Q. Some years ago, while appearing as a barrister before a bench of three magistrates in the youth court, I encountered a problem. As I rose to address the chairman of the bench I found myself looking at an entirely androgynous figure with short brown hair, soft features and any physical indications of sex obscured
Q. I regularly travel on the Ashford-St Pancras train and usually put my case on the seat next to me so that passengers can pass along the aisle, after which I put it down by my feet. Last week a woman pointed at it and said loudly, ‘Does that deserve a seat of its own?’
Q. I am going on a late holiday with a group of people who are keen on nude swimming, which I am not. The owner of the house has said that the pool area is secluded, so there will be no stopping them. I don’t want to strip off myself, not least because I am
Q. How do you persuade someone drunk to leave a party when it doesn’t make sense for them to stay? When the taxi arrived to take me and two friends back to my house after a 21st, one girl refused to leave. She said she was having too good a time. Things were already winding
Q. How can you tactfully tell someone that the large skin tag or blob they have grown in the centre of their forehead is disfiguring and should be removed? The person involved is a dear cousin who spends all her time do-gooding and thinking of others and is totally unvain. Her boyfriend, who should be
Q. Is there a polite way of not letting someone hold your baby? I love giving mine to people to hold but I don’t like it when he gets handed back to me stinking of someone’s perfume. Is there a kind way of keeping him away from anyone I don’t like the smell of, ideally
Q. While renting in Rock last week, I ran into an acquaintance who invited me to join her large house party for supper the next night. Looking back, the group of ten or so did seem oddly surprised to see me when I arrived. Then, during the pudding course, I looked discreetly down at an
Q. I have learned that someone I much admired in youth is about to become single again. I only have the sketchiest details but am single myself and keen to know more. The one person who knows everyone and would know everything is a valued and highly amusing friend of mine, but she is also
Q. Travelling on a train recently I happened to notice two former acquaintances, sitting together and very nearly opposite me, neither of whom have I spoken to for several years. The two are unknown to one another. This unfortunate coincidence left me in a difficult situation, as one is a most agreeable and attractive young
Q. At a recent literary festival I attended a talk with a high-profile octogenarian writer. I had already bought her book, so I obediently queued with the others lining up to get it signed. When I reached the writer, she was exchanging a few polite words with me while signing her book (I know several
Q. I am anxious about a forthcoming house party to which several people in my friendship group have been invited. Our friend’s father is the host. I have met him before and he could not be kinder but his historic house is unmodernised so we will have to share bathrooms. I have always had a
Q. The problem encountered by R.B. of Fareham (6 June) is similar to one I wish to avoid. I have organised an informal lunch for old boys of the grammar school we all joined in the 1950s, aged 11. There will be only a few there, not more than ten, and I know from previous
Q. My partner, a leading political commentator on a national newspaper, recently agreed to shave off his hair at the suggestion of his editor, in order to write and illustrate a feature piece on the charms of baldness. The timing, at the height of the summer season, could of course not be more embarrassing. He
Q. I was at the theatre recently and bumped into a well-known Liverpudlian crooner coming out of the disabled lavatory. She said ‘Don’t worry, luv, it’s fine to use them if no disabled people are waiting.’ Often theatre interval queues are long and in some of London’s better restaurants the ‘disabled toilet’ is closer, cleaner
Q. My parents brought me up to write only my name in a visitors’ book. However, following a recent long weekend in the house of a friend’s father, I was last to sign and found the other guests had all written lengthy gushing tributes to our host. If I didn’t follow suit, my own entry
Q. What should I say the next time I run into a woman with whom I was at art school but who obviously does not want to be friends with me now? I heard she had moved in round here and I was shopping in the high street when I saw her for the first
Q. I felt uncomfortable during a dinner for 20 in a private house. The young man on my left had failed to turn to the woman on his left when it was time to do so and instead stared vaguely down the table with his back slightly turned to her. She looked devastated. I wonder
Q. How can I discipline inconsiderate people who do not reply properly to wedding invitations? I am being driven demented by replies on cards from people who have scrawled, for example, what looks like ‘Tom M’ and ‘James P’, which do not correspond to anything on my list. I refused to spoon-feed guests by enclosing a
Q. I have a friend who can be shy and inhibited. Recently, he was invited to stay on a Caribbean island by a generous and rich host, so wanted to take the host and his wife and the other members of the house party out to dinner. The host suggested a beach restaurant which, despite
Q. As a writer I find working at home too distracting. I am a longstanding member of the London Library where rules and conditions allow one to concentrate in perfect peace. My problem is that the library has become so popular recently that, to secure one of my favourite desks, I have to arrive at