Q. I recently went to a birthday dinner. The tables were very big and round, meaning that conversation was only really possible with the people sitting on either side of you. The man on my right, however — someone I had never met before — had something very large nesting in the hair of his left nostril. With the best will in the world, I thought I might be sick if I were to turn, as I should have done, and so I hardly talked to him at all. I did not want to be rude and feel very guilty. Mary, how would you have tackled this problem?
R.J., London W11
A. Readers will empathise with your revulsion. Yet the truth is that everyone would prefer to be told, even if it has to be by someone they have just met. You can break the news prettily by sourcing two tissues. Handing one to the offender confide, ‘Apparently you and I need to blow our noses. Isn’t it embarrassing?’ Look away as you blow your nose. He will certainly blow his. Refuse to be drawn on who said so. Just start chatting. The important thing is that with you appearing to have been in the same boat, he can exchange humiliation for camaraderie.
Q. My friends have started saying, ‘You’ve already told me that story.’ I admit that I drink too much and probably talk too much but how on earth can one keep track of which anecdotes — some of which, if I say it myself, are highly amusing, and well worth listening to a second time — one has already told when one has a very active social life? I am 73.
Name and address withheld
A. It’s all very well the anecdotes being good, but people do not like them to feel impersonal — which they will tend to if you tell them twice to the same person. Given your alcoholic intake, it is sensible to preface each anecdote with, for example, ‘I’ve told you the story about Elizabeth…’ If your audience replies, ‘Yes, you have’, then move swiftly on to something like ‘I wonder how she is now. Have you seen her recently?’ Otherwise you can proceed.
Q. People keep kissing my baby girl without asking me first. Last weekend, when I stopped at a petrol station, the cashier said, ‘Let’s have a cuddle then. I can’t resist babies,’ and held out her arms. Unable to think of any reason to refuse — the obvious ‘worried about swine flu’ seemed too accusatory and snobbish — I reluctantly handed her my daughter. Through handling money all day long, cashiers have ostensibly shaken hands with half the country. My fear is that the next person to insist on holding my six-month-old is a muck-spreading farmer on the job. So how can I get strangers to stop treating my baby as an indulgence of their own without offending them?
F.J., Helston, Cornwall
A. You can pre-empt a lot of this nuisance by having the baby in a carry-sack up against your own chest, rather than in a more accessible pushchair. However, next time it happens say, ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t go near her if I were you. She’s going down with one of those terrible viruses babies get. I wouldn’t want you to catch it.’
If you have a problem write to Dear Mary, c/o The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP.
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