Mary Killen

In Competition No. 2539 you were invited to submit a problem in verse form to The Spectator’s agony aunt in the style of a poet of your choice. The assignment was inspired by James Michie’s poem ‘Dear Mary’, which appears in his superb posthumously published collection Last Poems and which brims with wit and humanity, as did the man himself. Honourable mentions to Mae Scanlan, Ray Kelley and G.M. Davis for enjoyable Ogden Nash pastiche; to Mrs E. Emerk for an entertaining reworking of Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’; and to Philip Wilkinson for his take on Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ written from the point of view of the mistress herself.

Q. While on holiday in the Middle East I contracted amoebic dysentery. Although it is an unpleasant condition, I am a bit overweight and the pounds have been dropping off. Do I go to the doctor or should I let the illness run its course and take advantage of the benefits that have arisen from my misfortune? V.L., London E8 A. Serial dysenterics have not had satisfactory outcomes from allowing their condition to run unchecked. They report that although the weight loss can be gratifying, indeed it can be inspirational to see a ten-pound-lighter version of oneself, even if only for a few days, the internal disruption is not worth the very short-term gains. Bilious breath is enough to offset any gain of having a more svelte physique.

Q. I am dreading Easter as my children are always given so many eggs by their various godparents and grandparents. This is to say nothing of those they bring home from hunts. I consider it terribly bad for them to eat so much chocolate but since each egg has been effectively endorsed by the grown-up or Easter Bunny who supplied it, I don’t know how to manage this dilemma. What should I do? A.B., London W8 A. There is not much that can be done at this late stage, but you could prepare for next Easter by putting aside some of this year’s eggs so that they will be well and truly past their sell-by date and fairly disgusting (though harmless) to eat by Easter 2009, when you can release them to your children before the other egg mountains start arriving.

Q. Somewhat fortuitously I was recently a guest of an eminent London picture dealer in an excellent restaurant in the West End. Among the assembled were various racehorse owners and trainers. I happened to be sitting next to a lord whose family are members of the Beerage. I could not help but notice that the said peer had a monogram of his title with coronet above, embroidered on his shirt. Due to his ample bosom this was very obvious. Do you consider this correct or is it rather parvenu, Mary? W.M., Stonegrave, York A. Monogrammed shirts are not quite so bad as personalised number plates. Monogrammed slippers are acceptable if worn at home because they are slightly jokey. Equally, boxes of matches with coronets are fine inside the home.

Q. I share a student house with three others. My room is next to the kitchen and one of my housemates often eats lunch while surfing the net on my MacBook. Some of the keys have been gunked up with the effluent and spores from his meals but he is the landlord and I don’t really pay a market rate, but neither can I afford a new computer. Any suggestions? Name and address withheld A. Dissuade him from eating al desko by Sellotaping a piece of rotten fish to the underside of the laptop table. Explain that a general accumulation of your landlord’s food in the keyboard has caused the disgusting smell. Remain passive while your other flatmates express revulsion. When you go away for the weekend announce you are going to have the keyboard flushed out at great expense.

Q. I suffer from a form of visual Spoonerism (in New College chapel Warden Spooner concluded, ‘in the sermon which I have just been preaching, wherever I have said Aristotle I have meant St Paul’). I often recognise a person as somebody completely different. The other day I went to a private view at a Bond Street gallery and confidently greeted our host as Gerry. I thought he seemed a little cool. As we left I said a cheerful ‘Goodbye, Gerry’. Actually it turns out that his name is Christopher, and I know perfectly well the difference between Christopher and Gerry. What am I to do to remedy this unfortunate gaffe? R.O., Kent A. Since there is very little you can do about this propensity you must use it to spark self- importance in your victims.

Q. I am approaching my 50th birthday and I want to have a party for around 100 people. There is an ideal space near where we live in London. It belongs to a friend, who has kindly offered it to us free, but is only really suitable for 100 people. Since we cannot afford to have more than 100, this suits us fine. Now, having finished compiling my must-invite list, I see it exceeds 180 people. There is no way I can prune this list without causing grave offence. What can I do, Mary? A. Just ensure you have your party on a Saturday night, preferably to coincide with a boarding-school exeat weekend.

Q. I am currently living, with two others, in a ‘high end’ house in an elegant garden square in Chelsea. We are all friends of, and pay rent in some form to, our absentee landlord, an old-school landowner and pig breeder who, when not charming the birds from the trees, is generally blasting the life out of them at his stately pile in north Norfolk. He is used to commanding retainers and, when in London, these feudal tendencies remain at the fore. Over the years the triffid-like growth of the buddleia tree in the garden had rendered the masonry perilous and poised to crash down on the minimalist plate-glass extension of the banker next door. The potential litigation could have been lethal so, on a trip up from the country, our landlord took to the overgrowth with zeal.

Q. We are lucky enough to be lent a chalet in Verbier. My wife invited her niece and boyfriend who is showing signs of becoming a fixture. He is not blessed with a great intellect and has been brought up in a household where shared meals are a rarity. He has little in the way of table manners. Chalet breakfasts often consist of croissants and honey. He used his knife to help himself to honey so, ensuring I was observed, I placed some on my own plate using a teaspoon. He then emulated this by using the spoon to spread the honey on his second croissant, thereby transferring crumbs, butter and possibly bodily fluids to the honey pot. This was but one example of a number of calumnies. They are likely to wish for further invitations when others may be present.

Q. I wonder if you can give me some advice. My parents have agreed I can have 20 people to a party in our house in Balham. I am 16 but very responsible so they agreed to go out between 7 p.m. and 11 when the party is taking place, though they would only go somewhere a few minutes away so they could come back in an emergency. The problem is that now they have found out that all their friends who live in Balham will be out on the night of the party and my father is diabetic, so he doesn’t like to eat later than seven. He does not want to sit in a restaurant for three and a half hours waiting until it is time to come back again. What do you suggest, Mary? B.F., London SW12 A.

Q. Now that eco-issues are so fashionable my husband has come out as a militant meanie on energy conservation. Meanwhile our three teenage daughters use absurd amounts of hot water each day and leave their laptops and televisions on. They also prance about in the skimpiest clothes imaginable, which means they always want the heating on full blast. Mary, how can I tackle these incompatibilities so that I can conserve some of my own energy and not have to dissipate it all on resolving domestic disputes? A.B., Pencaitland, East Lothian A. Stimulate your daughters’ own interest in conserving energy with the purchase of a Wattson O1 energy monitor. (£149.50 from www.electricity-monitor.com). This minimalist, packet-of-butter-sized device is easily fitted to your mains cable.

Q. My brother-in-law, of whom my wife and I are very fond, is an admirable man and rightly proud of the ordinary background from which he has risen to a leading position in his company. However his rise (without trace, as they say) means that all he knows about food and wine is what he has gleaned from expense-account meals and he has adopted many of the mannerisms of waiters for home use. For example, when opening wine he waves the cork under his nose, pours some wine into the glass, sips it adopting a judicious expression and then proceeds to pour it for others. Recently, after he had gone through this ritual, I realised the wine was clearly and unmistakeably corked and said so.

Q. Although I consider my dog Claude to have been born without a brain, he miraculously remembers that Wednesday is the day for his extra-long walkies and sits by the front door, thereby allowing no one to exit without his being in tow. So it was that this Wednesday Claude took up his position, collar on and gazing nobly as blue Great Danes are so adept at doing. At 7.43 a.m. precisely we set out and would have followed the customary route which entails an eager rush along Tite Street, greeting the Honourable Mrs Schleswig-Mopps’s trio of pugs, over Royal Hospital Road, navigating the four-wheel-drive tractors in Durham Place and a hurtle around Burton Court ending in an imperious trot down Royal Avenue. No sooner had we left the house than I felt a buzzing in my coat pocket.

Q. My very nice Polish cleaner wants my husband and I [sic] to come to her house for dinner one evening and, to be brutally frank, we don’t want to. Her English is very limited, my Polish non-existent, and I think it would be a night of sheer hell for all of us. Please can you come up with a cast-iron permanent excuse? At the moment I have told her that my husband is unwell, but he can’t be sick for ever. A.J., London W5 A. You have missed the point. What could be better than to go to someone’s house and be served with a free, probably delicious, dinner and not have to sing for your supper?

Q. I am a fan of The Archers but my listening pleasure always dips whenever one of the villagers makes the offer of ‘a coffee’ to another Ambridge resident. I feel the producers of the soap are failing to serve their loyal audience as it deserves, and are also missing an audio trick, in that they persistently omit any information about the nature of the beverage provided even though we live in a very caffeine-conscious age. For example, I would expect the Grundys to be a Nescafé family and the Aldridges users of cafetières, but there is never the happy sound of beans being ground in Jennifer’s Aga kitchen, and meanwhile Ruth, who is always bringing refreshments to Deevid on his tractor, would presumably have a Thermos, but again, we are never told!

Q. Two years ago I purchased a pair of Beretta shotguns which are ‘over and under’. In the shooting field this caused others to peer suspiciously down their noses at my gleaming new barrels. Generally it is only acceptable to arrive at a shoot with antique guns and when asked about your weapons’ provenance to remark that ‘they were made for grandfather in 1906 when we had our estate in Norfolk’. With my Purdeys consigned to the safe I quickly got used to the modern comforts of the Spanish guns which shoot fast and accurately with no recoil. To make them blend in better I had the shiny stocks changed to English walnut and the gold triggers changed to faded silver and then the family crest engraved into a gilded oval in the stocks.

Q. We live in a small flat and when we have visitors for a weekend or a few days we arrange for them to sleep in a spacious bedroom made available by a neighbour, who is also a good friend. She charges only a nominal amount, which so far we have preferred not to mention to our guests. But because it is at least partly a commercial arrangement she finds herself embarrassed by the gifts left her by grateful visitors. And then come the cards or letters, and even Christmas cards. How can we make it clear to our visitors that they need not overdo the effusions of gratitude — without their feeling mean-spirited and obliged to contribute, and without making ourselves look too grandly generous? I would be grateful for your advice. J.D., Frankfurt am Main A.