Dishwashers

‘Data-free vegans incoming by taxi,’ I texted the builder boyfriend, to alert him to the possibility of triple trouble. Quadruple really, for they were also American. The young eco-tourists from the West Coast didn’t want to switch on roaming on their phones, for they were interrogating me about the route by text while at the airport. I knew they were lefty environmental types because when the girl booked she told me she was travelling to Europe to learn about ‘natural building’. After the course, she and her boyfriend would be heading to Ireland for what she called ‘some misty time’. I don’t know whether that was a euphemism for sex.

The solar panel fitter was eating his fried breakfast when the talkative vegans came into the kitchen. They surveyed his plate of bacon, eggs, sausage and black pudding with a look of disgust before helping themselves to cereal, which they doused in the soya milk they had gone to the supermarket to buy, because I refuse to stock milk alternatives. What people eat is now a political issue hotter than the Middle East. It would be easier and safer for me to ask a B&B guest’s views on a two-state solution than say: ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ When I ask a guest what they want for breakfast, the

‘Please do NOT wash up!’ reads the makeshift sign I have fixed above the kitchen sink. It instructs our B&B guests to leave their dirty dishes on the side, which sounds ridiculous. But we cannot convince anyone to put their plates and cutlery in the dishwasher any more, because they all seem to have bought into the latest conspiracy theory. The Canadian was making his way through a plateful of eggs like Cool Hand Luke. He was very young and good-looking, so watching him devour eggs at my kitchen table elicited mixed feelings in me. I couldn’t be cross, given how lovely he looked as he performed his bowel-defying feat.

‘Please do NOT wash up!’ reads the makeshift sign I have fixed above the kitchen sink. It instructs our B&B guests to leave their dirty dishes on the side, which sounds ridiculous. But we cannot convince anyone to put their plates and cutlery in the dishwasher any more, because they all seem to have bought into the latest conspiracy theory. You may think anti-vaxers like me are annoying enough. But please give me credit for never being so barmy as to become an anti-dishwasherer. The anti-dishwasherers are way worse than the anti-vaxers for a whole host of reasons. So far they seem to be flying under the radar of the