How Others Live

 When we sold our family home seven years ago and moved onto Gecko we bought a converted mews house in Bath which we let weekly for holidays.

bathmews@aol.com

Over the past seven years we have welcomed visitors from all over the world and the UK. This year 66% of our bookings are people returning to stay with us.  Each Saturday our housekeeper, Jackie, arrives at the house at 10am to replace linen, clean the house and make everything ship-shape in time to welcome the new guests. A few weeks ago she called us to say that she was concerned the current guest - an IT expert seconded to a local firm - may not leave the property as clean as he found it. Despite having an afternoon tea-party in Buck and a Thames Pageant to attend we hired a car and  raced down to Bath like the 7th cavalry.
What we found stunned us.  The guest had been away overnight and had left the bathroom lights and fan on: in the kitchen the coffee machine was still on, coffee burnt into the jug and the central heating was set high and running 24hrs.
They say a picture paints 10,000 words so here is a short story.

Every pan and piece of crockery had been used and not washed

Two weeks ago the oven man deep-cleaned the oven and hob!

These pictures were taken an hour after the guest should have vacated the property. It took Margaret and I two hours to clear up just the kitchen.

He appeared to have slept on the lounge floor with the electric iron!

I don't think I could have made such a mess if I had been trying.
What does not show are the burns in the duvet covers and the shoe print which we have been unable to remove from one of the sheets.
If the compensation does not arrive soon I shall publish the name of the company whose employees live like this.