Q. My soon-to-be mother-in-law has started off-loading large amounts of her expensive but hideous cast-off clothes on to me. I don’t want them for many reasons, but we are moving into a much larger flat with lots of cupboards, so I can’t use limited space as a reason to reject them. She is not controlling, just tone-deaf. Can you help at all?
— Name and address withheld
A. Scroll through your contacts and source an impoverished and unchippy friend who would genuinely jump at the chance to refresh her wardrobe with these luxury cast-offs. Regale your mother-in-law with vivid hardship anecdotes about this friend, adding: ‘Incidentally, she is actually obsessed by you as a style model.’ Thereby you can gradually groom her to want to donate the clothing directly to this person, instead of to you.
Q. I have recently moved to an inland village where everyone gets on well but one village elder is something of a curmudgeon. I brought in a coastal plant called Alexanders, also known as horse parsley, from seed collected at my previous home in Anglesey, and was delighted to see two specimens had seeded and were standing proud in the village verges. This Roman potherb, which can often be found in the grounds of old monasteries and castles, is an excellent source of nectar for a very wide variety of pollinators and runs no risk of becoming invasive here, as the verges are mown by the council. I was devastated when I saw, from my window, the curmudgeon savagely beating them down with his walking stick. This old gent and his family have lived in the village for centuries and he clearly views any unfamiliar plant life as weeds. How can I tactfully protect emerging specimens?
— C.B., Shropshire
A. Unfortunately, the indigenous villager may see the Alexanders as a metaphor for you – another non-native species. Maintain harmony by saying nothing and seeding more of it in verges further from his house.
Q. Your correspondent of 29 March was disappointed when some of her guests ate frugally of a delicious dinner she had served. Later she realised they were on Ozempic. May I offer a suggestion? Here in the racing world we keep two different address books, one for people who only talk about racing and another for people with no interest in it. We never invite members of the different groups at the same time. Your correspondent would do well to exercise a similar apartheid with gluttons and the figure-conscious. This may help when it comes to planning quantities.
— H.T., Newmarket
A. Thank you for this tip.
Write to Dear Mary at dearmary@spectator.co.uk
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