After the Fawlty Towers incident, I decided it was best to research the origin and extraction of all future B&B guests on arrival, before the builder boyfriend got stuck in.
You may remember that he accidentally on purpose got a piece of gaffa tape caught on his top lip and held some ceiling felt at a jaunty angle during the stay of the Airbnb customers from Bavaria.
Thankfully, they were in another room and didn’t see but I had to shush him because he was making a bad job of whispering, ‘Don’t mention Brexit! I mentioned it once but I think I got away with it!’
A girl from Taiwan and a gentleman from Zimbabwe then came and went with no major incidents.
But when a young chap from Israel booked in I thought I had better be careful. He said he was from Tel Aviv, but that didn’t give me a definitive answer for how I should instruct the BB. In order to say ‘No jokes about x,y,z’, I would need to know beyond a shadow of doubt.
I got lucky, however, when, a few hours after his arrival, I delivered fresh towels to his room and saw his suitcase label, with the written side up. I looked up his address on the internet and found that he lived in a street named after a celebrated Mossad spy. I texted the BB immediately: ‘No jokes about Ariel Sharon or occupied territories…’
The guest was delightful and turned out to be a chef. He was flat- and job-hunting in London, wanting to settle here permanently. With little to do while he was not working, he set about cooking us delicious meals. As he knocked up chorizo sausage and mash with onion coulis one night, he and the BB got chatting and he told him he fancied going up north for a night on the tiles in, say, Manchester or Newcastle.
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