Q. I recently went to a birthday dinner. The tables were very big and round, meaning that conversation was only really possible with the people sitting on either side of you. The man on my right, however — someone I had never met before — had something very large nesting in the hair of his
Q. We are in the habit of entertaining guests from overseas, including a countess, at a bush camp in one of the excellent KwaZulu Natal game reserves. Usually we go, in a group of up to eight, on game walks, which bring us up close to animals including rhinos. From time to time, when a
Q. A close, though fairly new, friend of mine is an influential art critic. I suppose it is only natural that other friends should now be always asking me for his home address or to bring him along to their exhibition or to the exhibitions of their children. The problem is that they then send
Q. Can you please advise. If you have been invited to meet someone at a club or a restaurant for a meeting or get-together, and you arrive before them (either because you are early or they are late for some reason), is it polite to accept the offer of a drink from the staff and
Q. Caught short by unexpected guests and an empty larder, in desperation I opened a can of high-end cat food (Fancy Feast brand — chicken, heart & liver flavour), mixed in a shot of brandy and served it as ‘pate’ with some water biscuits. It was delicious (the brandy cutting some of the natural gaminess
Q. Last weekend we went abroad to a birthday party of great friends of ours. We often meet them when they come to London, and invite them to join us at my club. They are coming to visit London again, this time with another couple, whom we hardly know. Of course we would like to
Q. My daughter will be studying Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde for English GCSE and my wife and I are at daggers drawn. I say that Jekyll should be pronounced ‘Jeekill’, as in Gertrude. My wife says that this is pretentious and we should stick to ‘Jeckill’, as in Hollywood. Please advise. A.D., Faringdon, Oxfordshire
Q. Mary, please help urgently. We have friends to stay with us in Scotland every year at this time. This year I have an impressive quota of three single (heterosexual) men in their forties. I have identified one in particular as ideal for a singleton female friend who is also coming. How can I force
Q. I am in the middle of a second gap year some 33 years after the first (which was marred by menial work). The ‘Dear Mary’ item (8 August) about Justgiving charity requests prompted some thoughts since I have just been on the soliciting rather than receiving end of a fundraising drive. I fully share
Q. I was asked to review a collection of letters and did so, praising to the skies the late author’s wit, integrity and astute judgment of human character. News now reaches me that an old family friend, lampooned in these letters, has taken offence. She saw my ringing endorsement of these letters as a ringing
Q. I am feeling overwhelmed by the endless stream of sponsorship requests from friends, godchildren and relations, a lot of whom could write a cheque for ten times their target total without batting an eyelid. £15 — the most I could afford given the number of these demands on my overdraft — seems stingy especially
Q. I recently attended with my wife the summer party of a London literary society. The event offered wine and buffet supper between 6 and 9 p.m. Arriving at 6.50 we found the buffet table almost stripped bare, with guests seated around it, munching copiously, à la Babette’s Feast. Food stocks were not replenished. Therefore
Q. My husband has started working from home. The invasion of my privacy and the disruption of my peace is driving me almost mad. Now he has developed a habit of standing at the bottom of a staircase to the room where I myself work and yelling questions up it. He says he is too
Q. My host on a forthcoming holiday keeps his pool arctic cold so that it is not enjoyable for me to swim in it. I do not want to be a spoilsport. What should I do? Name and address withheld A. Bring a wet suit and swim in that, claiming you are extra sensitive to
Q. I was persuaded by my son to attend a lecture on astronomy. I was out of my depth within five minutes. Should I have interrupted the speaker, Mary, and asked for elucidation? I did not want to embarrass my son but through not so doing, the whole rest of the lecture went over my
Q. An old friend summoned me to a black-tie dinner at the Cambridge college of which he is master. On arrival I found I had forgotten cuff links so I threaded a shoelace through each cuff and tied them together that way. Knowing that I have about 20 pairs of cuff links at home, I
Q. Recently I was asked by friends to take a visitor from Germany on a game drive in the Chobe National Park. Unfortunately the visitor had unwisely lunched on some elephant meat from a recent cull and vomited in my new Range Rover, thus bringing the safari to an abrupt end for all concerned.
Q. Like many middle-aged, under-employed people, I have finally got round to finishing my novel. Being too self-regarding to vanity-publish and not, as some West Country nobody, seeing much other hope of publication, I scoured around for friends from university who in intervening decades have laboured their way to the top of the publishing world.
Q. My oldest school-friend, who moved to Paris, has recently been staying with me in London while visiting her sick mother. This was on my invitation. However I have noticed that she has been ringing her own family in Paris quite freely from our telephone and spending sometimes up to 40 minutes changing and rebooking
Q. I am trying to persuade my friends in the more fashionable areas of London that it is now not only socially acceptable but ‘all the rage’ to shop in Lidl, Asda and Netto, as opposed to Waitrose and Partridges in the King’s Road. Judging by the accents I heard on a recent trip, these