Are you one of life’s hosts – or the ideal house guest?

EASTER weekend staying with friends in Cornwall. Heaven. Non-stop chat, a house where our leaking boiler is not a full-time preoccupation, scrumptious meals planned and cooked by our hostess, the days passing without any organisation on my part. Really, I wish I could live my whole life as a guest.

For every person like me, utterly delighted to be spending four days on somebody else’s turf, there are equal numbers who find being a house guest a low-grade purgatory; forced to make conversation at breakfast, the horror of locals drafted in to keep you amused and the possibility of a bed that does your back in – the mattress too hard, too soft, too few pillows.

Most of us are either natural hosts or guests – and this applies as much around the boardroom table or at school sports day as it does for weekends away. Hosts are usually fearful of losing control; think a game, if played at all, is only played to win; regard a day without a plan (note, theirs not someone else’s) as a waste of time, dread boredom and insist on choosing the wine. They arrive by car, all the better to make a quick getaway, and always park it somewhere it can’t possibly get jammed in. If you ever invite a natural host to your home, the first thing they will do is ask for the wi-fi password.

Natural guests, for their part, excuse their tendency to selfishness by thinking it is more helpful to graciously receive than to give, have no compunction about hogging the most comfortable chair in the room, sitting in the back of somebody else’s car, and grabbing the first bath, never worrying about the hot water running out. We like to appear relaxed so are rarely the first people on our feet to clear the table or unload the dishwasher. Guests almost always slightly outfinally,