social humour
Dear Mary: How can I greet friends without clashing specs?
Q. As an old trout, large in height and breadth, I have taken a leaf out of the documentary Advanced…
Dear Mary: Another way to deal with a maddening blackhead
Q. Might I suggest an alternative solution to E.B. of London’s problem (3 October) about the person sporting a ‘maddening’…
Dear Mary: How can I make visiting friends realise it is a burden to take them to see the sights?
Q. I am an impoverished artist living in a famously cheap European city, largely for reasons of economy. I love…
Dear Mary: A horrid woman accused me of hogging a spare train seat
Q. I regularly travel on the Ashford-St Pancras train and usually put my case on the seat next to me…
Dear Mary: how can I resist peer pressure to go nude swimming?
Q. I am going on a late holiday with a group of people who are keen on nude swimming, which…
Dear Mary: How do you persuade your drunk friend to leave a party when the taxi arrives?
Q. How do you persuade someone drunk to leave a party when it doesn’t make sense for them to stay?…
Dear Mary: I don’t want perfumed people to hold my baby
Q. Is there a polite way of not letting someone hold your baby? I love giving mine to people to…
Dear Mary: I was at the dinner party when the text came disinviting me
Q. While renting in Rock last week, I ran into an acquaintance who invited me to join her large house…
Dear Mary: How to give a dinner party and still get an early night
Q. I socialise in Shropshire every weekend and regularly give dinners which end at 2 a.m., but it’s a different matter…
Dear Mary: What can I do about my neighbours’ downmarket recycling?
Q. Since recycling was introduced in our village, the wall at the end of our drive has become the depositing…
Dear Mary: Help me hunt down my priceless missing book
Q. A scholarly book of great importance to me appears to have gone missing from my library. It was heavily…
Dear Mary: How can I make sure I get frisked at airports?
Q. An architect is overseeing some builders at my house. She is a perfectly nice woman but has a maddening…
Dear Mary: Do I grass on my son’s schoolfriend?
Q. My son was invited, both verbally and via Facebook, to a schoolfriend’s 16th birthday party. However, when I met…
