Ireland

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.

‘Can I go now?’ said the farmer I was talking to over my gate, and he looked so scared I felt a bit ashamed of myself. I had flagged him down as he went by in his rickety blue tractor that’s so old it looks like Noah used it to load hay onto the Ark. I told him I hadn’t seen him for a while. He usually waves or comes in for a chat. He has been our favourite neighbour since we moved to West Cork. As he owns the land above us where our water well is situated, that’s all to the good. We went out of our way to befriend him from the get-go, but after deluging him in home-baked fruitcakes and offers of dinner, for he lives alone, we realised he was our sort of person anyway.

As the eco-tourism season got under way, the confused-looking French people began to arrive. They come to see ‘la nature’, and they insist they don’t mind about the rain or the terrible food, or the fact you can’t actually access any of this nature because it’s all owned by strapping great Cork farmers who won’t let you near it. After a few days, their faces suggest they’re getting a tad disorientated, but they don’t want to admit it. First there arrived a very nice couple from a town in northern France where the builder boyfriend and I had one of our most memorable holidays together. As I served them their breakfast coffee, they asked where they could go for a walk, for they had tried in vain for days.

‘Something I like to do with all my tables is ask what brings you here today?’ said the young waiter as he sat us down and began to talk. If I’d known he would still be talking nearly two hours later I think I would have got up and walked out. We were in a lovely riverside restaurant in Warwickshire for my mother’s birthday. But we were going to have to run the gauntlet of being served by a smiley young man who was under the impression that everything was about him. He was pale, long-haired, very tall and thin and bendy, as if a gust of wind would blow him over. He didn’t look like he had the strength to serve our lunch, never mind fight a war. That’s something I ask myself whenever I meet a man in his twenties. How would he fight a war?

As the first Americans of the season got out of their car I scrunched up my face and groaned. ‘They’re all like that, remember?’ said the builder boyfriend. ‘What if the bed gives way?’ I demanded. ‘How will they even fit in the bed?’ The BB shrugged. ‘Who cares?’ he said, with his usual sunny attitude. I don’t mean to suggest these people were overweight. I mean they were giants. I’m sure their depth was right for their height. There was just an awful lot of them, and we are not the Premier Inn, with super-king beds that sleep two medium-sized horses. She was in sportif wear. He was tousle-haired and bearded, dressed in a flowing shirt and baggy trousers.