Dear Mary

Q. I think I can offer you a solution to a problem which may plague others who spend intimate time with oenophiles and are driven to distraction by slurping. My brother is a mad wine-lover. He slurps his wine noisily. He is a physicist, and seems to be keen to prove that he can defy the laws of gravity by causing liquids to travel upwards rather than downwards. I have managed to persuade him of what I think is perfectly true: that in the case of an older vintage, one tottering on its last legs, the fact is that if it is slurped, the oxygenation caused by the slurping causes the delicate wine to lose its last grasp on life. Whereas, when sipped with great delicacy and minimal intake of air, as normal people drink anything, a great deal more of the wine’s flavour comes through. B.T.

Dear Mary... Q. I am shortly to give lunch to a number of high-profile people. Two of them have rung to inquire how late they can leave it before giving me a yes or a no. Do you agree with me that this behaviour, with its assumption that a better invitation may come along in the meantime, is outrageously rude?M.W., Wiltshire A. On the contrary. These days only the retired and low-profile can state with certainty whether they will definitely be available on a certain date. It is an unfortunate fact that the very reason why certain modern people are 'high-profile' is their ruthless insistence on flexibility where social arrangements are concerned.

Dear Mary... Q. I am a consultant to, and former partner of, a professional firm in the suburbs of London, where I do four days a week working in an extraordinarily happy and democratic environment with political incorrectness to the fore. A problem has arisen of a very delicate nature, where it has been alleged that a newly employed secretary – who is extremely popular, hardworking and efficient – suffers from the dreaded BO. How on earth does one address this issue, if at all?M.W., Gillingham, Dorset A. To deal with this problem, you must recruit two volunteers without ego problems from within the office.

Dear Mary... Q. My husband's 87-year-old father is greatly enjoying the Iraq war. With an understandable sense of personal invulnerability, he has been sitting in his 'safe house' in Cornwall, watching virtually every news bulletin and revelling in 'the deep satisfaction of seeing rockets hitting their targets', et cetera. We are taking our children, aged 9, 11 and l3, to stay with him for Easter. The house is not particularly big, but he has told us that all normal decorum will be suspended for the duration of the war, so he will have the television on nonstop in the one small sitting-room. Since he is deaf, it will be blaring away. How can we avoid being subjected to this harrowing coverage, which will traumatise our children as well as sickening and boring us?

Q. The person with whom I used to march, before he had to sell up, is hostile to my plan to allow wind turbines on my land. He still lives nearby and his view will be affected. He is utterly opposed on environmental grounds — the noise, the despoilation of the skyline, the fact that wind turbines do not actually save energy but just allow boxes to be ticked... I agree with him on all counts but unfortunately I am not in a financial position to resist a life-changing sum of money for doing nothing. We have been friends all our lives, and our parents and grandparents before us. Mary, how can I mend fences? —Name and address withheld. A.