Mary Killen

Q. I am in the middle of a second gap year some 33 years after the first (which was marred by menial work). The ‘Dear Mary’ item (8 August) about Justgiving charity requests prompted some thoughts since I have just been on the soliciting rather than receiving end of a fundraising drive. I fully share the exasperation of your correspondent who wants to know how to deal with a stream of sponsorship requests, but he should learn to distinguish between requests for funds which go directly to the nominated charity and those cheekily diverted to finance the cash-strapped adolescent gap year. My own was linked to a six-week Pyrenean walk from the Basque Atlantic to the Catalan Mediterranean coast. So far the walk has raised about £7,000 for Merlin, a medical relief charity.

Q. I was asked to review a collection of letters and did so, praising to the skies the late author’s wit, integrity and astute judgment of human character. News now reaches me that an old family friend, lampooned in these letters, has taken offence. She saw my ringing endorsement of these letters as a ringing endorsement of their author’s ‘attack’ on her. I did not refer to this woman in my review although I remember very much enjoying the references to her. It was clear that their author had never allowed her absurd side to stand in the way of his liking her very much. I feel the same way and my late parents would be horrified to think of any of us having hurt her feelings.

Q. I am feeling overwhelmed by the endless stream of sponsorship requests from friends, godchildren and relations, a lot of whom could write a cheque for ten times their target total without batting an eyelid. £15 — the most I could afford given the number of these demands on my overdraft — seems stingy especially when lists of donors and donations are published on the Just Giving website for all to see. I don’t want to watch their progress online as they train for their cycle ride to Bordeaux, I just want to be able to choose my own charities to give to. Is it acceptable to ignore some of these well-intentioned but almost bullying requests? Name and address withheld A. It is not acceptable to ignore them but you can field them pleasantly.

Q. I recently attended with my wife the summer party of a London literary society. The event offered wine and buffet supper between 6 and 9 p.m. Arriving at 6.50 we found the buffet table almost stripped bare, with guests seated around it, munching copiously, à la Babette’s Feast. Food stocks were not replenished. Therefore I ate nothing. For next time, should the organising committee be asked to delay food, or should one expect to join a hungry queue outside well before six o’clock? Name and address withheld A. No, let this party continue in the normal civilised manner without queuing or introducing elements of tension over inadequate suppliers. Perhaps this year, as a feature of the recession, the buffet was stripped bare by human locusts by 6.50 p.m.

Q. My husband has started working from home. The invasion of my privacy and the disruption of my peace is driving me almost mad. Now he has developed a habit of standing at the bottom of a staircase to the room where I myself work and yelling questions up it. He says he is too busy to come up the stairs and talk to me in a more civilised manner. I have tried to train him by not answering unless he comes upstairs, but then I can miss out if he assumes I am not in and he is calling to, for example, tell me something I really want to hear. I do not want to yell back, Mary, but neither do I want to have to get up from my desk, walk across the room and halfway down the staircase in order to answer him without having to shout myself. How can we move forward? Name and address withheld A.

Q. My host on a forthcoming holiday keeps his pool arctic cold so that it is not enjoyable for me to swim in it. I do not want to be a spoilsport. What should I do? Name and address withheld A. Bring a wet suit and swim in that, claiming you are extra sensitive to cold. Q. I recently attended the evening reception that followed the wedding of a male ex-colleague. On the way I picked up a bottle of champagne as a gift, but when I arrived I found that there was no obvious opportunity to present it. Both bride and groom were perpetually surrounded by well-wishers and, furthermore, everyone was already drinking champagne so my poor bottle seemed a bit pointless. I could only stay an hour, so I decided to take it away with me and give it to my friend after the honeymoon instead.

Q. I was persuaded by my son to attend a lecture on astronomy. I was out of my depth within five minutes. Should I have interrupted the speaker, Mary, and asked for elucidation? I did not want to embarrass my son but through not so doing, the whole rest of the lecture went over my head and, I would imagine, the heads of a large proportion of the audience. Secondly, a question-and-answer session followed in which those in the audience who had understood the talk posed questions. Can you explain why so many apparently able-bodied scientists seem to speak in staccato tones as though they were imitating Stephen Hawking? J.M., Salisbury A. In answer to your first question I am afraid a lecture hall is not a schoolroom.

Q. An old friend summoned me to a black-tie dinner at the Cambridge college of which he is master. On arrival I found I had forgotten cuff links so I threaded a shoelace through each cuff and tied them together that way. Knowing that I have about 20 pairs of cuff links at home, I could not bring myself, in the current financial climate, to go out and buy another pair. I felt my response was imaginative but my host raised his eyebrows in a pompous way and made me feel small. Who was right, Mary? C.S., Worcs A. It really depends on how the laces looked. Might they have looked a little bit Sir Les Patterson? Might your host have felt the omission was symptomatic of a general lack of respect for himself?

Q. Recently I was asked by friends to take a visitor from Germany on a game drive in the Chobe National Park. Unfortunately the visitor had unwisely lunched on some elephant meat from a recent cull and vomited in my new Range Rover, thus bringing the safari to an abrupt end for all concerned.    Being English, I expected at least a sorry and a thank you, but none was forthcoming. How should I deal with this when asked by the friends if the trip was a success? R.S., Tsetsebjwe, Botswana A. A recriminatory approach would be unproductive. Instead give an uncritical, factual account of the happenings. Deliver it in the manner of a mystery tale with full build-up and technicolour climax.

Q. Like many middle-aged, under-employed people, I have finally got round to finishing my novel. Being too self-regarding to vanity-publish and not, as some West Country nobody, seeing much other hope of publication, I scoured around for friends from university who in intervening decades have laboured their way to the top of the publishing world. These agreed with alacrity to look at my efforts: then nothing, and reminder emails to no effect. What can I do to get an answer without ruining any hope my work has of seeing shiny covers? M.C., by email A. It is a pretty safe bet that none of these people have read one line of your novel. They would have been meaning to for weeks but too great is the deluge that swamps all people in paid work these days.

Q. My oldest school-friend, who moved to Paris, has recently been staying with me in London while visiting her sick mother. This was on my invitation. However I have noticed that she has been ringing her own family in Paris quite freely from our telephone and spending sometimes up to 40 minutes changing and rebooking her flights on a premium rate number. We do not like to be stingy but due to the credit crunch, which has not affected her, it came as a blow when we noticed that our telephone bill has escalated considerably. As it looks like she is going to be here sporadically for the next few months I would like to know how we can gently ask her to either contribute to the bill or stop making these premium rate calls. Name and address withheld A.

Q. I am trying to persuade my friends in the more fashionable areas of London that it is now not only socially acceptable but ‘all the rage’ to shop in Lidl, Asda and Netto, as opposed to Waitrose and Partridges in the King’s Road. Judging by the accents I heard on a recent trip, these shops are attracting clientele from across the social spectrum due to the credit crunch. Could you reassure those of my friends who are still wary of venturing into these splendid emporia? N.McA., London SW1 A. Saving money has always been socially acceptable. Even during the boom years it was a form of one-upmanship to travel Economy across the Atlantic while fellow holidaymakers went Business or First.

Q. I was at a private view the other night when a waiter dropped not just one glass but a whole tray of them. I was unsure what to do. Should I turn a blind eye while the waiter tackled the problem on his own or should I have lent a hand? I know that good manners would dictate that I should bend down and help to pick up the pieces but I felt that to do this might implicate me in the accident and so I moved away. Now I feel I behaved shabbily. What is the correct drill, Mary? O.B., London W8 A. Instinctively, you behaved correctly. The last thing the waiter wants is for his accident to become the focus of attention at a party and for the momentum of chatting and interaction to be halted. There was practical help you could have offered.

Q. As a boy I was taught to stand up when a lady enters or leaves the room or indeed when she leaves and returns to the table in a restaurant. I have a new girlfriend and am moving in slightly different circles these days and wonder whether I might inadvertently be ‘giving offence’ to any feisty feminists by maintaining this practice. What is your advice, Mary? I.B., London SW3 A. It would be an unusually aggressive feminist who would take you to task for this heritage act of courtesy. Should there be aggro, however, just defuse the tension by blaming your age and claiming the habit was so deeply ingrained as to have become a reflex. Meanwhile, carry on. The important thing is that most women really like it. Q. I have a great friend who lives in the country.

Q. We have been trying to invite a very particular couple to supper for over a year and have finally broken down their resistance. Would it be better to have them alone, we asked ourselves, or should we play it safe and invite another couple? We decided on the latter, but late in the day, our foils have cancelled. Compatible people are thin on the ground around here, especially at such short notice, but would it be better to dilute the company with second-raters rather than to subject this distinguished duo to an intense à quatre with a couple they hardly know? We have no servants. Name and address withheld A. You should invite a single person rather than another couple.

Q. I was sitting in a South West train the other day. A woman across the aisle was making nonstop calls into her mobile phone, speaking very loudly in what sounded to me like Cantonese. I found it excruciating. I could not think, I could not read, I could not do anything. I did not want to give up my window seat and move to another carriage. I finally flipped, went over and said, ‘Could you please speak more quietly?’ The woman looked very surprised and quite angry but from then on she spent the rest of the journey texting. I found the incident exhausting. It was 30 minutes or so before it was resolved, so I wondered if there is a way in which it is possible to tip people off — right at the very beginning of their first call — that they are speaking far too loudly?

Q. Arriving for a weekend celebration, I was announced and entered a room in which everyone stood at once in a random formation to greet me. There was the couple who had invited me to mark their golden wedding, their daughter and son-in-law, in whose house I was now to be resident as a guest, and the parents of the son-in-law, who were nearest to my point of entry. Bearing in mind that the latter, I fear, are easily slighted, in what order should I have greeted the people present? It did not help that cheeks and handshakes were proffered simultaneously. To avoid embarrassment, please just use my initials if you print this! T.R.W., address withheld A. Unless royalty is present, the only issue here is of positional precedence.

Q. Have you any ideas on how to deal with recurrent offenders in the party-present line? I have an old and intimate friend who always brings a present almost insultingly slight, but, more seriously, also invariably well past its sell-by date. One small jar of pickle was two years too old. Other old friends contributed to an important birthday bash a splendidly packaged bottle of whisky which on opening turned out to have been half-consumed. My view has always been that these little trials must be borne in silence (and with gratitude for being given anything at all); obviously to retaliate with out-of-date or used goods would be simply to earn a reputation for meanness oneself.

Q. I love my husband but, when we go out together to parties, I often hear him saying things which both of us know are not true and which he is clearly saying just for effect or to keep the conversation moving along with no thought to the consequences of his talking such nonsense. I do not want us to turn into one of those couples who constantly contradict each other’s stories — that would be so boring. Whenever I upbraid him on the way home he always says, ‘Oh don’t worry about it. No one listens to what anyone else says at parties. Even if they did they wouldn’t have taken me seriously.’ I find it very frustrating. Any suggestions, Mary? C.B., London SW11 A. You are not the only woman to suffer from this annoyance.