Dear Mary: What’s the etiquette of loo-flushing for overnight guests?

Q. My husband and I have started receiving invitations to large summer events scheduled for after 21 June. We have been shielding for the past year and, although happy to meet up with small groups of friends out of doors, for the time being we are fearful to commit to indoor unventilated parties. Obviously our hosts require responses to these kind invitations, but we don’t know how to refuse without being thought of as ‘wimps’. Mary, can you help?
— P.Z., London SW7

A. There is no need to supply a reason for a party refusal. Indeed traditional etiquette decrees that you should not. You need only say you will be unable to attend. Your hosts will be far too busy planning their parties to bother challenging you for an explanation.

Q. My club, with a wonderful lawn facing the Thames, reopened on 12 April. How can I dissuade the club pariah from sitting at my table? I don’t want to appear unclubbable, but he has no interest in what I or my friends have to say, he constantly looks around to see if there is anyone ‘better’ to impose on, and he stifles the conversation of a good group of friends. I can’t remove chairs as he’s the kind of fellow who would pull one up regardless. What do you suggest, Mary?
— T.McC., London SW15

A. You should stop being so interesting. In future, brief each of your friends to come to the club armed with either a very long and boring story about someone the pariah could never have heard of, or a lecture on an arcane subject of no conceivable modern interest. As the pest joins your table, announce: ‘Fred has just been telling us about his great-uncle Jasper… do carry on Fred.’