Mary Killen Mary Killen

Your problems solved | 25 July 2019

Q. It was 10 p.m. by the time the canapés appeared and by then it was already too late. The well-oiled guests, including many old friends, were not drawn from the widest gene pool; many of the men had been to ‘school’ and there was a large Oxbridge contingent, of which I was one. I was doing my best to amuse an attractive woman while my wife’s back was turned when the spouse of a well-known Guardian journalist cut me off mid-flow. ‘You’ve come up!’ she declared, apropos of absolutely nothing. ‘You’ve come up a long way, haven’t you?’ It is true that I grew up in an unfashionable part of south London and went to a minor public school before going to Oxford and then the City. I may also have married a daughter of the landed gentry, but I have always had to paddle my own boat financially. I pride myself on being able to come up with a riposte but this time my wits let me down. Mary, what should I have said?

— Name and address withheld

A. You might have quipped: ‘It’s kind of you to say so, but you must have heard the old adage “it’s tough at the top”. That’s turned out to be true… But I believe it’s even tougher at the bottom?’

Q. Your response to my letter about men barraging me with emails containing Guardian articles, plus their mini sermons on politics, falls short of your usually helpful replies. You have got sidetracked by the gender of the senders, assuming the emails are a form of flirtation. They may be (or may not) but they are still extremely irritating, and many others I know are plagued by lecturing emails. Please address the problem of how to stop this?

— E.S.,

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