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Dear Mary

Dear Mary: How can I stop my elderly host making the bed?

Plus: More means of avoiding first-name terms with call centres, and another technique for seeing off night intruders

21 February 2015

9:00 AM

21 February 2015

9:00 AM

Q. I have regularly stayed with a hospitable friend in London but now hesitate to invite myself. She is seventy-something with a bad back and no help but always provides me with an immaculately presented bed and refuses to let me help with its preparation and dismantling. I bring presents but feel these are small succour set against the physical work my visits subject her to.

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