Sue Limb writes:
The Chinese have a saying, "Fish and visitors begin to stink after 3 days". Three days! With me it's more like 3 hours. What stamina the Chinese must have. Visitors ... the very word it's like a knell. It's like a prickly, uncomfortable, looming word like invigilators and inspectors. I suppose when you're young, staying with people can be fun. At 20 sleeping on your friend's sofa is a novelty. By 50 it has become an Olympic event requiring months of training!
One becomes more territorial and primitive with age, I find, and territorial violation is what causes all this visitor angst. Home alone you eat popcorn off your naked paunch as you watch naff TV. You can leave dirty dishes in the sink, swear in technicolour, yawn, scratch and burp like an ape. But long before the visitors arrive you have to start pretending you're civilised. Your vacuum cleaner is roused from it's sleep of ages, the old bedsheets, which have come to resemble a kind of low-budget Turin Shroud, must be ripped off and replaced by flawless, crackling white linen.
The first half hour is the best. How lovely to see them! How well they look! How diverting the gossip! You enjoy making them a cup of tea and getting out the cake you bought from the WI stall. You really want to nurture and cosset them but as the afternoon begins to set around you like concrete, the awesome responsibility of supper begins to be felt.
The next morning they're still there - in the bathroom just at the very moment you most need it. Of course visitors try very hard to be considerate, but there's a hair's breadth between visitors being considerate and helpful and visitors being critical and patronising. "What does she mean, shall I do the vacuuming? Does she think the place is dirty? Is she trying to score a point".
Three days can seem like forever. The second evening one begins to feel that a visitor is for life, not just for Christmas.
