Dear Mary: Should I give weekend guests paper napkins or napkin rings?

Q. I have a hatred of paper napkins – eating outside, they blow away; inside, people drop them on the floor and my dogs chew them, making a horrid mess. I love the old-fashioned way of giving weekend guests napkin rings but our friends tend to drink too much and can’t remember which is theirs! We have a lot of people staying for Christmas – what is the answer?

– A.E., Pewsey

A. Many companies now will embroider names on to pretty napkins which you can give your guests on Christmas Eve and not only can they keep them for the whole festival holiday but they can take them home with them, hence saving you washing them. Designer Izzy Granger, among others responding to the eco-imperative, has some exquisite examples in soft European linen.

Q. I am introducing two people who have never met but live in the same small village. Do I give them each other’s numbers so they can travel together? What if they don’t like each other and are then trapped into making the return journey?

– Name and address withheld

A. If it is lunch, it is a good idea to save emissions by introducing the pair in this way. So what if they don’t like each other? Unless one is going to stalk the other, there are all sorts of dividends to be reaped further down the line from even superficial bonding with a near neighbour. It will do them good to be introduced. If dinner, a shared car journey is riskier. One party may be thirstier than the other and reluctant to leave when the end should be nigh.

Q. I rent a house in the country from a land-owning friend who charges me an affordable rent, but is fairly demanding in that he likes me to turn up at ‘court’ when it suits him. Word has reached me that he is holding a lunch party on the same day as another near neighbour, with whom he doesn’t get on but who happens to be one of my oldest friends. I am bound to be invited to both lunches. I would rather go to the old friend’s but word will get back to my landlord if I do and he will take a dim view. Ditto the response from my old friend if I don’t go to him.

– Name and address withheld

A. You will be able to attend neither party. As soon as the invitations come in, comb recent death announcements in the Telegraph in search of the most socially obscure entry whose funeral is on the date in question. Write back to both putative hosts saying how much you would like to have attended their party but, as they may have heard, John Smith has died and his funeral, as luck would have it, is on that day. Make yourself scarce on the day in question and, if probed as to who John Smith was to you, say chokingly that you would rather not talk about it.