Since we moved into our house on the Greek island of Mykonos a few years ago, I've come to accept that if you own a home on the beach with plenty of spare rooms, people will come to stay.
This is our third summer at the wreck we stumbled upon on a deserted Aegean beach 15 years ago. It had been a longstanding dream: to have a place by the sea not just for future grandkids, but also to repay all the hospitality that has been extended to us by generous friends over the years.
We're not massive entertainers at home, but entertaining abroad, what with the sun and the sea and the good vibes, is always different.
Or so I imagined it would be when we first moved in. In my head, I had visions of me wafting around in a kaftan serving canapes on the spacious terrace, a bit like Beverly in the legendary Mike Leigh play Abigail's Party.
I suppose we all like to imagine ourselves as generous hosts when we acquire homes abroad - what else is the money you make meant for but entertaining people you love? You don't reckon though - or at least I didn't - on how much work it ends up being.
What is it about house guests abroad? Do they need fresh towels at home every time they wash their hands? Do they have to have three cooked meals a day? Do they have chauffeurs in normal life, or is it that they become allergic to driving only when they are on holiday?
'We didn't bother renting a car because we don't want to go anywhere.' If you want to make a host's shoulders slump, saying this will do the trick.
If I sound mean-spirited, it is because, as I said, I'm not a natural hostess to start with.
I'm a very bad cook, I'm surprisingly shy (so not very proactive on the social front) and then there's the legacy of my extremely right-on mother, who used to fill our bedrooms with visitors she'd met on her travels when we were teenagers at boarding school and then forget to tell them to leave when we came home. I've suffered from a slight Goldilocks complex ever since.
Don't get me wrong, we've had guests here who happily rent their own cars, travel with chargers and leave generous tips. And I love them to bits, these repeat guests of ours (you know who you are, A Team). But they are, in my limited experience, a minority.
Could this have something to do with the general boorification of the world? Or is it that even the most civilised, self-sufficient human beings regress into helpless teenagers when they stay with you?
I say teenagers, but there is something about breakfast, a meal I've skipped for years, that brings out the actual toddler in certain guests with all their finicky, short-order requests.
Just because we have eggs in the fridge doesn't mean I'm going to stand over the hob between 9am and 12pm churning them out over-easy with slightly crispy bacon like they do on Below Deck. And no, we don’t have English bacon here. Nor do we have pistachio milk (I’m not even kidding here). You’re on the continent now which means continental breakfast, OK?
Meanwhile, the second most depressing group of words in the English language? 'I think your coffee machine is broken.'
Many a bad house guest, of course, has no idea how they come across. In fact, they think of themselves as exemplary. I cite as an example the friend (usually female) who constantly hovers around you while you are in the kitchen, asking where everything goes, utensil by utensil, and when you finally cave in and let them lay the table they ask: ‘How do you like your napkins folded?’
This is the same guest who pads around your bedroom door first thing in the morning, insisting on accompanying you down to the beach for that solitary pre-coffee swim you hanker after all year - the one to gird you for the rest of the day dealing with everyone's dietary preferences and wi-fi issues - wanting a good long chat about life.
A fellow hostess puts such behaviour down to exception-to-the-rule syndrome. Even if you couldn't have made it clearer that the kitchen is off limits from 9pm and you need to be alone to get dinner on the table, they (usually a she) will automatically believe you don't mean them (her). You can explain to such a friend that you have talked to your therapist about this 'mental condition' of yours, needing to be alone in the kitchen, but in my experience this doesn't work.
The only thing you can do is lock yourself in the loo for an hour. But then you risk having them worry if they've offended you and then that becomes a whole other thing.
Equally fatiguing is the guest, usually much richer than you with lots of staff at home, who thinks of your home as a hotel.
I hate to sound ethno-centric here, but I'm afraid, in this respect, especially on the clean towel front, Americans are the worst. What is their obsession with cleanliness?
When a friend from LA, her husband and their seven-year-old son visited last year it felt like living in a commercial laundry.
They had our machine going 24/7, often with just a single T-shirt that had been worn for a matter of hours. We ran out of water after three days and they were staying for a whole week.
But it wasn’t just that. It was their lack of interest in anything or anybody outside their world (the retail industry). After I sent them on a boat trip to an ancient historical site (I thought it might be instructive for the kid, who seemed bored out of his mind) all they had to offer when they came back was: ‘How come the buildings are all so low?’
The pièce de résistance, though, was when they set up a photoshoot for one of their social media feeds on the terrace; the husband posing at our outdoor granite table pretending he was writing his journal. I came back from the supermarket to find him with our new visitors’ book (leather bound, vellum paper), having practised his signature on every single blank page with a black Sharpie.
This is the same couple who forgot to tip the waiter at our favourite local taverna and had a screaming match with the old lady who runs the children's merry-go-rounds in the town square. Oh, and complained because there were seeds in the watermelon (apparently they don't have seeds in American watermelon).
But what can you do? Another couple (again, American) arrived by taxi and breezed in without bothering to pay the driver. Had they assumed it was pre-paid? Why? My husband paid it, but he is the least rancorous person I know. He’s also the sort of person who takes builders’ lunch orders whenever they are doing work in the house. Me, I’m less accommodating. I didn’t say anything,but they are never coming back.
As I write this, I can see how I might have to just suck it up or else run a tighter ship.
I know of a couple who have a laminated list of suggested house presents in every spare room, as well as a rota for which couple pays for dinner on which night.
The longer we have our house the more this idea appeals. But I think you can only get away with it if you are very rich, have hot and cold running staff and can provide all those hotel-like amenities (as this couple do). And, obviously, not every guest is a dud.
Take my hairdresser and his partner, who came last summer. It was so gratifying watching how they, as it were,picked up the ball and rolled with it; how they took themselves off sightseeing, volunteered to get baked goods for breakfast every morning and made every other guest feel interesting. They also left exactly when they said they would - though, ironically,I’d have happily had them to stay much longer.
Another phrase that makes me wilt? ‘I suppose we don’t really have to head home tomorrow.’
Anyway,you must come to stay.
A version of this article first appeared in The Spectator