Dear Mary: Can I ask our hosts to look for my husband’s tooth in the flowerbed?

Q. My 74-year-old husband was having drinks in the garden of some young clients when he bit down on an olive with a huge stone in the middle. He heard a crack and picked the stone out of his mouth – along with what he thought was a splinter of tooth – and threw the bits into the flowerbed. This morning his dentist told him he had thrown away a whole crown. While he could repair the crown, it will cost £500 to create a new one. Although I would have no qualms in asking someone of our own age to scrabble through a flowerbed looking for a 74-year-old man’s tooth, I feel that a beautiful twentysomething girl would be repulsed by the request. We live too far away to drive back and look ourselves. – Name and address withheld

A. Ring the girl and ask if she remembers the signet ring your husband was wearing on the night. Say that when he got home he noticed that the precious stone had dropped out of this ring. He now remembers flinging an olive stone into her flowerbed and wonders could it have come loose at the same time. Explain it is a very unusual white stone, carved from ivory. The ring was presented to your husband’s grandfather by The League of British Equine Dentists. Would she mind looking for it?

Q. For years I have taken clients to a charming Italian restaurant near my West End gallery. One of the kindly chefs recently discovered I have become diabetic and has started to turn up in the gallery with loaves of rye bread and foil trays of healthy meals made just for me. While I really appreciate her thoughtfulness, my wife has pointed out that since I have offered to contribute financially, it is an expense we could do without, to say nothing of the difficulties of transportation on the Tube.