Etiquette

Five people I never met wished me a Happy Friday last Friday by email. You can pretty much be wished a happy anything nowadays, except perhaps Easter, since this assumes you share in the joy of the Resurrection. The London lights now say Happy Ramadan. Actually, if I were wished a Happy Lent it’d be the equivalent of telling me ‘Happy Abstinence’. The point is it is one more notch in the creeping commodification of goodwill, the conformity of niceness. Happy Friday is a way for strangers to introduce themselves on a note of cheer, since they’re trying to get you interested in an event or a product. But they don’t know you. It’s the assumption that you’re already friends that’s so galling.

Q. I have just got off a nine-hour overnight flight from Miami to Heathrow. I was in premium economy in the middle of the plane, an Airbus A330, sitting in the left aisle seat of a middle row of three. Beside me was another man and on his right, also in an aisle seat, was his wife. He made several trips to the loo during the night, and each time he chose to climb over and wake me up rather than disturbing his wife and using the other aisle. I just didn’t have the nerve to start something up with him about it, but now I wish I had. How could I have dealt with it? – R.H., London SW3 A. You might have switched to woke mode and told a member of the crew that this fellow passenger had rubbed against you inappropriately and you feel violated.

Q. I run a busy company with a workforce of 150, where I need to have short, to-the-point discussions with staff. In order to move along quickly, I set my mobile timer to ring on repeat every seven minutes. This means I have the perfect excuse for cutting short an overrunning conversation. But I cannot use this in a social setting, where I am aware it’s not OK to keep looking at one’s watch or have an alarm ring on a mobile. What should I do instead? — L.H., London SW1 A. It is, however, OK to look at a ring watch. They are available for as little as £11 and onlookers confuse them for blingy or bad-taste jewellery and do not realise that you are checking the time. Q. At the age of 65 I am surprised to find myself seeing someone.

Q. My grandson has just failed his driving test for the fifth time and yet I know, from his chauffeuring me everywhere, that he is an excellent driver. He is strikingly handsome and tall and I am convinced this prejudices the examiners against him. What would you recommend, Mary? — E.G., Alton, Hants A. Your grandson should aim towards growing enough hair for a mullet in time for his next driving test. This disfiguring haircut means that compassion should supplant any potential chippiness on the part of the next examiner and he will sail through with flying colours. Q. A neighbour and friend, who has been widowed before her time, is exhibiting some odd habits now she is living on her own.

Q. Last year I decided to share a flat with an old, but not very close, friend from school. It was a rushed decision because I had no one else at the time. But she’s far more anxious than I’d imagined. She seems to struggle with the concept of emotional independence. I try to keep boundaries but it’s hard when a person lives with you. As well as all this, she is messy and doesn’t have enough money to pay for the cleaners, so I’m on the hunt for a new housemate. I feel bad casting her aside as she works in the local bakery, and she’ll be hard-pressed finding a deal as good as this. What should I do? — Name withheld, London W10 A. Break the news with a beaming grin of positivity.

Q. My daughter is temporarily living abroad and we communicate daily on WhatsApp. She’s always desperate for any local news/gossip and I try to send her what I know, so she doesn’t feel too far away from what’s going on. A fellow parent in the village has now told me that my daughter forwards these titbits directly to others, often citing me as the source. I don’t want to gain a reputation for gossiping but neither do I want her to feel cut off. By the way, I have already tried saying ‘Just between you and me’, but her generation seems unable to understand the concept of discretion. They apparently think all information is for sharing – even the sensitive stuff. What do you recommend I do, Mary? – Name and address withheld A.

Q. I went to a supper party and sat beside a man who seemed rather pleased with himself. He never once asked me a question about myself, but proceeded to tell me about his children. They seemed to all be super-successful in their fields… hedge-fund manager, top lawyer, etc. The problem was that he had seven, and I found it hard to keep concentrating. Luckily, by the time he was about to tell me about number five, we had to turn for the next course. Mary, what should I have done to have made the conversation less one-sided? – Name and address withheld A. You might have halted his flow by enthusing: ‘I’m so glad you’re daring to tell me all this.’ Pause.

Q. Every so often we’re invited to our friends’ house for lunch or dinner. It’s close by and the house is beautiful, warm and comfortable. But whatever time we’re asked to arrive for dinner or lunch, we don’t sit down to eat until at least two hours later. The back door of the house enters on to the kitchen and without fail a raw chicken or unpeeled potatoes will be sitting there when we arrive. How our friends came to believe that this much time spent with each other before the meal was a good idea is a mystery. Mary, how can I let them know it’s entirely unacceptable without hurting their feelings? – M.G., Connecticut, USA A.

Q. My godfather, who has managed to get me a valuable internship in the Far East, has also sent me a business-class ticket to fly out there in the new year. I have seen how much the ticket costs (£3,800) and would much prefer to cash it in, go economy (£694) and spend the balance when I am there. But would it be rude to suggest this? – Name and address withheld A. First check with your godfather that he meant to buy you a business-class ticket – his secretary may have done it in error. Then offer to go economy. If he refuses, then make the most of the opportunity, but don’t try to cash the ticket in as the airline’s computer is likely to inform him of the change. Q. I’m a bachelor and as a spare man I often get asked away for the weekend.

Punctuation is a gendered thing. I’ve been trying to stop myself overusing exclamation points and it’s been difficult. Exclamation points are girly because they’re a way of taking the sting out of what you say; they make any pronouncement seem more tentative, less serious. They’re the equivalent of a disarming smile, a marker that says: “No offense!” You add them to the end of a sentence to prevent anyone thinking you’re being bossy or critical. They’re an economical form of non-confrontation. Women use them far more than men. Almost 20 years ago, a study in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication found that women used nearly three-quarters of the exclamation marks in electronic messages, but it identified the tic as “markers of friendly interaction.

Q. A close friend of my own age, 52, has had various things done to her face and now looks different. She definitely looks younger than 52 – certainly when photographed – but in real life the effect is just weird. I feel I can’t properly communicate with her, i.e. ‘read’ her. I have said this to her but she clearly thinks I’m just envious because she’s offered to front the money for me to have the same treatment. We are at an impasse. How can I rescue this long-term friendship when I don’t enjoy interacting with a frozen face and dread seeing her? – S.H., London W11 A. No need to fall out with this old friend. You can still have a laugh with her over the phone, on a walk or on a long drive. Q.

Q. I live in a small house in Hampstead and have taken in a friend of a friend as a lodger. He pays me a reduced rent for use of one of my spare bedrooms. I like him, but the agreement was that he would occupy the room for two nights a week; this, however, has started to slip into him being there for three, and often four, weeknights each week. I am livid but don’t know what to say to him. Neither I nor the friend who put us in touch with each other has any idea whether he is taking advantage of me or has just become forgetful. He is a widower. How do you think I should tackle this?  – S.M., London NW3 A. Collude with an imaginary friend (let’s call her Bertha), who will play ball to help you solve this dilemma.

Q. A very likeable woman has joined the company I work for and also just moved to my village. I said I would give a drinks party for her so she could meet a few people. My husband told me we should have a cap of 20. Now my colleague has asked if she can bring her two twentysomething children and their partners. This skews the numbers slightly, but the bigger problem is that she has also asked three neighbours of mine who have never been in the house before. She said she ‘assumed they would be welcome’. Well, there is a reason these three have never been in my house, and without wanting to sound pompous, their being entertained by me will disrupt the social ecology of the village. They will start asking me back and I will have to spend years saying no.

Q. An extremely old friend is a successful purveyor of high-end goods. Last time we saw him he invited us to a forthcoming Christmas party in Mayfair for his clients and people who have helped him get clients. We never got the email invitation, so I texted him and he said: ‘Oh I’m so sorry, I didn’t send it. I’ll do it today.’ But two weeks later, still no sign of it. Do we just go to the party or not? If we don’t go we fear he might be cross that we had ‘taken offence’ when no written invitation arrived. Yet we also fear that he may have decided he doesn’t want us because he now has too many Big Spenders coming and doesn’t have room for us. – M.F., London SW3 A.

Q. Some friends of ours have an amazing house on the coast in Kenya. Every time we see them they are guaranteed to say ‘You must come to stay, you’d love it’ or something similar. No dates are ever forthcoming but we have decided we’d actually quite like to go this winter. How can we tie them down without making them feel pressurised by our having suggested dates? –  Name and address withheld A. Choose the dates which suit you, then contact them to say you are thinking of going to, for example, Tanzania, or other likely adjacent spot around that time. Is there any chance you could come to stay either before or afterwards?

Imagine I were to begin this column by remarking that a woman preaching is like a dog walking on its hind legs. It is not done well, but you’re surprised to find it done at all. Dear me, that would never do, even in as cheeky a magazine as The Spectator. Then try instead: ‘Dr Johnson was no admirer of the female sex. “A woman’s preaching,” he said, “is like a dog’s walking on his hinder legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”’ I could get away with that. An antiquated opinion, safely attributed to an 18th-century writer, enclosed behind quotation marks and decorated with a few cobwebs, can still be sneaked past our 21st-century censors. But how about a more recent offensive remark?