Dear Mary

Q. A member of my social circle, a local celebrity of sorts, has created a Facebook group the title of which contains a glaring spelling error. I feel unable to accept her invitation to join, as doing so would generate notifications to my other ‘friends’, who no doubt would question my judgment. I now fear a froideur in my relations with said celebrity, who is sensitive to both slights and to any criticism of her work. Mary, what should I do?
Name and address withheld

A. Why not write on her message ‘wall’ that you are trying to join her group but the annoyingly overpedantic version of SpellCheck you have installed in your own computer will not let you
do so as it does not recognise the spelling she has used for its title. Can she take this as an acknowledgement that you are there in spirit? Having been alerted to her error in this nonjudgmental way she can unchippily correct the spelling while holding no grudge against you.

Q. Having offered to help at my daughter’s Pony Club camp I fear I have bitten off more than I can chew. I have been asked to sleep
in a room between the boys’ and the girls’ dormitories. I am supposed to leave my room door open so that I can be alert to any monkey business in the night should the boys try to go into the girls’ room. Given that they almost certainly will have a go at this traditional prank, and given that one or two of the boys have little or no respect for the authority of an ‘old bag’, I worry that I will have to resort to shrieking in an undignified manner when they make their inevitable excursion along the corridor and I order them to turn back.