Mi casa es tu casa?

I knew it was stupid as we pulled away from the house last Friday. The trouble was that if you ran the idea past anybody then they said things like "great, built-in house sitters, lucky you" or "Wow, you must be so relieved". Hmmm....

So here's the theory -

The Candidates - two twenty-nine-year-olds, one blood related in the offspring department to the MD, both in good physical condition, if a little zealous about the type of nourishment they consume . They both possess adequate brain cells to have built their own successful business, own their own home and travel the world regularly.

The job - housesitting one large Victorian establishment and caring for livestock for one week only. Gas and electric supplied, along with fresh fruit and veg for Big Fecker (who had decided that a family holiday was no longer for him) and a month's supply of cat vittles for Owen (obligatory witch's cat). The rules were simple - no parties for the Fecker, empty the bin (I remembered that one from last year!) and do your own laundry!

Simple....or was it?

Well no, apparently it wasn't!
First we had a phone call to say that the front door had broken and all callers were now directed around the back, including the stream of Feckerfriends who had taken up residence ten minutes after we had left. Then the microwave 'blew up' and the cat took himself on a starvation holiday in the rafters of the garage for three days.

After that things got worse! Big Fecker had to put on a train for his own safety and collected from a Somerset town that didn't have a train station (don't ask!). Once back in the bosom of his family, and finally dried out from all the whiskey that he had nicked, we heard that a kitchen cupboard had mysteriously fallen from a great height, and the washing machine had packed up.

I sit here now listening to the swearing from the kitchen as the cupboard is put back together. The front door was not broken, they had just neglected to do the double turny thing with the key and got it jammed half way and the microwave had not 'blown-up' either. They had just mistaken the steam from a rogue potato for that black kind of smoke that you get when things are going horribly wrong in the electrical department! Oh, and the washing machine was stuck on the 'no ironing' programme, which holds it full of water until some bright spark manages to turn the knob!

Yes, thank you for asking, we had a lovely holiday, but next year we shall be employing a housesitter of the professional kind. The present ones will not be 'sitting' in my house again and they will have to find somewhere else to store their dodgy looking 'health' foods!!