YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Dear Mary.. .
Q. I recently went abroad for a weekend with someone I would describe as both a friend and an employer. I had never trav- elled with him before and I had no idea he would begin to offload many hundreds of facts, sometimes quoted directly from a travel guide. Needless to say, whenever he told me something I nodded heartily, secretly wishing he might soon talk about something else. Which he did not. And my only recourse of action was to suggest gen- tly that we walked about separately for sev- eral hours. This, I calculated, would dis- tance me from both his facts and his increasingly palling company. He took my suggestion as an affront; so, being sensitive to friendship and employment, I said he was probably right, that we should stay together as much as possible and I had been mistaken. From that moment, my lit- tle holiday became a circuit of physical and mental endurance. Please help me by sug- gesting how I may escape a travelling com- panion's company for a few hours without causing loss of friendship and loss of employment. It would also be very kind if you added advice on how I may avoid a constant flow of facts when I am unable to hide from them. B.C., Putney A. My solution to your most enjoyable problem is that you say you are obliged to get fit for a sponsored walk/ father's race/ marathon or something similar. You there- fore have to jog for several miles per day. Obviously, you will have to jog until you are out of his sight, but you may then relax into a more leisurely pace and enjoy the plea- sure of solitude without giving offence.
Q. Every morning in my household starts off badly, as my husband keeps trying to `hang on' to his sleep. This means that every five minutes or so I am shouting at him from the foot of the stairs with increas- ing irritation while he says, 'I am up' or `You've no idea how tired I am.' It always ends with me having to explode before he will actually rouse himself and get out of bed. Meanwhile, I am in a furious mood for about half an hour. What can I do about it, given that my husband genuinely does seem to feel comatose in the morning?
M.W, Marlborough A. One way of curing your husband of this teenage behaviour would be to make a one- off tape-recording of yourself shouting upstairs of a morning. The following morn- ing, you then set the tape a-going in a play- er positioned at the bottom of the stairs. Turn the volume up. This means your hus- band will have to come down in order to turn it off. Meanwhile, you may get on with enjoying your breakfast in peace.
Mary Killen
If you have a problem, please write to 'Dear Mary, The Spectator, 56 Doughty Street, London WC1N 2LL.
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