Dear Mary… Q. What would be a fitting response to the extremely patronising remark ‘My goodness, you’ve got him well trained!’ This whenever my husband serves, clears (and has often prepared) a dinner party. Such behaviour is still obviously unacceptable to the majority of guests, even in these enlightened times, and among forty-somethings. I am
Dear Mary… Q. I was brought up always to write thank-you letters for gifts [sic]. In recent years I have found that I am usually far too busy, especially as I would have to write them on behalf of my young children (who receive far too many presents anyway) and also my husband. Is it
Dear Mary… Q. My wife and I have been invited to the 50th birthday party of a not particularly close friend. The party is to be held in a local sports centre, although we have been asked to wear black tie and evening dress. Enclosed with the invitation is a note requesting that we bring
Dear Mary Q. I believe I have fallen in love with another member of the VWH hunt. Whenever I go up to him on my horse, he has been friendly but since he hacks home I have only ever seen him mounted and with his riding hat on. I therefore have no idea what he
Dear Mary… Q. As the author of a number of bestselling books, I am naturally thankful for this success, but one consequence is a deluge of requests to sit on committees, judge awards, champion the voiceless, network for the jobless, and so on. It sounds curmudgeonly and pompous, but the truth is that I now
Dear Mary Q. Mary, please help. How can I stop cold callers shattering the peace of my home life with telephone marketing? Neighbours think it funny to pretend that the ‘homeowner’ is unable to come to the telephone because he or she is drunk, but I do not wish to be rude. What do you
Dear Mary… Q. Last year my husband and I bought a house on Exmoor which came with two cottages superfluous to our needs. We have been renting these out as holiday lets. Out of six recent lettings three of the punters, all of whom appeared happy while they were in situ, complained retrospectively and asked
Dear Mary… Q. My wife and I have been blessed with the arrival of a delightful baby boy. We have been inundated with soft toys from doting family and friends. We would like to do a cull and send many off to charities but don’t wish to offend the original donors, who may notice the
Dear Mary… From the Rt Hon. Michael Howard, QC, MPQ. A friend of mine was walking up St James’s recently behind a girl with a stunning figure. Admiring her form, he happened to notice, somewhat to his alarm, that her tightly fitting trousers were slowly beginning to split. If he speeded up his steps and
Dear Mary… Q. I have always deplored the practice of having to shake hands with strangers. After a burly oaf at a smart luncheon party shook my hand with unseemly force, I was barely able to hold my knife. The pain and fear that he had crushed the bones made me acutely aware of the
Dear Mary… Q. Recently I have developed an enigmatic passion for a rather grand gentleman. Unfortunately it is not entirely reciprocated and I wondered if I could glean some advice as to how to go forward with this. I fear the main problem is that he is rather disturbed by my lack of good furniture
Dear Mary… Q. Like 37,000 other people, I signed up to go to jail on the declaration day and received a little Hunting Declaration badge to wear on my lapel and a yellow car sticker against the unjust ban. What other gestures can I make to indicate support for this noble cause ?M.H., Collingbourne Ducis,
Dear Mary… Q. I have a pressing question. Although I am as addicted to my mobile as anyone else, I do try to keep conversations in public to a minimum. But I have noticed that on London buses there is a very plague of incessant chatterers. These people always seem to shriek as long and
Dear Mary Q. My wife and I have between us received invitations to no fewer than 17 parties being held in London on Wednesday, 12 November, all of them drinks parties between 6.30 and 9 p.m. How should we tackle this embarras de richesse? Although five of the parties are in SW1, it is my
Dear Mary… Q. Every day I find myself reading Today’s Birthdays in the Daily Telegraph. Do you know how I go about being included? Is a title helpful? (If so I will have to try harder.) The other day, there was a list of such types, toffs every one of them — to name but
Dear Mary… Q. In their light-headed enthusiasm, some of the disciples of the late Dr Atkins seem to have lost their social judgment as well as their weight. Last week, whilst dabbing at her crocodile tears on having to discard so many of her wonderful clothes, a very good friend offered me first choice. Unusually
Dear Mary… Q. For my husband and me the racing world has always been a source of Elysian happiness and this weekend we are taking our children to Newmarket races. There a problem looms. Our trainer enjoys heroic status in our household and our children have reached the age where they are beginning to participate
Dear Mary… Q. While staying in Provence recently, as the guest of some friends from Suffolk, my host, albeit an Englishman to his core, appeared every evening in a different pair of monogrammed velvet slippers (stags rampant on coronets, HS entwined with stags rampant, etc., etc.). Knowing that his wife (who, incidentally, is a very
Dear Mary… Q. Like an earlier correspondent this summer, my wife and I find ourselves in the invidious position of being asked, very much as an afterthought, to the wedding of friends to whom we considered ourselves close. Worse, on the grounds that they had ‘run out of’ the real thing, we have not even
Dear Mary… Q. Our 15-year-old daughter was invited as a guest to accompany a schoolfriend on holiday with her friend’s father and stepmother (whom we have not met) as the elder sister did not wish to go. In a telephone conversation to discuss possible dates that would not conflict with our own family holiday, my