YOUR PROBLEMS SOLVED
Dear Mary.. .
Q. I am a young female English painter and am having an exhibition of my paintings at the moment in Urbino. As a consequence, from time to time I find myself alone in the gallery. How can I avoid being an obvious sitting duck for the bores of the town who know I can't get away? They are usually middle-aged men. I look forward to hearing Your suggestions for any future show I may have.
I.R., Urbino, Italy A. Keep a fax machine near your desk or the place where you sit in the gallery. Feed into it, on the copy programme, an A4 sheet with the words: 'YOU NAUGHTY GIRL! I'M ON MY WAY ROUND' writ- ten in thick black felt-tip. When the copy has been disgorged from the machine, you can leave it dangling there, as though it is an incoming fax which has just arrived. Using this method, you will be able to see off bores by suddenly affecting to notice the arrival of the fax, then showing it to them. Oh no,' you can sigh and tut, 'I've got this really jealous boyfriend who keeps faxing me saying he's coming in to check up on me. For some reason he thinks I'm always being chatted up in here!' Q. How can one ensure that someone will enjoy the Christmas present one gives, rather than recycle it? My mother-in-law is a wonderful woman but her great passion in life, indeed her raison d'être, is saving money. It is frustrating to go to a lot of trouble to find her something she will love, and then learn that, due to a reluctance to spend 'fresh money', she has discreetly passed the present on to someone else. Last year, for example, I bought her the Cover to Cover talking book set of The Pal- lisers to listen to on drives to and from Edinburgh and found she had even passed that on. We are all given laughably unsuit- able things which have clearly been recy- cled. Last year my daughter, then nine, received mothball-impregnated drawer paper; my son of ten an adult-sized garden- ing spade `so that you can start building up a collection of gardening tools for when you are old enough to use them'. Needless to say, my dear mother-in-law is rolling in money. How can I catch her out this year so that we can put a stop to the recycling once and for all?
P.B., Yorks A. This year your mother-in-law's present should be a round box of chocolates from Charbonnel et Walker which you should hand over with the minimum of comment. Little will she realise that inside the box there is a personalised message — spelt out in square chocolates with raised letters and foiled in gold. The message runs round the edge of the box and you can have up to 50 letters. As you know she will be passing it on, however, why not restrict your outlay to the £34 box which allows 15 letters — quite enough for you to compose something personal? Six weeks later, sure in the knowledge that your box has been passed on to someone else, you can ring and enquire, `So what did you think of the mes- sage we spelt out on the Charbonnel et Walker chocolates?'
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