Q. I am 85. Until I was 60 my friends
would say, ‘How are you?’ From 60 to 70 they said, ‘How are you keeping?’ After 70 they asked, ‘How are you keeping now?’ My mother, who lived to 97, would answer, ‘Much better, thank you, since I got a refrigerator.’ Please tell me a polite reply, especially to the now frequent farewell, ‘Take care!’ R.D., Hertfordshire A. It is a regrettable feature of our healthand-safety-conscious times that the injunction to ‘Take care’ has replaced the more neutral and less anxiety-inducing vale of ‘Goodbye’. I can only suggest you answer
the call to ‘Take care’ with the jaded riposte, ‘It’s much too late for that,’ much in the manner of Richard Beeston, once the Daily Telegraph’s man in Washington, who, when invited to ‘Have a nice day’, rejoined drily, ‘No, thank you. I have other plans.’
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