I am having a headache trying to organise my first work dinner for the girls at the office. Our office is split into different sections and there are far too many people to invite everyone. So I’ve tried to restrict invites to those who come into contact with our department. But I’m worried word will get out and I’ll be the target because I’m the organiser. How do I do this politely, without hurting anyone’s feelings and without ending up with a ridiculous number of people? Jennifer Punda, Australia
Hospitable Herodotus! This is a common office problem. There are always going to be disappointed wannabes on the fringes of such a thrash who are miffed not to receive an invitation. It is a compliment that your department is so popular that everybody wants to come to your party. But you have to cultivate a thicker skin if you are going in for organising office entertainment, which is something of a corporate poisoned chalice. All that you can do is to decide on the maximum number that you can include. And allow for a certain amount of slippage for hard cases and unlucky omissions. Explain to two of the most gregarious gossips whom you do invite your problem about pressure of numbers. Rumour will soon get around the office. All sensible girls will understand that it is not possible to accommodate everybody. The insensible and non-sensible may still feel miffed at not getting an invitation. But that is their problem, not yours. Those who organise office entertainment have to cultivate sensibilities as smooth as a peach on the outside, and as tough as a peach-stone inside. Have a jolly party.
My boyfriend and I are going on a short trip with a (female) mutual friend. However, she has neglected to book a room in our hotel, which is now full. She is asking if she can share ours. I am not very happy with this arrangement, as my boyfriend and I were hoping to spend at least some time alone together on the trip. Would it be bad manners for us to suggest she just finds a room in a different hotel? M. L., Leicester
Not bad manners, but perhaps a bit ungenerous, unsisterly and uncollegiate. Your friend is a Foolish Virgin who forgot to bring oil for her lamp, or rather to book her own room in advance. What bad luck. That is her fault, not yours. Nevertheless, on occasions we all behave as fecklessly as Foolish Virgins. We share possessions, sometimes even our bedrooms, with our friends. That is one meaning of friendship. And we have to put up with the folly of our friends, as we hope that they will put up with our follies. You must consider sacrificing your own pleasure in order to accommodate your friend. You need to discuss this with your boyfriend and also with your mutual female friend. Explain your feelings honestly and simply. If you decide that you don’t want to share your room, help your friend to find other accommodation nearby. Make her feel included in your jaunt, not a cuckoo in your nest.
When being served by a clerk, shop assistant or librarian et al, is it bad manners to watch what they do as they ring up the till, type on the keyboard etc? I’ve often considered it better to look away and not scrutinise their actions, but other people seem to gawp fixedly on what the clerk is doing. Do you have any suggestions? Kevin Jenkins, Sydney, Australia
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It is not bad manners but common prudence to pay attention to shop assistants when they clock up your shopping. I dare say that all shop assistants in Sydney are scrupulously punctilious and honest. But in London, alas, cases of over-charging and credit card fraud are not unknown. The good shopper pays alert and cheerful attention to the accountancy of his purchase. He watches the transaction, reads the bill, and the receipt and the credit card record. He does so not in a suspicious or snooping way, as though he were a Government inspector, but with friendly alertness He does not need to gawp fixedly. But he has a right and a duty to observe what is going on, carefully not accusingly or aggressively. He may make trivial conversation as he does so, to indicate generosity not suspicion. That is professional shopping.
What is the best way to deal with a neighbour who constantly wants to “borrow” things (and not just cups of sugar either)? I don’t wish to be unfriendly but it is beginning to get on my nerves. Dorren Gibb, Chelmsford
Calm down. Pacify your nerves. Resign yourself to the universal truth that some neighbours are useless providers. Try to think of it as a (two-edged) compliment that your neighbour always assumes that you are a prudent housekeeper, who can be counted on to have a bit of olive oil/ salt/ milk in the cupboard to spare. The cost of a splash of olive oil or a pinch of salt is small. Good neighbours are more important than petty accountancy. You could consider making mildly humorous observations about your neighbour’s improvidence. But I doubt it. She knows this already. (Why do I assume that neighbour is a she?) Sarcasm butters no scrambled eggs for supper. I should write off such petty borrowings to neighbourliness, and cultivate your reputation for generosity. Generosity is a virtue. Meticulous petty accountancy can be a vice.
A friend of mine just got married. We were quite good and close friends when working together in Paris. I have moved back home to Scandinavia and since then (two years) we have been calling and e-mailing each other quite regularly talking about personal things. However, she did not tell me she was getting married and I learned about it when she suddenly started to call her boyfriend “my husband”. I also learned about her newborn baby via this strange way. It is a very awkward situation: should I acknowledge the marriage and the baby by sending a letter or something to wish them well? Should I be offended? Or should I understand that actually I am an “acquaintance” of hers and not a “friend”? I find it quite hurtful. Name and address withheld
For Juno’s (patroness of matrimony) sake don’t take the huff. Of course you should write your friend a loving letter of friendship and congratulation, and include (I think) a present for her baby. We do not know what turbulent storms of Life and Love have swept your friend into marriage and mummydom, without letting her friends know what was going on. There are circumstances that make all of us interrupt the even tenor of our routines. Friendships do fade. Absence does not necessarily make the heart grow fonder. Do not take offence. Do not feel offended. Resist the temptations of hurt pride. Polish your old friendship with generosity and understanding. Friendship matters much more than the formalities of etiquette and social life. Friends are the most important companions on our journey in this Ship of Fools.
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Is it ever correct to wear a necktie rather than a bow tie at a black tie event? I was a last-minute guest at one of the Cambridge balls, and as I couldn’t lay my hands on a bow tie wore a necktie instead (with a white shirt). I may have imagined it, but I think I got a few disparaging looks. Marcus T., Witney
Well, a daytime necktie with a dinner jacket is certainly unconventional wear. I might even go so far into proscription as to pontificate that it is never “correct” in any circumstances. In your circumstance of being unable to lay my hands on a proper black tie, I might (in a cowardly way) have tried to conceal my incorrectitude either with a dicky black paper bow, or by tying a subfusc normal tie in a bow. But at least you made a bit of an effort at tiemanship. You did not turn up tieless with exposed Adam’s apple. Those who gave you disparaging looks (if they really did, and you did not imagine them, as I would have done, through social embarrassment) were behaving badly. It is extremely bad manners to comment (even by indirections and glares) on what we consider to be the “improper” dress of others. Sly snobbery by social prigs. And almost any dress is excused the impoverished and feckless young at a May Ball. What matters is not your neckwear but your ability to enjoy yourself and to give your fellow-dancers a happy time. When youth and pleasure meet to chase the glowing hours with flying feet, perfectly tied black ties are almost irrelevant.
My next-door neighbour owns a motorbike that he is continually revving up outside my house. The noise is atrocious and it is driving me bonkers. However, I can’t realistically ask him to stop riding his bike. Any advice on what, if anything, I can do? J. M., Southampton
You must do something, rather than let the noisy motorbike drive you bonkers. Good relations with one’s neighbours are important in close city living. And if that is really impossible, non-bad relations. You must speak to your neighbour, in a neighbourly not a condemnatory or whinging way. Preferably over a neighbourly drink at the local or in your house. Neighbour must not assume that you hate his little tin god of a motorbike. There are people (count me as one) who detest the noisy and dangerous beasts. But we must conceal our dislike of other men’s dear enthusiasms. At all costs do not let this situation degenerate into noisy neighbour rage. We all have noisy neighbours. Good grief, some of our neighbours may be driven bonkers by our Mozart, if not our bikes. In the last resort, buy some earmuffs as worn by tractor drivers and operators of pneumatic drills. I tried that in our noisy office once. Hopeless. Satirical wags continually tapped on the earpiece to ask what pop music I was plugged into.
In your most recent column, you used the word “po-faced” and I was most pleased because David Bowie used this word in an interview years ago to describe someone I had once known and I have not been able to define it all these years. I know it’s derogatory, but what exactly does it mean? Bruce Boyers, Glendale, California
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Po-faced means with features as blank as the appearance of a po (English schoolboy slang for a chamber pot, which has a handle but no other features). English slang since 1900. Terence Rattigan used the phrase in French Without Tears, 1937. But the Lord Chamberlain (who knew it, and remembered using it as a boy) objected, and “pie-faced” was substituted by the actors. Po-faced became a 1960s elastic form of disapproval. It seems to equate with “square”, “establishmentary”, but also with “hearty”. Debs and book-reviewers popularised it. The phrase was found in literary supplements and heard on the radio. It implies that the po-faced has features that are bland or blank, set, socially correct, immobile of expression. The term suggests a social supercilious mask of a face that, unreasoning, claims deference by hauteur. It is a class brickbat used in reflection, i.e. disapproval, by and of upper classes. Quintin Hogg referred to the Prime Minister (Harold Wilson) as po-faced. But the context suggests that he was confused with poker-faced.
As a further follow up to the overbearing colleague, who shares intimate details of their love lives with workmates, perhaps the response should be a loud cry of “too much information!” I have heard this phrase used on numerous occasions in similar circumstances and it seems to work. David Robinson, Huddersfield
Excellent. What a useful and witty ejaculation to cut off an intimate Niagara of gush that we do not want to hear. It may cut off the flow in a humorous way without causing offence. I will remember your phrase and must adopt it.