Dear Mary: Help! My friend’s home is filthy

Q. What should I do if my housekeeper refuses to clean my nanny’s bedroom and bathroom? I am worried they will turn into a tip.

– M.C., London

A. Today’s competent London nannies are so highly paid that yours may have developed delusions of grandeur. Your housekeeper is quite right to refuse. Why not tell your nanny that you want to get the children into the habit of associating cleaning with fun at an early age? Suggest she supervise them tackling her bedroom and bathroom each day and you will come up to inspect and award stars for good work.

Q. My family and I were dismayed when we heard that a woman who moves in the same (literary) circles has bought a house near our remote cottage in Cornwall. She is by no means a soulmate – although, since we use the cottage primarily as a retreat from our over-social London lives, it would be even worse if she were. Last weekend, when I happened to glimpse her coming up the garden path, I warned the others and we all instinctively hid, even when she opened the front door and shouted: ‘Hello.’ We are now agonising because we realise she will have definitely seen, via a mirror, my mother hiding behind a sofa. How can we apologise without having to invite her to come back on another occasion? – S.N., London W14

A. Ring and explain that you have now seen that your security cameras (real or imaginary) picked up images of her coming to the cottage. You were aware that someone was knocking but you all hid because you always do when someone knocks on the door in Cornwall as you go there to get away from others. You had no idea it was her. Why doesn’t she come for a drink in London because, although you never socialise in Cornwall, you would love to see her in London?

Q. I recently went to stay with a friend in the country and was horrified by the filth and mess in which she lives. She is very aware of it, but works so hard that she has neither time nor energy to address it. I like this friend very much and it struck me that, if I could think of a tactful way, I could pay a company to do a deep clean of her home. How to offer this without being rude or humiliating her? I feel sure she would find it helpful.

– P.A., Bath

A. Tell your friend you attended a charity dinner and bid for a deep clean of your house by an agency. You won the bid but now find your own cleaner would be deeply offended if you let the agency in. Would she help you out by allowing the team to come to her instead?