you advise me? I am a bachelor living on my own and I have my shirts ironed by a very nice lady in the village. She does a great job, but I am getting increasingly annoyed as she leaves my shirts hanging in the kitchen and then proceeds to cook a roast
Q. Several years ago I had a well-respected broadsheet editor to stay for the weekend. The house party included another friend who has since become a rising star in the world of politics. Last Sunday, as I leafed my way through the newspapers, I almost choked on my breakfast cereal when I saw a large
Q. My son is on his gap year and travelling around India. While having lunch with a friend she showed me a website on to which her son has posted a blog of his gap year. By the looks of it virtually every 18–19-year-old public schoolchild in the country has done the same. Endless faces
Q. I find myself constantly smarting — for want of a better phrase — from the presumptions of instant matey-ness one encounters in almost every human interchange in English day-to-day life. Why should someone I have never met before address me by my Christian name? Why should the youth from the local garage who has
Q. The tennis coach at our village club was recently coaching one of his young clients. On the next court, one of the club regulars and her new middle-aged male friend were completing a strenuous game. The man suddenly collapsed and the coach, a trained first-aider, identified the symptoms of cardiac arrest and applied the
Q. I am on my gap year and looking for work as a tutor, which I understand is very well paid. The key months for Common Entrance, AS- and A-level revision are almost upon us and, although I have my details up on the noticeboards of various local schools, I have had no inquiries. I
Q. The other day I walked into a local restaurant where I saw two people I usually meet up with each year at a certain house-party. They greeted me with yelps of anticipation and asked was I excited about meeting up again next month. I had to admit that no, I wasn’t excited since our
Q. I am frequently invited to book launches. I always make a point of buying a copy of the book in question and leave the party with every enthusiastic intention of reading it. Yet these books tend to lie about on my coffee table unread, making me feel slightly guilty and embarrassed. I wonder whether,
Q. Last week I had dinner with some old friends in London. My husband was unable to join us since he was working late but came to pick me up at the end of the evening. When he arrived everyone had finished eating but we were all still sitting at the table. When a man
Q. At a recent lunch in an hotel to celebrate my parents’ wedding anniversary, my wife and I found ourselves engaged in animated conversation by our respective neighbours on all manner of interesting topics. However, in their enthusiasm they seemed totally oblivious to our need to deal with our well-behaved but still very young children
Q. Unlike your correspondent J.G. of Bath, I received a prompt and fulsome letter from my 15-year-old godson thanking me for the money I had sent him at Christmas. Unfortunately, this year I had sent no gifts of any kind to any of my godchildren. I did sheepishly admit this to his mother, but she
Q. Is there a tactful way to invite certain favourite old friends to dinner but without their partners? I have no wish to exclude or be cruel to anyone, but I know from personal experience that sometimes people are only too happy to go out separately. My own husband, for example, is delighted to be