Dear Mary: How do I retrieve the naked photo that was hidden in a cookbook?

Q. My mother is still mentally and physically sprightly at the age of 87. She is perfectly capable of living alone – indeed she has done so for the past 20 years. The problem is that she is still highly social but most of the London friends of her own vintage, some of whom lived in the same historic apartment complex in Piccadilly, have died. Any ideas as to how she could make new friends?

– G.F., Bruton, Somerset

A. Perhaps she could take a tip from another highly social widow, who has just died aged 97, but who was a keen attender of memorial services, having no qualms about turning up at those of people she had never met but who had well-known names.

To the same end your mother might enjoy scouring the Court & Social pages of the Times and Telegraph. She is perfectly positioned, geographically, to turn up at St George’s Hanover Street, the Guards’ Chapel and St James’s Piccadilly. If pressed at the ‘after party’ on her link to the deceased, she can openly admit it was tenuous. Most organisers will be delighted by the presence of anyone who swells the numbers. She may well run into forgotten acquaintances and will at least have the sensation of still being in the swim of things.

Q. I’m living in Brussels and paying what I think is an extortionate rent for a room in a flat. My bills are included but the owners, who use the flat only a few times a month themselves, always turn the heating right down when they leave and I feel uncomfortable turning it up again. I now have a high-maintenance girlfriend who feels the cold – unlike my landlords. What should I do, Mary?

– H.R.,