Mary Killen Mary Killen

Dear Mary… | 28 January 2006

Etiquette advice from The Spectator's Miss Manners

issue 28 January 2006

Q. Two years ago I dispatched a spoof Christmas letter to a select handful of friends thinking this might amuse them. I committed all the standard crimes: blow-by-blow accounts of (fictitious) holidays and activities; an insistence on the good looks, academic prowess and remarkable musicality of our children; my own successes; our soaring incomes; hilarity at the expense of the au pair; new kitchen and so on. I referred to the continuing asylum status of my daughter’s Afghan husband, sketching in how they had met when she was researching the impact of the previous year’s poppy crop on the local farmers for her forthcoming book, All Spaced Out and Nowhere to Go, and neatly deflecting any unwanted whiff of an imperfect situation by mentioning the massive advance from Hodders. Here is my dilemma: although most of our friends got the joke, periodically one or two will make tentative inquiries as to the continuing non-appearance of my daughter’s book or Afghan husband. Please can you help me get out of this hole without (a) making them seem idiotic, or (b) offending those whose newsletters add to the general seasonal gaiety.br>C.L.F., Aldeburgh

A. When these questions arise, assume an aghast expression and cry, ‘But didn’t you get the handwritten flier? You must have had a handwritten flier as well as the round robin saying, “I have had such a drab year and nothing of interest to report that I have invented a fictional year. This is what I wish had happened.”’

Q. I wonder if you or any of your readers could help with a slightly delicate problem which is faced by many people at this time of the year. I refer of course to the task of removing shotgun pellets from the loo — I needn’t go into the mechanics of how they get there, but they don’t flush! I have tried several devices to no avail and I really hate dipping my hand in after them. They are so unsightly. Please help.
R.S., Deal, Kent

A. You can adapt the technique used by dog-owners to collect messes expelled in public places. Don a plastic bag as a protective glove, then plunge your hand — which should be gripping a pellet of Blue Tack the size of a Ping-Pong ball — into the loo. Head straight for the recess where the pellets will no doubt be lurking together and, having ‘embedded’ them into the Blue Tack, withdraw and dispose.

Q. My Labrador has eaten my remote control to the digibox which I bought only two years ago. Now the shop where I bought the equipment tells me they cannot help with a replacement. We cannot operate the thing manually and I am naturally loath to shell out for a brand-new digibox just to get a new set of remote controls. What can I do, Mary?
T.S., Nairn, Scotland

A. A website called www.tvbitz.co.uk can supply replacement remote controls, usually dispatching them overnight. The telephone number for Luddites is 01635 276904.

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