How To Be A Good Guest

Rules For Being A Good Guest

Now that I am based in Marrakech, when I do come home to London, I have been staying with friends. For the past two and a half years, I have been mostly with Julian and Xav, in their gorgeous duplex apartment in the heart of Covent Garden. Often, they are away, and I have the flat to myself, but this summer I’m not able to stay there, and given how much Blighty has been calling, I have been trying to find something a little more permanent.

Until I get the riad in Marrakech, until the riad is sold, I’m a little cash-poor, so a place of my own in London is still a little while in the future. I’ve spent hours scouring online websites for rooms to rent, peering at pictures of grotty bedrooms in pretty grotty flats, knowing I could never do it.

Even if only for a few days, I need to be in beautiful surroundings, a place that feels like home. None of them felt like home. Last week I stumbled upon a little artists’s studio, close to where I grew up, owned by a single woman who works in media, and is looking for a part-time lodger. I had a suspicion, on seeing the French doors everywhere, the skylights, rooms filled with light, that this would be a place where I could be happy. We chatted on the phone, and it seemed that we would like each other.

Yesterday I went round for a cup of tea to see if we might be a fit. As I stood on the doorstep, two fat tabby cats wound their way around my legs. If ever the universe was providing a sign, this surely was it.

The house was even lovelier than expected. Not large, but bright and sunny, with a pretty courtyard garden. We chatted over a cup of tea and pistachio almond biscuits, and both agreed that this felt like a match.

And so, from the end of June, I now have a place to lay my head when I come to London. In the meantime, I am staying with other friends, and realize that there are certain rules to being a good guest, the kind of guest that doesn’t impose, the kind of guest who is so low-maintenance as to be almost invisible.

Of course, this isn’t right for everyone, but I have a lot of people staying with me in Marrakech, and my favourite kind are the ones just like this. They do their own thing, never make a mess, and don’t expect anything of me. I hand them the keys, a list of suggestions of where to go, and, because I am in the country, on the outskirts of Marrakech, the numbers of drivers who can take them back and forth.

Being a good guest is about consideration. Recognizing that you are not in your own home, and ensuring that your presence in someone else’s house feels light, rather than heavy.

So, these are my rules for being a good guest: