YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Mary..
Q. I have an incredibly busy and enjoyable social life which is marred by only one fac- tor. I seem incapable of writing thank-you letters to people until it is almost too late to send them. I attribute this failing to the fact that I am a journalist and therefore have become conditioned to a sort of deadlinitis as regards writing of any kind. I seem only able to produce if someone is breathing down my neck or cracking a whip. Obvious- ly no one is going to crack a whip to make me produce a thank-you letter, so what can I do about it? The guilt is ghastly.
A.H., London W11 A. Why not pop along to your office post- room each Friday and have some blank postcards franked and date stamped? You can then take these back to your own desk and use them in date order, re-introducing them into the postal system as and when you get round to writing them. No one in Britain will be surprised to receive a card or letter four weeks after it was posted, though it may be more convincing if you have your cards franked as second class mail. Q. As a frequent visitor to the United King- dom from Australia I am faced continually at cocktail parties or dinner parties in your country with the question: 'Oh, you're Aus- tralian. Do you know Clive James?' When I answer firmly in the negative, my interlocu- tor, rather than changing — or allowing me to change — the subject normally proceeds to describe an incident from a Clive James show, or in many cases the entire show, making frequent allusions to the hilarious nature of it. I have never found any of the incidents or programmes so described to be in the least bit hilarious. I become increas- ingly stressed and have often felt a pro- found inclination to smash my glass of nor- mally warm champagne over my interlocu- tor's head. I wish to avoid committing such a faux pas. Please advise me on a suitable strategy.
E.D.G., Darling Point, Sydney A. Before your interlocutor has a chance to get going, snap back, 'You are English. Do you know Jasper Carrott?', before pleasant- ly changing the subject.
Q. With reference to last week's problem about fathers in charge of little girls who need to go to lavatories in public places, I am a father of three girls and offer my own solution. I have found that while there are invariably queues for both male and female loos there is rarely a queue for the lavatory provided for the disabled. The trick is to dash in leaving the door slightly open so that a genuinely disabled person can turf you out at a moment's notice. I recently used this solution in Brancaster, Norfolk. No one objected.
C.M.B., SE11
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