Q. I was fishing in the Highlands and had to take a two-hour taxi from Inverness to the cottage where I was staying. In such a situation, how does one silence a well-meaning but overly chatty driver? — Marcus W., London A. Ideally, you should take more of an interest in people. However, if you
Q. My wife is known to run a very well-organised house. As a consequence, weekend guests often arrive without the right kit, assuming they can go and raid our boot room and borrow something belonging to one of our (seven) children rather than weighing themselves down with heavy boots and coats et cetera for their
Q. My son works in fashion and he does well, but he still lives at home. I am a good cook so I cook big dinners for him and his friends. When I see these silly thin girls sit at my table who eat hardly anything, I want to let them know that it is
Q. I own a house in west London and my drawing-room window gives on to a pedestrian-only bottleneck where people hang around to smoke. Sometimes these are well-known and interesting figures who are on their way to a nearby newspaper office and I feel it would be fun to exchange a few words with them.
Q. A friend of mine put five Coldplay tickets up for sale on Facebook. They were £80 each and I assumed they must be very good seats. I sent her the money. When they arrived I was surprised to see that they had originally been only £45 each. I made a wry comment to this
Q. Time is running out, but I hope you might be able to offer some last-minute help. An indulgent godmother is lending my 18-year-old son her immaculate mews house in London for the autumn while he ‘works’ on his gap year. He has no idea how to keep a house clean and tidy and any
Q. This autumn I will be studying in Paris. A friend from Italy will also be studying there and she wants us to share a flat. She is amazing and I worship her but, the problem is that I need to be alone first thing in the morning — and she wants to talk. The
Q. This autumn I will be studying in Paris. A friend from Italy will also be studying there and she wants us to share a flat. She is amazing and I worship her but, the problem is that I need to be alone first thing in the morning — and she wants to talk. The
Q. When we have people to stay for the weekend, each uses, I calculate, about 14 drinking receptacles a day: a glass at breakfast, one before both lunch and dinner and three at the table, plus five coffee or tea cups. There are five in my family and we often have ten people staying, so
Q. An old friend invited me to have dinner with him in London. We had just sat down when a couple he knew walked into the restaurant. They were slightly drunk and noisy and very excited to see him and made quite a fuss around our table so other diners started to look over. My
Q. My parents are giving a drinks party for me in our garden which, as all my friends know, is quite big. People also know my parents are very generous and laid back so my worry is that some if not all of the single men on the guest list will assume it is OK
Q. We grow our own organic vegetables, and do not really have a surplus to speak of, but because they are so fashionable and sought-after my husband cannot resist giving them away. How can we put a stop to this? for reasons of economy, we would prefer to be eating the produce ourselves. — M.W.,
Q. I often have the most fascinating dreams. These are not just run-of-the-mill dreams about flying or losing your teeth, but really amazing blockbusters which go on for hours and hours. Naturally I want to share these riveting nocturnal experiences with others, but I always find that when I try to recount them, while they
Q. A very stylish woman with a much-admired house happened to drop into my rather dark cottage. She advised me that I should paint the inside of my fireplace white: it would look much better than the current black hole effect and would also reflect light. It seems such a good idea that I suspect
Q. I give a young guns’ shoot for my childrens’ twentysomething friends every year and make a house party of it— it is an essential part of this very extravagant weekend that guests come to both the shoot and the dinner afterwards. This is fine for those staying; but I have found recently that one
Q. As chairman of the parish council, I am required, along with a local member of the aristocracy, to judge the best red, white and blue outfit and the best hat at the forthcoming village Diamond Jubilee celebration. The potential diplomatic pitfalls are legion. I have thought of saying that I have, during the occasion,
Q. My wife was a recovering alcoholic. Now she is a lapsed recovering alcoholic. After three years of sobriety she has taken up the bottle again. I feel that if only she could hear the foul-mouthed and irrational tirades she delivers when under the influence, she might go back onto the wagon. I have recorded
Q. I am a very busy person. Consequently I find it maddening when I am talking to someone on the telephone and I realise that they are not concentrating on what I have to say, but instead are staring at their computer screen. A case in point is a younger friend who is a junior
Q. Any more tips on how a lonely bachelor can improve his social life? Your recent advice that I should send out a round-robin email saying ‘I’ve had the all-clear’ backfired. I did get loads of calls but many of them were from people who assumed I had been suffering from an STD. — E.W.,
Q. My husband and I are at loggerheads. One of the buildings he owns has become vacant and he has planning consent for change of use to a pub. On the one hand we very much need the money. On the other I dread the drunkenness and yobbery it would bring. Can you rule, Mary?