Mary Killen

Q. I sent out email invitations to my forthcoming book launch. After a week, only about half of my A list had replied. Then I found that my spam box was full of acceptances, consigned there by my computer which had failed to recognise the email addresses of PAs, executive secretaries and in one case an ‘events co-ordinator’ accepting on behalf of my friends. Surely, Mary, it must be easier to click ‘reply’ to an email than to bother to brief a PA to do it for you? — R.J., LondonW11 A. Sometimes celebrities get aides to reply so that their private email addresses cannot be ‘harvested’ by publishing interns. However, having examined your invitation, I see that you have asked people to reply directly to you. Pretension is clearly at play.

Q. My son is 22. He has left Cambridge with a good degree, but also a mullet hairstyle (short and sticking out at the front and sides but long at the back). These are the key years when he could be getting a job and a girlfriend and, without the mullet, he would be exceptionally good-looking. I have begged, and even tried to bribe — to no avail. Any suggestions? — C.J., London SW3 A. The mullet is widely agreed to be the least flattering hairstyle available. No one suits it — but some of the young wear it for ironic reasons. Your son may be cannier than you think. Girls are excited, rather than put off, by men who could be so instantly transformed. Meanwhile the mullet is a useful camouflage.

Q. How do I deal with a dearly beloved wife who is beginning to display the same mildly eccentric behaviour of an aristocratic nature as her mother, also beloved by me? This week the timer went in the kitchen and my wife asked me to take off the greaseproof paper from the fillet of pork. This confused me as the roasting pan was still sitting on top of the oven and had yet to go in. Imagine my surprise when I opened the oven door to put it in and found two rather appealing stuffed mushrooms that apparently were meant to accompany the previous night’s supper. I thought nothing of this strange incident until this morning when i came down to find the swimming pool overflowing and the tap still on.

Q. I was fishing in the Highlands and had to take a two-hour taxi from Inverness to the cottage where I was staying. In such a situation, how does one silence a well-meaning but overly chatty driver? — Marcus W., London A. Ideally, you should take more of an interest in people. However, if you really dread such conversations on long taxi journeys, then make a point of entering the car wearing a windproof jacket (such as a Barbour) and a hat, regardless of forecast and condition. In this way, if it should turn out that the driver is a bit garrulous, you can chat animatedly for a short while before confiding that you suddenly feel a bit carsick and ask if you can open the window. You will find that the buffeting makes conversation all but impossible.

Q. My wife is known to run a very well-organised house. As a consequence, weekend guests often arrive without the right kit, assuming they can go and raid our boot room and borrow something belonging to one of our (seven) children rather than weighing themselves down with heavy boots and coats et cetera for their journey. My wife does not mind them doing this, but I do — it is the presumption that I mind. What do you suggest, Mary? — Name and address withheld A. Retrain the miscreants by mislaying the key to the boot room and instead offering them ‘pop-up’ raincoats fashioned from heavy duty garden refuse sacks or bin bags with holes scissored out for the head and arms. Let them undergo the indignity at least once before you find the key again.

Q. My son works in fashion and he does well, but he still lives at home. I am a good cook so I cook big dinners for him and his friends. When I see these silly thin girls sit at my table who eat hardly anything, I want to let them know that it is not healthy for them, it is wasteful; also demoralising for me to have made something very special that they will not try to enjoy. But my son says no — I must not spoil the atmosphere. Over to you, Mary? — Name and address withheld A. Load up the leftovers into personalised doggy bags in your kitchen and bring out a tray of the bespoke parcels while the guests are having coffee.

Q. I own a house in west London and my drawing-room window gives on to a pedestrian-only bottleneck where people hang around to smoke. Sometimes these are well-known and interesting figures who are on their way to a nearby newspaper office and I feel it would be fun to exchange a few words with them. Any suggestions as to how I can do this without appearing stalker-like, Mary? — Name withheld, London W8 A. Train a climbing plant, such as jasmine, up the front of your house so that you can go out and tend to it when you spot a particularly appealing smoker outside. In this way an informal dialogue can be naturally struck up without your undergoing any loss of dignity. Q.

Q. A friend of mine put five Coldplay tickets up for sale on Facebook. They were £80 each and I assumed they must be very good seats. I sent her the money. When they arrived I was surprised to see that they had originally been only £45 each. I made a wry comment to this effect but she expressed no guilt; she just said, ‘I rather hoped a close friend would not buy them — it is a bit of a side business for me.’ Mary, what is your view about this behaviour? — L.O., London W14 A. It was no surprise that your friend should wish to profiteer: her mistake was not to be straightforward. The correct protocol would have been to warn that she was making a mark-up, rather than letting people assume that the tickets were being passed among friends at cost. Q.

Q. Time is running out, but I hope you might be able to offer some last-minute help. An indulgent godmother is lending my 18-year-old son her immaculate mews house in London for the autumn while he ‘works’ on his gap year. He has no idea how to keep a house clean and tidy and any attempts made by me over the last few months to encourage/bully him to smarten up have met with failure. I do not want this extremely generous offer to spoil a special relationship but I fear he is going to mess up the house within minutes of arriving there. —Name and address withheld A. Incentivise the boy by explaining that he will have to hire a cleaner for the mews during his occupancy. This will cost £70 per week or £10 per hour for one hour per day.

Q. When we have people to stay for the weekend, each uses, I calculate, about 14 drinking receptacles a day: a glass at breakfast, one before both lunch and dinner and three at the table, plus five coffee or tea cups. There are five in my family and we often have ten people staying, so we wash up as many as 210 receptacles per day. We have two dish-washing machines but still can’t cope. What do you suggest?  — A.E., Pewsey, Wiltshire  A. Largesse at this level indicates the need for a third machine in your collection, namely a Bar Aid 500S glass-washer. You can buy one from Hansens at 306 Fulham Road, London SW10 for £2,340 plus VAT. It delivers 1,500 sparkling clean glasses per hour with a choice of 90- or 120-second cycles, while using only 2.

Q. An old friend invited me to have dinner with him in London. We had just sat down when a couple he knew walked into the restaurant. They were slightly drunk and noisy and very excited to see him and made quite a fuss around our table so other diners started to look over. My friend felt he had no option but to suggest the waiter pull up another table and the couple sit down and join us. Afterwards we both felt sorry we had not been able to chat to each other. How, without seeming unfriendly, could he have tactfully encouraged them to move on? — A.B., Great Dunmow A. Etiquette would have decreed that your friend stand up to greet the couple. Did he? Like all courtesies, this one has a practical purpose: it signals respect while discouraging lingering.

Q. My parents are giving a drinks party for me in our garden which, as all my friends know, is quite big. People also know my parents are very generous and laid back so my worry is that some if not all of the single men on the guest list will assume it is OK for them to rock up with a girl in tow. But I have too many single girls coming as it is. How, without coming over as pompous or predatory, can I tactfully ask these single men not to bring someone? Equally, without seeming desperate, how can I check they are even coming in the first place? Most of them have not bothered to answer. — Name and address withheld A. A few days beforehand, text these men asking them to let you know whether they can come.

Q. We grow our own organic vegetables, and do not really have a surplus to speak of, but because they are so fashionable and sought-after my husband cannot resist giving them away. How can we put a stop to this? for reasons of economy, we would prefer to be eating the produce ourselves. — M.W., Wilts A. Why not take a tip from organic guru Bob Flowerdew and invite people round to consume the vegetables at your table? In this way you can be generous with ounces rather than pounds of vegetables and at the same time your husband can enjoy a more extended self-validation experience. Meanwhile, the guests are likely to bring wine which will counterbalance your own outlay on meat. Q. Recently I had occasion to visit a friend’s bathroom.

Q. I often have the most fascinating dreams. These are not just run-of-the-mill dreams about flying or losing your teeth, but really amazing blockbusters which go on for hours and hours. Naturally I want to share these riveting nocturnal experiences with others, but I always find that when I try to recount them, while they are fresh in my memory, nobody wants to listen. It is they who are missing out, so what is the best way to get someone to stop stuffing in their breakfast and concentrate on something really mind-blowing which I am trying to tell them? — C.B., London WC1 A. Why not cast your audience as minor characters in the dream? Introduce them right at the beginning. In this way you may be able to hold their attention. Q.

Q. A very stylish woman with a much-admired house happened to drop into my rather dark cottage. She advised me that I should paint the inside of my fireplace white: it would look much better than the current black hole effect and would also reflect light. It seems such a good idea that I suspect the reason it is not done more often is because it is unsafe. Can you advise? — A.L., London W11 A. Fire specialist Allan Christensen takes a different view. He pronounces: ‘I would avoid using light colours inside a fire chamber as the light reflected is quite cold. You are better off using a dark reflective colour such as graphite or metal black as the light reflected is much warmer. It is possible to purchase heatproof spray online or try www.stovax.com.

Q. I give a young guns’ shoot for my childrens’ twentysomething friends every year and make a house party of it— it is an essential part of this very extravagant weekend that guests come to both the shoot and the dinner afterwards. This is fine for those staying; but I have found recently that one or two local invitees from very social families, who get a lot of these sort of invitations, accept the shoot but refuse the dinner on the basis that they have prior invites elsewhere. How can I tactfully make sure that they realise it is both or nothing, leaving them no opportunity to accept only the shoot, without giving offence? — Name withheld, Shaftesbury, Dorset A.

Q. As chairman of the parish council, I am required, along with a local member of the aristocracy, to judge the best red, white and blue outfit and the best hat at the forthcoming village Diamond Jubilee celebration. The potential diplomatic pitfalls are legion. I have thought of saying that I have, during the occasion, been texting pictures to our MP (who happens to be the Prime Minister) and claiming the selection was his. However, I fear that this deception may result in me ending up in front of some inquiry or other. Can you suggest a better way to negotiate this — as far as I am concerned — no-win situation? — C.C., Ramsden, Oxfordshire A. You are right to be concerned. No matter how just your judgment, you will inevitably become the focus of resentment.

Q. My wife was a recovering alcoholic. Now she is a lapsed recovering alcoholic. After three years of sobriety she has taken up the bottle again. I feel that if only she could hear the foul-mouthed and irrational tirades she delivers when under the influence, she might go back onto the wagon. I have recorded several of the hideous conversations she and I have had late at night with the idea of playing them back to her in the morning. Do you think I should try it, Mary? — Name and address withheld A. Definitely not. Recording her in this way is a violation of the trust between you. Much better to let her inadvertently record herself while ranting. To this end, introduce her to the speech recognition facility on her laptop.