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
Dear Mary… Q. I regularly enjoy Sunday lunch at a premier hotel here in Bangkok. The food is exceptional and the Thai service staff friendly and professional. Staff recognise and greet me on arrival with a warm, formal ‘Good morning, Mr Smith’. A couple of Sundays ago, chatting with an attractive waitress by way of
Dear Mary… This week, Mary is dealing exclusively with problems relating to table manners. Q. When eating, my 15-year-old daughter knocks her teeth with her fork or spoon. She is very amenable to being corrected, but we are about to join a large house-party where we will all be eating en famille, and I can’t
Dear Mary… Q. What should you answer when a lady whom you have not seen for 30 years greets you with the question, ‘You do not remember who I am, do you?’ when you don’t?P.S., Cornwall A. You should not worry. Such a lapse in memory is not the offence it was in the days
Dear Mary… Q. Is it now de rigueur to offer one’s dinner-party guests expensive chocolates along with their coffee or tisane? If the answer is yes, then I am afraid that I personally cannot afford to shell out a further tenner on top of what I will already be spending on food and wine. Plus
Dear Mary… Q. A few days ago I was in a flat belonging to one of my sister’s friends, whom I do not know very well. On visiting the bathroom, I discovered a lavatory, no paper, a bidet and a neat pile of clean fluffy towels. Never mind what I actually did; what would have
Q. A colleague who sits next to me at work has a propensity to break wind violently whenever he feels inclined to do so. Far from being embarrassed by these eructations, as I imagine most people would be, he seems to see it as a social indelicacy on a par with coughing or slurping coffee;
Q. Having just sold a flat, I have some spare cash which I wish to put to good use for my family. My grandson George recently had a nasty operation on his knee, and my daughter was, at the time, not quite sure how much the medical insurance would pick up. I sent her a
Dear Mary… Q. On doctor’s orders, I’ve recently had to lay off some of my favourite foods – bread, shepherd’s pie, spaghetti carbonara, etc. Would it be polite to refuse a dinner invitation, when I know that the food served won’t agree with me, especially as it’s to a celebratory party for an old friend
Dear Mary… Q. I have been giving a summer drinks party in my London garden each year for the past 20 years. It has become something of a fixture on the social calendar and I am loth to give it up, but now a ruthlessly frank friend has suggested that this year I move the
Dear Mary… Q. I understand that, even though my husband and I are reasonably well paid (our joint income is £65,000), we may still be entitled to something called child tax credit for our new baby – this on top of child benefit. How do I find out if this is true with the minimum
Dear Mary Q. My new wife, I have discovered, has a disturbingly communal disposition. From a large, somewhat boisterous family, boarding-school bred and a once committed Girl Guide, she thinks nothing of barging into the bathroom during my ablutions. Worse still, she seems intent on conversation with me, particularly when I’m on the loo. Without
Dear Mary… Q. An adored friend, with whom I regularly have lunch, always insists on ‘supporting’ his club. These lunches are deeply enjoyable but, as the member, my friend is the only one allowed to settle the bill. I have tried pressing cash on him when off the premises but, although he knows I have