Modern manners

The grand tourist trap

Last week, I was in the Florence Baptistery by 8.30 a.m. That used to be early enough to avoid the crowds and admire the Baptistery’s east doors by Ghiberti — the Gates of Paradise, as Michel-angelo called them. No longer. As I stared at the 13th-century mosaics in the apse and Donatello and Michelozzo’s tomb of Antipope John XXIII, a group of bored Italian teenagers started hugging each other and gossiping on the front pew next to me. It was the same all over town. In the Piazza della Signoria, tourists flocked round the copy of Michelangelo’s David at 8 a.m. Next door, they were queuing to see the Botticellis

Can you prove you’re not a racist?

After an essay in this month’s Prospect about literature and freedom of speech, it seems I was cited on Twitter as a ‘racist provocateur’. Now, I rather fancy being a ‘provocateur’. But as for the adjective… Someone can call you ‘stupid’, and that’s just one person’s opinion. It doesn’t seem true because a single childish naysayer has impugned your intellectual prowess. Yet hitherto, the tag ‘racist’ has tended to stick. And it’s self-verifying. Why ever would anyone call you a racist if you weren’t one? In our current climate of sensitivity about race (and everything else), finger-pointers wield enormous power. A sole review of my last novel — amid perhaps

Dear Mary | 15 March 2018

Q. How does one avoid power handshakes? Twenty-five years of wicket-keeping have left me with pathetically fragile knuckles, and each greeting (especially from bold young men keen to show just how ‘firm’ their grip is) brings the risk of crunching fingers and cracking bones. The pain can rule out my other hobby — playing keyboards in a band — for a couple of weeks. But it would seem terribly rude to refuse to shake someone’s hand. What do you suggest? — C.F., Hinton Ampner, Hants A. You should sidestep the usual full-hand shake which juxtaposes both ‘handpits’ between thumb and index fingers. Instead deftly grab only the fingertips of the

Dear Mary | 8 March 2018

Q. Recently I held a party at which some people were meeting each other for the first time. One social-climbing couple, who I do not know well and invited only to pay them back for their own recent party, subsequently emailed to ask for the contact details of the most influential and elevated of my acquaintance. I resisted replying, but then they emailed again suggesting that they hold a dinner and invite my social lions, along with my husband and myself. I am feeling somewhat under siege, as well as mildly outraged. But I know that if some friends I knew better (and liked more) had asked for the same

Dear Mary | 22 February 2018

Q. Obviously one is delighted to have visits from close friends and family when one’s spouse is ailing, but how does one politely deter those in what might be called the second division who, mindful of the Bible’s teaching, are intent on visiting the sick, when the sick and his wife would rather be left alone and only wish for supportive emails promising thoughts and prayers? Visitors require feeding and watering, which entails shopping trips and general labour in the form of tidying the house and getting in flowers etc. They need meeting off trains and taking to the station and the whole enterprise causes great stress when one is

Dear Mary | 15 February 2018

Q. We want to invite a rather exceptional friend to dinner. He lives nearby but he has a top job and also travels a lot so we hardly ever see him. More to the point, his wife controls his social diary. Our problem is that the wife has become a tiny bit chippy about her husband’s star status. Since he is a charismatic, life-enhancing, poetry-reciting, anecdotalising, perceptive, well-informed,witty man, he takes centre stage at any gathering. He may sound insufferable but I can assure you his fellow guests are always happy to just sit back and listen. Not unreasonably, his wife would like to occasionally take centre-stage herself. Consequently she

Dear Mary | 8 February 2018

Q. I am at the age where parts of the body start to go wrong, and I have a minor but life-changing issue. I am in the process of telling my friends when I learn that one of them has a much more serious and life-threatening one. Should I mention my own lesser problem to him, and if so, how? I don’t want to belittle his by seeming to compare notes, but I suspect he would wish to know. — J.N., New Malden, Surrey A. Commiserate with your friend about his own condition. Listen to the details. Then give a short laugh and ask, ‘By the way, do you find

Dear Mary | 25 January 2018

Q. Several friends have reached an age and wealth that means they take unreasonably long holidays or even entire gap years. I enjoy being in regular touch with them when they are at home and am sad they will be away for so long. But should one stay in touch? And how, without the intrusive help of Skype and webcams? Some of my acquaintances post Instagram pictures (one or two too often). Is mutual Instagram following a satisfactory way ahead? — B.F., Barnham, West Sussex A. You should resist the urge to maintain your usual levels of dialogue. People go away for many reasons and sun-seeking is only one of

Dear Mary | 11 January 2018

Q. Should the lady or the gentleman have the banquette in a restaurant? I’ve been brought up to believe that the lady has the banquette for her more delicate bottom — and for her handbag. She has the view of the room; the gentleman has only eyes for her. My fiancé says that a modern couple should take it in turns to have the hard chair. Whose bottom takes precedence? — L.F., Bayswater, London A. As with so many cultural traditions, the lady takes the banquette for practical reasons. Not only does it allow access to her handbag and protect her more delicate clothing from spillages, but the lady usually has

Dear Mary | 4 January 2018

Q. At my son’s school the boys keep a clandestine leatherbound book known as ‘The Bible’, a sort of Rogues Gallery which, inter alia, keeps a detailed account of various misdemeanours and advice on how to circumvent school regulations. It is handed down from year to year, and one of my son’s friends was caught with it by his housemaster. The school believes that this kind of insubordination runs against the ethos of the school and have asked for the boy’s father to destroy the book. I think it is a well-written, amusing account of school life that bucks the trend of political correctness and encourages creativity. It is also

Celebrity Dear Mary | 13 December 2017

From Sir Vince Cable MP Q. I have an unfulfilled ambition to win a national title for ballroom dancing in my age group. But this leadership thing gets in the way of my training. What’s more important — Parliament’s squabbling schoolroom or Blackpool’s twinkle-toes ballroom? A. What’s all this either/or business? These days the only way to become a leader is to become a celebrity first. Viz Trump. If they like you as leader it won’t be because you’ve got the ‘leadership thing’ — it will have been the twinkle toes that swung it. From Jacob Rees-Mogg MP Q. My two eldest sons are becoming quite good at playing the trumpet

Dear Mary | 7 December 2017

Q. My wife and I were having lunch in our local bistro. A boy of about two was wandering around the restaurant and after a while began to scream loudly, with no remonstration by his parents. At this point my wife asked them if they could make the child desist. This brought a diatribe of abuse from the Aussie hipster father. The mother’s response (she was a Mitteleuropean) was that he was only small. Management was reluctant to intervene so what should we have done? — C.H.-T., by email A. The same people who fly off the handle in response to someone trying to ‘boss them about’ will happily obey

Dear Mary | 30 November 2017

Q. We have reached the age when we are receiving invitations from our friends for Golden Wedding celebrations. All the invitations clearly state no presents please. It feels dreadful to arrive without a gift, especially as others have obviously ignored the hosts’ request and arrived with presents. What to do? — M & D., Somerset A. It is annoying for such hosts who quite emphatically ask for no presents. They are not being coy but, at their age, actually feel panic at the thought of new clutter coming into the house. In anticipation of being wrong-footed by fellow guests, contact the hosts before the party to say that under normal

Dear Mary | 26 October 2017

Q. What is the etiquette of hospital visiting? A friend in his fifties is about to spend six weeks in a London hospital recovering from a heart operation. He will be in a private room. He is going to be fine but he will feel a bit fragile, so can you advise me how long I should stay, what I should bring, and, since I am one of his closest friends, whether I should organise a rota so that people don’t overlap? He is a very popular (and newly eligible) man, so he will have no shortage of visitors. — S.B., London W6 A. The classic gaffes to make when

The danger of no danger

We all know about helicopter parents and how terrible they can be. In New York, where I live, a mother sued her child’s $19,000-a-year nursery because her four-year-old was spending too much time playing with two-year-olds, thus ruining her chances of one day getting into an Ivy League university. Huge story, but I suppose I can’t talk, since I’m the gal who let her nine-year-old take the subway alone and got dubbed ‘America’s Worst Mom’. Still, the other mom’s shame came from not believing her kid would be fine. She didn’t realise that mixed-age play is the greatest thing for kids since the invention of the sippy cup. For her

Rod Liddle

The kids aren’t all right

Now that the Scots have banned people from smacking kids — both their own and, presumably, those that belong to other people — I suppose we will dutifully follow suit and another one of life’s harmless little pleasures will have bitten the dust. Fair enough, we can still say horrible, frightening things to them in order to exert a bit of discipline. But the immense satisfaction of hearing them howl in pain from a sharp slap to the leg, or a nasty pinch to the upper arm, will be gone for good.  Not many parents do hit their kids any more. It is already a vanishing art. Smacking unruly brats

Dear Mary | 19 October 2017

Q. A newish friend who has very good manners lent me a DVD of his grandfather at the Olympics. I forgot to watch it. Now, a year later, he has asked for it back but I can’t find it! It is unique and irreplaceable. I feel rather guilty but did not ask to borrow the DVD and why on earth did he wait a year to ask for it back? — E.S., Sussex A. If the man is old enough to have a grandfather who performed at the Olympics then he is old enough to be able to judge a friend’s ability with chaos control. The fact that he foisted

Lionel Shriver

The young oppress their future selves

Matt Ridley’s fine recent Times column was hardly the first to raise the alarm about the pseudo-Soviet intolerance of the left emerging from university campuses. Yet he began with arresting statistics: ‘38 per cent of Britons and 70 per cent of Germans think the government should be able to prevent speech that is offensive to minorities.’ Given that any populace can be subdivided into a veritably infinite number of minorities, with equally infinite sensitivities, the perceived bruising of which we only encourage, pretty soon none of us may be allowed to say an ever-loving thing. We won’t rehash the whole trigger warning/safe spaces nonsense. But I am baffled by what

Dear Mary | 12 October 2017

Q. A well-known television mogul,whom I had met only once, came to dinner at my house. I was on good culinary form and though I say it myself, the food and wine were exceptional. For various reasons it turned into an almost bespoke dinner for the mogul, in that the other guests were all people he had been desperate to meet, and so one way or another he became the guest of honour. He even struck some sort of deal with one of them. In any case we had a great evening and he thanked me profusely as he left. The next day I opened the door to find someone

Dear Mary | 5 October 2017

Q. We have moved from London into a rural area where we are preparing for the first visit of a lifelong friend who has become a self-invented countryman. I know that he will insist on foraging for mushrooms, but none of my family wants to go on kidney dialysis machines as a result of being forced to eat them. None of us (including him) are mushroom experts. Much as we love our friend, he is something of a bully. What should we do Mary? — Name and address withheld A. Buy in a store cupboard supply of dried chanterelles, ceps etc, and rehydrate them prior to his visit. Feign enthusiasm