Q. I am in the process of planning a party for my husband’s 60th birthday. We have excellent caterers in place but my problem concerns the place à table. We will have ten long tables in the marquee, each one seating 30 guests, but how can I possibly decide who should go beside whom? It is too large an event for precedence to play any part but I am already being leaned on by friends asking for either themselves or their children to be placed next to certain people they would like to know better. There is a lot of competition to be next to the same handful of people some of whom are — dread word — celebrities. How should I proceed?
F.P-G., Taunton, Somerset
A. Why not take a tip from Lord Marland, who recently entertained a similar number of guests at his 50th birthday party? As guests arrived they were directed towards two baskets, one containing blue cards for the men, one containing yellow cards for the women. Each card gave a table name and a seat number (even for the women, odd for the men) and this pot-luck system — the only feasible one in the circumstances — worked extremely well. Guests should be warned as they sit down that there is also a ‘wild card’ system at play so ‘don’t get too comfortable as you might be moved at any time’. This will enable you to intervene should any explosive human cocktails have been produced by the random system.
Q. The parking spots here in our village outside the post office and shops, though clearly marked, are few. On Saturday as I stood near the pillar box a gleaming scarlet open-topped e-type Jaguar was parked in front of me by a beaming fiftysomething driver ostentatiously stopping midway between two parking spots.
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