Mary Killen

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.

Q. My problem may make me seem selfish and spoilt but I suspect that some of your readers will sympathise. Since I was a schoolgirl I have daydreamed about owning my own flat in Venice. Finally I have managed to buy a wonderful apartment there and it has now been restored to perfection and is ready to live in. I will not be able to go there very often because I work in London and have commitments elsewhere, but I know it will be bliss when I do go. My problem in a nutshell is this. I am bound to run into people I know when I am in Venice and will have to invite them for drinks or supper. I will be glad to see them but the word is bound to go round that I have this flat that I don’t use very often and people will start asking can they borrow/rent it.

Q. In the last few days I have opened six separate letters asking for sponsorship for the London Marathon. Each one comes from either a godchild, a relation or a child of a really close friend. I think £100 is about the going rate but I can only afford £100, not £600. I cannot sponsor one and not the others. What do you suggest, Mary? P.Z., London SW15 A. It is time the junior generation had a reality check, so have no qualms about replying with the news that you are having to divide your London Marathon budget equally between all the applicants. Enclose a cheque for £16.65 and make no apology. Do praise them for competing but remember that, for the runner, the mental participation of the sponsors is just as relevant as the sum of money raised for good causes.

Q. My husband is a retired scientist but still much in demand. Recently he was part of a small committee organising a world congress in Brisbane, judged to have been very successful, thanks in no small part to him. Every time we now meet one of the other committee members, a businessman, he teases my husband, mainly in regard to his age (75). I am finding this increasingly irritating, particularly since this man has little else to say to my husband apart from the teasing. He is a perfectly pleasant chap, whom we must meet socially occasionally, and I don’t want to make too strong a retort, but I am fed up with the tone. What would you say to him, Mary, to make him realise he needs to find something more pleasant to say? A.F., Queensland A.

Q. Ten years ago, at 15, I met the closest friend of my life. We did everything together and she grew so close to my whole family that, when her own rather difficult home life became too much, she even moved in with us. She has always been the person I felt I could turn to. She was one of my few friends, for example, to make the effort to travel to visit my mother when she was recently very ill, and to keep ringing to check I was OK. Here’s the problem: a few years ago she got married — to a woman. I like her wife, who is very clever and sweet, but whenever I suggest dinner, a film, coffee, whatever — the wife is now always part of the package. When I managed to see my friend alone once, her wife rang about ten times an hour to check on her.

Q. I am at the mercy of a very over-the-top decorator provided by the management of our block of flats. He is like the worst sort of game-show host, cracking jokes all the time and bullying me and the young man working with him. I thought he was only here for four days but have just been told he will be here all next week as well, sometimes hanging out of my bedroom window strapped to a harness, a block of wood tied to his waist to stop him falling out — I am on the sixth floor. This morning I have literally had to walk the streets to keep out of his way, although I am supposed to be finishing a book. I cannot spend all day in a library as I have a dog. The trouble is, I am always too friendly.

Q. I was brought up in South Africa and did graduate studies in the US. When I moved to London in the mid-1970s I encountered ‘put downs’ at dinner parties when I mispronounced aristocratic English surnames which I had only seen written. I had some exposure to them in South Africa but obviously not enough. (It was rather like the ‘snooty’ reaction I got when I called Albany ‘The Albany’ — as does Wilde in Importance... — but as I actually lived there from 1976 to 1981 I ignored the criticism.) A clever reply would have been very useful but I did not have one. Now I am living in Australia I wonder if you have any ideas which I can pass on to Australian friends who find themselves in a similar situation when visiting England? D.A.

Q. My 12-year-old son and I braved the snow last week to keep an appointment for him to look at a school. On the much delayed journey back to Paddington I was walking through to the buffet car when I saw two friends of a friend who kindly suggested I fetch my son and come and join them. Having said I would, I immediately regretted it because it meant my son (who boards) and I would not be able to chat together alone. I could not think of a way to backtrack and dragged him through to both of our regrets. How could I have explained that I had changed my mind without causing offence, Mary? J.N., London W12 A.