Q. I was caught out last week during dinner. The guest on my left was droning on at length and I had tuned in to a more interesting conversation down the other end of the table when to my horror he suddenly said, ‘Sorry… I lost my train of thought. What was I talking about?’ Mary, although I had an ‘interested’ expression on my face, I had stopped listening long before. Can you advise so that I am fully prepared should a similar situation arise?
—Name and address withheld
A. You should reply with great enthusiasm, ‘I’ve no idea what you were saying because I’ve been staring at your face and it’s completely mesmerised me. Did you know you had a perfect Grecian profile/enchanting half-smile?’
Q. How can I kindly tell a new neighbour and potential close friend that she needs to do something about her stained teeth and have her moustache bleached or waxed? I would not want to strike the wrong note but I happen to know these things have already put some other neighbours off.
—N.B., London SW3
A. Invite your neighbour to coffee at your local department store, Peter Jones, at Sloane Square. Ask her to meet you there as you need to make some boring purchases first. Suggest the third-floor ‘toilets’ on the dot of, say, 11a.m. as you want to go in there and change into some new tights you are about to buy. Be ten minutes late and turn off your mobile so she has to wait there for you. Light floods in through the giant windows of these third-floor toilets and a wall of mirrors allows the most forensic scrutiny of one’s personal appearance. Over ten minutes she will be unable to resist making a full examination of her own. You need take no further action.
Q. Our children are now in their early twenties. Neither of the girls earns very much and our son is still a student but my husband says they are already at the age when they should be tipping when they go to stay with someone. I say why should they when they certainly earn less than the people who are making their beds and cooking for them and are already being paid for doing that? What is your view?
—Name and address withheld
A. Yes, the people helping in the house are already being paid for doing so. However that is not the point. The act of tipping is as much a way of thanking your host as it is of thanking the staff. It is a means of bringing excitement to a somewhat dreary job. In the eyes of the staff it conflates the extra work of a house party with benefit for them. If guests did not swell the downstairs coffers in this random way, then upstairs would have to make resentment-inducing overpayments on a permanent basis. Your children should leave a fiver each (per night) to show willing.
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