Dear Mary… Q. A friend of mine has a maddening habit. She rings me from her mobile saying urgently, ‘Can you ring me straight back?’ then hangs up. Clearly she believes that it is much cheaper for me to ring her mobile from my landline than vice versa. This may or may not be the
Dear Mary… Q. I am shortly to take the stage at a certain literary festival. I always enjoy talking afterwards to those readers who have brought along their copies of my book for me to sign. One thing which grates, however, is the inevitable presence, always at the very top of the queue, of a
Dear Mary… Q. I cannot believe that you condone the habit of ‘high-profile guests’ who keep their hosts waiting while they decide whether or not to accept an invitation (26 April). Their so-called ‘ruthless insistence on flexibility where social arrangements are concerned’ shows a weakness of self-importance. The hosts would no doubt have other guests
Dear Mary… Q. My wife and I are actors, and therefore we are at home most of the day. We have a Brazilian cleaning man who comes for three hours at a time three days a week. Our problem is that for a full half-hour of each of these sessions he occupies the downstairs loo.
Dear Mary… Q. My husband has developed an annoying habit of beginning to unzip himself as he approaches our downstairs gents. He also delays the buttoning-up process until long after he has vacated the facility. I am afraid that I find this obscene. How can I put a stop to this habit?Name withheld, Binham, Norfolk
Dear Mary… Q. I am shortly to give lunch to a number of high-profile people. Two of them have rung to inquire how late they can leave it before giving me a yes or a no. Do you agree with me that this behaviour, with its assumption that a better invitation may come along in
Dear Mary… Q. I am a consultant to, and former partner of, a professional firm in the suburbs of London, where I do four days a week working in an extraordinarily happy and democratic environment with political incorrectness to the fore. A problem has arisen of a very delicate nature, where it has been alleged
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