Dear Mary: how do I dodge a party to avoid an undesirable guest?
Q. I am on a long, jam-packed and much disrupted train journey to Scotland. In the carriage someone is working…
Dear Mary: how do I stop my book club banging on about their grandchildren?
Q. At the Ludlow Piano Festival, during a Tyler Hay concert, my husband and I spotted a fascinating-looking couple who…
Dear Mary: how do I stop our cousins’ dog peeing on the curtains?
Q. I have a friend whom I see quite often who keeps asking me if I will ‘get her invited’ for…
Dear Mary: how should I thank a friend for dead flowers?
Q. I left fashion school last year and since then I’ve spent most of my time applying for jobs and…
Dear Mary: what should I do if a fellow passenger is reading porn?
Q. On a recent short-haul flight, I had the misfortune to be seated next to a much older man who…
Dear Mary: how can I help pay for an expensive lunch without seeming rude?
Q. My husband and I (both in our eighties) recently visited a carpet shop with a view to replacing the…
Dear Mary: how can I get restaurants to turn off loud music?
Q. My husband never wants to go out to lunch on a day when he could be gardening but he…
Dear Mary: How do I choose who to sponsor for the London Marathon?
Q. For the past couple of years, many of my sons’ friends have been gamely running the London Marathon for…
Dear Mary: should I encourage guests to strip their beds?
Q. Our son, 17, who is generally a credit to us, has started eating with his mouth open. It’s the…
Dear Mary: how can I unmask anonymous marathon sponsors?
Q. My son-in-law is running the Paris marathon to raise money for cystic fibrosis research and has sent out a…
