Your Problems Solved
Dear Maly Q. I am the chairman of a charitable foundation that owns a couple of wild animal parks in southern England. Recently one of our more generous donors shot a leopard while it was feasting on its prey in Tanzania at a reputed cost of £25,000. Our parks specialise in breeding endangered species and with some success returning them to the wild. What should I do — relinquish all contact to emphasise my disgust at his dastardly act or tell him that he should contribute at least double his usual sum to our charity as a penalty?
J.0., Kent A. It would be an own goal to relinquish contact with such a generous donor. Instead, why not organise a lecture on wildlife conservation at the Royal Geographic Society and invite him to make a cameo appearance to talk the audience through the costs involved in shooting such a leopard. No doubt he will welcome the chance to boast of his derring-do and will accept your invitation. However, as word spreads of his impending performance this donor's friends will inevitably round on him, querying the paradox of his advertising such an outrage while under a conservation umbrella. Daytime television, they will say, is the best place for such a confession, not the hallowed halls of the RGS. When he telephones to ask you to set his mind at rest you can say, Tes, perhaps my request was ambiguous. I wasn't really talking about the financial costs, the f25,000, but about the costs to the environment.' Then suggest, 'But why don't you go ahead and give the talk anyway and then tell the audience you are going to make amends by financing a private jet with attendant medical team and everything else necessary to return a replacement cub to the bush?'
Q. I recently organised a `cookathon' at my cottage in Wiltshire: a number of young people interested in food and wine agreed to join in for the evening and everyone cooked one particular pre-arranged dish.
It was a great success and we plan to repeat this every six months. However, the question I have, as host and organiser, is what do I do with the leftover ingredients? (There wasn't much food left over, thank goodness.) Do I put it in plastic bags and make sure it goes home with the person who brought it? Keeping it in my larder will make me appear greedy, which is the last thing I want.
M.K., Mildenhall, Wiltshire A. It would strike the wrong note were you to be left with a food mountain made up of lwcwy items. Neither will you want to throw out the leftovers, not just because the waste would be morally wrong but also because of the new rat-promoting system of dustbin collection. Giving back individual packets of leftovers would be petty — one mouthful of lwcwy cheese worth £3.50 for one guest, two organic parsnips for another — yet it would be well worthwhile for one young person to take away the entire collection of leftovers. Therefore you should issue free raffle tickets at the beginning of the evening and at the end draw a winning ticket from a hat and donate the entire leftover collection to one grateful youth.
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