When one has had new carpets fitted should one ask visitors to brush their shoes on the doormat, or remove their shoes and suffer cold feet? Or is it correct to line up pairs of ill-fitting slippers in the hall? Which comes first in life — relaxed friends or clean carpets?
Lin Howard, Bournemouth

Relaxed friends come before spanky clean carpets, of course. Brand-new carpets must, like chimney-sweepers, come to dust. Children, dogs, visitors, yourself and the changes and chances of this mortal life will see to that. But friends mature with age and usage. To force them to take off their shoes, for other than religious reasons, can be pushy in English society. If you must, do so with humour and a self-deprecating smile about being such a carpet puritan.

Am I showing incorrect Etiket by wearing greenish suede shoes with my rather shiny office lounge suit?
Mark Pickering, Birmingham

Greenish suede shoes might be taken to state: “I am a Bohemian, possibly gay, and I do not care for your old codgerish conventions.” We live in an Age of Self-Expression, I should wear comfortable shoes and blow the material. I wear black boots with my office suit. The laces are too long, but how do I shorten them without losing the metal tags at the end?

On several occasions when my wife and I have been invited to a meal by a friend, one or other of us has been violently ill afterwards. How can we politely insist that in future he always comes to eat with us?
Adrian Neil, Weymouth

How good is this friend with the dodgy cuisine? You must bite the bullet, and take it in turns with your wife for one of you to nibble a roll when you go to him, on the grounds that one has lost one’s appetite. Or explain that you have developed family agoraphobia, and never eat out. I guess that a good friend is worth more than an occasional puke.

It used to be considered bad taste to wear black socks with anything but a dark suit. Since the war the wearing of such socks with weekend clothes has become standard practice. I think it looks horrid. It probably arose in the days of post-war clothes rationing.
Wing-Commander T. C. F. Hudson, Buckingham

I dare say that you are correct, Wing-Commander. Jeeves would purse his lips. But vestimentary prescriptions and conventions have relaxed. To wear black socks with weekend kit shows poverty, both of sock drawer and colour-coding sense. Better to follow Einstein: “When I was young, I found out that the big toe always ends up making a hole in a sock. So I stopped wearing socks.”

Frederica Huxley, Looville: “A minor point of order in May 10’s Modern Times: Americans always refer to the ‘jon’, never the john.”

Chambers, Oxford and Partridge give “the John” for the privy. Partridge: “. . . probably a pun on the dialect Jack’s house or on Jack.” PH

Sonia Gable JP, BSc, ARCAS, ATII, Postscriptville: “With regard to the order of placing letters after a person’s name, your reply last week differs from the advice of the Ministry of Justice with regard to the placement of letters designating the appointments QC, JP, DL and MP. The Ministry says these letters should follow orders and decorations conferred by the Crown and precede university degrees. I wonder if you might clarify further.”

I take my position on letters after the name from Debrett’s Correct Form. The Ministry of Justice seems frivolously revisionist. PH