Q. My brother, who lives in southern France, uses unsavoury words to gain my attention, such as ‘infernal swine’, ‘schweinhund’ and ‘w****r’. Being somewhat genteel myself, I am reluctant to engage in verbal fisticuffs across the ocean. His literary aspirations, I believe, may have topped off with the Biggles compendium. What strategy, Mary, would you suggest I follow to maintain some fraternal friendship yet decrease the negative tone?

— Name withheld, Toronto

A. Tell him you have got new software on the computer which has an annoying habit of obliterating words it does not like. This makes his emails sometimes difficult to read. For example, he said that ‘x is a complete [something]’ but there was just a blank there, what did he mean to say? You guessed he might have meant ‘gentleman’?

Q. Each time I go to mass in my local church, the priest is monopolised afterwards by a man with tousled hair who doesn’t seem to realise that other parishioners are queuing behind him, all waiting for a word. This man’s behaviour seems very selfish and un-Christian. The priest is clearly too kind to know how to move him on. How can we and the others deal with this? — E.S., Sussex

A. Quietly arrange that two or three of you, when you get to the priest and the lingerer, say loudly to the priest ‘I’d love to have a word when you are less busy’, and variants of this. This will help jolt the priest-blocker from his complacency and let it dawn on him that in this scenario, the first should be last. Specifically, he would do well to wait till the priest’s decks are cleared before coming forward himself for a lengthier session.

Q. The other night we went out to a private view of paintings. My husband was wearing trainers for various reasons. Afterwards, as we began to drive home, we noticed a really revolting smell in the car. My husband, realising he had stepped in dog mess in the dark streets around the gallery, immediately threw the affected (brand-new) wedge-soled trainer out of the window. Mary, we had some miles to go before reaching home, but I still felt he acted too hastily and that the gesture, although amusing at the time, was wrong on all sorts of levels. What should we have done?

— J.F., London SW12

A. You are right – it was an anti-social act to put this toxic litter into the public arena. It was also a waste of money. You could have sealed the toxic trainer in a plastic bag and hung it from a wing mirror before turning a jet hose on it once you got home. At least your account of the incident has served a useful function, since it may partly explain the mystery of why there are always so many single shoes at roundabouts.