Mary Killen

Dear Mary... Q. What is the correct attitude to strike when a friend regularly inquires whether one has read the latest issue of The Spectator, the purpose of the inquiry being to draw one’s attention to correspondence from that person in the issue in question? As the friendship is dear, I would welcome your advice on a suitable, gentle put-down.J.V.B., St Peter Port, Guernsey A. This all sounds very Pooterish and I am tempted to tick you off for mean-spiritedness. However, you may have supplied me with insufficient detail, so I will give you the benefit of the doubt. Why not reply with enthusiasm, ‘Yes, and I saw your letter and I started reading it and then something distracted me. Thanks for reminding me about that. I will make a point of finishing reading it.

Dear Mary... Q. I am 16 and am looking forward to the delights of Daymer Bay in Cornwall, a meeting-ground renowned for its nightly teenage public-school gatherings. I am somewhat nervous as I do not smoke, and most of my friends use cigarettes as tools of entry into a circle of people. How, Mary, can I avoid the terrible prospect of being left standing alone, and thus immediately being classified as a loser? M.M.H., Wooton Rivers, Wiltshire A. I am reliably informed that the correct etiquette for those wishing to enter a conversational cluster on Daymer Bay is to simply walk into it saying, ‘Blahblahblah.

Dear Mary... Q. I wonder if I might pass on this little tip to your readers. We have recently had new neighbours move in who keep a terrier, which is locked in the house all day while the owners are out at work. The constant whining and barking of the bored and lonely dog was driving us to distraction, and the new neighbours seemed disinclined to do anything about it. The solution turned out to be simple — laxative chocolate, removed from its wrapper, and pushed through the letterbox. After coming home to a house full of dog excrement for only two days in a row (minimalist decor with white carpets), they made other arrangements.

Dear Mary Q. I am commuting to Italy most weekends this summer and, unlike Charles Dunstone, am an ‘Easy’ rather than a ‘Net’ jet user. What do you suggest I do when without asking the passenger in front tips his seat back into my face? I have thought of various measures such as prevention — walking to my seat with a stick pretending to have a bad leg — or revenge — allowing runny honey to drip down the back of the seat. Or should I accept the growing ‘pikeyness’ of air travel? Cabin staff seem to be there to extract cash from passengers and enforce the increasingly draconian rules and my remonstrations are usually met with blank astonishment.M E-J., Paris 7eme A.

Dear Mary... Q. What advice can you give to a boy of 16 (my brother) who has not been out with a girl before? He fancies one at his school but although I have told him he is cool he does not have the nerve to ask her out. He is almost more worried about her saying yes than no. He says he wouldn’t know where to take her or what to say. D.C., London W6 A. Rather than asking her out, your brother should ask her to help him dye his hair. Girls cannot resist the chance to conduct a cosmetic experiment, and since the procedure is soothing for both parties a relaxed intimacy will ensue. More to the point, the inevitable choice of venue — his house or hers — is both budget- and parent-friendly. Q.

Dear Mary... Q. We have a house in Spain and the parents of one of our daughter’s schoolfriends asked if they could rent it for two weeks. We said, well, we don’t rent it; what we will do is lend it to you and ask you to give a cheque to our favourite charity. We said that people normally give two grand to the charity for each week that they take the house. This figure was agreed. The day of their departure was dawning and there was no sign of a cheque, so I rang and said that our driver would bring them the keys and could they give him a cheque for £4,000? They handed him an envelope which was found to contain a cheque for only £2,500. Mary, we feel they are pulling a fast one. What should we do? B. and A.G., Sibbertoft, Leicestershire A.

Dear Mary... Q. I have been married for over 35 years and have four children and two grandchildren and parents still alive. My husband, of whom I am still fond, has been engaged in a long, weekday affair with a friend of mine, which is probably delightful for him, but hurtful and boring for me. I am quite used to allowing him a long rein. I live in the country and he is in London during the week, and the thought of a full-scale confrontation and the inevitable ensuing drama seems pointless and damaging for all who would become involved. However, I am finding it increasingly galling to let them, particularly her, get away scot-free. How can I punish them suitably? She is a divorcee and a headmistress of a smart London prep school. Mary, please help me.Name and address withheld A.

Dear Mary... Q. Living as we do far from the motherland, a particular problem arises with what are best described as ‘professional Englishmen’. These men, of often dubious past, make a living out of pretending to be ‘top-drawer’ English. They sport an old school tie and the appropriate accent and wind up being appointed to company boards and invited to the best parties. The recent cost-of-living increases in central London have meant that their arrivals on our shores have reached plague proportions. I myself was recently fooled into inviting one of the ersatz gentlemen to my own dinner table with disastrous results which need not concern your readers. Mary, please help.

Dear Mary Q. Can you tell me who all these people are who wear black eye-patches and look like pirates? One only has to look through the social pages of H&Q or Tatler and no party snapshot seems complete without some old boy or gal with an eye-patch. You never see these people at humbler gatherings, so are people of Social Class One especially prone to eye deformities? Are these due to polo or shooting injuries? I’m a doctor and I know you’re from a medical family, Mary, so can you enlighten me? C.T., Southsea, Hampshire A. Although their eye-patches may make them more visible, so to speak, than other ranks with eye injuries, grandees are not especially prone to them.

Dear Mary... Q. I have an etiquette question for you. I came back from Egypt with a stomach bug the other day, was overcome by nausea on my way across Westbourne Grove, and had to choose between vomiting in the gutter or in the litter bin outside Agnes B. I chose the litter bin but have been told that that was wrong/inconsiderate. Can you rule, Mary? M.W., London W11 A. As the vomiter will be equally humiliated by either course, the point here is to minimise offence to the supporting cast in this mini-drama, so I am sorry to say this means the gutter would have been the better option. It is actually very difficult and unpleasant to try to get sick out of the Kensington and Chelsea bins, as the usual failure to do so attests. It is, by contrast,a lot easier to sluice it down a gutter.

Dear Mary... Q. As I am getting on a bit I find the process of uncorking bottles extremely arduous and fear doing irreparable damage to my aortic muscles. Can you give me some guidance about any of the wines that come in screwtop bottles? Is it all inevitably second-rate, or are there any good names you can recommend? J.O., London SW4 A. Times have changed — at least as far as New Zealand wines are concerned. The majority of the Wine Society’s New Zealand wines come with screwtops, and the Sauvignons that come from Marlborough are thought to be absolutely acceptable. What is more, says Charlie Wrey of The Vintry (www.vintry.co.uk), screwtops are ideal for pensioners who may not wish to finish a bottle at one sitting.

Dear Mary Q. In recent weeks I have been the recipient of an unusually large postbag of personal letters. In order to open these with speed and efficiency, and without inflicting repetitive strain injury on thumb and forefinger, I have been forced to employ a paper-knife. The sad upshot of this has been that many of these very welcome letters have had a third slashed off them as the knife did its work in opening the envelopes. Mary, would you please remind readers to fold letters in two, not three, and with the crease at the bottom of the envelope in situations where the recipient is likely to be inundated? Name and address withheld A. Thank you for this useful tip. Q. I am very short of money but do not have much time available in which to work.

Dear Mary Q. Here’s a solution to noisy New Zealand neighbours having barbies in the garden late at night. The last time ours had one my husband went over and told them the noise was absolutely fine by us, but there was a lunatic on crack in the assisted housing flats next to them. Said crack addict had come at him with a leafblower one evening when we’d had the gardeners in and actually smashed a pane of glass in the front door trying to kill him. The police came round and said they couldn’t do a thing about it, of course, which meant it was quite likely he would strike again if provoked. All perfectly true too. H.C.d.S., London W14 A.

Dear Mary... Q. My son attends a school where all the parents, apart from his own, appear to be either Yummy Mummies or Superdads as well as multimillionaires. Since most of these mothers don’t work, they are all very competitive with each other, and the key competition of the year is coming up in the last week of term, the PTA-arranged tennis tournament. I dread the thought of being ritually humiliated both on and off the court. When confronted by the PTA member who will shortly be standing outside my son’s classroom asking me to put my name down for singles or doubles, how can I decline without seeming antisocial or unsportswomanlike? Name withheld, London W11 A. Do not cringe in anticipation.

Dear Mary.... Q. A friend who invited me to stay for a few days in France has told me I can get a lift in the plane of one of the other guests. I am a nervous flyer at the best of times and particularly nervous at the thought that the plane-owner, whom I do not know well but who has an aura of recklessness about him, might be at the wheel. How can I delicately find out whether it will be he or a proper pilot with braid on his shoulders? Should the former be the case and my destiny be in the hands of the plane’s owner, I would rather go No Frills but No Kills.K.L., Wantage, Oxfordshire A. Ring up the hospitable plane-owner to thank him for his offer and to get details of departure times, et cetera. Then say, ‘Congratulations!

Dear Mary... Q. My parents, sister and in-laws are all devout Roman Catholics. I myself was raised a Catholic but have been an atheist for over 20 years, a fact of which all my family are aware. Naturally our family life involves attending numerous RC church services (weddings, baptisms, funerals). Joining in with the religious actions (genuflecting, kneeling to pray, taking communion, making the sign of the cross and so on) makes me feel bogus and uncomfortably self-conscious. However, I worry that not joining in would be seen as an ostentatious rejection of beliefs which are dear to people I love. How can I politely attend these Roman Catholic religious services without taking part in them? Thank you for your help.Name and address withheld A.

Dear Mary... Q. As a child I largely complied with my parents’ wishes and there was no question of baiting them ad infinitum as my own children do me. In my day there was still the fear of smacking but, needless to say, my own children, a boy aged nine and a girl aged seven, have never been smacked. They do love each other and usually get on well, except during long journeys, when they fight like cat and dog. Over Easter I arrived at various destinations totally drained from breaking up fights. I am now developing travelphobia in anticipation of long journeys scheduled for the summer holidays. My husband, who has more control over them, will be travelling separately . Do you have any tips for making children behave during these interminable journeys? S.A., London SW12 A.

Dear Mary... Q. I recently went business-class, for the first time in my life, to New Zealand and back. On the second lap of the long return journey, from LA to London, I returned to my correct seat, one of two near a window, to find a couple in their sixties standing there. They said they had been incorrectly given seats away from each other and seemed to expect me, because I was travelling alone, to change to a seat in the centre. Since that would have had no window, I refused. I said I had never flown business-class before, I liked my seat and was looking forward to seeing the country around Las Vegas. The stewardess said I had a right to refuse and told the couple to sit in their designated seats for take-off, after which she would try to reposition them. The woman sat next to me.

Dear Mary Q. My dilemma is about male wedding rings. I (born 1927) was brought up to believe they were ‘non-U’, and now I see all sorts of males wearing them. I have to know whether I am right or wrong before I die! I am beginning to wonder whether this is a ‘politically correct’ subject, like so many things today. Please, dear Mary, can you put me straight?F.B., Helston, Cornwall A. Traditionally the English gent does not wear jewellery, and even signet rings are considered dodgy. Of course there are exceptions that prove the rule.

Dear Mary... Several friends living overseas have indicated that they will be coming to England this summer and that they would like to pay us a visit. However, since seeing them last, these friends have produced a number of infants and they seem to labour under the delusion that I am more interested in seeing the children than their parents. The truth is I can tolerate the company of children under five for a maximum of 20 minutes. How do I tell these proud parents that I am looking forward to seeing them, but without offspring? Naturally I do not want to hurt anyone’s feelings.L.B., via email A. You clearly have no children. If you had, you would be aware that, when trying to socialise, parents can tolerate the company of their own under-fives for a maximum of 20 minutes.