Friendship

Q. We have old friends who live in the northern hinterlands and have a property in Provence where they normally spend each summer. On their journey down through England they make a stopover with us. We’re always pleased to have them, but not their ill-trained dogs, which always cause some damage. Since our friends couldn’t go last year, they are determined, despite France being on the amber list, to travel later in July and are angling to stay with us. While we’d be glad to see them, we’ve had enough of their dogs (they now have three) and won’t tolerate them any more. I did consider booking the dogs into our local kennels, but our friends always arrive late, outside the opening times.

Q. We have moved house from north to south London. For me one of the chief pluses is that we no longer need to employ the same cleaner who has blighted my life for years by being useless. My wife, who is a soft touch, could never bring herself to sack the woman for fear of ‘hurting her feelings’. How can we avoid repeating the mistake (with going rates as much as £15 an hour)? We don’t know any of our new neighbours to ask for recommendations. — B.B., London SW17 A. Advertise in a newsagent’s window. It is important to mention the hourly rate you are prepared to pay as potential cleaners will not make contact otherwise.

Q. At a lunch party, I was getting on so well with someone I had not met before. She knew my work (I’m a designer) and loves it — so much so that she suggested I contact friends of hers who own a design company and are looking to fill a post. I told her that, coincidentally, I had just been for an interview at that very company but, despite shared aesthetic sensibilities, had not (inexplicably to my mind) been offered the job. At this point my interlocutor cried: ‘Oh, how ridiculous. You would have been perfect. I had forgotten what terrible snobs they are.’ Mary, I am still asking myself what it is about me that my new acquaintance so clearly saw could ‘trigger’ snobbery.

Q. I’ve recently been approached by a very good friend who — with genuinely admirable candour and tact — pointed out that my fiancée ‘eats with her mouth open’, and that I ought to mention it to her to prevent future embarrassment. I suppose I have occasionally noticed this habit in the context of pizzas and wine on the sofa, but now that my friend has addressed it I can’t help but see — and indeed hear — his concern daily. Mary, how can I approach this rather unedifying conversation about a very unedifying habit with my otherwise cultured thirty-something fiancée, without causing embarrassment? — Name and address withheld A.

Q. I am placed in a social dilemma due to a proposed visit on the last weekend of June by an American friend who has been hospitable to me. She is great fun. However, it is also the weekend (planned far ahead) when I have staying a recent widow who has been even more hospitable, having had me to visit three times overseas at her seaside house, providing there delicious meals, tourist attractions and delightful company in the form of her other house guests. She is bringing to me a mutual friend, a charming elderly widower. She and he are taking me out to dinner on the Saturday night. But what do I do about the unexpected American? I don’t want to put them in the position of paying for her, too.

Q. My husband and I have started receiving invitations to large summer events scheduled for after 21 June. We have been shielding for the past year and, although happy to meet up with small groups of friends out of doors, for the time being we are fearful to commit to indoor unventilated parties. Obviously our hosts require responses to these kind invitations, but we don’t know how to refuse without being thought of as ‘wimps’. Mary, can you help?— P.Z., London SW7 A. There is no need to supply a reason for a party refusal. Indeed traditional etiquette decrees that you should not. You need only say you will be unable to attend. Your hosts will be far too busy planning their parties to bother challenging you for an explanation. Q.

I heard the shocking news last week that one of my oldest friends — Richard Edwards — had died suddenly of a stroke. He was just 54 and a picture of health. I met Richard in 1988 when we were both PhD students at Cambridge. He had got the second-highest First in English in his year and was thought to have a brilliant academic career ahead of him, but as the year wore on it became clear that neither of us were particularly attracted to the scholarly life. Instead of dragging ourselves off to the library every day to ‘do the reading’, we would sit in his room drinking wine, making each other laugh and luxuriating in our mutual dissipation.

Q. I am extremely fond of an artist friend, despite the fact that I have never liked her work or bought any of it. I always had the excuse that it was too big for my house. Unfortunately she has given me an early Christmas present of one of her smaller paintings, about 2ft square, and clearly expects me to hang it where it can be seen by all. Mary, it is not to my taste but I do not want to undermine her fragile self-confidence by not hanging it. What is the solution? — Name and address withheld A. Take the painting to a framer and ask that a mirror in dusky Georgian glass be affixed to the back of it so that the artwork can be ‘reversible’. You can never have enough mirrors.

Q. Is there a tactful way to wind up a Zoom call when one of you has more time on their hands than the other? A friend, living alone in London, Zooms me on a regular basis. He is immensely good value — and as a successful stage actor is clearly missing the audience he would have were it not for lockdown. Much as I would love to be entertained by him for lengthy periods, I need to get things done while the children are at school. How can I halt his flow without wounding his ego? — M.N., Tetbury, Glos A. With a small amount of preparation you can enjoy this actor’s company without fretting about your chores. Answer the Zoom call while already at an ironing board. Ask if he minds if you start wading through a pile of laundry while you are chatting.

Q. Many years ago I was asked to officiate at a funeral for a family I did not know. As far as I was concerned the service went neither better nor worse than any other and afterwards I went along to what the undertaker used to call ‘the bunfight’ at the local pub. The mourners were facing the door and could see me come in; the widower however could not. As I approached, he began to tell the group why he wasn’t happy with the service and the things I had and hadn’t said. The guests were clearly mortified and I, not knowing what to do, simply stood like a statue right behind him. Eventually he finished speaking and I made a big thing of heading to the bar.

Q. Some friends persist on displaying our email addresses in large address lists when sending out round robins to all of their friends. How may I tactfully ask them to blind copy me, GDPR and all that? In chain recipe and joke emails, before you know it, there are 200 addresses included: a hacker’s dream, I’m told.— Name and address withheld A. Quite right. You need to spell out, to wilful Luddites, the potential nuisances that could arise from not using the ‘Bcc’ box. Next time reply with an email which shows only your own name in the ‘To’ section.

I used to live in Mogadishu for months at a time, cooped up in compounds behind fortified walls. Venturing on to the streets meant a flak jacket, escort vehicle bristling with guns, chain-smoking as we zoomed through smashed districts, militias, ambushes and roadside bombs. Despite the incarceration, Somalia gave me some of my happiest memories. At home on the ranch in Kenya we often make a point of staying away from town for as long as possible. Our record is three months of no shops, offices, crowds or traffic — just cattle, pasture, birdsong and the rarest of visitors dropping by for a beer. And as a child in north Devon during the winter of 1978, I recall the local constable escorting me across fields in a blizzard to my mother’s arms.