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Saturday 22 November 2008

Dear Mary

Your problems solved

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. I think the driver should pay less — because he has to do the driving. Whatever the answer is, it is a problem for us because we are broke. We would have hired the cheapest available car for ourselves.
                         Name and address withheld

A. It would be undignified to quibble over this. Instead, why not pretend to have got the wrong end of the stick? Email the couple to say you have booked a Fiat Punto — or whatever the cheapest available car is from that airport — and grandly offer that they be your guests and have lifts with you all week because your hostess is keen that you should be eco-friendly and only have one car. They will email back, Princess-and-the-Pea-style, to say that they too have already booked a car so why not cancel yours since theirs will be more comfortable? Your having set the precedent of not charging will mean they should not expect to charge you. But establish this as a certainty by emailing that you INSIST on filling up when the car runs out of petrol. This is unlikely to happen more than once within a week.

Q. A friend with a house in London which he only uses sporadically had me to stay the night but left before I did the next morning. I sat down on a chair in his drawing room and went straight through it. I have been mortified to learn — from a mutual acquaintance — that this chair, whose seat was made of cane, was never intended to be sat on and was merely decorative. I feel such a clumsy brute. I had no idea that such a thing as a merely decorative chair existed. My friend is away for another six weeks. How can I have the chair repaired without taking it out of the house? I have a key, but am worried that if I send the chair away my friend’s mother may notice it is  missing and think it has been stolen.
                                                 G.H., Brighton

A. Simply telephone Ray Sharpless, known as the ‘Wicker Man’, who has been mending chairs around central London for many years, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather before him. Hoorays and yobs alike have been falling through cane seats since time immemorial and Ray Sharpless comes to your home and mends it on the spot, or , if the weather is good, he sits in the street outside doing it. A well-known figure in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, he charges something like £3 per ‘hole’ in the seat frame to reseat a cane chair for a typical £70 to £100. Ray’s number is 0845 331 2704.

If you have a problem, write to Dear Mary, c/o The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP.

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