Q. My husband and I (both in our eighties) recently visited a carpet shop with a view to replacing the stair carpet in our four-storey house. The salesman showed us various carpets and we discussed their relative merits. When I asked him how hard-wearing a particular carpet was, he looked at us carefully and said: ‘Well, it is not going to need to be very long-lasting is it?’ We were a bit surprised and will be taking our business elsewhere. But can you suggest how we might have been able to indicate to him politely that this particular form of words was unlikely to secure a sale?
– R.H., Cheltenham
A. You might have cried pleasantly, ‘What do you mean? We’ve just extended our lease by 20 years!’ and then stared at him enquiringly while he struggled to answer.
Q. Every year a friend invites me out to dinner on or around my birthday. Despite falling on hard times, he insists we go to the same high-end restaurant in Mayfair as he knows it is my favourite. I know he would not hear of my going halves with him, but the restaurant has become so expensive. How can I can contribute this year without offending him?
– R.B., London NW3
A. Go on to the chosen restaurant’s website and pay for a gift voucher to the value of some of the approximate cost of the evening. Print this off. When the bill arrives, pause the waiter while you forage for this voucher as though you had just remembered that you had it, then lunge it forward and explain that another friend gave it to you and, as it’s about to expire, it must be used or it will go to waste.
Q. Dear Mary must know the Russian proverb ‘Three can keep a secret if two of them are dead’ (27 April). If my spouse told someone to tell a third party that I fancied someone whom I didn’t, just to tweak a seating plan, he’d find himself on the floor. Wouldn’t better advice have been simply for this lady to go to the lunch party alone?
– A.F., Barnard Castle
A. You refer to the device suggested for preventing a socially recalcitrant husband from being put off socialising for good. It is true that the ‘secret’ would inevitably have been widely circulated afterwards, as all secrets are. But while half the recipients would have dismissed the intelligence as absurd and unlikely, and probably a result of Chinese whispers, the other half would have been intrigued by the eccentricity and, wanting to know your husband better, would have extended invitations of their own. Thus you would have increased his social cachet.
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