England

The Germans stampeded into the house, overwhelming me with the element of surprise. ‘Incoming!’ I shouted through the main staircase window into the farmyard to alert the builder boyfriend, who was haying the horses. A car was unloading two couples – double the amount of guests I was expecting. They came at me all at once and piled up the stairs, and I ran behind protesting that there were too many of them. ‘It is no problem! They sleep with us!’ said the woman who had booked, as she and her very tall husband and their two friends crowded into Room 4. An en suite double, Room 4 is very comfortable and rated five stars, but I doubt you could fit two extra Germans in there. Two extra Chinese maybe. The BB came running and looked fit to burst.

The French socialist must have burst her bladder getting a litre of percolator coffee down her to stop the Dutch couple getting any, but she managed it. She was more than a socialist, actually. I think she was one of those continental communists. ‘Why can’t we all just ’ave what we need an’ live in peace, uh?’ she asked me at one point, with the obvious answer, ‘Because you hate everyone and pilfer everything,’ but I couldn’t say that and I didn’t want an argument with her because she was pretty feisty. Pretending to be Irish for two weeks was wearing me out but I kept it up because I feared she would boil over if she found out I was Crème anglaise.

The French couple did not speak much English so I rattled on in my best French, thinking I was doing a fine job. She asked the usual question, how long had we lived in this lovely house? And I assumed she was assuming we were Irish and it had been in our family for generations. Guests always like to think this and I don’t like to completely disabuse them of it. They’ve come to West Cork for an authentic experience so I massage the Englishness out of the BB and me as best I can, on a customer service basis. My usual shtick poured forth, therefore, in my best French. And my best French ought not to be too bad. I once lived in France, in a village near Orléans. I was 18 and had fled home at the first opportunity, as young people used to do in those days.

Sir Tom Stoppard, who died last week, never wrote a memoir, but he did sort of speak one. Just over ten years ago, he told me that he and his new wife, Sabrina Guinness, had become tenants of an old rectory in Dorset. I asked him if he would therefore speak as guest of honour at the AGM of the Rectory Society, a fan club for existing and former clergy houses which I invented in 2005. The AGM always takes place in a central London church, and in 2015, the year I invited Tom, it was held in the Queen’s Chapel beside St James’s Palace. Beyond expressing a tepid wish that speakers make some small reference to the society and its purposes, I never specify their subject.

‘Good news for patriots,’ said one of our most celebrated national newspapers this week: ‘Your numbers are likely to swell.’ This was on the editorial page, where the opinions of the paper are laid out, and it referred to a poll conducted by ‘More in Common’ which had found, to everyone’s surprise, that British teenagers are pretty patriotic. About half of all 16- and 17-year-olds feel proud of their country, it found, which is more than their parents. It was an interesting poll for anyone considering the rise of Reform and how that might interact with the incoming slew of teenage voters. Interesting too for those of us in liberal London, trying to keep the flickering pilot light of patriotism alive in our children’s tiny, K-pop-infested minds. (What’s K-pop?