Upon purchasing a villa in the South of France, I was entering the world of entertaining houseguests with my eyes wide open. As the French saying goes 'Villa dans le midi - amis pour la vie' which roughly translates as you rediscover dwindling friendships that weren't that interested in you when you acquire a villa in the South of France. I'm not new to welcoming people into my home, in 1999 I built a chalet in Verbier specifically to host lots of friends and the parties we have had in both places are unforgettable. Annoyances back in the chalet years didn't seem quite as bad as the new found villa ones, but that's probably because I was a couple of decades younger and tolerance levels were higher. There was little that couldn't be resolved with a night out dancing and the ensuing hangover.
So the disclaimer is, my gripes are light hearted, if you think you see yourself in them, it's all said with a pinch of salt and you're probably not the only culprit. For all my moaning, I love having friends to stay, we always have so much fun, but over the years, I've amassed a few likes and dislikes which many of you can probably empathise with and, hopefully, you all find amusing.
If you help out in the kitchen by cooking or emptying the dishwasher, I am more than grateful. But PLEASE try to remember where you got the grater from in the first place and put it back in a similar spot because opening every damn cupboard and drawer five times searching for it when I'm stressing over the stove is really irritating. If you don't know where it goes, LEAVE IT OUT, as I much prefer putting stuff away myself than having to play hunt the grater/masher/chopping board. Oh and if you think you're improving my kitchen organisation with your superior placement of afore-mentioned object, at least let me know so that I can scream at you and put it (and you) back in your place.
Talking of places, yours is the other side of the kitchen island. There are stools there, there are chargers there, and you can still access the fridge and snacks. Venturing over to my side uninvited is at your own risk!
'I'll cook tonight and you can relax.' I know you mean well and I genuinely appreciate you offering to cook, you are all (literally) great cooks. I must have subconsciously lopped the bad cooks off of my guest list years ago. But if you are going to ask me every 10 seconds where something is, how something works, or what you should be doing then it's actually not helping me at all. I'd literally prefer to be cooking than having my 'relaxing time' interrupted every 5 minutes while I demonstrate the hob, dig out a serving dish, show you where the spices/flour/oil is and try not to scream when you use my best china as a chopping board.
Please bear in mind that your hostess is 5ft nothing when you tidy away plates, glasses, and other every day items onto the highest shelves. There is a reason why those shelves are empty.
Stop telling me to just chill and take a break when the kitchen is a bombsite, someones toilet is blocked, I haven't had the opportunity to answer a single e-mail in 3 days and you've just emerged from 2 hours of sunbathing and reading your book whilst saying 'have you booked lunch for tomorrow yet?'.
When you say 'May I help?' and I say 'No it's fine' I am LYING. What I don't need is help along the lines of .... you come to my side of the island and get in the way whilst chucking some salad leaves into the wrong bowl. What I do need is the outdoor table wiping and cleaning, the terrasse sweeping, the bbq cleaning out, towels hung to dry not dumped in a wet lump, the pool robot put in or taken out and the table laying with knives, forks, plates, glasses, water jugs AND GODDAMN NAPKINS. (Please never ever put kitchen roll out in lieu of a napkin as it will ruin my entire day as I contemplate how we ever became friends in the first place). Open the damn wine, pour me a glass and make sure it stays chilled and filled. THIS is how to help me.
If you're in my home, then you've most probably been my friend for many years, in which case you know that I live alone. I never even managed to live with my husband way back in the early 90's and it's been all downhill since then. My last relationship (long distance obvs) was over 6 years ago. You all know that I have no children and have never shared my living space with anyone apart from seasonal house guests. So this one should be obvious but apparently isn't. SHUT THE FUCK UP. I can't handle your noise in the mornings. I can handle Abba blasting out of a bad portable speaker at midnight, but I cannot handle chit chat pre 10am. I try my hardest to empty the dishwasher silently not because I don't want to disturb your beauty sleep but because I don't want you to wake up and appear in my kitchen all perky and chatty. I want you to all stay in bed for as long as possible. OR - and I am equally happy with this, get up, make yourself a tea/coffee/whatever, say good morning to me and retreat back to your room, or laze in rosé corner or even sit in the kitchen with me flicking through your phone. I don't want to discuss this evenings dinner menu, or spend an hour dissecting where we might go for lunch or listen to you moan about your husband/kids/parents. We have all afternoon and all evening to bitch and dissect all your relationships - just not pre midday please. My mornings are for walking the dog, drinking tea, cleaning up the kitchen and (in a truly perfect world) listening to some crappy true crime podcast whilst doing the above. That's a stonking great clue by the way - if I return from Paco's daily morning walk and you spot me with my airpods in, don't start signing at me so that I have to take them out unless it's a medical emergency. If I have to take them out multiple times whilst you ask me irrelevant questions, you will probably get snapped at.
We will drink a lot of wine. I drink a lot of wine, and if you're my friend, you probably also drink a lot of wine. I am not a wine snob, but if there is one thing I have learned from my decade in the South of France, it is that our wine is cheap and therefore we don't have to buy the cheapest. The cost of a luxury bottle of rosé here is the same as a cheap and nasty Pinot Grigio in Tescos. The wine fridge will be stocked when you arrive. If you walk in the door boasting about how you will re-stock my wine fridge before you leave, then be aware of your consumption. You are my guest, so I would actually prefer you to buy me NO wine than to buy me 6 bottles of cheap plonk (oh my god the rosé is so cheap here - I hear you squeal) when you guzzled at least 2 dozen of my 'not so cheap' bottles. I cannot count the number of times I have had shipments (yup literal pallets of wine) delivered, then had an amazing week of fun and frivolity only to find myself looking at 6 bottles of 6 EUR rosé in the fridge when everyone has gone.
Going out to dinner. Most of you invite me out to dinner or lunch at some point during your stay, and that is great and lovely. Call me ungrateful, but I really don't think of that as a 'gift', I think that's just common courtesy. If you weren't here for a weeks free holiday, I wouldn't be eating out in restaurants alone so it's an expense I wouldn't have. I think it should be a given that when people stay at a friends house, (especially if you're a couple and drinking/eating for two and I'm very obviously single with all the bills that go with a house all to myself), then if we go out to eat, you pay for the host. Chances are, we're eating at home most of the time, because that's the whole object of a villa - dinners around the pool during balmy evenings listening to 80's tunes, that's what we all love. So if we do go out occasionally, please foot the bill. Anyone who knows me knows that I am not stingy, and I don't expect reimbursement for every expense of your trip, but cleaners, pool maintenance and de-blocking the septic tank because some teen flushed her tampon down the toilet all add up. I am sometimes gobsmacked when people come for a lovely week chez Carla, all whilst regaling me of the 'proper' holiday that they will go on later at vast cost before asking me 'are you going on holiday?' - errrrr I spend my entire summer entertaining you lot and my entire budget trying to keep the damn house functioning!
If you're on a special diet for medical reasons, I will do my utmost to respect that. I actually enjoy trying to find recipes that encompass peoples likes and dislikes. I'm quite fussy myself, so I totally get it. But when you tell me you're gluten intolerant but then inhale a pain au chocolat every breakfast, I tend to get a bit pissed off. If you tell me you're on a no carb, no dairy diet, and I make meals respecting that, then take your grubby mitts off of the baguette and cheese. Eat the shitty cardboard gluten free bread that cost me an arm and a leg instead. And if your kids only like kid food, that's also fine - I won't judge you (out loud) because your kids only eat pasta, cake and pizza. But don't pretend that they love veggies, and that you would never let ultra-processed food past their lips because I will take this literally and buy all the healthy stuff. Two days later when your kid is pale from starvation and you nip to the supermarket to buy him/her nutella snacks, I am left feeling guilty for undernourishing your kid! Don't tell me they love sushi when in fact they ate a cucumber roll once four years ago. I will happily buy them crisps, biscuits, burgers and other 'kid' food as I don't really give a toss what your kids eat because they're not my kids.
You can sunbathe as much as you want, in fact please sunbathe loads as that generally results in silence. But if you are a child of the 80's and have to shift your sunbed 5 degrees every 10 minutes because you firmly believe that otherwise your lower left armpit won't be as brown as your lower right armpit, then put the bloody sunbed back where you found it at the end of the day. If, for some reason, it has ended up halfway up the lawn because you think you will get 0.5% browner there, trust me, my lawn will be 50% browner very soon unless you put it back onto the terrace. Feel free to also sunbathe in other places, like the beach where they have waiters to serve you cocktails and restaurants to cook you lunch.
My bathrooms aren't the greatest, and apart from mine, they're not used that often. So if your sink/shower/bath/loo is blocked, or not clearing well, then for gods sake tell me because otherwise I will never know until something literally explodes. Saying 'oh I didn't want to seem rude and say anything' when the emergency plumber is elbow deep in gunge isn't really helping. How on earth am I supposed to know that your drain hole is clogged up with hair and doesn't drain if you don't tell me. And how about this for an idea? Ask me for some tools and clear the drain yourself. I am totally aware that the incriminating blockage may have nothing to do with you and it's a stinking job but you're supposed to be my friend. I don't have a handy husband, well I do - it's me. So if I can dig out shitty hair from a drain then so can you. And I will absolutely LOVE you if you do it. No matter how annoying it may be for me to learn that there is a damp patch in your room, or a broken tap, it's still preferable to not knowing. I won't blame you but at least I can try to get it fixed before the next guests come.
They say guests stink after 3 days a bit like fish. And I get what they mean. I sometimes encourage people to stay longer, and I'm happy for my villa to be your base down here, but that doesn't mean that I don't want a break. The villa isn't my home, it is my weekend escape. So if you want to stay for a week (or more) that's great but I'm not part of the package. I will happily hang with you a couple of days, then give you the keys for you to do your own thing and then I'll come back for a couple of days before you leave. But please don't guilt me into being with you the whole time (especially if you have children). This is not my holiday. This is your holiday. I have a job and other responsibilities and much as I would love to spend my entire summer sipping rosé and shopping in markets for the best olives around, I just can't take every day off when a visitor is staying. Oh and if you do bring kids, then please take your offspring off of the premises for at least 3 hours a day to give me time to clean up the mess they created and regain some sanity.
I have procrastinated over the post for years as I don't want to upset anyone so please please don't take anything personally, it's just a light hearted blog that I hope makes some of you chuckle!
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