I cannot help but feel sorry for Michael Trend, the disgraced Conservative MP, who allegedly defrauded the taxpayer by claiming a whopping sum in false expenses. Michael Trend’s career and perhaps his life is now in ruins and he can look forward only to an eventual ignominious obscurity. I wish to announce at once that
Dear Mary… Q. At a party the other day a friend of mine took a canapZ off a loaded plate that was being carried by someone she thought was one of the catering staff, only to realise, on account of the woman’s astonished look, that she was a guest and the plate a private one,
Dear Mary…Q. A man and a woman are in a railway carriage either side of the door. Both want to get off at the next station. The train stops. Who gets out first, a) if they are known to each other, b) if not?B.A.L., Egerton, Kent A. In both cases the man gets out first
Dear Mary… At a recent literary prize-giving, after three short and elegant speeches covering the shortlist and the award, the winner – for the first time in his life, it seemed – had the microphone. And did he not enjoy it! The assembled company of around 150 guests looked at one another in horror as
Dear Mary… Q. My problem is that my skin is very dry-looking, a bit like cr
I hardly spend my life attending dinner parties given by the chattering classes. But I will admit to attending dinners given by people who chatter – though not in the Hampstead/Islington fashion but more in the Tory manner, if it exists any more except in muddled gobbledegook. Most of these people have been scathing about
Dear Mary… Q. I rather prefer the use, however dated, of the English version of foreign place names, such as Leghorn, Peking and Bombay. I recently had occasion, in conversation, to refer to Majorca, whereupon my interlocutor pointedly (and from the point of view of clarity of meaning, needlessly) repeated the name, very elaborately, in
Dear Mary… Q. I was driving my wife and children to the Warwickshire countryside. My mother followed us in her car. At a slanted T-junction, I stopped to allow some far-off traffic to pass. My mother, thinking, perhaps, that I was still driving like the boy racer of my youth, accelerated straight into the back
I am not in the least bit surprised that the Americans are furious and bewildered by the churlish actions of France and Germany which are now threatening to destroy Nato. As has been pointed out, not only did hundreds of thousands of US servicemen, many of them little more than boys, die liberating Western Europe
Dear Mary.. Q. I have a very dear friend who lives in increasingly bohemian circumstances in the country. He and his wife have repeatedly asked us to stay with them on one of our visits to England. The fact of the matter is that their standards of domestic hygiene are not particularly high. Suffice it
As I wrote last week, Florida, not to mention the United States, is full of surprises. Many practising Christians show a marked lack of opposition to scientific advances that cause hysteria in Britain. One of these is cloning. Expressing my distaste for recreating human beings I used the specious argument that, surely, for the religious,
Dear Mary… Q. I am in my gap year, have been travelling to Vietnam and the Far East already, and was supposed to have gone off travelling again, this time to Eastern Europe, shortly after Christmas. This trip has now been postponed for various reasons, including waiting to see whether a war will start. In
Dear Mary… Q. The story of Red Chris in last week’s issue brings to mind another tricky issue about house parties, and that is the subject of bringing presents. As a host who occasionally entertains in the country, I do not expect guests to arrive with a gift but am nevertheless delighted to receive one
Dear Mary… Q. As a newly commissioned officer in a regiment that considers itself both pukka and professional, I have recently encountered a problem concerning the etiquette at formal dinner nights. Once seated, one may not rise for relief until after the Colonel has done so. This may be at least three hours, even longer
Dear Mary… Q. Can you suggest an original birthday present for a novice gardener who is not yet very experienced?S.B., Aldeburgh, Suffolk A. Yes, you can buy 1,000 worms for £35 from the Green Gardener at Rendlesham. Curiously, you can freeze worms, then bring them back to life – rather like those little magic fish
Q. Friends of mine have parents who moved to this neck of the woods three years ago. The parents bought a property with a tiny garden and consequently very much wanted to find an allotment. An elderly lady living in a stately home nearby was dividing up her walled kitchen garden and gave them a
Roy Jenkins was my father’s oldest friend. They first met when they were both at Oxford. When, afterwards, they both decided to go into politics, my father pipped him to the post. Much later, when I was growing up in Wiltshire, where we had a house, two of our neighbours were Roy and his pearl-pretty
Dear Mary… Q. A couple of years ago you advised readers to minimise present-buying stress at Christmas by finding something that would be acceptable to people of all age ranges and simply buying up said item in bulk. This year I took your advice and feel I must share with readers the great success that
This has been the season of goodwill. Which, of course, it hasn’t. I am sorry for stating the obvious but there is always less goodwill around at Christmas than any other time of the year. The newspapers seem more vicious, more scandal-ridden and more aggressive than in spring, summer or autumn. This is principally because
‘Tis the season to be self-deprecating. Or even more self-deprecating than during the rest of the year. The traditional British custom of laughing while others tell insulting stories about you, running yourself down, making yourself look a perfect ass, and being the butt of practical jokes, while keeping a fixed grin on your face, really