YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Dear Mary. . .
Q. Apropos your reply to the letter (24 November) from the lady with the curmudgeonly husband, I have to tell you I was always taught that it is milk that comes in crates, and that champagne comes in cases.
G.D., Maidstone, Kent A. Thanks to you and to other readers who wrote in to chastise me. Of course, you were not to know that I was replying to a reader in Ireland, where, colloquially speaking, champagne comes in crates.
Q. Some friends of mine are coming to dinner. The husband is spoiled by his wife, and is insisting on my buying wine worth £15430 a bottle, which he implies he is used to at home. He says that when he last came to dinner he had headaches the next day. None of my other guests has ever complained about this. I have discovered that mutual friends who entertain this couple regularly buy wine costing £7 per bottle maximum. I do not want him to make a scene at my dinner party, which will contain two single men with whom I may want to have further dealings. Should I perhaps stick false labels on the £7 bottle to deceive him?
Name and address withheld A. The wine writer Rory Ross suggests that you decant two bottles of wine, one expensive, the other cheap. Tip off your tricky guest that you have done this and will be serving
the cheaper one to the rest of the party. Only towards the end of the meal, when you have bonded well with the two single men, should you claim to have discovered that you have muddled the two decanters.
Q. This year I am short of money and short of time to shop for Christmas presents. What shall I do, Mary?
Balham, London SW12 A. Simply give everyone a 'Mobile Protection Chip' at £20 each. These garden-pea-sized domelettes claim to use 'eight carefully selected natural gemstones, containing 16 common elements which synergistically attract to themselves the electromagnetic fields created by mobile phones', thus protecting users against their adverse effects. My medical adviser has studied the literature. He says that he does not see how the MPC could possibly work, but in my view it is worth buying anyway. The accompanying leaflet pro
vides convincing evidence of efficacy in the form of before-and-after Polycontrast Interference photographs'. As the domelette adheres to the front of your friends' mobiles, it will remind them of you all year long, of your hopes for their safety, and of the dangers of mobile overuse. MPC: 01747 850435; www.mobileprotectionchip.com Warning: some readers may find the next problem offensive.
Q. My new boyfriend has a large blackhead in the centre of his back of which he is unaware. My natural urge is to expunge it, but I feel it would be rather revolting and unromantic to do so at this early stage of our relationship. In the meantime, I find it difficult to concentrate fully on his charms. What shall I do, Mary?
S. G., Sudbury, Suffolk A. Buy pore-cleansing strips from Almay. These look indistinguishable from Sellotape. Leave bits of Sellotape lying around your bed. Claim to have been wrapping Christmas presents, and make a show of sweeping them off before mounting the bed with your boyfriend. Once he is asleep, apply a moistened pore strip to the affected area. In the morning you can rip it off, complete with blackhead plus stalk. Yawn as you comment, `Sellotape . . . stuck to your back.' In this way, romance can remain intact.
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