Mary Killen

Q. Later this summer my boyfriend and I are flying out to the Aegean. Our hostess emailed to say we can get a lift from the airport with another couple who are coming for the same week on the same flight and who have already booked a hire car. She says she only needs one extra car to transport everyone around during the week and so we should not hire another for ourselves as this would be un-eco. We only barely know the other couple but we do know they will have booked the most expensive car available. What is the etiquette? Should we offer to pay half the cost of the week’s hire since we will be getting lifts in it all week? My boyfriend says we should not pay half because he will not be a named driver and the driver should pay the lion’s share of a hired car.

Q. I have caught a cold from a senior member of the royal family. I feel sure there must be ways in which I can turn this to my social and/or financial advantage and I admit that I have deliberately been sleeping in a draught in order to prolong the symptoms. What do you suggest, Mary? Name and address withheld A. There are very few socially acceptable ways in which one can market such a condition or even use it to boost one’s status. For example if anyone said ‘Bless you!’ when you sneezed, it would be quite wrong to then remark on the provenance of your cold. Where charitable fundraising is concerned, however, it is a different matter and, if you act quickly, you could offer your services at some Tatler-y party.

Q. Please advise me. I have a friend whose mobile has no signal when she is at home. When I ring her landline her father always says he will pass the message on that I have rung but he often forgets. She does not call me back and I do not like to annoy her father by ringing again in case she is still not in. He always says, ‘No problem. I’ll make sure she gets the message,’ but he always seems to forget. P.W., Wiltshire A. Say ‘Would it be all right if I call back in a bit? I’m going somewhere where there is no signal so she won’t be able to call me on my mobile. So when would be a good time to call again?’ Precede the call you make later with 141 so as to disguise the fact that you are indeed ringing from your mobile. Q.

Q. Since I now live alone and have spare bedrooms my house in London has become something of a destination for old friends who want to stay overnight. I love seeing them. I love making them welcome and giving them drinks and food if they want it but the one thing I have to admit I do resent is the domestic drudgery aspect. I cannot bring myself to pay the going rate for a cleaner and it seems to take four hours or more to bring the house up to scratch. Even if people left tips — for some reason those who do in the country never seem to do it in London — they would be unlikely to leave £60 which is roughly what I would have to shell out to professional cleaners to come in for four hours on a random basis. What do you suggest, Mary? Name and address withheld A.

Q. A very dear friend has lugged back a present from China. It is the most hideously frightful, huge, garish, golden ‘money’ cat with a waving paw which he has specifically asked me to put in ‘my’ drawing room (along with the Meissen and Chippendale). My problems are fourfold; I do not want to upset him after all the trouble he’s taken; I live in a National Trust house so ‘my’ drawing room is not actually ‘mine’ and is open to the public most of the year; I certainly do not want to lose the opportunity of money for myself; I fundraise for a charity and obviously do not want to lose money for them either. What on earth should I do? A.H., Wiltshire A. There is no need to cause any upset.

Q. Whenever I have my friends round for dinner, someone’s mobile phone will always ring and they will always answer it at the table. When I extend my next invitation, how do I request that they turn their phones off on arrival? I do find such behaviour at the dinner table unacceptable but many treat their phones as a natural extension of their arms. K.T., Chesterfield A. Disarm guests by letting them see themselves as victims of mobile culture rather than heroes of it. As they arrive greet them warmly saying you have so looked forward to seeing them and giving them a break from their hectic schedules. Then add, ‘You won’t have to fend off bullies all through dinner, will you?

In Competition No. 2539 you were invited to submit a problem in verse form to The Spectator’s agony aunt in the style of a poet of your choice. The assignment was inspired by James Michie’s poem ‘Dear Mary’, which appears in his superb posthumously published collection Last Poems and which brims with wit and humanity, as did the man himself. Honourable mentions to Mae Scanlan, Ray Kelley and G.M. Davis for enjoyable Ogden Nash pastiche; to Mrs E. Emerk for an entertaining reworking of Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’; and to Philip Wilkinson for his take on Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ written from the point of view of the mistress herself.

Q. While on holiday in the Middle East I contracted amoebic dysentery. Although it is an unpleasant condition, I am a bit overweight and the pounds have been dropping off. Do I go to the doctor or should I let the illness run its course and take advantage of the benefits that have arisen from my misfortune? V.L., London E8 A. Serial dysenterics have not had satisfactory outcomes from allowing their condition to run unchecked. They report that although the weight loss can be gratifying, indeed it can be inspirational to see a ten-pound-lighter version of oneself, even if only for a few days, the internal disruption is not worth the very short-term gains. Bilious breath is enough to offset any gain of having a more svelte physique.

Q. I am dreading Easter as my children are always given so many eggs by their various godparents and grandparents. This is to say nothing of those they bring home from hunts. I consider it terribly bad for them to eat so much chocolate but since each egg has been effectively endorsed by the grown-up or Easter Bunny who supplied it, I don’t know how to manage this dilemma. What should I do? A.B., London W8 A. There is not much that can be done at this late stage, but you could prepare for next Easter by putting aside some of this year’s eggs so that they will be well and truly past their sell-by date and fairly disgusting (though harmless) to eat by Easter 2009, when you can release them to your children before the other egg mountains start arriving.

Q. Somewhat fortuitously I was recently a guest of an eminent London picture dealer in an excellent restaurant in the West End. Among the assembled were various racehorse owners and trainers. I happened to be sitting next to a lord whose family are members of the Beerage. I could not help but notice that the said peer had a monogram of his title with coronet above, embroidered on his shirt. Due to his ample bosom this was very obvious. Do you consider this correct or is it rather parvenu, Mary? W.M., Stonegrave, York A. Monogrammed shirts are not quite so bad as personalised number plates. Monogrammed slippers are acceptable if worn at home because they are slightly jokey. Equally, boxes of matches with coronets are fine inside the home.

Q. I share a student house with three others. My room is next to the kitchen and one of my housemates often eats lunch while surfing the net on my MacBook. Some of the keys have been gunked up with the effluent and spores from his meals but he is the landlord and I don’t really pay a market rate, but neither can I afford a new computer. Any suggestions? Name and address withheld A. Dissuade him from eating al desko by Sellotaping a piece of rotten fish to the underside of the laptop table. Explain that a general accumulation of your landlord’s food in the keyboard has caused the disgusting smell. Remain passive while your other flatmates express revulsion. When you go away for the weekend announce you are going to have the keyboard flushed out at great expense.

Q. I suffer from a form of visual Spoonerism (in New College chapel Warden Spooner concluded, ‘in the sermon which I have just been preaching, wherever I have said Aristotle I have meant St Paul’). I often recognise a person as somebody completely different. The other day I went to a private view at a Bond Street gallery and confidently greeted our host as Gerry. I thought he seemed a little cool. As we left I said a cheerful ‘Goodbye, Gerry’. Actually it turns out that his name is Christopher, and I know perfectly well the difference between Christopher and Gerry. What am I to do to remedy this unfortunate gaffe? R.O., Kent A. Since there is very little you can do about this propensity you must use it to spark self- importance in your victims.

Q. I am approaching my 50th birthday and I want to have a party for around 100 people. There is an ideal space near where we live in London. It belongs to a friend, who has kindly offered it to us free, but is only really suitable for 100 people. Since we cannot afford to have more than 100, this suits us fine. Now, having finished compiling my must-invite list, I see it exceeds 180 people. There is no way I can prune this list without causing grave offence. What can I do, Mary? A. Just ensure you have your party on a Saturday night, preferably to coincide with a boarding-school exeat weekend.

Q. I am currently living, with two others, in a ‘high end’ house in an elegant garden square in Chelsea. We are all friends of, and pay rent in some form to, our absentee landlord, an old-school landowner and pig breeder who, when not charming the birds from the trees, is generally blasting the life out of them at his stately pile in north Norfolk. He is used to commanding retainers and, when in London, these feudal tendencies remain at the fore. Over the years the triffid-like growth of the buddleia tree in the garden had rendered the masonry perilous and poised to crash down on the minimalist plate-glass extension of the banker next door. The potential litigation could have been lethal so, on a trip up from the country, our landlord took to the overgrowth with zeal.

Q. We are lucky enough to be lent a chalet in Verbier. My wife invited her niece and boyfriend who is showing signs of becoming a fixture. He is not blessed with a great intellect and has been brought up in a household where shared meals are a rarity. He has little in the way of table manners. Chalet breakfasts often consist of croissants and honey. He used his knife to help himself to honey so, ensuring I was observed, I placed some on my own plate using a teaspoon. He then emulated this by using the spoon to spread the honey on his second croissant, thereby transferring crumbs, butter and possibly bodily fluids to the honey pot. This was but one example of a number of calumnies. They are likely to wish for further invitations when others may be present.

Q. I wonder if you can give me some advice. My parents have agreed I can have 20 people to a party in our house in Balham. I am 16 but very responsible so they agreed to go out between 7 p.m. and 11 when the party is taking place, though they would only go somewhere a few minutes away so they could come back in an emergency. The problem is that now they have found out that all their friends who live in Balham will be out on the night of the party and my father is diabetic, so he doesn’t like to eat later than seven. He does not want to sit in a restaurant for three and a half hours waiting until it is time to come back again. What do you suggest, Mary? B.F., London SW12 A.

Q. Now that eco-issues are so fashionable my husband has come out as a militant meanie on energy conservation. Meanwhile our three teenage daughters use absurd amounts of hot water each day and leave their laptops and televisions on. They also prance about in the skimpiest clothes imaginable, which means they always want the heating on full blast. Mary, how can I tackle these incompatibilities so that I can conserve some of my own energy and not have to dissipate it all on resolving domestic disputes? A.B., Pencaitland, East Lothian A. Stimulate your daughters’ own interest in conserving energy with the purchase of a Wattson O1 energy monitor. (£149.50 from www.electricity-monitor.com). This minimalist, packet-of-butter-sized device is easily fitted to your mains cable.

Q. My brother-in-law, of whom my wife and I are very fond, is an admirable man and rightly proud of the ordinary background from which he has risen to a leading position in his company. However his rise (without trace, as they say) means that all he knows about food and wine is what he has gleaned from expense-account meals and he has adopted many of the mannerisms of waiters for home use. For example, when opening wine he waves the cork under his nose, pours some wine into the glass, sips it adopting a judicious expression and then proceeds to pour it for others. Recently, after he had gone through this ritual, I realised the wine was clearly and unmistakeably corked and said so.