Solar panels

As I was showing a couple from Lincolnshire to their room, I smelt a rat. I don’t mean metaphorically, about them. I mean that halfway down the hallway, as I walked two paying guests from the front door towards the staircase, the most overwhelming stench of rotting carcass wafted upwards from the floor, right next to the fancy dresser displaying the tourist leaflets. I glanced at them nervously to see whether they had noticed. They were telling me about their house-hunting. They wanted to move to West Cork to go off grid and get in touch with nature. That’s handy, I thought, because nature is currently rotting under the floorboards.

The house fell silent as the last of the tourists took their oat milk and pretend cheese from the guest fridge. Winter came in the nick of time. I’ve bitten my lip for six months while the B&B guests have forced their pro-Palestine, anti-Trump views on me, while refusing to eat normal food or use the dishwasher because, in leftie parlance, dishwashers cause neurological damage. ‘What does the shower cause?’ I wanted to ask some of them, who didn’t even use one towel or open one wrapped mini-soap in a week-long stay. Is soap carcinogenic now? Are you staging some sort of Gaza protest by not washing? The bookings dried