Home From Home

~ tidalscribe.com

Staying in someone else’s home is the topic I chose for our writers’ group when it was my turn this week. It covers a wide range of experiences from world leaders being the guests of royal families, to school children going on sleepovers, so I am expecting them all to have come up with a piece.

I have stayed in many homes, sometimes those of strangers. As the eldest in the family I was often farmed out to make way for visiting friends and relatives. Looking back now, senior me would be appalled at the thought of sleeping on a stranger’s living room floor with several friends. Last week I did sleep in an office; modern working from home means spare bedrooms have become offices. However, the sofa bed was very comfortable and I did have exclusive use of the shower room next door, except when boys were having showers or going for a …

How kind were the many people who put me and friends up on various travels. Nowadays I prefer to be the hostess not the guest and we have had many people to stay over the years.

Whether you are staying or having visitors, the bad experiences are more fun to write about.

Worst Sleepover

My younger son and his best friend, plus a boy we had never met, were taken to the speedway by BF’s Dad. They enjoyed the evening and the sort of takeaway food you can get away with when there are no mothers around – this fact is relevant to the story.  They then came back to our house to get settled into sleeping bags in our son’s room.

At 3am our bedroom door was flung open and son announced that the ‘other boy’ had been sick in his sleeping bag.

Worst Christmas – also involving vomiting.

My friend and I left Perth, Western Australia, having cadged a lift across the Nullabor Plain with a family friend. Our final destination was Tasmania. My friend being a laid back Aussie country girl assured me her various relatives would be happy to put us up. Our first stop was her aunt in South Australia for Christmas. They had an apricot farm near the Murray River and another aunt lived across the road. They also owned a shop down in the town – relevant fact.

They welcomed us in the lead up to Christmas and we planned to leave on Boxing Day. Christmas Eve proved eventful as the aunt across the road was having a miscarriage and my friend commandeered our driver to take Aunty to hospital. I was left alone to look after her other children, who I had never met before, in a house I had never been in and feed them.

Christmas Day was very pleasant, but that night my friend and I were awoken by the most horrendous noise. Our driver had food poisoning… what we subsequently discovered was that other visiting relatives had noticed one of the freezers in the family shop was dodgy and had warned each other not to touch the chicken.

We set off for Melbourne the next morning with my friend assuring our poor driver he would be fine. We made it, but I succumbed to the food poisoning the following day.

At some stage we bade farewell to our driver and went to stay with another aunt and uncle in a posh house. After a couple of nights we took a coach to Sydney where we stayed in a Girls’ Friendly Society hostel. We had to sign back in before midnight, even on New Year’s Eve. We then returned to Melbourne for a planned second short stay with the aunt and uncle before our flight to Tasmania, but they had mysteriously disappeared on holiday!

With no money set aside for accommodation we wandered into a respectable Christian bookshop in the city and asked a young shop assistant if she knew any cheap accommodation. She replied that her father had just gone away for a few days and she would be delighted to have some company to stay as she did not like to be alone.

What are your best or worst experiences of staying in someone else’s home? Take this quiz to find out if you are a good guest.

Your host is lactose intolerant, vegetarian and teetotal. Do you arrive with

A  a homemade vegan cake you have made especially

B  a lovely bouquet of flowers

C  a bottle of wine, box of chocolates and pork pies from ‘our lovely farm shop’.

One person in the family has to get up very early and catch a train to work. You always wake up early so do you

A  Check the night before what time they go out the door, so you do not get in their way. Hide under the covers not making a sound in case they worry they have woken you up.

B  Dash in the shower and hope you are out before they want to come in the bathroom.

C  Get up to make a cup of tea for both of you and take the chance to have a nice catch up chat.

Your host is cooking the evening meal, do you

A  Peep round the kitchen door say ‘You don’t want any help do you’ and retreat quickly.

B  Ask if there is anything you can do and keep out of the way of the cooker and the cook while you peel the potatoes as requested.

C  When the cook says ‘No you go and watch television, I don’t need any help’ insist on helping and showing how you usually do the potatoes and catching them up with all the latest events in your life.

All Cs, I am away that week, sorry, though I do like chocs and wine…

All As and Bs I’ll just check the calendar…

All As  You are welcome to stay

35 thoughts on “Home From Home”

  6. I much prefer to stay in someone else’s house, but I have a rule to always check that there is sufficient paper on the toilet roll before using a stranger’s toilet. I find having guests at home too disruptive now I am older, though at one time I was happy to have a houseful, with someone sleeping on both sofas too. These days, I recommend nice, reasonably priced hotels or pubs with rooms nearby.

    Best wishes, Pete.

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  8. fun stories, but unlike you, I’d rather be the guest than the host. and how kind of that shopkeeper to invite you to stay with her. She must have had a spirit of adventure about her. Did you happen to stay in touch with her at all?

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  9. We’re lucky we can arrive with our own fully self-contained accommodation, so long as our host doesn’t mind a lorry parked out front, which is not always a given…

    We have turned up at a few friends’ houses – one alerted the local neighbourhood watch, most of whom came to have a guided tour of The Beast. I think they rather liked it!

    I’m happy being a host – which was just as well when we moved to Bournemouth. Living in such a beautiful place, it’s unsurprising that we had house guests most weekends!

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    1. Hello Robbie, I’m sure lots of us will agree. I laughed at the ‘half the night bit’ everyone has different ideas of when bedtime is, with guests unsure when to announce they are going to bed, or unable to get away from chatty hosts!

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  13. We stay in hotels these days. We still host people at our house, especially kids and grandkids even though we offer to pay for other lodgings for family. We had a permanent bed and bathroom in the attic at middle son’s house when their children thought it was haunted. Eventually the teenage daughter decided a haunted bedroom was okay. We prefer the hotel and motels anyway.

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  16. Crikey, those sleepovers!! Like another reader below, I’m all for the nearest hotel when it comes to visiting people and staying over. Having a bit of breathing space to relax always feels nice.

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  17. I once stayed with a relative abroad and went to have a shower one night but the water was ice cold, not running hot. Everyone had gone to bed and I didn’t want to disturb my host. Not great 🙃🚿

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