Mary Killen

Q. I graduated this year (I got a first) and have written more than 70 letters to potential employers. Those who deigned to reply just sent formulaic acknowledgements and regrets. People who know me can’t believe the apathy. Everything I’ve already achieved (without parental help) is there in my CV. Volunteering, sport, my own small business… Moreover, I’ve already raised enough money by my own efforts to be able to work without being paid for six months, an offer I’ve included in all my applications. Clearly, the employers are just too busy to read my CV. If they did, they would definitely give me at least an interview. Any suggestions? — Name and address withheld A.

Q. At a drinks or a dinner party, when very attentive waiters are hovering, I tend to let them keep topping my glass up since the alternative — continuing to say ‘no thank you’ — is so disruptive of conversation. However, my wife tells me that other men clearly manage to find a way of keeping track of how much they have had since other men don’t seem to get as legless as I do. What do you suggest, Mary? — R.B., Exeter A. Have 20 coins in your right-hand pocket. Each time the waiter fills you up, mark his input by discreetly transferring one coin into your left hand pocket. Assuming that a waiter refills no more than a third of a glass at a time, by the time you can feel ten coins in your left-hand pocket, you’ll be ready to switch to water.

Q. I live far away from my brother and his family, but went to stay with them recently for the first time in many years. Having supper was like eating a meal with the starving. Brother, wife and their young teenager hunched down low in order to be nearer to their large plates of stew, which they ingested by noisy slurping and eating off both forks and knives, scraping the plates clean intently and, in my brother’s case, lifting plate to mouth to make sure the last bit of gravy went unwasted. Sister-in-law holds knife and fork like pencils. Child is learning the same. My mother would have been horrified at this Hogarthian scene, as was I. I also felt sick. How can I help them to mend their ways? — K., London A.

Q. My former cleaner has now retired and lives nearby. I visit her with clockwork regularity and always enjoy seeing her, but the problem is that although we may have just been chatting and laughing or sitting in companionable silence, as soon as I say I must go, she chooses that moment to open a sort of conversational Pandora’s Box, e.g. to communicate some bad or worrying news. Suddenly I can’t leave but must sit down again and talk for another half hour. How can I make her tell me these things at the beginning of my visits, when she always greets me saying she’s really well and everything’s fine? — C.C., Bristol A.

Q.  We have recently returned from Provence where we stayed the first night with distant relatives. We woke on a perfect morning to sounds of laughter in the pool, so we happily slipped on our swimsuits and went down.  Our host and hostess were in the water but minus swimsuits. My husband, who was clearly taken aback, briefly greeted them, dived in, did a couple of lengths and left. I followed suit, although my inclination was to shed my costume and join our hosts. I think that we were unnecessarily prudish and have told my husband so. He says we invaded their privacy. What should we have done, Mary? — J.R., Sittingbourne, Kent A. Your husband’s retention of costume and minimised immersion was not prudish but correct.

Q.  My 16-year-old son, who has recently had his first experiences of Clubland, has observed to me, his mother, that men’s table manners degenerate inside men-only clubs. Is this true? — A.D.M., London SW1 A.  Allegedly so. Men seem hard-wired to let standards slip when the civilising influence of women is absent. According to the late sage Hugh Massingberd, the seating protocol of man/woman/man/woman originated in the early days of chivalry, when it was noted that a more courtly pace of consumption would characterise the round tables when knights were faced and sandwiched by females. Then as now, a courtly pace was much less disruptive to the digestive system and therefore desirable. Q. Can it ever be permissible to withdraw an acceptance to a party?

Q. I am the co-owner of a chocolate business which regularly receives requests for donations of goody bags and raffle prizes. I take a dim view when these come addressed to ‘Dear Sir or Madam’. It seems that the larger the charity the less likely that anyone can be  bothered. How can I, without being pompous, politely explain to people that if they only write a round robin-type impersonal letter, we are unlikely to support their cause? — N.C., London SW1 A. You have enough on your plate already, so take a passive approach and let the results of these slapdash applications speak for themselves.  Q. I am wheelchair-bound, and sometimes hire a carer from a (very expensive) agency to accompany me to various events.

Q. A friend regularly hires a stall at a general neighbourhood market in order to sell surplus second-hand clothes and women’s accessories. She recently sold one of her handbags to a regular customer whom she knows quite well. Subsequently she realised that she had left her day’s takings in the handbag (quite a sum of cash). The customer has since been back a number of times but never mentioned the contents of the bag. My friend is now too embarrassed to ask outright, partly because she is only 99 per cent sure that she left the cash in the handbag. What should she do? — J.W., Sydney A.

Q. Two acquaintances of mine have somehow inveigled their way into my dining circuit. They are men who, despite privilege and early promise, have made failures of their lives, but my goodness they both believe they have a story to tell. It’s not just tedious, but they bore with a ferocity that feels ideological in nature. After the last occasion I was determined to sort them out but was restrained by my friends who claimed they were basically good men. I know the dinner-party bore is nothing new but I wondered if you had any fresh ideas on how, with a degree of politeness, such people could be tempered and defused. — Name withheld, Epsom A.

Q. On arrival at a top level dinner, I was surprised to see at the table a woman who, I have reason to suspect, sells gossip as a sideline. However, clearly no one else suspected her and, assuming it was Chatham House rules, everyone was talking freely. When one man began to regale the table with an anecdote which was bound to culminate in a dynamite piece of gossip, I was paralysed with horror but I couldn’t think how to stop him before it was too late. The consequence was that the item appeared in the press a couple of days later, causing all manner of probable future security problems to the subject of the story. Although I can’t prove it was this woman who sold or leaked the gossip, I strongly suspect she did.