Q. For her wedding present I gave my 28-year-old goddaughter a cheque, about five times the value that I would give to a mere family friend. I have now received a note from her which reads, ‘Thank you for the generous present. I hope you enjoyed the wedding…’ For some reason I feel that not enough gratitude has been expressed. How do I convey this without causing offence to her or to her parents, who are still my very close friends?
Name and address withheld
A. Some readers will be impressed that you received a letter at all, since so many twenty-somethings suffer from ‘entitlement syndrome’. All that will change, of course, in forthcoming months. In the meantime — ring your friends and say your book-keeper says there is some confusion over your bank account and since you stupidly failed to fill out the amount on the stub of the cheque you wrote to your goddaughter, could they remind you how much it was for? You were certain you knew how much, but then thinking back on her thank-you letter, you may have been wrong. Leave it at that.
Q. Close friends have made a ‘Sound of Music’ type recording for their home answerphone. Their four small children take turns to trill out lines like ‘No! Our parents aren’t at home’ and ‘Please leave a mess-ess-age!’ The 45-second performance is charming the first and possibly only time you hear it, but not the subsequent times. How can we tactfully convey to our friends that, while we too think their children adorable, we are busy people and cannot waste this amount of time when we need to leave messages for them. More to the point, we also worry that the husband — who works freelance — may lose potential clients who are irritated by the wait.
P. and L.G., Penrith
A. Did you know that if you press the hash button on your own telephone when an answerphone message starts, you can skip the message and cut straight to the quick for message leaving? Your friend may wrongly assume that everyone knows this tip. Why not bring up the subject of answerphones and say enviously, ‘I wish we could have such a charming message on our answerphone but we can’t afford the risk of self-important people not knowing that you can cut to the quick by pressing the hash button.’ Then smile blandly while he questions you further.
Q. May I pass on a tip to readers? I recently made two extremely nice new friends while waiting outside the Albert Hall for return tickets for the Proms. It strikes me as a wonderful way to tune into people on one’s own wavelength. The topics of conversation come naturally and if you are unlucky with the tickets, then you can wander off for a drink with your new friends.
A.G., Witney, Oxfordshire
A. Thank you for reminding readers of this very good way, also, of finding a new romantic partner. Now that the Proms are over readers can still scan the listings pages for other concerts over the winter months which are likely to be sold out. There is a sense of camaraderie in such queues which can be most helpful in sidestepping the early awkward stages of new relationships.
If you have a problem write to Dear Mary, c/o The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP.
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