inotify: Separate query sending logic from Server starting. Use a decorator around the public statusquery method of Client: start_server(query_to_server): try: query_to_server() except QueryFailed: [error recovery, inotify Server (re)starting] query_to_server() This way, introducing a new xxxquery Client method is easy: one has only to code the protocol part of xxxquery, ignoring errors, and decorating it using start_server to handle server recovery and (re)starts