Q. We frequently have our very young grandchildren to visit. However it reduces us to teeth-grinding, stony silence when the parents allow their children to spend fleeting milliseconds at the table before galloping off around the room while we try to eat food which has taken time, effort and love to prepare. Trying to correct the children evokes defensive retaliation from their parents. We love having the family round. How can we tackle this diplomatically?
– Name and address withheld
A. Say nothing. The grandparent role is to love unconditionally and effect corrective behaviour by more subtle means than criticism. Tackle this with a two-pronged attack. Introduce them to food like artichokes and mussels, in which the getting at it is all part of the enjoyment, and also takes time and effort for the eater. In addition source some well-behaved (and ‘cool’) children of the same age group or marginally older and invite them to lunch at the same time as your grandchildren. This can be billed as an exciting play date. The contrast in table behaviour will speak for itself.
Q. I have found, in recent months, that at dinner parties I will listen carefully to whoever is sitting beside me, as he or she speaks in detail about their (often tedious) jobs; and yet, if I dare to offer some modest titbit from my own field in response, I’m immediately disparaged for ‘showing off’. Most recently, someone asked me what I did, and I began to answer, when the person on my other side said ‘It’s not as if nobody’s heard’, and cut over me. Mary, I hadn’t even mentioned my career by this point, and I’m certainly not one to sing my own praises! What am I to do?
– Name and address withheld
A. Clearly whatever it is you do is enough to provoke envy. Why not take a tip from Renaissance man Brian Eno and hide your light under a bushel. When asked what he does Eno likes to reply along the lines of: ‘Well I’ve been painting my bathroom today.’ You might do the same, focusing on something banal which has taken up your day, and leave it to others to interrupt you and say: ‘But why haven’t you told them the really interesting thing about your work?’
Q. May I pass on a tip to readers? My husband and I have been married for 50 years and my engagement ring – a thick band with a sapphire – could tragically no longer go over my swollen arthritic joint. Now
the fabulous private jeweller, John Lloyd Morgan has adjusted it by incorporating an invisible hinge so I just bypass the joint and fit the ring like a wristwatch. – S.S., Tisbury
A. Thank you for this tip.
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