Etiquette

Dear Mary | 12 April 2017

Q. My aunt lives in a small market town with narrow roads and limited parking. A neighbour opposite acquired a large and gruesome camper van and parked it right outside her front door. The neighbour was polite enough to ask, and my aunt was polite enough to say that, of course, it was no problem. A year later, the van is still parked there. Not only is it ugly, but it is a huge inconvenience, given that the space outside her house is permanently out of use for both her own car and for anyone visiting (e.g. me). Personally, I want to have it crushed it into a small cube

Do you know a flake fatale?

It was the third time in a row that she had cancelled our date for drinks. The first time she’d forgotten. The second time she remembered a previous engagement and the third time she claimed she’d got the dates mixed up. The next day I got the text she always sends: ‘Sorry darling, I’m such a flake!’ I used to have friends. Now I have flakes — people who are always screwing up arrangements to meet. Flake has become the catch-all explanation and excuse for the bad manners or bad behaviour of friends and loved ones. Cosmo Landesman and Freya Wood discuss the modern affliction of flakiness: We all know

Dear Mary | 6 April 2017

A friend of a friend hosted an engagement party in a London hotel. Invitations had gone out six weeks beforehand, and no expense was spared. They had planned it to be an ultra lavish event to please even the most critical and spoiled of their friends. However, between the hours of 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. on the day of the party, 30 of the 100 guests who had accepted suddenly cancelled. The bride and groom are in their fifties, so surely their friends should be old enough to know better? What can an ordinary, non-super-rich person like me expect the turnout to be for my own forthcoming engagement party?

Dear Mary | 30 March 2017

Q. As an artist I’m indebted to my sponsor. I also like him, but not his habit of ringing me up when he has friends in the room, asking me to describe, for example, a party I’ve recently been to and then putting me on loudspeaker. It’s a good thing that he considers me to be entertaining, but I draw the line at being required to act the stand-up comic to an invisible (even if appreciative) audience. My mother says ‘he who pays the piper calls the tune’. Can you rule Mary? — Name and address withheld A. You are not a human jukebox available to churn out anecdotes on demand.

Dear Mary | 23 March 2017

Q. We had some people up from London for a very long weekend. We put on an extra-special do, costing a lot of money (even hiring an after-dinner concert pianist), all for the benefit of one particular couple. This was eight weeks ago yet — despite being of the age group who knows how to behave — they didn’t write a thank-you letter. My husband has been grumbling and I worry he might use this discourtesy to curtail any further entertaining on this scale. What should I do? — C.P., Blakeney, Norfolk A. Email the couple saying you found one of those annoying Missed Delivery cards, dated seven weeks ago,

Dear Mary | 16 March 2017

Q. Living in a large house in the country within striking distance of a motorway, we get a lot of people calling in on their way elsewhere. We love it. We are particularly glad to see one busy and successful friend who is often passing and also needs a bed. The problem is he is a commitment-phobe and leaves his plans until the very last minute. He lives alone and hasn’t any idea of how a large household is run and often won’t reveal whether he will make, say, Sunday lunch until 11 that morning — usually with a breezy ‘Don’t worry about me.’ Of course, he arrives at 12.30 and eats

Dear Mary | 9 March 2017

Q. Most of my friends have small children and being mostly media types in west London, have given them silly names: Zedechiah, Tiger etc. I’m used to that. What is driving me up the wall is that some of them have begun to use the definite article before referring to their offspring. As in: ‘I’ll bring The Zed to tea, shall I?’ Or ‘I’m taking The Wolf to swimming.’ What irritates me is the implication that we’re all expected to join in with the parents’ (understandable) assumption that their child is special and unique. I see that my irritation is mean-spirited, Mary, and I know that to mention it straight

Dear Mary | 2 March 2017

My partner has become a recycling fascist. She checks everything I put into the bin. I received two bollockings today alone — the first at breakfast because I did not make a distinction between the top of my small bottle of Actimel (non-recyclable) and the bottle (recyclable). I do try to do my best, but is it time for her to be recycled? I can’t go on like this. — Name withheld, Hampshire A. First bear in mind that your best will never be good enough. The booby-trap potential is too great for anyone who hasn’t had the time or inclination to mug up on all the complex requirements for correct

Dear Mary | 23 February 2017

Q. I’ve listened to the radio to deal with insomnia for years (Dear Mary, 18 February) and your suggestion of single earphones does not work well. They hurt your ear — when they haven’t fallen out of it. The answer is either a Roberts Radio Pillow Talk speaker (flat, sits under pillow, clearly audible through pillow) or a Sound Asleep Speaker Pillow (haven’t tried myself but has 49 good reviews on sleepypeople.com). Both cost £14.99.—F.C., Newbury. A. Thank you for sharing your findings. Q. Our 15-year-old daughter has, on paper, nothing to complain about. We both love her passionately and have only her best interests at heart. Moreover, we live

Dear Mary | 9 February 2017

Q. A (very attractive) man I knew at university invited me to a party given by him and his girlfriend. When I got there I found the girlfriend has reinvented herself as a hat designer and there was a pop-up shop at the party. I was bullied into buying one even though, patently, none of them suited me. Because of the social nature of the event I was embarrassed into pretending I thought it was wonderful and I shelled out a lot of money. What should I do now? — Name and address withheld A. Offer the hat to a pushy and aggressive friend. If she says she doesn’t like

Dear Mary | 2 February 2017

Q. My granddaughter has asked to use our barn for her 21st birthday dance in June. We can only sleep 30 in the house, but she won’t let me arrange billets with neighbours for the other 70, saying ‘everyone will sleep in their cars’. This seems short-sighted. It goes against the grain not to offer folk beds after a late-night shindig. Should I overrule her? — E.C., Adelstrop,Glos A. The reason the young no longer need beds after 21st dances is first that they tend to stay up all night and second they are prurient about drink-driving, so would in any case be unable to drive to a guest billet

Dear Mary | 26 January 2017

Q. I recently made an arrangement with a flaky friend from university to go to my gym together. Half an hour after we were supposed to meet she called saying she was at the cash machine looking at her bank balance and she didn’t think she could afford the £20 guest entry fee. She suggested cancelling but I was dressed and raring to go so I offered to lend her the money. She politely declined saying, ‘I don’t like owing people money.’ I volunteered to pay the fee. On the way to the gym she said she was hungry and, opening a wallet stuffed with cash, bought luxury snacks costing

Dear Mary | 19 January 2017

Q. At a drinks party at Christie’s this evening my face was splattered with flecks of spit from the guest I was talking to. I desperately wanted to wipe them off but felt that would have been impolite (and in fact I had no handkerchief anyway). What is the top way to deal with this problem? — F.I., County Down A. Ideally you would drop something and then quickly wipe your face with your hand while your interlocutor is bending to pick it up for you. Should he/she fail to perform this courtesy, scoop it up yourself with one hand while wiping with the other. Q. My son goes to

Dear Mary | 12 January 2017

Q. My son decided to go straight into work and has got a job. The problem is that it is in central London and none of his friends are available to share accommodation since they are all either on gap years or, if in London, in university halls. He’s been lucky enough to find a berth with a friend’s parents. He pays rent but, though they’ve given him his own small fridge, he doesn’t cook there — he doesn’t know how to and also he senses they would prefer he didn’t. Consequently he eats at Pizza Express every night using vouchers. He is a sociable boy and is used to

Dear Mary | 5 January 2017

Q. I have bought a second-floor flat which comes with a bow-shaped balcony which overlooks a communal garden. My problem is that I will want to go on to the balcony to smoke but I won’t want my neighbours to see me doing this. Nor will I want them to be able to see who is standing on the balcony smoking with me. Solution? — Name withheld, London W11 A. Why not take a tip from the late Lucian Freud? When the reclusive painter had his own bow-shaped balcony, he concealed his doings from neighbours with a 7ft high wall of tightly packed Chinese bamboo. This device allowed Freud to

Celebrity Dear Mary

From Rt Hon Gisela Stuart MP Q. I keep getting into arguments with people about what being a Labour MP is all about. I used to think that being in government was better than being in opposition. They now tell me I’m wrong and that the years since 2010 have been better and purer than the flawed years from 1997 to 2010. Help. Are they right and am I wrong? A. As a Roman Catholic German Brexiteer Labour MP for a Birmingham constituency, you should have grown used to being in a minority. If you would rather be in power than out of it, the obvious solution is to switch

Dear Mary | 1 December 2016

Q. I don’t go to my club that often but the other day I found a letter there waiting for me from an elderly cousin, also a member, whose home is in Scotland where he lives alone. The letter announces that he is down south until January and asks whether he might spend Christmas with my family here in London. I am well aware of the meaning of Christmas and have no wish to be mean-spirited, but my wife and I have a relentless social life throughout the year and our children are as yet unmarried, so Christmas Day has become the only time we can be sure of being

Dear Mary | 17 November 2016

Q. Following a lavish house party I received a flood of effusive thank-you letters, the bulk of which praised the impeccable service, the luxurious treats laid on nightly, and my attentiveness to my guests’ every whim. One letter, however, commenced in a fairly complimentary vein but soon devolved into a letter of complaint about a fellow guest. So vehemently did the author express his antipathy that he covered two sides of paper. I concede that the young woman in question is an acquired taste, but I resent my friends being subject to character assassinations. How can I reprehend the scribe? — Name withheld, London W2 A. Bear in mind that this

Letters | 10 November 2016

A downbeat Brexiteer Sir: Alexander Chancellor (Long Life, 22 October) wondered why Brexiteers were not more upbeat about their victory. I suspect many, like me, were worried about Remainers trying anything they can to overturn the vote. The news that the judges have ruled that Brexit cannot be triggered without a parliamentary vote shows how sadly right we are to be downbeat. Marion Gurr Pury End, Northants Shakespeare’s ‘nothing’ Sir: Charles Moore comments upon the difficulty of selecting just one word to sum up Shakespeare’s poetry. Like Cordelia, I would suggest ‘nothing’. The word occurs 654 times in his works, with greater frequency in the great plays, and provides the

Dear Mary | 10 November 2016

Q. A man I know (but not very well) has invited me and another girl to stay in a villa he’s been loaned. He says the only thing I’ll have to pay for is my flight but I suspect that though we’ll probably have picnics on the beach each day for lunch, we’ll go to expensive restaurants at night and split the bill three ways. I like them both, but they are spoilt while I’m an artist and just can’t spend what they can. It would be so uncool to start saying, ‘But I only had the salad and water and you’ve had the oysters and champagne blah.’ Nor would