Q. How to stop parents chatting throughout school chapel services? Your advice to the organist at the leading public school will not work. I know because my son attends just such a school and services like confirmations and carol concerts are recorded. The parents are reminded that this will be happening but it does not stop them from chatting with gay abandon all the way through. Can’t you come up with something better?
— L.P., Basingstoke, Hampshire
A. Feedback from other schools suggests the problem is indeed widespread, but not universal. One way of controlling it is to give false deadlines for service starts. Hence the parents are all assembled in chapel at the correct time but find they have ten to 15 minutes of unexpected social networking opportunities before proceedings commence. This tends to be sufficient to render them happy to self-gag for the duration of the service — especially when they know it will be followed by a reception back at their child’s house at which further social and conversational reassurance will be available.
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