Rules.

When he was doing his nomadic thing, Lloyd wrote a post about the different kinds of rules people with whom he stayed had - almost universally unconscious. A kind of habitat-culture: "the way we do things around here". Lloyd reckoned that recognising these rules said most about himself. (But I know it was really all about me...) Unfortunately I can't find Lloyd's original post.

I have had quite a few visitors over the last couple of years, and whilst I have a few hints at how to make visiting easier (such as don't flush the loo before getting in the shower: living at the top of an early Victorian building, sixty feet above the road level, water pressure is low!), I think I have only one explicit rule.

"If you open the window, make sure the cat isn't in the room and keep the door closed so the cat can't get in."

This is because those windows give access to the roof, and the idea of Talisker-cat getting onto the roof and exploring the neighbours' chimney pots - and maybe their open windows, too - is just too much. A real feline no-go area.

So I was a touch peeved when, after a day dashing around dropping my godson on a bus to the west coast, taking his mother to the hospital, moving their car so it didn't get towed away, and an evening at the theatre, I returned home to find both the window and the door in the spare room wide open, and they must have been for several hours.

The cat, of course, was fast asleep on my bed. I have no idea if he went exploring or not.

* * *

There may only be one explicit rule, but there are plenty of implicit ones. Well, they're not rules, not even guidelines. More passive-aggressive observations that leave me screaming "don't do that!" Silently, of course. I wouldn't be so rude to a guest.

There are things about the kettle (don't fill it to top if you just want one cup!), the fridge (don't leave fridge door open!), the sink (don't leave anything the sink! ANYTHING), the washing up. There are others too, I guess, but maybe I'd need to think a bit more about that.

(There are logical, perfectly rational reasons for all these.)

But I'm also baffled by the way guests do things. I have many mugs, for instance. Lloyd had a preference for a forty year old (perfectly clean) mug which he would retrieve from back of the cabinet. My brother obsesses about a particular white cup. (Personally, I go for stoneware over china. I really don't like drinking out of china.)

My hospitalised guest came for one night and ended up staying two weeks, recuperating on antibiotics, before she could travel back west. I'm not used to living with someone else.

She over-filled the kettle. She had a favourite mug. (Based on the largest possible volume, I think.) She left things in sink.

The strangest thing, though, was the pots and pans. I have a cupboard full of pots and pans: the cupboard beside cooker, so I can reach them easily when I cooking. My guest managed not to find those, instead looking into depths of the furthest cupboard from the cooker, where she found the third rate, twenty five year old pans I bought when a graduate student. I was baffled and confused why she used those. It must have been such hard work to get those pans rather than the usual ones.