your problEMs solvEd
Dear Mary
Q. I have caught a cold from a senior member of the royal family. I feel sure there must be ways in which I can turn this to my social and/or financial advantage and I admit that I have deliberately been sleeping in a draught in order to prolong the symptoms. What do you suggest, Mary?
Name and address withheld
A. There are very few socially acceptable ways in which one can market such a condition or even use it to boost one’s status. For example if anyone said ‘Bless you!’ when you sneezed, it would be quite wrong to then remark on the provenance of your cold. Where charitable fundraising is concerned, however, it is a different matter and, if you act quickly, you could offer your services at some Tatler-y party. You could charge £50 a time to allow snobs eager to have this sort of rare intimate contact with royalty by baccillae to join you in a claustrophobic overheated booth within the party. The takings could then go to charitable causes and tongues would wag as to how you were in a position to catch the cold in the first place. Naturally you would refuse to be drawn on this issue.
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