YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
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Dear Mary.
Q. My house is remotely situated. It is so far from the nearest habitation that the insurance company (I have a lot of valuable furniture) has agreed with the police that it is pointless to install the usual burglar alarm as, by the time they have raised themselves from their well-deserved sleep, the burglars will be in the next county. Have you any suggestions, Mary? •
Name and address withheld
A. Why not fix up the inside of your house with an electronic announcement system, programmed to respond to unexpected human bodies by booming out the message, 'Your presence has been detected and you have been photographed. If you will please leave the premises I will take no further action. If you continue, you will be shot by our automatic firing system.'
Q. A very charming friend of mine runs a local Suffolk pub. She is particularly under- standing and patient with all the sad and tired local middle-aged men. One particularly sad customer whom she cannot offend insists on telling her the same tedious story every night towards closing time, when he's reached capacity and she wants to shut. All she has
managed so far is tq say to him that she has to close, but to tell her tomorrow, which of course he does. What can she do to stop him without pain whilst preserving her sanity?
Suffolk
A. Next time the man in question comes into the pub she should say, 'I've been thinking about that story you started to tell me last night. It's given me the idea of starting to compile a collection 'of some of the best stories customers tell me, so I won- dered if you would tell it to me again from the beginning today and let me record it with this tape-recorder I have ready here. Who knows? A cassette of pub stories could become a bestseller!' Next time the man starts on the story again, therefore,
she can wave the recorder at him, saying, 'Oh no, please don't. The first version was so brilliant you couldn't improve on it!'
Q. I am a bachelor. I regularly receive invi- tations to the houses of friends but have been fairly negligent in reciprocating. In a bid to rectify matters, I have now organised a ludicrously grand dinner party for ten people who, I have now realised, will not get on. As I owe them all hospitality I can- not cancel them, but I would willingly pay a large sum of money not to be there myself. Any suggestions, Mary?
Name and address withheld
A. Why not invite another two people, then when your guests arrive, the caterer's can come forward to welcome them, saying that you present your compliments but you realised at the last moment there would be 13 at the table so you have done the decent thing and gone out to a restaurant yourself? You will join them after dinner. In the mean- time, they must make themselves at home. Your absence will ensure that a mood of classroom-style anarchy takes hold 'and by the time you return the assembled company will be getting on like a house on fire.
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