Eddy writes:

Dear Sir Charles,

My girlfriend and I are not getting along anymore. We fight about some of the stupidest things. She does not have very good communication skills. She wont tell me if there is something wrong. I keep telling her that she needs to tell me if there is something wrong. How can I get her to open up? She has not had any meaningful relationships.

Eddy

Sir Charles replies:

Eddy, my lad,

Ah yes, my boy. 'Tis always the case. She has not had any meaningful relationships. And yet you have, have you not, Eddy?

Eddy, I sense you are a boy with vast capacities of experience to draw upon. There was that two-week note-passing relationship you had with a girl in algebra as a sophomore, wasn't there? And you always thought your cocker spaniel had the most soulful brown eyes, didn't you?

You've had the kind of love only a boy can have with his right hand and a copy of the 1997 Victoria's Secret catalogue discovered in the cigarette ash-sprinkled stack of magazines on your mother's loo, haven't you, Eddy?

One advises you give the girl a bit of a break, my boy. Man of the world though you may be, not everyone lives their lives at the frenetic pace of a born heart-breaker.

With distinct sympathies for the girl, one remains,
Sir Charles Grandiose

Jenny writes:

Dear Sir Charles:

I'm having problems at my job. I just seem unable to get into it, you know. I know I need the money and any job's better than one, but making orange juice is really really boring. I'm thinking of some other occupation but I really don't know what else I'd be good at.

What should I do?

Your fan,
Jenny in Florida

Sir Charles replies:

Young Jenny,

You will, my girl, never keep that job at the orange juice factory if you don't learn to concentrate.

Calling for a rimshot to accompany that inestimable set-up, one remains,
Sir Charles Grandiose

A stable lad writes:

Dear young Penelope Windsor-Smythe:

O young Penelope Windsor-Smythe,
As soon as from me you get a whiff,
Directly you wish to ride away
On such a lovely beautiful day.

And, I fear, I am not quite complete,
To ever really ever compete,
With that dastardly blacksmith of old:
Sir Colin Bates, his name is I'm told.

I do not ask for marriage;
Just to attend your carriage.
I would feel happy as friends;
But of course it all depends:

On whether you would like me
And if Sir Charles would not strike me,--
A flogging to death would not be good,
Losing my stead in the neighbourhood.

What am I saying? O, I do not know.
Of course I will help you, at the horse show.
Now of these fine verses, I will take my leave;
Be not full of curses; why not go and weave?

Love,
A stable lad

Young Penelope Windsor-Smythe replies:

Dear stable boy,

Sitting in my Silver Rolls,
I read your letter, thinking, "Foals
Really need a stable boy
To feed and groom them. Oh what joy

To receive, from grubby hand
A letter from a foreign land!
A letter from a willing boy
Who on our staff would find employ!"

But then I thought, and took it back.
Of gentility, I sense a lack.
It does sound harsh: I'd rather spit,
Than hire a Yankee piece of utter commonness who didn't even have the courtesy to send one a photograph of his manly thighs or a letter of reference!

Frostily, one remains,
Penelope Windsor-Smythe