ANGELS UNAWARES…
I remember how shocked I was when first I stayed with a vicar friend and his large family - “Use any of the toothbrushes” he shouted as I went into the bathroom to freshen up before preaching. Well, I suppose I had eaten other people’s apple cores, shared cutlery in college when I couldn’t be bothered to go and get another spoon, why not use someone else’s toothbrush?
So now I have a guest toothbrush in my bathroom - it is rarely used. But my guest room is constantly in use, both by my semi-permanent lodger, and by a stream of visitors; or by me when I wistfully give up my double bed for married friends.
It’s the laundry that gets me down most. I always smell the bed before visitors arrive to see whether I need to change the sheets. And I change them however fresh they still are, after three or four different guest/nights. (I use the barely damp towels for myself and lash out on clean ones for every guest!)
Visitors are like 68 buses: they always arrive in packs and never when you want one. A lonely evening when you’ve finished the Times crossword and there is nothing but snooker on TV and such a mound of work in the office that it gives you vertigo just looking at it; and there isn’t a caller in sight. But wait till you’re in a ‘work’ mood or watching the finals of Come Dancing with a group of friends and a bottle of Ribena, and in they all troop. The definition of hospitality flashes through your mind: the art of making people feel at home when you wish they were!
Another problem is that I always seem to arrange for multiple guests to arrive when I am in Nottingham or some other far-flung corner of the Empire. This can be an advantage as the guests often entertain each other, make the beds, clean the flat, do the washing up left over from last week’s guests, cook you a meal and welcome you ‘home’.
But there are times when a punk friend turns up at the same time as a professor from a prestigious American seminary; or an aggressive synod of ordained women friends clash with some effervescent ‘Joy of Womanhood’ supporters; or a pagan Scottish pal clutching a gift bottle of malt whiskey comes face to face with the local rep of the Band of Hope. There's blood on the doormat when you arrive home and the prospect of a long and difficult evening.
Self-centredness is the constant enemy of both singles and family units, but the angels are there to protect us. “Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” (Heb.13.2) Although they are sometimes a burden, guests greatly enrich my own life and often the lives of their improbable fellow guests, room-mates and toothbrush users.
Woman Alive monthly column
