Chaperones again

Dear Hillary,

I see that you had someone write in complaining that they had to take a chaperone with them when going to dinner with a young girl he was interested in. Why complain? This is the sort of girl we all want to meet, not the money grubbers from the beer bar. This turkey doesn’t know just how lucky he is. Tell him to send me the details and I’ll happily go in his place. There’s a lot of guys like me who have been ripped off over the years, and to find someone who is living a sheltered life is almost too good to be true here. Stop complaining Dude!

Jealous

Dear Jealous,

You read the letter, but did you also read my reply? I said, “You are considerably older than her and have spent the past two years in the bar scene, by your own letter. If you want to progress with this relationship, you must not just agree for a chaperone to be present, but you should suggest it, when you do ask her out to that dinner or a show.” I was trying to get him to see just how fortunate he really was, but I think two years of “Hello sexy man. Come in please. Sit down please. You want beer? Another beer? By me drink. I wan go wit you. Pay bar for me?” was all too much. He is a lost cause, I feel.

Happy ending

Dear Hillary,

Where can I go to get a ‘straight’ massage? Every massage place I stop at offers me massages with “happy ending”. I have a longstanding back and right leg problem after an accident a few years ago, and a proper deep massage does seem to help. The other kind doesn’t. Any ideas Hillary?

Bad Back

Dear Bad Back,

What a lovely change, my Petal. Most of the readers who write in here have a middle leg problem and not a right leg (or left leg) one. ‘Physical’ massage is certainly good for all kinds of ailments, but you have to find a place that advertizes that it does ‘traditional Thai’ massage. Most of the big hotels have a spa and massage area, though they cater for the tourists more (and charge tourist prices). Tell any place you go to that you don’t want an oil massage, but want physical massage. Hope you feel better soon.

Face-off book

Dear Hillary,

How do I stop realtors filling my Facebook pages with offers that I don’t want? Is everybody like this? I thought it was supposed to be “social” networking, not business advertising. Or am I wrong?

Bewildered

Dear Bewildered,

Like you, I wonder just how some of the entries appear on my page. “Friends” that I’ve never heard of in my life tell me that they are going to or have been to places I have never heard of either. I used to moan about this, but then I was shown the ‘magic button’. Scroll down the left side of the page until you come to an entry called ‘Unfriend’ and hit that. In an instant, your ‘friend’ you have never heard of disappears like magic in a puff of ethereal smoke. Use it frequently and you can even become giddy with your new-found power. Enjoy!

Hairy problem

Dear Hillary,

After putting it off as I was so busy, I just had to get a haircut or a violin. Since I can’t play any musical instruments at all and don’t want to take violin lessons at my age, I went to my usual barbers, to find it was closed. This was something new to me, so I drove around to see the next one, and it was closed as well. Asking around with my friends, I was told that all barbers close on Wensdays (sic) and it was a Wensday (sic) that I was looking at getting the locks shorn. Can you tell me why they all want to shut on that day? I had to spend the rest of the afternoon in the pub instead. Is it a government rule or what?

Just sign me Harry the Hair.

Dear Harry the Hair,

Aren’t you lucky, it was just the Bar-ber that was closed, and not the Bar-beer! That would have been a national disaster. Pre-warning Harry, the Thai national elections are coming up and the Bar-beers all have to close, so you and your drinking mates should lay in a stock of the amber fluid now to get you over the election days. Your friends were correct, by the way. The barbers do close on Wednesday (write out the correct spelling 100 times, Petal). It is not a government (write this one out 100 times as well) rule, but comes from the fact that we consider it to be bad luck to cut your hair on a Wednesday, so the clever barbers may as well close, rather than spread the bad luck. It is something like the old religious edict of “no meat on Fridays” overseas, which gave the butchers a holiday as well. Don’t go looking for a gold shop on Saturdays either. That’s their holiday.