Modern manners

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: What can I do to make couples split the bill fairly?

From our UK edition

Q. I’m a single bloke now and for various reasons don’t foresee any change to that status. I have moved to Australia and found several convivial people of similar backgrounds who are couples. From time to time we meet up in restaurants but I find there is an expectation that the bill be settled either by dividing it in two or that I should pay in full every other meal. No one ever suggests splitting it three ways. These are people with means. I dislike broaching the subject of money so the consequence is that I meet up with these friends less often than I would like to. —Name withheld A. Bear in mind that an astonishing number of people are hopeless at maths and it could genuinely be that these couples have just not grasped the inequity of such divisions.

Theodore Dalrymple

How we drive our children mad

From our UK edition

Mental health is a slippery concept at best and according to the annual prevalence rates given in the latest Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association, people in north America and Europe suffer from an average of about two-and-a-half psychiatric conditions a year. This suggests that either we are all mad or the American Psychiatric Association is mad (though with a shrewd eye to the main chance). It is hardly surprising then, since the child is father to the adult, that at least 10 per cent of children in Britain suffer from ‘diagnosable mental disorders’, to use a phrase much favoured in the press. Given the way that mental disorders are diagnosed, more or less by checklist, I am surprised that it is so few.

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: When is it all right not to bring something to a dinner party?

From our UK edition

Q. A wonderful and generous woman invites me, on a regular basis, to dinner parties at her house. What is an appropriate gift for an impoverished artist to take along on such occasions? I am always told by her that I shouldn’t have brought anything but my rigid British upbringing is telling me otherwise. — T. R., Florence A. As a rule grandees have present fatigue. They already have wall-high supplies of scented candles and chocolates and find flowers irritating due to the nuisance of having to find a vase. They are not ungrateful for the ‘thought’ but for practical reasons, they prefer guests to walk in empty-handed.

Olivia Glazebrook

Exciting new ways of not writing a novel

From our UK edition

I read that Damon Runyon, in New York in the 1930s, would get up at 1 p.m. for a breakfast of ‘fruit, broiled kidneys, toast and six cups of coffee’. Then he would read all the newspapers. Then he would bathe, shave, dress and go out for a long walk which would probably include some shopping — one of his favourite activities. (‘He wanted to buy prize fighters, and racehorses, and great houses, and stacks of clothes and jewellery for his lovely [second] wife.

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Is the Dorchester the designated grand hotel for fat people? The portions at its new grill say so

From our UK edition

The Dorchester Hotel, Park Lane, is a cake floating in space. All grand hotels create a parallel universe in which their guests are returned to some great gilded and unnatural womb with mini-bar and floristry, but the Dorchester feels particularly remote; has it overplayed its myth? Or is it a combination of the traffic (Park Lane has eight traffic lanes, three roundabouts, one set of unicorn-themed gates and a monument to the dead animals of war), the net curtains (the decorative equivalent of blindness) and the strange completeness of the building? What does the Dorchester, with its curved beige frontage and yellow awnings, actually look like? Bournemouth. Or any retirement community. Such as Monaco, or Torquay.

Thursday

Jane Kelly

My wood-burning stove is expensive, trendy – and miserable

From our UK edition

One of my earliest memories is seeing my father in the early morning raking out the ashes of our coal fire. I was interested in the blue veins around his ankles and bare white heels as he strained forwards with his short shovel. After the ashes he carefully placed balls of newspaper, which he called ‘spills’, and built a tent of small kindling logs over them. I was careful not to speak as he was always in a furious temper while he was doing it. Fifty years on, I have discovered why. I recently moved house and inherited from the previous owner a wood-burning stove, which takes up a large amount of space in my small living room, and a lot of time and energy from me.

James Delingpole

Two shops. Two philosophies. Which side are you on?

From our UK edition

Are you Lush or are you Aldi? Me, I’m Aldi all the way. So much so that when someone — usually my daughter — tries to drag me anywhere near one of Lush’s painfully ubiquitous high street cosmetics shops, I respond a bit like the Antichrist does in the ‘it’s just a church, Damien’ scene in The Omen, writhing and shrieking like I’m about to be dissolved in acid. (Which, funnily enough, is rather how my skin feels when I’ve treated myself to one of Lush’s fizzing bath bombs) Not, it must be said, that there is anything remotely Antichrist-like about hating Lush. On the contrary, it is the perfectly natural response of any civilised, intelligent, moral human being. What’s wrong with Lush?

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my elderly host making the bed?

From our UK edition

Q. I have regularly stayed with a hospitable friend in London but now hesitate to invite myself. She is seventy-something with a bad back and no help but always provides me with an immaculately presented bed and refuses to let me help with its preparation and dismantling. I bring presents but feel these are small succour set against the physical work my visits subject her to. What do you suggest? — O.G., Bourton-on-the-Water A. You might offer to keep, by agreement, a discreet parcel of two single sheets and pillowcases in a cupboard at your friend’s house. In such a sheath, you can slide into any ready-made bed which it suits her to offer you and make minimal impact. Moreover you can bring a change of sheets when you see fit.

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

It takes a village (or six): the battle for rural churches

From our UK edition

Some of the longest job descriptions belong to rural Church of England clergy. ‘So what do you do?’ ‘I’m the Rector of Aldwincle, Clopton, Pilton, Stoke Doyle, Thorpe Achurch, Titchmarsh and Wadenhoe.’ Every one of these place names evokes an ancient Pevsner-worthy church, smelling of candlewax, damp hymn books and brass polish. Though many villages no longer have a shop or a pub, most do still have a parish church used for regular services — even if only on the first and third Sunday of the month. You push open the creaky door, and last Sunday’s hymns are still up on the hymn board.

Matthew Parris

Of course you can choose to get up early (and maybe you can choose to be gay)

From our UK edition

‘Oh, I’m an owl,’ said my friend Nick. ‘You’re probably a lark.’ I raised an eyebrow. He explained. Apparently all human beings are either owls or larks, being genetically predisposed to stay up late or get up early, and to be at their best after sundown or dawn. Nonsense, of course, complete nonsense. Nick just likes partying and his career does not demand his availability much before ten in the morning. The woman friend he had just consigned to the larks section of the human aviary has land and horses, needs to be up before dawn, and not unnaturally begins to flake out after about 9p.m. None of this has anything to do with genes.

Thursday

Melissa Kite

I wouldn’t want to be a girl in the age of Tinder

From our UK edition

My foray into the world of online dating was short-lived. Within a few hours of my profile going live, a deluge of young men in their early twenties began to bombard me with messages. I was shocked and somewhat delighted. At my age, I had expected mostly sad widowers and maybe the odd divorced equine veterinarian, encouraged by the pictures of me on my horses. To attract a clamour of Ashton Kutchers was beyond my wildest dreams because, although I was now undoubtedly in the cougar age group, I really hadn’t seen myself as a Demi Moore. When I opened the messages, however, any notion that these handsome young men were about to whisk me on a romantic dinner date, then marry me on a windswept beach, evaporated.

Tom Hollander

My moment of mortification with Saint Joan Collins

From our UK edition

I did a film with Dame Joan Collins once. No no, not The Stud. It wasn’t as good as that. It was called The Clandestine Marriage. And although it wasn’t that fun to watch, it was really fun to make. We filmed it one autumn in someone’s stately home. I had a lovely fling with a woman in the art department, who, in order to hide the fling from friends of her faraway boyfriend, came up with the brilliant ruse of pretending to have a fling with the third assistant director to confuse everyone. At least that’s what she told me she was doing. I was definitely confused, but I believed her. It was years later that someone explained to me that she really was having a fling with the third assistant director. But I never minded. She was so nice.

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop my neighbour pacing the ceiling?

From our UK edition

Q. The woman who lives above me has insomnia and walks around all night. I’m also disturbed by her rather noisy cat, which seems to be constantly jumping around. Together they are keeping me awake and my work is suffering. But we are in a small house converted into two flats and I don’t wish to make an enemy of my only neighbour. How can I tactfully ask her at least to stop walking around so much in the night without infringing her freedom to roam? — M.R.-H., London W12 A. You can’t ask her without infringing it. Instead, write in the most friendly way to apologise in advance for the terrific amount of noise which will shortly take place by builders coming in to soundproof your ceilings.

Thursday

Mary Killen

Dear Mary: How can I stop friends staying after a 21st?

From our UK edition

Q. A neighbour is hosting a party for his daughter’s 21st birthday. Adequate provision has been made for anyone who wants to sleep over but I won’t be taking up the option myself since I don’t drink and I can easily drive home. Unfortunately I am coming under pressure from some acquaintances at university that they should stay overnight with me. My parents would welcome them but it doesn’t make sense for me to have to round everyone up and lead them in convoy through winding roads to my house when they are all welcome to stay where they are. I have now discovered that their enthusiasm has been fuelled by the rumour that my parents’ historic house is ‘like Downton Abbey’.

Tanya Gold

Quaglino’s, the vampire brasserie

From our UK edition

Quaglino’s is an ancient subterranean brasserie in St James’s, a district clinging to the 18th century with cadaverous fingers. It was founded in 1929 by -Giovanni Quaglino, who once wrote a book called The Complete Hostess; do not buy a haddock that weighs over 2lbs, he counsels, among other things. Quaglino’s is called a ‘grande dame’ by the sort of critic who confuses ‘grande’ with louche. Quaglino’s initially catered to posh idiots who thought they were ‘edgy’ because they listened to jazz during the abdication crisis. The Queen came once — the first time a reigning monarch had dined at a restaurant — and Princess Margaret repeatedly, but the Queen did not return; louche, then.

Andrew Watts

Send in the clowns – how comedy ate British politics

From our UK edition

Something funny is happening in this country. Our comedians are becoming politicians and our politicians are becoming comedians — and public life is turning into an endless stream of jokes. Last week, the comedian Al Murray announced that he would be standing at the next general election in the constituency of South Thanet, the same seat that Nigel Farage is contesting. Al Murray performs in the persona of ‘The Pub Landlord’. A sexist reactionary, never pictured without a beer in his hand, forever declaiming ‘common-sense’ solutions to Britain’s problems, Nigel Farage has welcomed the additional competition.

Mark Mason

Why tomorrow’s parents won’t want their children to go to university

From our UK edition

Could the current generation of parents be the first ones who won’t want their children to go to university? Until now that mortarboard photo on the sideboard has always been the dream, visual proof that your offspring have munched their way to the top of the educational food chain. Advancement by degree. But that was before tuition fees. Now there’s a price tag attached to your little one’s ‘ology’ (to quote Maureen Lipman in those BT ads), how many people will automatically see it as a good thing? Perhaps more of us will refuse to prostrate ourselves before the great god Uni? If so, that can only be a good thing. I attended Manchester University between 1989 and 1992.

Ysenda Maxtone Graham

How to stop being scared of full stops

From our UK edition

Typical mother-to-mother email, January weekday, 2015: ‘Thanks so much for helping out yesterday, Jamie had a great time with you all, thanks also for bringing his games kit home, let me know if you need me to help tomorrow… xx’ Emails and texts like this, flitting across the ether in their thousands, demonstrate the free-flowing currency of helpfulness — mother going the extra mile for mother, in her Volvo, every day — in school-run land. But have you noticed the appalling punctuation? The use of the ‘weak comma’, or ‘splice comma’, where there should be full stops? My guess is that you have, especially if you are over 45 and went to a good school: one at which you were well punctuated.

Matthew Parris

The Stonewall dinner left me with one question: why are volunteers so horrible to one another?

From our UK edition

I watched the video with some trepidation. Stonewall (the campaigning gay and lesbian equality organisation) had just sent me the YouTube link. This was to a short film of the dinner that Stonewall’s founders attended last year to celebrate the quarter-century anniversary of our existence; and most of us had been there. Now we were but wrinkled reminders of the young revolutionaries we had once been. So this could have been a rather mellow occasion. We had started the organisation as a defiant response to what came to be known as ‘Section 28’: a small measure that was part of a sprawling local government bill and intended to stop the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools and by local authorities.

Thursday

Toby Young

David Sedaris was right: litter is a class issue

From our UK edition

David Sedaris is my new hero. Not because he’s such a funny writer, but because he’s obsessed with litter. He told a group of MPs last week that he spends up to five hours a day picking up fast food containers and fag ends around his home in Pulborough, west Sussex. Thanks to his unstinting labours, he’s become a local hero and has had a rubbish lorry named after him. I’ve some way to go before I qualify for such an honour, but I do my bit. For instance, on Monday I spent an hour clearing the litter from the flowerbed outside the West London Free School in Hammersmith. This was rubbish left by passers-by, not the pupils. Sedaris said what infuriated him the most were crisp packets tied into a knot and stuffed into soft drink cans, but I can trump that.