Our resident relationship counsellor

Every time we have people over for dinner, my brother takes it upon himself to explain my job to the table. He does not know what I do. He has described me as being "in logistics, broadly" to a room that included two of my actual colleagues. I have corrected him four times now, in private, and each correction seems to make his version more confident.

You are dealing with a man who has built a cathedral on sand and is now selling tickets to it, and sand does not argue back. Correcting him in private was your error: a private correction is a secret you have agreed to keep together, and he has filed it under flattery. The remedy is the dinner table itself. Next time he begins, you agree with him loudly and then extend it. Tell the room you are also responsible for the tunnels. Let him nod. In my performing years I shared a dressing room with a man who told everyone he was a trained stuntman for eleven months, and the lie ended the afternoon somebody handed him a rope and simply waited. Hand your brother the rope, and be kind about it, because the silence does the work and you only have to pour the wine.

A friend of mine redecorated her hallway in a colour I had been talking about for nearly a year, and I cannot let it go. I know how this sounds. I had the paint chart, I had shown her the paint chart, and she has now got the exact shade on the exact sort of wall, and everyone who visits her says how lovely it is. I have been in that hallway twice and both times I said nothing and felt enormous.

This is not about a colour, and we both know it, so let us stop pretending we are discussing paint. What happened is that she took your idea out of the drawer where you keep your good intentions and she put it on a wall, which is the one thing you did not do. The pain is not theft, it is being overtaken by someone holding your own map. My advice is specific: paint your hallway a better colour within the month. Not the same one, a better one, chosen quickly and badly if necessary, because a decision made in temper is still a decision and the wall will not know the difference. Then invite her round and say nothing at all about it. A woman I counselled in Haddenham did exactly this and reported that the silence in her hallway was the most eloquent thing she had ever owned.