Mary Killen

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.

Q. A friend and I have been working in the new Eliot Reading Room of the London Library and are very pleased with it (the Ladies’ in particular is very swish) but there is one drawback. A bespectacled man of Chinese appearance is in everyday, chomping his way through packets of gum, and making the most annoying series of clacking and liquid chewing noises as he derives maximum oral satisfaction from his unsightly habit. As he is also plugged into his MP3 player, we assume he is blissfully unaware of the intolerable aural pollution he emits. Obviously we all feel like killing him, but do you have any better suggestions? Name and address withheld A. Your friend should take up a position at the same table as the offender.

Q. My cousin and her husband recently went to a dinner party. When they compared notes later, it emerged that the husband had seen the cat before dinner with its paw and tongue in the butter dish, which was then placed on the table, and the wife had seen the cat sitting in the bowl of fresh salad which was also then served. How could they have warned each other and the other guests without offending the hostess, who adores her cats? E.S., London W11 A. Should this happen again it would be advisable for the witness to affect to sneeze over the dishes in question. He/she could then announce, ‘I’m so sorry. I absolutely insist on being allowed to rewash the salad and scrape a few centimetres off the butter all the way round. You can never be too careful.’ Q.

Q. Several chums have contacted me ‘as friends’ to alert me to the latest rumour about my extracurricular activities — to wit, according to the local Notting Hill bush telegraph, I am having an affair with a banker worth several hundred million in our social circle. As ever, I am last to know. This is annoying on several levels: I am married, so is he; though I enjoy the company of the chap in question, we’ve yet to exchange Christmas cards, let alone anything more intimate. I also resent the implication that I would commit adultery with someone just because he is rich, handsome and kind, and the disrespect to my husband and, indeed, his wife that this gossip entails.

Q. I know someone who is a theatre producer, an extremely generous man who never says no to anyone, whose secretary is besieged with calls from friends of his wanting (often free) tickets for Oliver! How can she deal with this without offending them? How can he continue coming off like a saint? It is doing the poor secretary’s head in. Name and address withheld A. So that the applicants can avoid feeling like members of a salon de refusés or that other friends have been given priority, the secretary must say that the producer had allocated his block of special tickets to a charity. ‘We are hoping that some of these will be returned,’ she can say.

Q. A friend from university invited my boyfriend and me to stay with her parents in a very grand house over New Year. We were made very welcome, but my boyfriend felt out of his depth in at least one instance and wonders what you would have advised. On New Year’s Day there was a large number of people for lunch. The butler went round the table with a tray of roast beef, offering it to each person in turn to help themselves. The piece my boyfriend tried to take was attached by gristle to a sort of concertina of other slices and when he tried to cut through the gristle the butler did not respond by exerting resistant pressure from underneath the tray but instead slackened his grip so my boyfriend could not cut through.

Q. I moved down from Scotland to London about two years ago with my family. When my husband is away or working late, I regularly have dinner with a (platonic) male friend who used to live near us up north. He now lives in north London and I live in south. We always meet at the same restaurant, which is exactly halfway between us. We always really enjoy the chat. We always split the bill. The only trouble is that he drinks — not very much, but enough to preclude him from driving — and I have recently given up drinking so I always have my car outside. He used to get taxis back but the last three times we have met he has expected me to drive him home.

Once again Mary has invited some of her favoured persons of distinction to submit Christmas queries. From Sir Tim Rice Q. I have recently employed a full-time driver. A friend (a well-known art dealer and social gadabout) has informed me and many of my close circle that it is considered common to sit in the back of a car when being driven. This has caused me some distress. I am painfully aware that among the highly competitive brotherhood of drivers I may be harming my new employee’s standing by not sitting in the front with him. Of course, it would be foolish to take this issue to the extremes of a late friend of mine, a distinguished cricket writer who was such a snob that he refused to be in the same car as his driver, but I would very much like to keep all concerned happy.