Q. Further to your correspondence with ‘name withheld’ of Yokohama, I have a recurring problem with my beautiful Japanese wife of many years and I was wondering if you could help. Here in Australia, when meeting people for the first time, they often ask, ‘Where did you meet your wife?’ I then usually explain that we met here in Australia. But if they do not ask, therein lies the problem because I know they may be silently coming to the wrong conclusion. It is common here for desperate, lonely farmers to purchase ‘mail order’ brides from the Philippines and other poor countries. My worry is that I don’t want people to think that that was how we came to be together. While nobody in their right mind would confuse me with Leonardo diCaprio, I do believe I cut a certain dash and am perfectly capable of finding a mate without purchasing one. Mary, without resorting to the unfortunate American habit of telling my life story to people I have just met, how do I subtly convey the fact that my bride was won through sheer animal attraction and not gained by commercial means?
A.W., Adelaide, South Australia
A. Simply purchase a wallet with photograph window integral. Place within this the earliest existing photograph of you and your wife together. You can always find an excuse to flip the wallet open and draw attention to the picture saying, ‘Look, that is us when we first met at university’ (or wherever). In this way you will quell suspicions at the outset.
Q. Re: Christmas cards. First- and second-class stamps can be used at any time after they are purchased, so buy them before the price rises and then wait until December.
S.S., London SW6
A. Thank you to you and all those other thinkers who wrote to point this out. Your brains were sharper than my own on this issue.
Q. I bought the Sunday Times Rich List and was irritated to see that my father’s name did not even appear in the index, despite the fact that he should have been pretty near the top of the pile. How should I go about submitting the evidence to the Sunday Times team — or would this be seen as pushy?
M.T., Northern Ireland
A. Perhaps you do not realise that there exists an ultra-elite who celebrate each year the fact that they have outwitted Philip Beresford, compiler of the list, and that he knows nothing about them. There are few advantages in being identified as rich, even when the details given are inaccurate. You should keep your head down.
Q. The Van Gogh exhibition was so crowded that a lady friend and I found ourselves cheek by jowl with a man bawling into his mobile phone. ‘I’m in the National Gallery,’ he said. ‘No, you’re not,’ said my friend, loudly enough to be heard over the phone. ‘You’re in the Royal Academy.’ Annoyed at the correction, the man tried to claim that this mis-statement was deliberate. ‘If I’d known that,’ said my friend, ‘I would have said “No, you’re not. You’re in bed with your mistress.”’ What would you have said?
P.R., by email
A. Had the banter been good-natured on both sides, then I could not have bettered your friend’s riposte. As a yobbophobe, however, I would have let the man get on with it while I turned my own attention back to the paintings.
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