Etiquette

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Do I really have to take my shoes off indoors?

Q. There has been a marked increase in the number of people who have pristine flooring and are so keen not to have outside dirt brought in that it has, in my view, entered the value system of good manners for me to offer to remove my shoes when arriving at their homes. That’s fine. But in the evening, especially if I’m invited to a dinner or drinks party, I think about my shoes according to the rest of my outfit. To then have to take off the soft, possibly Jimmy Choo, suede shoes or delicate leather boots and spend the evening in barely stockinged feet is, to me, uncomfortable

Thursday

Richard Madeley

Richard Madeley’s diary: Forgetting Tom Conti’s name, and other harrowing experiences

Oh God, it’s happened again. Another evening where I’m surrounded by people I know personally or have interviewed, and I can’t remember a single name. Multiple blanks. It’s a sort of self-fulfilling nervous tic — a phobia, almost. We were at a fundraiser at our kids’ former school in north London. For some reason, lots of celebs send their children there, including Jonathan Ross. He once joked that it’s the only school in London with a permanent posse of paparazzi hanging around outside the gates. Anyway, a veteran actor with grandchildren there strolled over for a chat. After he’d wandered off, I looked at my wife in mute appeal. ‘Tom

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How to talk to friends whose book you haven’t read

Q. What is the correct thing to say to a writer friend whose book you haven’t read? I buy most friends’ books out of loyalty but there have been so many in the last few months that I can’t think when I will have the time, if ever, to read them. So what feedback can I tactfully give? — Name and address withheld A. You might take a tip from Sir John Betjeman. Derwent May has given me permission to repeat his own account of taking Caroline Blackwood to lunch and finding John Betjeman in the restaurant. Kind Betjeman sprang instantly to his feet to announce, ‘I’ve just ordered several

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my future son-in-law saying ‘must of’

Q. My future son-in-law has been successfully house-trained in the use of upper-middle-class English over the years that he has been walking out with my daughter. However, one bad habit remains. How can I cure him of saying ‘must of’ when he means ‘must have’? He always says ‘of’ very clearly, as though he really means it. I dare not correct him for fear of making him feel inadequate. —Name and address withheld A. First disarm him with praise. Find an excuse to praise the fluency and elegance of his conversation, perhaps by comparing him with a less articulate contemporary. Then add, ‘And I don’t think I’ve ever caught you

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Is there a tactful way to shorten the guest list for my 21st?

Q. I am organising my 21st birthday party at our family house in Italy. It is a fantastic location, but it means that I can only invite about 20 guests. The result of this is that I am unable to invite a group of friends from a university society of which I am a member, despite several of them having invited me to their parties. I will be inviting one person from the group (I knew him away from the society), so the rest will become aware of it. I feel bad for not inviting them, but they are simply not any of my 20 closest friends. Is there anything

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Learning to love a man who whistles through his nose

Q. What can you do when disorganised friends say they would love to come to a concert with you but you suspect they won’t get round to buying the tickets? The concert in question, run by the Friends of the Georgian Society of Jamaica, is this Saturday at St James’s, Paddington, with folk songs collected by Dr Olive Lewin and music by Tippett and Ramirez, and I want to plan dinner afterwards. How can I, without seeming like a bully, make them get their acts together and buy tickets before they are sold out? The dynamic of our relationship is that, were I to buy them, they would feel even

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Can I run out on an apprenticeship for my dream interview?

Q. I have been trying to get an apprenticeship in fashion for over a year without success. I just had a day-long interview where I had to sew and cut and was employed on the spot. My problem is that a few hours later, I got the call to come in to be interviewed by a designer who has been my fashion idol since I was 15. He would be much cooler to work for. He may not offer me a job but it seems like a chance of a lifetime. How should I play this, Mary? —Name and address withheld A. Honour is all. ‘Employed on the spot’ means

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Is it an insult to be given anti-ageing cream?

Q. When someone gives you anti-ageing cream as a present, is that an insult or a compliment? — A.O., Provence A. It is both, but such creams make pointless presents. Cosmetics are all to do with suggestibility: for them to work, the user must be the one who has studied the spiel on the packaging and decided it seems plausible. Well-wishers should also consider that products with names like ‘emergency filler’, ‘intensive repair’ and ‘total elasticity loss rescue’ on daily display on a bathroom shelf can eventually depress an onlooker. Q. We have taken our children on holiday to the same beautiful cottage on the Cornish coast every year since

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Show me the tactful way to pay for a lift

Q. My neighbour is really lovely and always helps me chainsaw trees. He used to be the herdsman at the farm but was laid off last summer when they sold the herd, so now he is unemployed. Friends from London often borrow my cottage when I am away and I am sure my neighbour would welcome £10 a time to collect them from the station. He is now being paid a small monthly amount to keep the garden in order for the new owners of the Big House but I don’t want to seem grand or patronising by asking if he would be interested in regular taxi work as well.

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What do we do with a teenage guest who hogs the bathroom?

Q. We have taken a flat in Edinburgh for a month and a young girl, temporarily homeless and a friend of one of our sons, has moved in with us. We like her very much but the problem is that she goes into the (only) bathroom for more than one hour at a time, sometimes twice a day. It is so unbelievably selfish but my son doesn’t want to embarrass her by saying something. How should I deal with this without making her feel unwelcome? — M.G.C., Edinburgh A. Take the lock off the door. Say the landlord has been round and done it for some reason. She will not feel so

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Help me hunt down my priceless missing book

Q. A scholarly book of great importance to me appears to have gone missing from my library. It was heavily annotated so it is irreplaceable. I lend books all the time and I have a strong feeling I have lent it to someone, but I just cannot remember to whom. I can remember the last time I saw it and have emailed all those who signed the visitors’ book since, asking whether by any chance they have borrowed it — but it seems that none of them has. I feel it would be a tad accusatory/Alzheimery to send a round robin to all friends and colleagues to ask whether they

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How to accept wine refills at parties without getting drunk

Q. At a drinks or a dinner party, when very attentive waiters are hovering, I tend to let them keep topping my glass up since the alternative — continuing to say ‘no thank you’ — is so disruptive of conversation. However, my wife tells me that other men clearly manage to find a way of keeping track of how much they have had since other men don’t seem to get as legless as I do. What do you suggest, Mary? — R.B., Exeter A. Have 20 coins in your right-hand pocket. Each time the waiter fills you up, mark his input by discreetly transferring one coin into your left hand

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I tame my brother’s savage table manners?

Q. I live far away from my brother and his family, but went to stay with them recently for the first time in many years. Having supper was like eating a meal with the starving. Brother, wife and their young teenager hunched down low in order to be nearer to their large plates of stew, which they ingested by noisy slurping and eating off both forks and knives, scraping the plates clean intently and, in my brother’s case, lifting plate to mouth to make sure the last bit of gravy went unwasted. Sister-in-law holds knife and fork like pencils. Child is learning the same. My mother would have been horrified

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: Do men really have worse table manners when they’re on their own?

Q.  My 16-year-old son, who has recently had his first experiences of Clubland, has observed to me, his mother, that men’s table manners degenerate inside men-only clubs. Is this true? — A.D.M., London SW1 A.  Allegedly so. Men seem hard-wired to let standards slip when the civilising influence of women is absent. According to the late sage Hugh Massingberd, the seating protocol of man/woman/man/woman originated in the early days of chivalry, when it was noted that a more courtly pace of consumption would characterise the round tables when knights were faced and sandwiched by females. Then as now, a courtly pace was much less disruptive to the digestive system and

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I make my polite English husband interrupt like a German?

Q. My dear English husband has never mastered the knack of timing his interventions in conversation. He hesitates politely, and by the time somebody pauses, his comments are no longer to the point so he shuts up. After 45 years I always know when there’s something he wants to say, and it’s become a sort of party turn that I butt in and call for order for the next speaker — which doesn’t reflect well on either of us. Any ideas, Mary? Should he signal, for example by raising his right forefinger, the hand resting on the dinner table? — B.D., Frankfurt A. This gesture is too puny to halt

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I spike a gossip-pedlar’s guns?

Q. On arrival at a top level dinner, I was surprised to see at the table a woman who, I have reason to suspect, sells gossip as a sideline. However, clearly no one else suspected her and, assuming it was Chatham House rules, everyone was talking freely. When one man began to regale the table with an anecdote which was bound to culminate in a dynamite piece of gossip, I was paralysed with horror but I couldn’t think how to stop him before it was too late. The consequence was that the item appeared in the press a couple of days later, causing all manner of probable future security problems

Cosmo Landesman

When did it become OK to be boring?

[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_8_May_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Cosmo Landesman and Lara Prendergast debate if the bores have taken over” startat=1297] Listen [/audioplayer]I can remember back in the 1970s when a girlfriend of mine, sensing my lack of interest in her very long and very detailed analysis of the lyrics of Bob Dylan suddenly said, ‘Am I boring you?’ Of course she was. And of course I denied it. Why? Because it was a hurtful and embarrassing thing to say to someone. Back then to be seen as boring was the verbal equivalent of having bad breath or body odour. But today no one worries about boring other people — or being branded a bore. I

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: My teenager insists on an NHS operation. What can I do?

Q. Our son, aged l6, has a medical condition which, although not life-threatening, requires surgery by a specialist to pre-empt it becoming lifestyle-threatening. The NHS waiting list is long. He has had private health insurance since birth and never yet used it but he refuses to jump the queue as he disapproves of ‘elitism and privilege’. We’ve explained that by taking up his right to go privately he would help another young man with the same condition move more quickly up the NHS list but to no avail. While we admire his ethical aspirations, my wife is having sleepless nights. — N.G., London SW1 A. First find a surgeon who

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I escape the tyranny of teacher presents?

Q. It’s only April and yet I am being emailed by parents who have already taken charge and are drumming up support for collective year presents for teachers at my children’s schools. I have one son and two daughters who are all leaving their respective schools and I would prefer to thank staff members on my own terms. Am I being petty? — H.K., Hampshire A. Many parents would be relieved that this organisational chore was taken off their hands but others would agree with your instinctive reaction. If you wish to distance yourself from the herd and the modern tyranny of present-giving, say, ‘Oh dear — for the first

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How long must I wait to tuck in?

Q. I am always making or receiving phone calls which get cut off. When I ring the person back their line is engaged as they are trying to ring me too. Mary, whose responsibility is it to ring back when a call has been disturbed in this way? Can you use your immense authority to rule, once and for all? — A.B., London W8 A. The person who initiated the call is duty bound to ring back. It was they who made the overture in the first place and they who presumably have something to say to you. There is no implied hostility in your failure to ring them back.