Dear Mary

Q. A few weeks ago we had a 25th wedding anniversary dance. Old and new friends came from far and wide. A clutch of beautiful presents was left for us in the hall, which we did not expect. One had an unsigned card (from a Dover Street Art Gallery). The present is the most stunning set of silver salad servers. I am in agony at being unable to thank the kind person who gave us these. Going through the guest list, I eliminated all those who gave presents with cards attached. Then I picked three particularly stylish girlfriends who were likely to have given such a present; I emailed them with my mystery but felt embarrassed. All three said they weren’t the donors but said, ‘Your present is still being made.

Q. One of my neighbours displays the most extraordinary behaviour when I go to dinner. When the guests arrive they are not offered a drink, even a soft one, for at least 15 minutes. He then pours one bottle of wine into tiny glasses. He later replenishes his own glass at the expense of his guests’. The other night, no wine whatsoever was offered with our first course. Later, a small amount of red appeared, in a decanter. There were no refills until the very end of the meal, when he poured himself, and one other male, a full glass. This has happened so often in the last 20 years that I would like to teach him a lesson. He has little sense of humour, so a jokey reprimand would not work. (My neighbours, and my ex-husband, have noticed his keenness to accept refills when out.

Q. On holiday in Greece this summer there was an area of unexpected tension in our house party. As we lay by the pool it seemed that everyone was reading either Wicked! by Jilly Cooper, or A Much Married Man by Nicholas Coleridge, or Title Deeds by Liza Campbell, or The Guynd by Belinda Rathbone. This meant that at no time could you enjoy discussing any of those titles you had read or were reading yourself because, as soon as you started, you would elicit a scream from a neighbour begging you to stop on the grounds that they hadn’t read it yet or hadn’t yet reached the passage you were talking about. Mary, this was frustrating to say the least. It meant stimulating conversation was virtually barred. How could we have managed this better?A.E., Pewsey, Wilts A.

Q. I am in the process of planning a party for my husband’s 60th birthday. We have excellent caterers in place but my problem concerns the place à table. We will have ten long tables in the marquee, each one seating 30 guests, but how can I possibly decide who should go beside whom? It is too large an event for precedence to play any part but I am already being leaned on by friends asking for either themselves or their children to be placed next to certain people they would like to know better. There is a lot of competition to be next to the same handful of people some of whom are — dread word — celebrities. How should I proceed? F.P-G., Taunton, Somerset A.

Q. Sharing my name with a well-known property tycoon and philanthropist, I frequently receive invitations for dinners and other fund-raising events from organisations expecting a substantial contribution to their cause. I am not tight-fisted, Mary, but a minimum donation of £100,000 is something I can ill afford. The problem is that such amounts are rarely stated on the invitations themselves and organisers are not prepared to divulge anything on the telephone. No doubt some invitations are meant for me, but I tend to decline them all for fear of embarrassment. How can I work out whether invitations are truly intended for me or for my wealthy namesake? D.R., address withheld A. Rather than developing a phobia about these invitations, why not turn the confusion to your advantage.

Q. I have recently started going out with a new girlfriend. She is articulate, well-spoken, elegant, witty and polite — in short, a real catch. There is only one thing that puts me off: she holds her knife like a pen. You will accuse me of being an inveterate snob, which I hope I am not. However, I know what my parents would say if I were to take her home for supper. Worse still, my grandmother! Perhaps, Mary, you will say I am making a fuss about nothing, or you will tell me not to be so snobbish. Equally, I am not trying to wheel in old-fashioned prejudice under my grandmother’s skirts. I just think HKLP is a case of bad table manners and I need your advice. Please tell me — how can I reach a solution without appearing rude? A.S., Wiltshire A.

Q. I was recently invited to stay with some well-heeled friends who were renting a house in Tuscany. Having cleared up any possible confusion about payment (I wouldn’t have to contribute to the rent), I accepted their invitation. Early one evening I was strolling on to the balcony of my bedroom, reading Juliet Nicolson’s A Perfect Summer, when I walked straight through a large metal mosquito net fitted across the doorframe. Sunglasses, iPod, panama and book were flung across the balcony as the entire structure collapsed around me. After several failed attempts to reassemble it and hearing my hosts calling me down for poolside drinks, I panicked and shoved the whole thing under the bed planning to tell the housekeeper (a charmless, surly Serb) later.

Q. A good friend of my husband’s always addresses me as ‘Gorgeous’ or ‘my sweetie’, as he does many of his other female friends. After two years it is starting to grate and I would like him to start calling me by my given name. How can I get the message across without hurting his feelings? I can’t ask my husband to say anything as he is just too tactless and his friend does mean well, even though his efforts to be suave and charming fall flat. His friend considers himself a ladies’ man but sadly just doesn’t have the ‘necessary’ to carry it off!S.W., Swadlincote A. If your concern is that other people might consider the two of you an item, then do not worry. Your body language will indicate that this is not the case.

Q. I am worried. I have to attend the banquet of a livery company so senior that white tie is the order of the day. I am now over 70 years old. My son-in-law, slenderer by far than me, has inherited my tailcoat. My hunt coat appears regularly at hunt balls, but is now worn, oh so elegantly, by a Joint Master, more my junior than I care to recall. I am staying at my club for the great night. I am not too concerned by the members. It’s the staff that worries me. You know what snobs club servants can be. When I enter the club with Moss Bros emblazoned all over the plastic suit cover, will I receive that look of cold contempt from the Hall Porter from which even the hardiest member shrinks? How can I avoid being made to feel so socially inadequate? Suggestions please, dear Mary.A.D.

Q. I wonder what is the correct etiquette when one notices that a friend has something unattractive and highly visible in their nostril? I have a bit of a phobia about this. Obviously, one can be straightforward if it is a close friend, but I am shortly taking a house in Trebetherick for the John Betjeman centenary celebrations, and we’ll be with a gang of people I don’t know very well. I have noticed that the problem is always much worse when people are in and out of the sea. T.M., London W8 A. You are correct. Incompletely evacuated sea-water seems to promote the generation of veritable bouquets of nasal detritus. The best way to deal with this phobia is to carry a TweezerMate 12 times magnification pocket mirror, available from Boots for £12.

Q. I have a small problem with vanity. I have made a successful application to join a specialist library where I can work in peace almost every day of the week and have access to an unrivalled set of references on my subject. I am aware that this is a privilege. However, because of the rarity of the collection, members are required to carry at all times photo ID, supplied by the library itself using its own machine to take the photograph. These famously unflattering photographs are sealed permanently into tamper-proof lamination, and updated only every seven years.

Q. I read your ‘In the Chair’ Q&As in the online edition of The Spectator with interest. In this session you mentioned a dilemma of your own. You told of how your own good manners had once been compromised by your reluctance to dilute a conversation with the great Auberon Waugh by having to introduce hovering friends. I have a similar problem at parties. I am a close friend of an internationally famous actor. Occasionally we meet up at semi-public events, but I am never able to exchange more than a couple of sentences with him before a host of people, some of whom I hardly know, are queueing up on the pretext of wanting to talk to me, but really so I can introduce them to him. How can I get ‘quality time’ with my friend on these sorts of occasions?

Q. Your correspondent (1 July), who was asked to pay towards a dinner to which he had been invited as a guest, has the opposite problem to my own. Whenever I have lunch with a much-loved friend, he pays for it. He is not wealthy and I would like to reciprocate his hospitality but he makes it impossible, either by insisting on going to venues where he can leave his credit card at the door or to his club where only he is allowed to pay. Although I crave this friend’s company, his reluctance to let me treat him, to say nothing of the guilt that I feel knowing his wife must find this reckless spending unsettling, means that I am seeing much less of him than I would like. How can I square things with my conscience so that I can see as much of him as possible? Name and address withheld A.

Q. Parents of one of our son’s best friends at school are famous for their tightness. The father makes ‘funny money’ in the City, but they often invite people to their house in Devon, then suggest the guests take them out to restaurants as the mother ‘can’t face’ cooking. They are people my wife and I do not usually see outside of school functions but they recently prevailed upon us to put them up for membership of a certain exclusive club. Because of our sons’ friendship we did so. The desired result having been achieved, the couple rang to thank us and say, ‘We must take you out to dinner.’ My wife and I were delighted to accept their invitation to one of the most expensive restaurants in town.

Q. One of my husband’s best friends is married to someone who, we know from past experience, is too demanding and controlling to be good company at a house party.  The couple often go their separate ways on holiday and might well not object if he were to come without her to our house in France — but it seems a bit crude to invite him to come on his own. Can you suggest a tactful way in which we can get him alone?  Name and address withheld A. Go through the list of fellow guests you might also invite. Choose someone Mr P has never met — let’s call him Harry. Ring up the Ps to say you are longing to introduce them to Harry, so can they go through their diaries to see which week they are both free? You will get Harry to do the same.

Q. I recently celebrated my CP (civil partnership), having been with my boyfriend for almost 21 years. I had planned it for months and arranged a flamenco evening at a smart venue in St James’s in London. We were restricted by the number of people we could ask, so I expected that all those who RSVPd in the positive would definitely show up. Can you imagine how disappointed I was when several people didn’t show up? Some had illnesses, and I could fully understand those, but one or two had lame excuses about baby-sitters and missing a train. Should I forgive them, as not only did I have to pay for them but I could have asked someone else in their place? What do you think, Mary?M.K., Mildenhall, Wilts A.

Q. Recently visiting the city where a niece of whom I am very fond is in her final year as an undergraduate, I asked if she would like to meet for lunch or a coffee. I was taken aback and a little hurt to be told that, as she would have been celebrating handing in her dissertation the previous evening, she expected to have a hangover and did not therefore feel up to accepting my invitation. To my surprise, my sister-in-law, who had been consulted on the matter, encouraged her to take this approach. How should I have responded? Disinheritance seems excessive, but how should I have conveyed to my niece my view that she was both impolite and a bit of a wimp?Name and address withheld A.

Q. A colleague and friend and I have been particularly close since she ‘saved my life’ ten years ago, having arranged help for me during a medical emergency. But since my retirement a year and a half ago, my attempts to meet for lunch have been fruitless, the last time particularly upsetting when she slept through our arranged noontime rendezvous. My feeble attempts to remind her of her promise to make it up by regularly forwarding humorous emails were brusquely rebuffed with a singular response several months ago, with no contact since. Now out of the blue I’ve received — surely at my friend’s guidance — an invitation to her daughter’s graduation at a prestigious university hundreds of miles away.

Q. Returning from a trade fair held at a neighbouring stately home I was reminded of the apophthegm ‘a fool and his money are soon parted’. Before my visit I thought a trade fair was full of dusty men with brawny arms selling exotic tools such as adzes, bradawls and drill braces. This, however, was the County female contingent prepared — as vendors at various bric-à-brac stalls — to embark on a discursive rambling gossip with any customer. These conversations were of such detail and duration that my wife, who is generally reliable in stores and shops, found it impossible to move on without making a purchase (in the same way that return invitations are issued by guests leaving a dinner party).

Q. We have lived in a very nice, civilised square in south London for nearly 20 years. It’s surprisingly private and everyone gets on well. One of our neighbours is an eminent Liberal Democrat peer of the realm. Unfortunately his wife and he persist in aggressively canvassing and leafleting our neighbours and us, even though they know that I have belonged to the Conservative party since before the Liberal Democrats were even formed. I would never consider canvassing their household and I consider this macho flaunting of their political affiliations to be bad form, and actually rather rude. Can you tell me how I can make this plain to them without seeming rude in return?Name and address withheldA.