My mother’s first Airbnb stay (aged 86 and three quarters)

Given that I last saw my mother on Dec 3 2019, and my kids last saw her almost a year ago, some might say that it was at best eccentric and at worst insensitive to eschew her hospitality in favour of an Airbnb. Those were my own worries, too. But as our trip to Edinburgh grew closer, it became clear from our phone conversations that, while she was very much looking forward to seeing us, she was also concerned.

My mother is 86 and lives alone: pedantic at the best of times, in these worst of times, she quite understandably wanted to adhere strictly to

Public Health Scotland’s guidelines. One of which suggested maintaining a 2m distance from visitors, even within your own home.

“How will we do that around the dinner table?” she fretted. “It’s too cold to eat in the garden. This is Scotland.” She was also worried about sharing a bathroom. There was nothing else for it: we’d have to stay somewhere else. The more I thought about it, the more the idea made sense.

“It’ll be like a holiday for her, without the stress of having to leave the country,” I told my husband. “Or even the postcode.”

She did end up leaving the postcode, although I managed to find an Airbnb a short taxi ride away: in Stockbridge, in a pretty cobbled mews carefully chosen for its proximity to the quirky independent coffee, cheese and clothes shops my mother (OK, I) loves. I sifted through hundreds (no chore – I’m a middle-aged woman, property is my porn) before settling on the mews house: stylish yet cosy, it didn’t feel intimidating (important) yet was possessed of the sort of interior design flourishes that I figured my mother would appreciate, and be inspired by. What really swayed me was its commitment to an

“enhanced clean”, which meant that all high-touch surfaces would be thoroughly sanitised, and all linen washed at high heat.

With my mother paranoid about catching our London germs, and us equally concerned about spreading them (even though we all felt well, and would never have made the 500-mile train journey otherwise), this reassurance was welcome.

We arrived to find the place as “sparkling clean” as the reviews had suggested. My mother entered cautiously, as though half-expecting the owners to be in situ watching