Q. While on holiday in Corfu, we met a rather nice man who invited us to his house for dinner. The house turned out to be something of a palace. There were six of us around the table and a waitress came towards us. She had a tray with a bowl, sitting in a bed of ice, and a tin of caviar, with a mother-of-pearl teaspoon, surrounded by ice within that bowl. Caviar is my favourite food and I can remember every mouthful I have ever had – but I hardly ever have it. The waitress presented the bowl to me first. I didn’t want to be gauche and ask my host how much I should take, so I took just one teaspoon. But as the bowl moved around the table, I could see everyone else taking much more – about ten times as much – and we were never offered seconds. It sounds spoilt, but to me it was a minor tragedy. How can the first person invited to help themselves to caviar know how much to take?
– A.H., Penrith
A. Your host would not have been hoping for anyone to ‘go easy’ or he would not have had the whole tin presented. You should have calculated roughly what a sixth of the tin would constitute and taken slightly less. This would not have been considered greedy but the correct amount to take.
Q. My sons, who are in their late twenties, walk around the house wearing their AirPods, which makes interaction almost impossible. My wife and I are always longing to hear their news and tell them ours. What can we do, Mary?
– T.L., Hedgerley, Bucks
A. Don’t take this personally. Blocking out others is a side effect of the housing crisis. The young are craving the mental privacy which, in previous generations, they could have been enjoying in their own homes. Pleasantly suggest you listen to the same thing so you can have some shared references to bond over. Can they set it up on your own iPhone? This will unnerve them to the extent that they will prefer to take out the AirPods and talk to you.
Q. My retired husband has begun a collection of bonsai trees. For him it is an absorbing and aesthetically pleasing activity which I have encouraged, but the downside is that our social life is now being impacted. We have been invited to a week on the Spey, which is always great fun, but this year he doesn’t feel he can leave the bonsais for that amount of time.
What should I do? – Name withheld, London
A. An agency called Plant Sit (www.plantsit.com) could provide holiday cover in the form of sympathetic horticulturalists. They come highly recommended and are roughly £35 a visit.
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