Dear Mary… | 11 March 2006

Q. I am in the process of restoring an old barn and want to use only environmentally friendly, locally available or recycled materials. However, the clipboard Nazis at the local council have told me I must coat my exposed beams with fire-retardant paint. I am very anxious to avoid the chemicals contained in these paints. Have you any suggestions, Mary?
P.J.K., Cirencester

A. Why not take a tip from Lady Bamford’s eco-spa at Daylesford just down the road from you? The spa, housed in an old farm building behind the fashionable shop, was transformed by architect Spencer Fung to a strict ecological brief. He too was instructed by fire officers to coat the beams of the old building, a former hay barn, with fire- retardant paint, but instead he managed to find an environmentally friendly fire protection coating from Envirograf which has a range of products for various woods in different coating finishes for the fire rating required. Telephone 01304 842555, www.envirograf.com.

Q. As a human resources manager of an international finance house I am writing to ask for your advice on a very sensitive issue. I have been approached by our chairman’s PA on the subject of her boss’s halitosis. His offensive breath has not gone unnoticed by clients and employees alike and has now become something of a joke. Clearly, in my capacity as HR director, this is something that I need to address. Please advise how I can delicately tell our chairman that his clients and employees find his bad breath offensive. Oh yes, and I do want to keep my job!
Name withheld, London

A. Please visit www.therabreath.com, the website of Dr Harold Katz, director of the California Breath Clinics and author of the depressingly entitled Bad Breath Bible, in which he details the multifarious causes of bad breath and exculpates most sufferers, explaining that it is usually nothing to do with bad hygiene.