One day will live in infamy in our house. Two cars, full of people, swept into the yard. With no notice. We were caught rotten

Christmas is a time for visitors. And I’m ok with that. Now.

But it’s taken a while for me to be a person who just deals with visitors. I think I’m still a bit scarred from an incident 30 years ago known as The Time All The Visitors Came And We Had No Notice.

We didn’t have a visit-able house. It was a bookish farmhouse. That mean wellingtons on top of books. A certain je ne sais quoi hung in the air, but if I had to take a guess it was probably silage. Consequently, visitors caused a bit of stress.

Not all visitors. Some had special immunity, because they had a job to do. They raised no eyebrow when they stepped inside the house. The ESB man who checked the meter was one. As the meter remained the property of the ESB, he had the right to go straight to it unhindered. The door wasn’t locked and he walked in. If he had an opinion on the mess, he took it with him to his grave. What secrets the ESB men of the country must have, passing like photons through the lives of others.

One day will live in infamy in our house. Two cars, full of people, swept into the yard. With no notice. We were caught rotten. As if they were Prohibition-Era G-men who’d blocked all approach roads, and we were up to our shaven temples in moonshine.

Inside in the house, there was consternation. It was a November day when everything was fogged up. Windows, pictures, television, even things that weren’t glass seemed to have a sort of opaque film on them. The place was in a heap. The floor was barely visible, covered in Readers Digest letters saying you were one step away from a guaranteed five-figure windfall, “just like Mrs Winnifred Tilsley from Derby”. Always Derby. The Saturday morning Examiner and all its antecedents for a week or so, were sprawled across chairs.

And in they trooped, while we stood around helplessly. These were really nice people who we would have happily filled up with biscuits, fairy cakes, and Fanta if only we’d have known they were coming. But having nothing to offer them but tea, a slightly stilted conversation and with a large group of people crammed into a November farmhouse kitchen, what could have been a sugary party, instead resembled an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting or an important but grim play.

I’m recovered now. I see the benefit of visitors.

I treat visitors as if they are regulator. It’s a bit like the banks. If you rely on the banks to self-regulate, they won’t. Why would they? They’re banks. Like asking a scorpion not to sting you. But if you have a financial regulator, like a real one, not a harmless oul lad who’d rather be on the golf course, there’s some hope that best practice will be followed. So visitors keep us honest. They prevent a build up of food on the counter-tops before it turns into something that could be analysed by a Time Team archaeologist speculating on our diet.

“Now this interesting, if you look here, there is clear evidence that they had access to some sort of Readybrek in this era. Fascinating.”

Plus we have small children. So we’ve given up on appearance now. Our clothes have stains. And children have a different attitude to visitors. We see them as people to hide stuff from. Our toddler sees visitors as people to show all the things in the house to. Things that were under the sofa for a reason apparently need to benefit from full legal discovery, like we’re in a tribunal. The younger baby just scutters gently into her nappy. At least I think it’s her. It helps end a polite but dull conversation about property prices. So if you receive an invitation from us, chances are the house is due for a tidy.