Town Mouse

Tom Hodgkinson

‘ “We opened a drawer and inside was a curious sock,” wrote one Chinese guest’

Life isn’t always easy for a town mouse trying to make a living from writing. The worlds of journalism and publishing – today’s Grub Street – provide a precarious sort of existence. One moment, we hacks are putting on our frock coats and dining in the finest establishments in Mayfair; the next we’re grubbing around in Tesco’s bargain bin for cut-price salads.

A few years ago, Mrs Mouse and I found ourselves on a very low annual income indeed – somewhat less than a newly qualified nurse. We town mice had become as poor as church mice. With three little mice to feed, life became tough. We introduced various household economies. No pubs, no restaurants, no cinema, no theatre, no taxis, no tumbledryer, no foreign holidays, avoid the tube and use a bicycle. But we still felt the pinch of poverty. Not real poverty; not starving poverty – but relative poverty, the kind where you can eat and drink perfectly well at home but where one parking fine can upset the whole delicate ecosystem. You also feel left out of society and its culture, and feel a vague sense of being despised.

So we decide to resort to that age-old trick of the impecunious – rent out a room. We didn’t have a spare room but our teenage son occupied a very nice attic bedroom with its own bathroom. We put it on Airbnb, and so it was that young Arthur would arrive home from school on a Friday and be told he was to move out and share a room with his brother for the weekend as we had guests.

In some sense, and certainly at the start of the process, Airbnb seemed like a magical money machine. The bookings would arrive and cash would appear in our bank account. The money was a lifesaver. And Airbnb plays the very clever trick of somehow convincing you that it has given you this money. It has

The Oldie also removed the shame that used to be associated with the decision to let a room. Far from being a sign of poverty, as it was in the old days, doing Airbnb makes you feel that you are a member of a groovy class of modern entrepreneurs.

At first it was fun. We met some very interesting people, including architects from Somerset and doctors from Brazil. But we made the mistake of providing bacon rolls for breakfast to an Australian lady, and serving them in the kitchen, while we chatted with her. She wrote on her review: ‘Lovely breakfast served by the hosts in their kitchen!!!’ We instantly realised that this was a huge mistake as it would commit us to not only giving every guest a bacon roll – with all the intricate planning and cooking such an offer would entail – but also to having a friendly conversation with them, the last thing you might feel like doing at eight in the morning.

So we changed our settings and instead offered a simple breakfast served in the room. This was nearly as bad as the breakfast-in-the-kitchen option, though, because it entailed one of us delicately and groggily placing two pre-wrapped brioches on a tray alongside two cups and two teabags with a little jug of milk and two neatly folded Provençal napkins. And then creeping upstairs to leave the tray outside the door. Inside my head, my ego would be shouting, ‘I am a published author, not a housemaid!’

Then there is the laundry. Endless piles of laundry, the burden of which generally fell on Mrs Mouse. And the complaints. I don’t know whether the online review system has been fiendishly designed by Harvard physicists to encourage whingeing, but we certainly got a lot. ‘We opened a drawer and inside was a curious sock,’ wrote one Chinese guest, who also put the chain on the door – so I was unable to get back in to the house at midnight one evening. He treated the little bathroom as a wet room and destroyed the ceiling of the bedroom below. Another guest complained of seeing a red beetle with white spots appear on her pillow. Sorry, love, but there’s nothing we can do about ladybirds flying through the window.

With every complaint that appeared, I would grow increasingly incensed. ‘It’s not bloody Claridge’s, for God’s sake! They’re only paying us 60 quid! If I’d wanted to go into hotel management, I would have gone into hotel management!’ It takes a certain kind of person to be good at B&B and dealing with customers.

It is also worth noting that the platform encouraged you – very aggressively – to reduce your prices. And this is what is ethically wrong with these Silicon Valley platforms: they undercut the competition, thereby driving them out of business, while they siphon off a percentage from every transaction. You do the work, while they portray themselves as your saviour.

The 60 quids did, however, add up to a few thousand quid over a year, and we were able to afford a trip to Italy with the children. Then, luckily, our fortunes slowly began to turn, and we became less desperate. We allowed young Arthur to live in his room full-time and have made a vow: no more Airbnb ever.

Tom Hodgkinson is editor of the Idler (www.idler.co.uk)