Dear Mary: where should I park my car at my boyfriend’s parents’ house?

Q. My boyfriend’s family live in a very pretty Georgian house in the country. The family park their cars at the back of the house by the kitchen, where they tend to congregate. Guests park at the front where the door is unlocked occasionally for their arrival. I am now regularly the only non-family member staying. I know they are of the view that the house looks better without cars in front of it, and my Golf sitting there alone like a mini cab adds little to the elevation. Yet swinging round to the back feels like a land grab. Should I be presumptuous and risk frightening him off before a second Christmas?

– Name and address withheld

A. Parking at the back of the house would certainly signal a symbolic promotion but promotions are not in your gift.  Stay calm and continue to park at the front until you are invited to park at the back.

Q. A kind and generous host whom I have liked enormously on every meeting has asked me and five others onto a gulet in Croatia this month. He is comfortably out of my league financially and insists I am entirely his guest: I will need to pay nothing towards the charter, only the tip to the crew. That tip, he says, is £500 a head. There are six of us: that’s £3,000. I should love to go. But I cannot see how any crew could expect £3,000 for a week. Do I take him quietly aside and suggest he is being comprehensively fleeced?

– J.H., London SW3

A. Do not. A gulet of the kind your host has in mind runs to some £30,000 for the week, and the accepted convention is that the tip to the crew amounts to 10 per cent of the hire/cost of operation. His arithmetic is correct but your frame of reference needs to be adjusted. To be fair, £500 plus airfare is a jolly good price for a week. Be grateful you are not in the Caribbean where the going rate is 20 per cent.

Q. My husband’s twin is still potentially very attractive but, since his wife died, has rather let himself go. He has grey stubble and has stopped changing his clothes. In short, he smells musty. We know the most perfect girl for him but how, without knocking his fragile self-confidence, can we spruce him up for their forthcoming meeting at our house party?

– Name and address withheld

A. Have the twin arrive first.  Carelessly knock a plastic jug of milk over him while he sits at the kitchen table. Send him upstairs for a shower and shave, and let him change into some of his brother’s clothes while you launder the milky set. First impressions last, and with luck the perfect girl will go for him.