Q. I want to give a drinks party for 200 friends. The alcohol is within my budget. Most of my friends are recovering alcoholics and the others are too old to binge drink, but I have been quoted £30 a head for food. I do not want to pay £6,000 for, effectively, a few kilos of trussed up ingredients in exotic sauces. Most people will be going out to dinner afterwards in any case. What is the solution, Mary? I do not want to seem mean.
N.S.C.C., London W14
A. Status canapés have become the norm at smart parties but your guests may well be grateful if you do not tempt them and add to their calorific intake. Satisfy their expectations instead by providing only the illusion that there is food at the party. Create this by having tall waiters push through the throng from time to time holding catering-sized trays above their heads containing only a litter of cocktail sticks and half-empty dips. Your friends will assume that there is food but that they personally have been serially standing in the wrong place at the wrong time to access it. Since most of them will be going out to dinner afterwards the failure to gorge will do them no harm. Less is the new more.
Q. Every year I take a house in Cornwall with a friend for the first week of the school holidays. We have to drive down all the bedding and all the necessary kitchen equipment and food to cater for about ten of us, to say nothing of our dogs and puppies. It would not be possible to do it by train but none of the teenagers coming has passed their driving test and, unfortunately, my friend and I have both been banned from driving. Our husbands are both working that week. We will also need transporting around while we are there. Mary, can you help?
Name withheld, Pewsey, Wilts
A. The bans are a blessing in disguise. You can use a tutorial service to fill this need while simultaneously giving yourself and your friend some moral support. Ask the agency for a personable young man with a driving licence, not for straightforward pre-exam tutoring, but to orchestrate evening general knowledge quizzes and book clubs for the teenagers. More to the point he can drive the necessary loads both down to and back from Cornwall and do the pick-ups from Bodmin Parkway. In addition this young man can provide some male authority in the household and throw his weight around with the teenagers and go out looking for them when they do not return by the traditional 2 a.m. curfew (I assume you are going to Polzeath). A residential tutor
normally costs £180 a day for four hours work. Obviously the role is less of an academic and more of a Paid Companion position. But if you openly explain your needs to a sophisticated agency such as Bright Young Things Tuition, you may well negotiate an off-peak non-pre-exam deal to satisfy both parties. 02081 339637; brightyoungthingstuition.co.uk.
Q. My boyfriend says he has no time to go to fancy dress shops yet we have two such parties looming. What should I do?
F.W., Edinburgh
A. In the old days men simply turned their shirts back to front and came as vicars. However, as long as he looks noticeably different to his normal appearance it will seem your boyfriend has made an effort. Just buy him a wig and a pair of sunglasses and tell him to let other people guess who he is.
If you have a problem write to Dear Mary, c/o The Spectator, 22 Old Queen Street, London SW1H 9HP.
Comments