‘Where are you off to now?’ I asked the fellow from Hong Kong as he and his wife stood in the hallway ready to leave, their many suitcases beside them.
At first it sounded like he said ‘Ukraine!’ very cheerfully, but he couldn’t have said that, obviously, so I asked again. ‘I mean, now you’re leaving West Cork, where are you off to next on your holiday? The Ring of Kerry? Killarney? The Cliffs of Moher?’
He stared at me like I was stupid. ‘Ukraine!’ he said, and then when I stared back he shouted: ‘U-KRAINE! You know Ukraine? Big war Russia Ukraine! Ukraine?’
‘Yes, I understand you keep saying Ukraine, it’s just that I was under the impression you were on a road trip around Ireland.’
‘Yeah we go Ukraine now!’ said the wife, who spoke very little English.
I sighed. It had been a long 24 hours. The couple from Hong Kong shouldn’t really have been wandering around Ireland in the winter. I had been about to shut up shop until March. I was just going to block the calendar on the booking site when the reservation request for one night came in, and in order not to spoil my response rate, I took it.
But really, what on earth would anyone want with Ireland at this stage in the year? I look out the window and the mushroom soup has descended. You can’t even see the nearest line of trees. The days are suddenly so short we barely get a few hours of daylight, and some days it doesn’t get light at all.
Aside from seeing the Northern Lights on a clear night, which is a wonder to behold from this depopulated location, there is very little to recommend a trip here until the weather breaks.
But the couple from Hong Kong turned up late one night, looking confused and tired. They drove the wrong way around the drive, then parked their car the wrong way round by the fountain, blocking the front door, then tried to bring their bags inside by pulling them backwards.
I understand Chinese people. You just have to stay calm and say ‘no toaster’. You cannot overreact
Suitcase after suitcase after suitcase. We had this with a pair of Chinese girls who brought so many suitcases I lost count, and then they somehow got me to take the entire contents of these suitcases from them and do all their washing for them for nothing.
‘What are we, a bloody Chinese laundry now?’ said the builder boyfriend. It took a hell of a lot of time in the tumble dryer and by the time I was done I reckon their stay probably cost us money, if anything. But the girls were so sweet, and when they left they gave me a hair slide in the shape of a bow, which they presented to me very formally, in a sort of goodbye ceremony in the farmyard.
They insisted on a photo of all three of us, me standing there with this bow in my hair. And they kept emailing me letters with their news and pictures of their small pet dogs long after they went back to China.
When the couple from Hong Kong came through the doors with five or six suitcases, therefore, he barking a lot of questions about whether there was a toaster in the room, I quickly shut the BB in the kitchen with his dinner. I understand Chinese people. He doesn’t. You just have to stay calm and say ‘no toaster’. You cannot overreact. The last thing we needed as the season closed was a stinking review because the BB came at a Chinese couple ranting: ‘You better not want that lot washing!’
As it was, he only glimpsed the suitcases through the kitchen window, and when I came back down from checking the couple into their room, he told me: ‘They better not want that lot washing!’ Which was better than him saying it to them.
They didn’t want anything washing, actually. But they did want a lot of questions answered, about how the shower worked, and the lights, and the key to the door. And the next morning, they wanted a lot of breakfast: all the different kinds of cereal, fruits, yoghurts and a full Irish fry-up, and toast.
And then he asked if I had an English muffin. Which I did not. And then he asked me to heat two bowls of milk. But they were sweet enough, as they munched through all the clashing foods they were enjoying once they had established it was all inclusive.
I kept telling myself it was the last booking of the season. One more satisfied customer review, and I could close until March. So I made all the small talk, and after they had breakfasted for two hours, I answered their questions as they wandered about the drawing room pointing at paintings, and an old chair she liked – and what was the name of that bush in the garden? I could have said ‘Dunno’ but I said it was a Chilean lantern tree, which it wasn’t, and this pleased them. ‘Aw!’ she said.
I thought it would be a nice way to wrap up and ease them towards the front door to ask where they were off to next. But I was only half listening. People always say Killarney or the Cliffs of Moher or Mizen Head.
But he said: ‘Ukraine!’ ‘Show me on the map,’ I said, racking my brains for somewhere Irish beginning with U. But he shook his head at the map of Ireland and walked to a coffee table where I had a world atlas. He opened it and pointed. I leaned in and squinted. His finger was hovering over Ukraine. ‘Yeah and then here…’ He pointed at Bulgaria. ‘And then here…’
His finger jumped left and landed on Spain, then down to Morocco. ‘…and then here…’ and his finger jumped right and landed on Hungary. ‘But surely you’d do Bulgaria then Hungary,’ I said, though that was the least of it.
‘No! Bulgaria, Spain, Morocco, Hungary! Then back to Hong Kong!’
‘What about London?’ I said.
‘We did London before here, and before that United States!’
These people were having the worst holiday ever. You couldn’t design a worse one. How long they’d been travelling the world backwards with half a dozen suitcases, I had no idea. I didn’t want to ask.
But they were very happy with their rainy night in Ireland and wanted to book in again for next year.
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