Mary Killen Mary Killen

Your Problems Solved | 22 May 2004

Etiquette advice from The Spectator's Miss Manners

Dear Mary

Q. Here’s a solution to noisy New Zealand neighbours having barbies in the garden late at night. The last time ours had one my husband went over and told them the noise was absolutely fine by us, but there was a lunatic on crack in the assisted housing flats next to them. Said crack addict had come at him with a leafblower one evening when we’d had the gardeners in and actually smashed a pane of glass in the front door trying to kill him. The police came round and said they couldn’t do a thing about it, of course, which meant it was quite likely he would strike again if provoked. All perfectly true too.
H.C.d.S., London W14

A. Your solution is ingenious and would, no doubt, be effective, but the addiction problem has assumed plague proportions and is not the laughing matter it once was to those who have had no experience of it. We must all give what money and moral support we can to those professionally engaged in tackling it.

Q. Can you tell me what is the form about chatting at the breakfast table during grand house parties? My husband is convinced that, on the grounds that most of the fellow guests will be hungover or grumpy, it is bad form to do anything other than read the newspapers and offer to pass things to fellow guests, but I feel that is a bit curmudgeonly. Can you rule, Mary? O.A., Suffolk

A. It is true that many people are grumpy in the morning even without hangovers. They find voices jarring at that time of day, but the form is that if you don’t want to talk yourself, it is perfectly acceptable to shelter yourself behind a newspaper.

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