Dealing with Airbnb as I Get Older

Becca’s uber-clean room

A week of unexpected action. Monday morning, as I get on the good foot and am clearing out the shed in a hunt for the key to my bike’s front wheel, I get a last-minute Airbnb request, my first ever. It’s for three nights starting tonight and the woman, Jane*, has great reviews. She apologises for the lateness of the booking, and says she can wait until the evening to come.

I say yes.

Everything needs to be cleaned and tidied. Linen must be found and inspected, and I know that everything always takes longer than you expect.

First, I look for linen. I have my visitor’s bag with a single duvet and cover, and damn, the cover needs a wash. No pillows. Up to the loft I go to find some. Then I unearth everything from the linen chest in my bedroom in a hunt for pillowcases which may also need a wash – a muddle of duvet, sheets, pillowcases and pyjamas all over the bed.

I find what I need, and it all goes, with the last of the washing liquid, on a quick wash.

The bathroom is next. I get into my decorating gear with rubber gloves and goggles, and pour thick bleach, bought weeks ago for exactly this, onto a rag fortuitously found in the shed. I smear it onto the tiles around the bath – aiming to clean the grout. I rub it in, wishing for nose protection and wonder if it’ll work. Leave it for a while and get on with the rest – my trusty Jiff, still going strong after I don’t know how many years. Basin, taps polished off with a towel, bath, rinsing off the bleach that has trickled into it. More bleach down the loo. Vacuum the floor with the Hetty, attempt to use the Flash Mop, batteries missing, down on hands and knees with the little sponge. Then, rinse the tiles. Better, but not 100 percent.

Hang the washing up. It’s hot and sunny with a breeze. Fab.

Then the spare room. Dust and polish, vacuum the floor, vacuum the mattress. Remove the keyboard and stand, replace with wooden fold-up desk and chair. Place pictures on the hooks, put Spanish blanket from the loft on top of the chest of drawers for extra warmth, pile up pillows and the cat cushion from my room, add my own bedside lamp and rubbish bin.

Then to the kitchen and a chance to properly tidy. Great. Vacuum the floor and spot-clean it. Vacuum the hall a bit, vacuum the stairs and landing, and spot-clean with the sponge.

And then, all the little bits you forget and, somehow, an improbable, random shower while I’m not looking from what had been a cloudless sky. No way! The garden is wet! The paving, the plants, the duvet cover again…

By now it’s 4pm. I finally have lunch. But there’s more to do. The duvet cover miraculously re-dries, so I put it on the bed. But at the last minute, I have to iron the pillowcases and get the long ladder from the shed to remove the linen globe lampshade to clean a thick coat of dust off the top. Man!

Jane arrives around 6.20pm and I take her around. I do a double-take when we get to the kitchen. “This is the kitchen,” I say, “tidier than it has been in years.”

At 7pm I’m away to Bell Green with my shopping trolley containing a broken bedside lamp and toaster to recycle at Curry’s. It’s still a beautiful day. I then do a big shop at Sainsbury’s, including a face towel for my guest. It’s dark when I finish, and the trolley weighs a ton. Exhausted. No obvious way to get home. I call an Uber but have no idea where the pickup point is, so cancel it. Trolley too heavy to heave onto the bus that would take me some of the way, so I drag the trolley home – a 45-min, mainly uphill walk. Supper at 10pm.

All the same, Airbnb strikes me as a win-win. Your guests are on their best behaviour to get a good review. They have minimal food to clutter up the kitchen and minimal belongings to clutter up the house. You, for your part, keep the house uber-clean and tidy and are nice to them.

But it also strikes me that I’m getting old.

On Tuesday, there’s an all-pervading smell of damp plaster. I go round, sniffing, trying to work out what’s going on. Prioritise preparing for the Creative Writing class later, the first of the new term. Reply to emails from last-min students. I’m a bit muddle-headed. There’s not enough time to go to Crystal Palace to flyer, so I go back to some editing I’ve been employed to do. Call the plumber eventually and, after teaching the first class of the new term, eat a ton of lentils and spinach, not wanting to cook anything smelly to disturb Jane, who is not yet back. Drink a little wine and end up falling fast asleep on the sofa, sitting up. Like narcolepsy. When I come to, at around 10.30pm, I’m disorientated and don’t know where I am, when it is, possibly even who I am. I wonder if I’m ill. I wonder if there’s a gas leak, or carbon monoxide. I stumble to the bathroom to gulp some water and then take to my bed, sitting up, as is my way when I’m ill. The cat comes in, perky as ever, then curls up on my chest (unusual) so I put thoughts of gas and carbon monoxide out of my head and attempt to rest, grateful that Jane is still out. What would she have thought if she found me sitting up, fast asleep? She might have thought I was dead!

Becca DJing recently

Today, Wednesday, I get up around 6.45am, gingerly. The damp smell has gone and I feel kind of OK. I wonder, what caused this episode? The hard physical labour of Monday, or the stress of Tuesday, worrying about my classes, still not getting to Crystal Palace to flyer, a phone call from a friend, 82, who herself blanked out for 10 days, waking up in hospital never to go home again? She’s now in a nursing home, diagnosed with Parkinson’s, arthritis and Long Covid. She asks what I’ve been doing, and I reel off a list:

Reggae festival, bike accident, teaching for one month, DJing, leafleting, interviewing, writing, editing, 4K overdrawn, 10 steps behind. Because she’s how she is, she doesn’t ask me about any of it but gives me an interesting insight into her current environment and says I am among her select group of real friends.

My friend tells me I must make plans for my forthcoming decrepitude, and I wonder, was it age or stress that caused me to pass out? Stress over not enough students? Stress over a forthcoming interview with a well-known reggae singer, stress over the transcribing and editing? Stress combined with that very long, hard Monday?

Attending Rototom Reggae Festival in Spain

I think I must be gentle with myself today. Forget about Crystal Palace. Concentrate on the good things I have rustled up over the past week: a possible Deptford teaching venue, more DJ venues, two new students from the leafleting I have managed to do (I now have six at Forest Hill, including 4 returners, which is not really enough, but just about OK).

Update: Thursday 6.30am. After a gentle day transcribing, a meeting with another author I’m supporting and a homemade spag bol, I sleep pretty well. Jane has checked out early for work. She’s also sent friendly messages and useful links to help with my projects. The sun’s coming up and I’m feeling positive again. Go with the flow, girl. Go with the flow.

Becca is running a new online Creative Writing course, scheduled to start on Monday 13 October, 6.30pm-8.30pm. You can find out more book up here: https://beccaleathlean.co.uk/product/approaches-to-creative-writing/

*Name changed to protect privacy

Creative Writing for Wellbeing:

https://beccaleathlean.co.uk/