Nat Locke: I don’t want to seem inhospitable, but the thought of hosting fills me with pre-emptive exhaustion

An article popped up on my feed the other day lamenting the demise of the house guest. And my initial reaction was . . . good!

I don’t want to seem inhospitable, but the thought of hosting someone who isn’t say, my niece, just fills me with pre-emptive exhaustion. There’s all the cleaning, to start with, and the stocking of the fridge with things that I wouldn’t normally buy, like milk. I’m sorry, OK. I just don’t drink milk. I make up for it by eating cheese, though, so don’t be too concerned for my bone health. But I digress. All of the preparation is just a bit mentally draining on top of my energy-sapping working hours.

And speaking of working hours, then there’s the fact that every morning I have five alarms screaming at me to get up at 4am, and given that my guest room is next to my bedroom, I would have to be concerned about my noise waking them up. Because I might be a terrible host, but I’m at least considerate.

It’s not like it’s a foreign concept to me, though. My childhood was filled with cousins who would visit for a couple of weeks over the Christmas holidays. My mum would fly into accommodation mode, and foam mattresses would appear from nowhere to take up any available space. Bedroom floors, lounge room floors, the back lawn. Kids would be strewn everywhere. The fridge would be stuffed full of industrial amounts of polony, because we had to eat something, obviously. And for two glorious weeks we would just muck around. There were no structured activities, no official outings, and no pre-booked holiday entertainment. Basically we just took turns annoying each other until someone would cry, and then we’d start again.

There were even a few years when a family — old friends of dad’s if my memory serves me correctly — would turn up in their caravan and stay on our lawn for a couple of weeks with their three kids and sometimes some of their kids’ friends. Might I point out, we had exactly one bathroom with a woodfired hot water system and one toilet. Were we peeing in buckets? Did we just not shower? I have no recollection. Maybe we were too busy playing ping pong.

These days, the notion of your family holiday arrangements revolving around the entire tribe decamping to a relative’s house for a couple of weeks is definitely dying out. We’re more likely to take the whole mob to Bali and let them run amok in the Kids’ Club while mum and dad drink cocktails by the pool. There are more toilets, for starters. And fewer air mattresses.

Still, every real estate listing describes a “guest bedroom” so where are the guests? Full disclosure here: I’ve been more than willing to accept the hospitality of friends and family. I stayed with a friend who was living in Switzerland for a few days which helped with the astronomical cost of visiting that country. Honestly, it’s comically expensive. In exchange, I took a swag of Tim Tams and Caramello Koalas (and yes, taking chocolate to Switzerland was very brave of me). I’ve also stayed with my cousin who lives on a gorgeous little storybook farm in rural Denmark (the country, not the town down south) and her hospitality was extraordinary, including (but not limited to) driving to the next town when I got on the wrong train, doing my washing, and forcing me to watch Top Gun: Maverick. See? Above and beyond.

When I travel to Melbourne, I have a plethora of friends that I could stay with, but these days I would much prefer to stay in a centrally located hotel. Partly it’s because I know I won’t get in the way of my friends’ morning routines and nor will they be able to judge me for sleeping in until 10am if I want to. And hotel staff politely clean my room while I’m out adventuring.

But if you are going to have house guests, might I recommend my friends Sally and Andy? They were driving their caravan around on a big adventure a couple of years ago, and I offered to put them up for about five days while they were in town. They were completely self-sufficient: I didn’t have to entertain or cook for them and we had a swell time drinking wine and gossiping. As a final coup de grace, Andy (who is one of those incredibly useful people) went about fixing everything that needed it. He repaired the wobbly toilet seat, hung several pictures and sorted a dripping tap.

Now that’s my sort of house guest.