Dear Mary… Q. My husband’s 87-year-old father is greatly enjoying the Iraq war. With an understandable sense of personal invulnerability, he has been sitting in his ‘safe house’ in Cornwall, watching virtually every news bulletin and revelling in ‘the deep satisfaction of seeing rockets hitting their targets’, et cetera. We are taking our children, aged
Dear Mary… Q. My parents-in-law have taken to dropping round uninvited. While I do not dislike them, they always seem to appear at an inconvenient time, when either the house is looking horribly dishevelled or I am. My husband doesn’t see anything wrong with this and gets very offended when I mention it. How can
Dear Mary… Q. At a party the other day a friend of mine took a canapZ off a loaded plate that was being carried by someone she thought was one of the catering staff, only to realise, on account of the woman’s astonished look, that she was a guest and the plate a private one,
Dear Mary…Q. A man and a woman are in a railway carriage either side of the door. Both want to get off at the next station. The train stops. Who gets out first, a) if they are known to each other, b) if not?B.A.L., Egerton, Kent A. In both cases the man gets out first
Dear Mary… At a recent literary prize-giving, after three short and elegant speeches covering the shortlist and the award, the winner – for the first time in his life, it seemed – had the microphone. And did he not enjoy it! The assembled company of around 150 guests looked at one another in horror as
Dear Mary… Q. My problem is that my skin is very dry-looking, a bit like cr
Dear Mary… Q. I rather prefer the use, however dated, of the English version of foreign place names, such as Leghorn, Peking and Bombay. I recently had occasion, in conversation, to refer to Majorca, whereupon my interlocutor pointedly (and from the point of view of clarity of meaning, needlessly) repeated the name, very elaborately, in
Dear Mary… Q. I was driving my wife and children to the Warwickshire countryside. My mother followed us in her car. At a slanted T-junction, I stopped to allow some far-off traffic to pass. My mother, thinking, perhaps, that I was still driving like the boy racer of my youth, accelerated straight into the back
Dear Mary.. Q. I have a very dear friend who lives in increasingly bohemian circumstances in the country. He and his wife have repeatedly asked us to stay with them on one of our visits to England. The fact of the matter is that their standards of domestic hygiene are not particularly high. Suffice it
Dear Mary… Q. I am in my gap year, have been travelling to Vietnam and the Far East already, and was supposed to have gone off travelling again, this time to Eastern Europe, shortly after Christmas. This trip has now been postponed for various reasons, including waiting to see whether a war will start. In
Dear Mary… Q. The story of Red Chris in last week’s issue brings to mind another tricky issue about house parties, and that is the subject of bringing presents. As a host who occasionally entertains in the country, I do not expect guests to arrive with a gift but am nevertheless delighted to receive one
Dear Mary… Q. As a newly commissioned officer in a regiment that considers itself both pukka and professional, I have recently encountered a problem concerning the etiquette at formal dinner nights. Once seated, one may not rise for relief until after the Colonel has done so. This may be at least three hours, even longer
Dear Mary… Q. Can you suggest an original birthday present for a novice gardener who is not yet very experienced?S.B., Aldeburgh, Suffolk A. Yes, you can buy 1,000 worms for £35 from the Green Gardener at Rendlesham. Curiously, you can freeze worms, then bring them back to life – rather like those little magic fish
Q. Friends of mine have parents who moved to this neck of the woods three years ago. The parents bought a property with a tiny garden and consequently very much wanted to find an allotment. An elderly lady living in a stately home nearby was dividing up her walled kitchen garden and gave them a
Dear Mary… Q. A couple of years ago you advised readers to minimise present-buying stress at Christmas by finding something that would be acceptable to people of all age ranges and simply buying up said item in bulk. This year I took your advice and feel I must share with readers the great success that
Dear Mary… Q. I rarely shoot, since I have always been a hopeless shot. However, I recently went out for a day and was rather pleased to shoot a woodcock. At the end of the day, as the keeper was loading my car, I was surprised to see only pheasants in the boot. ‘What happened
Dear Mary… Q. I am a hereditary peer. I am also in the auctioneering business and my work takes me to the United States, where confusion frequently arises over my Christian name. What is the most tactful way for me to correct those who have misunderstood the details on my business card and assume that
Dear Mary… Q. Please help! I recently met a wonderful girl whom I find quite enchanting. She’s beautiful, creative and successful in her own business, and I find that I am always thinking about her. I am concerned, however, that she might be a bit thick. While on her way to an important trade event
Dear Mary… Q. During lunch at the house of some friends of my parents, I was put between two boys from Bryanston who talked across me through each course as though I didn’t exist. I did not take their rudeness personally – in fact, I was quite sleepy that day and would have been quite
Dear Mary… Q. Could you give me some guidance on how to keep my parents’ and acquaintances’ opinions about my single life to themselves? At 32, unmarried without children and happy about it, I hear a regular chorus from the parents and assorted people: ‘You ought to get married sometime soon’; ‘Shouldn’t you be finding