Etiquette

Q. A good friend often cycles over when I invite him for drinks. The trouble is he insists on turning up slightly sweaty in Lycra, and it makes things awkward when other guests are in jackets and dresses. Mary, how can I steer him towards something more civilised without causing offence? – B.H., London SW3 A. Begin a tradition of taking a group photograph in front of your grandest backdrop. Mention casually on the invitation: ‘We’ll take a quick photo when everyone has arrived.’ Few men will risk posterity, or indeed Instagram, in Lycra. Your friend will find himself spontaneously smartening up his act without your having to intervene. Q.

Q. My twins’ birthday is coming up, but we will be in the country. Their godparents are usually punctilious, but will send things to the London address. How do I let them know that we will be away, without sounding like I’m expecting them to send presents? – P.W., London NW1 A. Ask them to lunch shortly before you go away. The subject of your imminent departure for the country will naturally come up at the lunch. If they can’t come, say: ‘Oh well, I would ask you the following week but we will be away in the country.’ Q. My husband and I recently went on a ten-day cruise, hoping to spend time together without too many social interruptions.

Q. I am soon to entertain a house party on a sporting estate. We took the same house last year and all went well, except the housekeeper complained to the owner that we’d let our guests ‘tramp through the house in their trainers and boots’. This was a misrepresentation but it’s true that the odd guest, dashing back to their room for a mobile, might have failed to spend five minutes unlacing and relacing boots. We don’t want to be banned from the property in future so, given human nature, how can I enforce the boots-off rule this year without causing bad vibes? – V.P., Malmesbury A. You can easily sidestep this nuisance by buying multiple packs of disposable surgical overshoes and leaving these on prominent display in the boot room area.

Q. My friend has had an irritating experience in our local cinema. She speaks fluent French and teaches it in secondary school. Her enjoyment of a very good French film with English subtitles was ruined by a group of women in the back row laughing loudly each time a joke was made in French, before the subtitles appeared. This ruined the experience for my friend, who often sees French films there. How should she shut these show-offs up if they do it again? – E.S., Sussex A. Loud laughter is unacceptable in any circumstances, let alone in a small screening room. However ‘erudition signalling’ is a plague of all arts venues. At the opera, know-alls disrupt by chortling merrily at incomprehensible libretto jokes before the surtitle appears.

Q. While on holiday in Corfu, we met a rather nice man who invited us to his house for dinner. The house turned out to be something of a palace. There were six of us around the table and a waitress came towards us. She had a tray with a bowl, sitting in a bed of ice, and a tin of caviar, with a mother-of-pearl teaspoon, surrounded by ice within that bowl. Caviar is my favourite food and I can remember every mouthful I have ever had – but I hardly ever have it. The waitress presented the bowl to me first. I didn’t want to be gauche and ask my host how much I should take, so I took just one teaspoon. But as the bowl moved around the table, I could see everyone else taking much more – about ten times as much – and we were never offered seconds.

Q. We have a neighbour who always overfills my glass. I beg her not to. Even if I commit the solecism of holding my hand over the glass to stop her, she will wait and then sneak up behind me and pour more in. I like her but I always reel away from her house pie-eyed, and wake with a hangover. What do I do? – D.S., Delhi, Catskills, USA A. Punish your neighbour by stocking up on silicone stretch lids, as used by the fastidious to cover the likes of yoghurt pots in the fridge. Having extracted a promise from her that she will not sneak up to refill your glass, secrete a stretchable lid over it. Since these lids are invisible, she will have only herself to blame when she suffers the splash-back consequences. This should put a stop to her meddling in future. Q.

Q. When I have an arrangement to meet a certain friend for lunch she sometimes turns up with a streaming cold – and then I catch it. I would never dream of meeting a friend when I am ill; I would always say to them: ‘Do you want to meet me with a cold? It’s up to you.’ She’s a bit fragile, so how do I tell her off without causing any offence? – J.F., London SW12 A. An inoffensive but effective measure would be to update your WhatsApp profile picture to one of you holding a large handwritten sign saying: ‘No colds please!’ The repeat offender is bound to query the new profile photo and you can say: ‘Oh, I am just fed up with catching colds from friends who don’t mention that they have one when we arrange to meet.

Q. We are going to stay with some old friends who we haven’t seen for a couple of years as they have been working in the US. I happen to know that they now have widely different political views to my husband’s ‘far-right’ opinions. How I can stop any potential conversations getting out of hand, as my husband tends to dig his heels in? – B.D.V., Northants A. Collude with your husband to pre-empt possible catastrophes. Tell the couple that he has agreed to imminently take part in a village debate to raise funds for charity. Unfortunately he has been assigned the argument ‘President Trump is a good man’. He doesn’t want to let the charity down but cannot think of anything to say in Trump’s favour.

Q. I had the same Spanish housekeeper for 25 years and was devoted to her, and she to me. She was loyal, reliable, fastidious and an excellent cook. She died three years ago and I mourn her every day. I have often wondered how you would have dealt with the one aspect of our relationship which was unsatisfactory. Each morning she arrived at 8 a.m. and went straight into the flat’s guest lavatory, where she evacuated. The smell somehow permeated the whole flat for some time. I always wanted to suggest that she arrive at 8.10, having gone at home first, but couldn’t think of a way to say so without hurting her feelings. How would you have tackled this, Mary? – Name and address withheld A.

Q. My husband and I have recently made very good friends with some neighbours in France. They know I am having a 60th birthday party in London and have assumed they will be invited too. My problem is one of these new friends is a world-famous Hollywood actor and his wife is famous in her own right. I am worried about where I will seat them. I wouldn’t want to give the impression to a roomful of my oldest friends (none of whom is famous) that I think the ‘stars’ are more important than they are, but neither do I want to offend the stars, who I fear will expect to be next to us at the top table (and possibly even sitting side-by-side American style). What should I do? – Name and address withheld A.

Q. I recently attended an opera on a friend’s estate in Kent. It was a multi-generational, non-ticketed, invitation-only event. The setting was idyllic, but as night drew in and my party looked around for some sort of food van, we realised we hadn’t read the small print on the invitation: ‘Bring your own picnic.’ It was at least a 20-minute drive to the nearest village, which would mean us missing the opening aria, and we looked on in dismay as the older generation produced checked tablecloths, platters of barbecued chicken, sausages, artisan bread and hummus. I hovered near a platter of chicken thighs and stared longingly at it. Its procurer, a benevolent older lady, took pity on me. ‘Do have one,’ she said. Gratefully I took one for me and one for a starving friend.

Q. Everyone I know pretends to have neurodivergence to make themselves seem more unusual and so they can talk about themselves all the time. Is there a polite way of pointing out that this isn’t actually an interesting topic of conversation? – V.H., Herefordshire A. You might engage in a ‘bore off’. As soon as your interlocutor announces their diagnosis, retort that you too are quite convinced that you are suffering from a kind of rare condition. Launch into a list of your obscure symptoms. Enjoy letting your imagination roam. Brook no interruption. By the time you have paused to draw breath, they will think twice about resuming the neurodivergence topic in case it ‘triggers’ a flood of your own rival symptoms.

Q. I’m the author of 14 books, mostly historical fiction but a few children’s books, all published by a major firm. I find that I sometimes get invited to grand dinners in Notting Hill where I am often put next to a middle-aged banker’s wife. When I tell them about what I do and how hard it is to sell books, they start giving me their advice. It’s always the same: ‘You should really go on Instagram’ and ‘Have you tried TikTok?’. I feel my blood boiling because these are people who have never earned a penny or done anything, and I have no desire to submit myself to a Silicon Valley platform. What should I do? – S.P., London W12 A. The trouble with being too grand for TikTok/BookTok etc is that you may be missing a big trick.

I’ve always loved English swimming pools. I can’t help it – I am a pool-fancier. The lumpy feel of the blue lining beneath pale feet; the peculiar, chlorinated smell of the pool hut where you do the knicker trick; the scratchy pool towel, the near-collapsing deckchair by its side; the greying sky overhead. There’s the swimming, too, but that’s not what gets me. No, the English pool is a particular social idea, a knowing nod to vulgarity, a paradis artificiel in our rainy climes. Chips Channon, an early adopter, knew it when he insisted on putting in a pool at Kelvedon in 1937, as did Viscount Astor when he went against his mother Nancy’s wishes and did the same at Cliveden.

Q. I was caught off guard last week by a busybody mother at my son’s boarding school asking us to join them for their sports day picnic. I pretended we would have our son’s godparents with us but she just said words to the effect of ‘bring them, the more the merrier’. My son doesn’t even like their son. How can I get out of this without causing offence? Name and address withheld A. Tell the busybody you have thought through her kind invitation but, realistically, you want the godparents to concentrate on your son because ‘they see him so rarely’. At the event itself, the busybody may not notice in the mêlée who, if anyone, you are picnicking with but if queries arise, gush brightly: ‘Yes! We’re wondering where they are as well. They’re not picking up!’ Q.

Q. I find that when I go to mixed-age dinner parties the young all seem to be shouting. How can one tell them to pipe down without puncturing their ‘self esteem’? – N.H., London SW7 A. Young people’s voices have indeed become louder. The habit of wearing headphones and watching Netflix with subtitles so they can double-screen has compromised their ability to hear real-life voices and in response they shout. If, apart from the shouting, you still enjoy socialising with the young, you could equip yourself with noise sensitivity loop earbuds and use these in some capacity. Q. I am an artist and have started employing a neighbour who comes to my house two mornings a week to help with the compilation of a back catalogue of my work.