Q. I have a meeting scheduled with a possible business associate who asked me to buy a certain book on financial management and read it beforehand. He made a voice call last week to check whether I had got the book and, because I was actually near a bookshop, I lied and said yes. I headed for the bookshop but then got distracted. I have now forgotten both the name of the author and the title. We have no crossover friends. Help, Mary!
– Name and address withheld
A. You can mitigate your inadequacy by buying a copy of Simple But Not Easy by Richard Oldfield, the supreme book on investment. Read this thoroughly and absorb. Immediately on entering the meeting bamboozle your potential associate by splurging out your key ‘takeaways’ from it. Since these are likely to be better than any contained in the book he has recommended, if he presses you for an answer as to whether you have read it or not, assert authority by staring him in the eye and replying: ‘Up to a point, Lord Copper.’ Leave him to draw his own conclusions. At least you will have shown that you have put effort in.
Q. My new 19-year-old assistant drove me in her car into our local market town where I was going to do various shopping chores. She parked in a side street with a 30-minute ‘free’ limit, but waved away my concerns about the fact that we would be longer than half an hour, saying confident words to the effect of: ‘The warden never does his rounds this early.’ However, when we returned to the car he was in the process of giving us a ticket for £60. To my surprise she just handed the ticket to me without apology. I feel it is her responsibility, not mine. Can you adjudicate? She is not a trustafarian so cannot really afford the £60.
– G.C.C., Northants
A. Your assistant must atone for her crimes – for her own sake – and she must pay the fine. However, you can make the punishment more manageable by finding a subtle way of over-paying her to the tune of £60 for some extra pop-up work she can do for you.
Q. My 96-year-old mother is the most terrific snob and will not allow me to arrange live-in carers to look after her. Money is not an issue. We are at our wits’ end. What should I do?
– J.B., Wells, Somerset
A. Why not take a tip from another Spectator reader who described the live-in carers he arranged for his snobbish mother as ‘live-in servants’. The mother is more than happy and loves telephoning friends to say: ‘Thank goodness I now have live-in servants.’
Write to Dear Mary at dearmary@spectator.co.uk
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