Etiquette

Q. Just before Covid, we moved out of London with the intention of having a quiet life in the country. We were surprised to find that, although remote, the area offers almost as many potential friends as the city. We were welcomed and we did go out and had people back. Yet no matter how compatible our neighbours were turning out to be, it confirmed for us that actually we don’t want too active a social life down here. We were wondering what to do about this when Covid intervened. Now that social things are about to take off again, we are faced with a big dilemma because, especially with our being newcomers, it will not go down well to say ‘no thanks’. This is not my being conceited. People are bored around here. What should we do?— Name and address withheld A.

Q. How can one politely stop predatory kissers? I am (or was) an affectionate and demonstrative person but I don’t wish to immediately go back to kissing and hugging — even close friends — at social events, let alone people I have just met. I accepted an invitation to my first (garden) lunch since lockdown because I was told we would be only six. I arrived to find we would be a much less manageable ten. One of the un-billed guests, a neighbour I’ve only met a few times, came immediately towards me saying: ‘Are you kissing?’ When I said ‘no’ he bore down on me anyway, saying ‘Well I’m going to kiss YOU!’ as though it were a compliment. — A.W., Halifax A. Your host should not have put you in this position.

Q. I know it is rude to ask, when invited to a dinner party, ‘who else is coming?’ I assumed, therefore, that it would have been equally churlish to ask, when invited to a private piano recital to be staged in the garden of a large country house, ‘what is the repertoire?’ And so I just accepted. Now I am dreading being served up, for example, one of the atonal later works of Schoenberg or Webern, which would be torture to me. What to do if this happens again?— Name and address withheld A. The best line to take is to immediately gush that you would have loved to come but you are busy that day. It is then fine to enquire about the repertoire. If it meets with your approval, ring back five minutes later to say you find you are free after all.

Q. Now we are instructed to mingle again, I’m sure I’m not alone in being surprised to find an awkwardness on meeting or departing from friends and relations. The lack of handshake or hug has us all twitching. I struggle to find the right socially distanced replacement; the ‘namaste’ praying hands gesture seems rather mutton dressed as lamb for those of us who are the wrong generation for a gap year experience. Do you think the over-arm bowling gesture might give the right spirit of cheeriness and connection without actual body contact?— L.O.G., Petersfield, Hampshire A. Nice idea and thank you for sharing it, but the gesture is somewhat niche and could even cause alarm rather than conveying cheer. However there may be no need for replacement gestures.

Q. I own a small, somewhat shabby and antiquated but well-located flat in central London which I have been happy to lend out to friends as I wasn’t using it much myself. No one was there during lockdown but four separate people stayed for various lengths of time just before. No one paid to stay there and I wouldn’t have wanted them to, but arriving there myself this week, for the first time this year, I found a vital piece of equipment broken — the glass jug of the ancient coffee machine. It’s not the cost (and difficulty) of replacement which annoys me, but the thought that one of my friends could be so inconsiderate as not to tell me either that they had broken it, or that it was already broken. It’s no fun not being able to make coffee when you need some.

Q. Please can you tell me the correct etiquette about signing the visitors book after you are married? Obviously you don’t sign your parents’ one before marriage — but your fiancé does. After you are married do you both sign — even if you have lived in the house all your life? — Name and address withheld A. There is no reason for any former child of a house to feel offended if the parent (or step-parent) asks them to sign the visitors book after marriage. It is not a veiled insult or a signal that ‘this is no longer your home’. The visitors book is a matter of record, which will be kept for decades, even for generations. Thus both members of the partnership should sign.

Q. For me the hallmark of a really close friend is someone with whom you feel comfortable enough to bring a phone call to an abrupt halt with no need for explanation. I too am over 70, but unlike your correspondent from New Zealand (Dear Mary, 9 May) am still working full-time — now from home. Yet my telephone rings throughout the day with calls from the sort of people I might see, at most, twice a year in the outside world, now wanting lengthy chats. I could just tell them that I am still working flat-out but the problem is that these are often people I feel guilty about because, to be blunt, they are keener on me than I on them and I have neglected them, and so I don’t feel I can hurt their feelings by explaining that I need to get on.

Q To your correspondent with a guest whose table manners offend (2 May), you suggest screening him off with a well-positioned vase of flowers. Mary, this may work for lockdown but whether or not his peers say that ‘table manners aren’t a thing anymore’, they certainly are still a thing among the sort of people who might give him a job. Someone needs to upset him, in the short term, for his own good in the long. I write as a parent whose daughter’s likeable but slobbish-at-the-table boyfriend will re-enter our orbit when this blessed holiday comes to an end. — Name and address withheld A. The clue is to approach the issue from a humanitarian, rather than a snobbish, perspective.

Q. I am being driven to distraction by a touchy relation who has responded to the lockdown by WhatsApping me three or four times per day with a succession of YouTube and other video clips, accompanied by messages such as ‘You’ll love this!’ If only that were the case. None of the often lengthy video clips are particularly interesting or entertaining, yet I feel obliged to open them, not least because WhatsApp allows her to see whether or not I have done so. The arrival of each new message from her fills me with dread and exhaustion. How can I stop her from continuing to bombard me without hurting her feelings?— Name and address withheld A. She cannot tell if you have muted the clips, so why not turn these interruptions to your advantage?

Q. Each day while working from home, I have at least one hour-long meeting via Zoom. One of my colleagues has a dodgy internet connection and has become a terrible menace as we all politely sit through minutes of unpleasant white noise while she tries to communicate her thoughts. The meeting chair never seems to take a hard line on this; do you have any advice? — M.C., Fosbury, Wilts A. You would do well to join the Zoom meeting via a computer rather than your phone. Zoom will highlight the person who is speaking at any one time, so when the offender’s name comes up on the screen, you can turn to some ironing or an unfinished watercolour you prepared earlier.

Q. Caught in Switzerland as the ski resort shut down around my ears, and feeling like a walking health hazard, I returned to Somerset to begin splendid isolation days before it became fashionable or mandatory. I’ve been getting loads of jobs done, and the dog is happier than ever, but my peace is being perforated by London friends — the sort who associate solitude with boredom — inviting me to virtual dinner parties on Zoom at a set time with the inescapable tagline ‘we know that you have no other engagements’. After a busy day out in the garden, all I want to do is settle by the log burner with a sausage supper and catch up on MasterChef.

Q. Mary, what percentage of cleaners’ normal wages should we pay them when they can’t come in for the foreseeable future? My cleaner has worked for me for 30 years but she has never had a bank account and so I’ve always paid her in cash. Since she has never legitimised her position, it means she would not be able to benefit from Rishi Sunak’s scheme to help the self-employed. If I pay her 50 per cent, it will not be enough, as she needs every penny of what she earns. However, if I pay her as much for not working as she would normally get then I feel it is giving the wrong message. Also she has benefited all these years by not paying tax on her earnings. Can you help me solve this?— T.S., Norwich A. Painful though this is, you should pay 100 per cent.

Q. How can I stop a member of the household from glutting out on the chocolate supply I have stockpiled? A glance into the larder would suggest we are more than adequately catered for in the event of a lockdown, but we are an unusually large family (which includes in-laws and staff) and while most of us are on board with an ethical siege spirit, two large bars of Fruit & Nut went missing over the weekend. You don’t have to be Agatha Christie to guess the culprit’s identity. My problem is: how can I catch him in the act? People are in and out of the larder at all times, so locking it would be impractical. — Name and address withheld A. First pleasantly address the household.

Q. I am arranging the seating plan for my daughter’s wedding and have a problem with one of her guests who is notorious for swapping her place to insert herself between ‘better’ people and thus disrupting the whole scheme. There will be 20 tables of eight at the dinner and I will be too busy to keep an eye on her. What do you suggest, Mary? — Name and address withheld A. You can outwit this disruptor by substituting a pseudonym, say Harriet Belafonte, for her own name on the grand plan at the door. Her name will not appear and so she won’t know which place name to swap.

Q. I adore doing jigsaws and these days there’s an added bonus — by posting my progress on Instagram I can share the happy glow it gives me knowing that I’m reducing toxic screen-time habits. Recently I begged to borrow a magnificent 1,000-piece puzzle from a friend — a vast winter scene by Pieter Bruegel. Setting to, I succumbed to the meditative calm and satisfaction of puzzling. After two weeks of hard graft neglecting pretty much all domestic duties, the puzzle was finished, but with a piece missing! This maddening lost piece is an obscure blob of twiggy branch that nobody could love, but its absence mocks all my efforts. I cannot be sure it was I who lost it.

Q. I see a lot of two of our grandchildren because they live in our London house. We are centrally located so we see a lot of their friends, too. Our grand-children are well-mannered but conversation is always stalling because of their refusal to allow me to use shorthand to identify the friend being discussed e.g. ‘the fat one’. I do not intend to offend — they’re just shortcuts that people of my age group (70+) use when we can’t remember anyone’s name, let alone the names of our grandchildren’s friends. If I have to ask, for example, ‘Was Eric the boy in the Star Wars hoodie who ate crumpets last Tuesday?’ — rather than ‘Is Eric the fat boy?’ — dialogue becomes clunky. How can we break this impasse?

No one sends Christmas cards any more. Except that I do, and you might, and a few other people do too. But overall, cards have become so expensive, time-consuming and, let’s admit it, unfashionable that many people have abandoned them with some relief. Some of them rather piously tell us the money thus saved is now going to charity. Others, even more piously, say they are no longer sending cards because of the waste of planetary resources, and they now prefer more ecologically sustainable methods of celebrating Christmas. These are often the people who then fly to New York to go Christmas shopping. I love cards. I like buying them, I like writing them, and most of all, I like receiving them.