20 AUGUST 2005, Page 47

Q. The other night I went to dinner with a

new friend. We stayed up talking until 6 a.m. at which point my friend showed me into a double-bedded guest room where I lay like a log between cool linen sheets for all of two hours before getting up again. I was unsure how to leave this bed on which I had made so little impression so I remade it neatly. Was I right, Mary?

M.B., Boar’s Hill, Oxford A. This was downstairs, rather than upstairs thinking. It was not up to you to decide whether to change the sheets or not. On aesthetic grounds, it was considerate of you to remake the bed but in any case your £5 tip on the dressing table would have alerted housekeeping that the bed had been slept in.