It’s the holiday season, when people stay in each other’s houses, and so there’s the annual question of how much you have to share-provide-explain-avoid.
Some things are obvious. If you leave your premises to another, they do have to know where the keys and the loo paper are to be found. But how much of your lifestyle need you explain? Do you have to warn them about tiresome neighbours? Run them through the best shops? Tell them where you’ve buried the bodies? The only ones we’ve ever had are wounded birds knocked off by the cats, actually – about whom my infant son, having helped plant bulbs, asked: “When do these come up?” (To which my husband said I’d missed a trick by not saying: “On de great gettin’ up mornin’”.)
Probably anyone left in an unfamiliar home should have the number of a helpful neighbour and a local minicab. And if I’m staying with someone who’s out to work all day, I need their number to be able to call and say: “A man’s delivering a big package and says you ordered it, and wants a tenner.”
You can pick up dozens of new ways of eating and passing the time but still feel good coming home, not just because you’re rested and tanned but because it’s such a relief to be back where things are as you planned them, and you know where everything is.
What do you think? Have your say below
