I have just bid farewell to my uncle and his dear wife who stayed with me in my single man’s abode for a delightful few nights on their holiday from Australia. They have gone on to rest for a couple of days in the country before returning on a flight home soon-ish. My dilemma is in finding a pair of ladies drawers apparently drying as laundry on the bedroom radiator and am unsure of how to correctly respond. My options appear to be “bag, bin and silence” or “hoohah, letter, envelope and the post office”. I suspect that I know the answer but my step-aunt, being so delightfully Australian and possibly lacking my queasiness, might appreciate a clue as to “all’s all right with the pants, mate”.

Keith Rayment, Anonywhere

Let us not be shy about step-aunt’s knickers. She is grown-up and Australian. They are less hung-up about underclothes in Oz than we are. Pack them up, post them to Australia, with a loving and humorous card. The humour depends on your relationship with uncle and aunt. But the relationship sounds affectionate not stuffy.

Dear Mr Howard,

Am I correct in adding an antecedent when sending emails?

Bill Bond, AnonyMousehole

Dear Mr Bond, Whether to begin an e-mail with a preliminary address is not a matter of correctitude, but of convention. E-mails are so recent that we are still establishing their conventions. Their function and virtue are speed and conciseness. Therefore, we should cut the cackle and get to the courses. It is unkind and impertinent to impose more words than we have to on our poor recipient, standing under a Niagara of spam. Therefore, I should leave out the introductory “Dear Mr Howard”, and stick a headline in caps at the top, signifying the message content. Be brief and businesslike, Dear Mr Bond.

As a three-year-old I was taught at school the correct way to hold a knife and fork via the simple expedient of being rapped across the knuckles with a steel ruler the first time I toyed with them. Painful but effective. Can you then please tell me how it is that 90 per cent of elderly people that I see eating out hold their knife with the penholder grip? And, more to the point, is it important? It drives me potty, which concerns my wife who suspects my mutterings are the signs of agrowing paranoia.

Bill Bond, AnonyMoushole

To hold the knife like a pen is considered bad table manners in the United Kingdom. It looks a bit like the behaviour of a cowboy. This is merely a polite convention, not an aesthetic issue. It is not important. I know that correct handling of eating irons was drummed into previous generations. Nanny, granny, mother, father whacking elbows of child painfully on table, shouting: “All joints on the table are meant to be carved.” The only exception is that a fish-knife is conventionally held like a pen. You have been well trained in polite table manners. But I should not let the lapses of others drive you potty. Let us be tolerant of the bad behaviour of others, in the hope that they will be tolerant of ours.

At a wedding ceremony, a young soprano sang Ave Maria so beautifully that I could not help but clap. Is this a correct thing to do?

S. E. T., Forest Row

Clapping during a wedding service has become common. Whether it is considered correct is a function of age and upbringing. There are those who find it offensive to applaud during a religious sacrament. But I do not suppose that the Almighty objects.