‘You could mow all this lawn here and it would look a treat,’ said the arborist, returning from a stroll around the grounds, which were looking resplendent in the sunshine.
‘Yes, yes, mow the grass. Good idea,’ I said, for the builder boyfriend has told me I have to agree with the customers. No matter what they say, no matter how obvious their suggestions, just smile and say ‘Good idea.’
Old houses are like horses. Passing strangers feel ownership of them. Once they encounter them, they proclaim how they would care for them, because they decide from their soulful look that the owners must be neglecting them – when the truth is the owners slave day and night for them, getting nothing but a good kicking for their trouble.
So I had to bite my lip as this latest guest, from Wales, informed me that the lawns needed mowing. ‘Believe it or not, this is one week’s growth,’ I said. ‘Ireland, you see. Rain and sun. Rain and sun.’
‘How much land you got here?’ he asked. ‘Only seven and a half acres,’ I said, ‘and the horses graze most of it…’
‘You wanna get yourself some goats,’ he said, standing with his hands behind his back in front of the multicoloured hedgerows. The gardens were a blaze of exotic colour too, sloping away to two hilly fields where the four horses were grazing. It was a little picky to look at this sumptuous scene and point out the lack of goats as an issue.
‘Goats yes, good idea,’ I said. ‘We did think about goats, to eat the nettles.’
‘And you wanna put some yurts in. A big yurt in that circular garden there where you’ve got the bench. You don’t want a bench. You want a yurt. People pay good money for a yurt.’
‘Yurts, yes, good idea,’ I said. ‘We did think about yurts. Only he’s got quite a lot on, what with renovating an eight-bedroom house and two coach houses…’
‘And cut back all this lot here,’ pointing to my favourite tree. I said: ‘That’s a Chilean lantern tree.’ ‘Yes, cut all that back. You wanna get yourself some machinery.’
I told the BB and he said I should ignore it. Then the Welshman cornered him over breakfast and I could hear the BB saying ‘Good idea’ over and over. I knew what was coming. He waits until they’ve gone.
The arborist left on Sunday morning. Sunday, as it happens, is the BB’s day for mowing the grounds. With the guests gone, he got cracking with his enormous mower and had the acres of formal gardens looking manicured again in no time. When he finished, he stripped off for a shower in the downstairs bathroom and stood in the altogether shouting, in his best cockney ranting voice: ‘I tell you what eh. Thank God that Welsh fella came. His suggestion of cutting the grass has made an amazing difference. I kept wondering what that red machine was in the middle of the barn! You must send him a message and thank him.’
I could hear him ranting away to himself as he had his shower. ‘A right Einstein he was. He knows what he’s talking about. He should take over running the place.
‘I mean, he’s been here a night. He knows everything about it…’ And he veered into volleys of expletives, as colourful as the abundant gardens.
The builder b enjoys it. I don’t. I hear myself making low growling noises. The arborist’s girlfriend told me I should charge more. ‘That room was amazing,’ she said over breakfast. ‘The shower was lush. The house is gorgeous. Look at this message I just sent my friend: “Stayin’ in the most amazin’ Georgian country house. I feel like Jane Austen. You never seen anythin’ like it!” That’s what I said to my friend, that is. Why you charging so little?’
‘Because you won’t pay,’ I growled very quietly, as she sliced the butter block almost in half and pulverised it skilfully on to a single piece of toast. ‘People want a lot for their money,’ I said out loud.
The man from Hawaii also informed me I should be charging more. And he said it so often that in the end I told him he was right. The prices were going up. Whereupon he inserted this caveat to his suggested pricing regime. He wanted to book the best room in the house for another two nights, because he liked it so much, and he wondered if he could pay me a bit less, for cash.
‘Maybe,’ I growled. He said the only thing was, he was out of euros and he didn’t want to incur the exchange rate or have the bother of going to the post office in the village, so would I take dollars? ‘What?’ I shouted. ‘Everyone loves dollars,’ he said. ‘You can spend them when you visit the States.’
‘Listen here,’ I said, for he and I had struck up a good rapport. ‘You’ve gone from telling me to put my prices up to you don’t want to pay me what I’m currently charging to offering me dollars when I’m about as likely to get a trip to America as hell freezing over, so that’s the equivalent of not paying me at all. I’m never going to Florida, or New York, or Hawaii. I’m stuck here trying to run a West Cork B&B with customers demanding marble minibars and gold tea bags for €60 a night, and haggling me down while telling me I should put my prices up.’
‘Hey it was just an idea,’ he said. ‘I’ll book it online. You can send me a special offer, right?’
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