Skip to main content

Air BnB Reviews



These are from my forthcoming book of Eavesdrops.


When I last stayed here, you were alongside a lovely river.


The last thing I was expecting was llamas. Let alone, right in the driveway as we arrived, bin-bags on sale of their pooh.  


I know you're going for the vintage, bedsit land vibe. Which you've fully achieved with your Baby Belling, bead curtain and candlewick bedspread.  But perhaps think twice about your retro-signage with the mid-last-century acronyms on? H and C and A.M.C. are fine, or course - but not N.P.O.C!


If you're going to rent out your narrow boat, you must do something about the over-inquisitive swans. 


Apartment?  Really?  At best it's an en-suite-banquette-couchette, ducks.  Being a criminal barrister, I’ve consulted with convicted murders in bigger spaces under the Old Bailey.  


I really don't think the "Things of Interest to do in Wiltshire" folder should include cash only order forms for your home-made scones, fudge, jam, eco-friendly soap-ends squidgy balls, or the self-produced CD of you singing jazz. On that 'note' – ha ha - you do tend to sing a fair bit around the host quarters at quite unsociable times. 


To add insult to injury after we were quite seriously locked out of our rental, the homeowner, Ed, said he never had difficulty remembering his key safe code as it is date of The Battle of Hastings - not to mention he was born in October 1966. Like this was meant to help. Some people are just born narcissists.


Well, seeing so much of the canal network is fun! You’re probably confused to read that sentence? Your narrow boat is lovely. Well maintained and appointed and (originally, at least...read on...) in a lovely spot. However, at the beginning of our very much not free stay in it, we discovered that your boat was right at the end of its fortnight's free mooring period. Your immediate neighbours are both permanent and resentful. We were getting all too frequent comments starting with, 'We know it's not actually your problem, but...' followed up by details of however many previous times you've overstayed the free mooring period here, how you're not actually allowed to sublet, and how you were strongly suspected of filching a bag of coal from Sandra and Mike. The upshot being, we took the initiative and have put an end to your overstay. We've pootled quite a way away now. Six locks and counting. 


Staying in your property made me finally realise that I basically just don't get on with other people's four walls. 




#airbnb#airbnbreviews#tripadvisor#holiday#holidays#canals#longboats#staycation#humor#humour 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Me Featuring in The Sunday Times, Nicely...

  This happened. The editor thinks it's a book of dog sitter stories waiting to happen. I am scribbling away at same...  I first house-sat by accident. I was originally at Haven House, Lembton, as a live-in safety net for Lady Olive Simmonds, a seventy-nine year-old Bostonian with a lilac afro, a Temazepam habit and leg ulcers. Haven House was by the sea. Eighteenth century, elegant, comfortable.  But there was Olive... Always in pain; either drunk, hungover or both; barely educated. She had married a man who was knighted, and believed this gave her a licence to be a twat. According to Olive, her fellow Lembtonians were all dull academics - this group having reading ages older than hers, which was thirteen - or failed schizophrenics. She had serious monophobia, with staff working (unnecessarily) every day apart from weekends. At weekends, first thing, anxious, she would ring round the Lembtonians that were still speaking to her - six in number - inviting them for coffee, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Marine Says I Must Re-queer...

                                                                 Being camp in Camp Basra... Stacks, ex-Royal Marines Commando, recently watched my Tutu Went AWOL! show on Zoom. He had notes. I was shifting from foot to foot, he said, and gesturing too much. 'And you must put back the stuff about the Brigadier and your fellow comedian being homophobic...' The Brigadier had been sneering about my act, saying it would be more suited to Butlins. But, more importantly, he believed I was an 'inappropriate influence on 42 Commando'.  Stacks, deadpan, commented, 'Sir, before Iestyn started hanging out with us, sir, it had never occurred to him to play Tiddlywinks with anything other than his thumb, sir.'  My fellow comedian, who I'll call Mark, because that's his name, asked Reg, Garrison Sergeant Major, in front of ...
Post a Comment
Read more

I Love the Library

                            Therese, soprano, never uses a library. ‘Oh, no, Iestyn. Unlike you, I pride myself on always buying my books.’ I agree with Helene Hanff, who said that buying a book you haven’t read is like buying a dress without trying it on. ‘How do you know the dress will fit, Therese?’ I asked. ‘I always know what’s going to fit me, book-wisely speaking. I tune into asking the universe what it needs me to read for the greater good, go into the bookshop and find that I’m drawn to a department, then a section of carpet, then the particular shelf and there will book the book, in a sort of outline of almost light picked out from the others around it.’ ‘But there are billions of books out there, Therese, in umpteen shops, divided into squillions of bits of carpet and…’ She was giving me her look: a nurse at my hospital bed telling me the prognosis was far from ideal. ‘Yes, but with me it’s narrowed down q...
1 comment
Read more