Mary Killen

Dear Mary... Q. My husband's 87-year-old father is greatly enjoying the Iraq war. With an understandable sense of personal invulnerability, he has been sitting in his 'safe house' in Cornwall, watching virtually every news bulletin and revelling in 'the deep satisfaction of seeing rockets hitting their targets', et cetera. We are taking our children, aged 9, 11 and l3, to stay with him for Easter. The house is not particularly big, but he has told us that all normal decorum will be suspended for the duration of the war, so he will have the television on nonstop in the one small sitting-room. Since he is deaf, it will be blaring away. How can we avoid being subjected to this harrowing coverage, which will traumatise our children as well as sickening and boring us?

Dear Mary... Q. My parents-in-law have taken to dropping round uninvited. While I do not dislike them, they always seem to appear at an inconvenient time, when either the house is looking horribly dishevelled or I am. My husband doesn't see anything wrong with this and gets very offended when I mention it. How can I ensure that they come by invitation only? They're driving me mad!M.P., Colchester, Essex A. Teach yourself the yoga position 'the corpse'. Read a few paragraphs about the benefits of yoga. Then you will be well equipped to reply, when next they ask how you are, 'Really well. I've started doing yoga. It's very soothing, especially the corpse position where you turn off all the telephones and just lie really flat and relax every single muscle in your body by turn.

Dear Mary... Q. At a party the other day a friend of mine took a canapZ off a loaded plate that was being carried by someone she thought was one of the catering staff, only to realise, on account of the woman's astonished look, that she was a guest and the plate a private one, as it were. What should my friend have said?L.B., London W8 A. The normal response from the woman carrying the plate would have been to laugh pleasantly at the mistake and use it as an opening gambit in conversation. However, since the woman's body language was clearly giving off waitress signals, she might well have been suffering from low self-esteem, a condition which would only have been compounded by your friend's error.

Dear Mary...Q. A man and a woman are in a railway carriage either side of the door. Both want to get off at the next station. The train stops. Who gets out first, a) if they are known to each other, b) if not?B.A.L., Egerton, Kent A. In both cases the man gets out first and holds the door open for the woman, offering to give her a hand with her bags if appropriate. Q. I have been going to the same hairdresser for about 15 years and have always been pleased with the cut. However, for one appointment, he was away sick and my hair was cut by another stylist, a girl, who cut it very well, and I had compliments when I returned to work. I managed to get her again when I changed my appointment and my regular stylist was not available, and again she cut it much better than my usual man.

Dear Mary... At a recent literary prize-giving, after three short and elegant speeches covering the shortlist and the award, the winner - for the first time in his life, it seemed - had the microphone. And did he not enjoy it! The assembled company of around 150 guests looked at one another in horror as the speech went on and on and on; those near the door began to slip away, the chairman hovered - looking as though he might grab the microphone - but no, we had to wait a full 20 minutes before the torture ended. It is not the first time I have experienced an overlong speech that totally stripped a party of its lively atmosphere and momentum. Had you been there, Mary, could we have counted on you to come up with a way of stifling the man's excesses?

Dear Mary... Q.

Dear Mary... Q. I rather prefer the use, however dated, of the English version of foreign place names, such as Leghorn, Peking and Bombay. I recently had occasion, in conversation, to refer to Majorca, whereupon my interlocutor pointedly (and from the point of view of clarity of meaning, needlessly) repeated the name, very elaborately, in its Spanish form. Naturally, at the time I let this pass, but I wonder whether there might be some way, without being reciprocally rude, in which this kind of smart-arse response might be trumped. S.M., Linton, Cambridgeshire A. With Majorca, for example, one could say, 'Oh, thank you for putting me right. So is MYORCA now the fashionable pronunciation?' Your interlocutor would be bound to reply, 'Not fashionable, my dear, just correct.

Dear Mary... Q. I was driving my wife and children to the Warwickshire countryside. My mother followed us in her car. At a slanted T-junction, I stopped to allow some far-off traffic to pass. My mother, thinking, perhaps, that I was still driving like the boy racer of my youth, accelerated straight into the back of my Mercedes. The result: damaged bumper, knackered tow-bar, car in need of repair. Do I: a) claim on her insurance - with all the associated form-filling and grief? b) Claim on my comprehensive insurance and risk a premium rise next year? c) Get the car repaired and send her the bill? Please help.M.F., Nethercote, Warwickshire A. The insurers will consider it the fault of the driver whose car has done the crashing into.

Dear Mary.. Q. I have a very dear friend who lives in increasingly bohemian circumstances in the country. He and his wife have repeatedly asked us to stay with them on one of our visits to England. The fact of the matter is that their standards of domestic hygiene are not particularly high. Suffice it to say that after using their lavatory a couple of years ago my wife went into something approaching a catatonic trance and was unable to speak for three days. So far we have managed to conjure up sufficient excuses to justify our absence, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that we are deliberately avoiding their hospitality. Mary, what can we do?Name and address withheld A. Visitors to England do tend to condemn our general standards of hygiene.

Dear Mary... Q. I am in my gap year, have been travelling to Vietnam and the Far East already, and was supposed to have gone off travelling again, this time to Eastern Europe, shortly after Christmas. This trip has now been postponed for various reasons, including waiting to see whether a war will start. In the meantime, I am kicking around the house all day. Can you recommend any reasonably well-paid work, other than cold-calling, that an as yet unqualified 19-year-old can start and stop at short notice, and even do from home if necessary? L.C., Andover, Wiltshire A. One in five public schoolchildren is currently infested with headlice resistant to all known treatments.

Dear Mary... Q. The story of Red Chris in last week's issue brings to mind another tricky issue about house parties, and that is the subject of bringing presents. As a host who occasionally entertains in the country, I do not expect guests to arrive with a gift but am nevertheless delighted to receive one if they do. My pleasure does not, however, extend to receiving second-hand goods. A good friend of mine, the owner of a hilltop estate in Wiltshire and a schloss in Austria, recently came to stay with his wife and four children, and presented me with a box containing a small bar of soap and three bottles of bath unguents, all inscribed 'The Franklin Hotel', along with a miniature bottle of whisky from the hotel mini-bar.

Dear Mary... Q. As a newly commissioned officer in a regiment that considers itself both pukka and professional, I have recently encountered a problem concerning the etiquette at formal dinner nights. Once seated, one may not rise for relief until after the Colonel has done so. This may be at least three hours, even longer with speeches. Not consuming alcohol would be considered particularly bad form. A friend (not in my regiment), unable to contain himself any longer, availed himself of a decanter, unfortunately incurring the severest of penalties. I have heard that it is possible to remove one's mess dress coat, revealing one's dress shirt, and thus, disguised as a waiter, slip out carrying some plates. Re-entrance would be accomplished in a similar manner.

Dear Mary... Q. Can you suggest an original birthday present for a novice gardener who is not yet very experienced?S.B., Aldeburgh, Suffolk A. Yes, you can buy 1,000 worms for £35 from the Green Gardener at Rendlesham. Curiously, you can freeze worms, then bring them back to life - rather like those little magic fish available from toy shops. Your friend can thump the worms out of their container and down a pipe leading to the centre of her compost heap, where they will go about their business and render the heap a desirable consistency in half the time it would normally take. Q. My husband and I will be entertaining a member of the royal family to dinner in the near future, and wish him to meet a female friend of ours, as we know that he will appreciate her sense of humour.

Q. Friends of mine have parents who moved to this neck of the woods three years ago. The parents bought a property with a tiny garden and consequently very much wanted to find an allotment. An elderly lady living in a stately home nearby was dividing up her walled kitchen garden and gave them a plot within this. The allotment has been a great success but my friends' parents are now faced with a dilemma. The elderly lady is moving to a dower house and would like the couple to leave their existing allotment and start another one in her new garden. Meanwhile, the son and daughter-in-law who have moved into the big house are also very keen on the couple and want them to stay on in the walled garden.

Dear Mary... Q. A couple of years ago you advised readers to minimise present-buying stress at Christmas by finding something that would be acceptable to people of all age ranges and simply buying up said item in bulk. This year I took your advice and feel I must share with readers the great success that I enjoyed with my bulk purchase of butler's trays from IKEA. These trays are deep and come in painted-white-wood effect with fold-up stand. They were received with delight by both adults - who saw them as ideal bedroom accessories - and children who used them to provide surfaces to play on and to contain little messes of small plastic toys. At the end of the day, said messes can be lifted up wholesale to the child's bedroom; all this for only £17 a tray. F.W., London W8 A.

Dear Mary... Q. I rarely shoot, since I have always been a hopeless shot. However, I recently went out for a day and was rather pleased to shoot a woodcock. At the end of the day, as the keeper was loading my car, I was surprised to see only pheasants in the boot. 'What happened to my woodcock?' I asked. He replied, 'Oh, Lady X [my hostess] is rather partial to woodcock. She's kept that back for herself.' This seemed to me rather unjust, and I wondered if I had been 'abused', in today's parlance. Was I wrong to have assumed that he who shoots it gets it, so to speak?A.C., London W12 A. Yes, you were wrong. The correct etiquette on a shoot is that everything belongs to the host.

Dear Mary... Q. I am a hereditary peer. I am also in the auctioneering business and my work takes me to the United States, where confusion frequently arises over my Christian name. What is the most tactful way for me to correct those who have misunderstood the details on my business card and assume that my parents actually chose the name 'Lord' rather than it being thrust upon me, as it were?Name and address withheld A. Let us assume that you are Lord Blunderbuss and that your true Christian name is 'Peregrine'. The very first time the misunderstanding is confirmed - when, for instance, someone says, 'Good to meet you, Lord' - you should reply, 'Oh, just call me Peregrine. I never use my title.

Dear Mary... Q. Please help! I recently met a wonderful girl whom I find quite enchanting. She's beautiful, creative and successful in her own business, and I find that I am always thinking about her. I am concerned, however, that she might be a bit thick. While on her way to an important trade event in Paris, she asked me to recommend restaurants where she could take staff and clients. I recommended, among others, one of the newest and most chic 'designer' restaurants that I have frequented, as I often travel to Paris on business. On her return she thanked me for the recommendation. Recently, however, I was told quite confidentially that she didn't consider me to be a suitable new friend because of this same recommendation.

Dear Mary... Q. During lunch at the house of some friends of my parents, I was put between two boys from Bryanston who talked across me through each course as though I didn't exist. I did not take their rudeness personally - in fact, I was quite sleepy that day and would have been quite happy to drift off into a personal reverie had not their voices been quite so loud. What should I have done to remind them to mind their manners?M.G., Fosbury, Wiltshire A. Wearing a kindly expression on your face, as though dealing with the disabled, you should simply have stood up and moved along one place. Standing behind the offender on your right, you could have said, 'Please, do change places with me and then you can talk to each other without my being in the way.

Dear Mary... Q. Could you give me some guidance on how to keep my parents' and acquaintances' opinions about my single life to themselves? At 32, unmarried without children and happy about it, I hear a regular chorus from the parents and assorted people: 'You ought to get married sometime soon'; 'Shouldn't you be finding a wife by now?' etc., etc. As if I could just pop down to Harrods this sunny afternoon, pick up a sweet young thing without a second thought, maybe even find a nice one off the rack at a 10 per cent discount. How can I let them know that their opinions and helpful suggestions are of no value to me, without ruffling any sensitive feathers?D.V., Salt Lake City, Utah, USA A.