The day I realised my B&B guest was a Chinese spy (and other tales of the unexpected): Melanie Cable-Alexander

Never did I imagine that at 62, the start of my wrinkly-prune stage of life, I would find myself standing at my back-garden gate wearing flip-flops, a grey onesie and a pair of yellow rubber gloves, directing an immaculately coiffured Thai woman to the footpath into town. 

And worse, that I’d be spotted by a troop of local yummy mummies taking their children the back way into school.

At least it wasn’t as embarrassing as that time a glamorous polo-playing Argentinian came down for breakfast horribly early, holding out a pair of my knickers between finger and thumb and handing them to me in the kitchen. I had dropped them on the stairs on my way to a swift pre-breakfast laundry run.

Time was, I’d be in kitten heels and a designer outfit, Louis Vuitton holdall in hand, for a trip to Barbados, to write up a five-star hotel in my then-role as features and travel editor for Country Life magazine.

 Then I became a B&B hostess in my own home, and my red-carpet lifestyle changed from designer luggage to manning the laundry and occasionally sleeping on the drawing-room floor. 

That’s one of the hazards that come with opening your home to strangers from all over the world. Because no matter who is to blame for overbooking, there’s only one option when all your rooms have been taken and a Parisian couple – the wife heavily pregnant – turn up on your doorstep at midnight insisting they had made a reservation. 

Turn them away into a winter night when there is no other accommodation available around? No way. You have to offer them your own bedroom.

The other time that happened was ten years ago when a particularly elegant middle-aged woman who had enjoyed three days with us asked to stay on a fourth night. 

She was well aware we were fully booked, but such was her charm and engaging personality, somehow familiar but which I couldn’t quite place, that I gave her our room while my husband and I bedded down on the drawing-room carpet once more.

Then there was the guest who arrived just before Covid, paying £100 a night, but stayed for a year, including lockdown, when we charged her just for food and bills. 

She was a non-English-speaking, cigar-smoking Chinese divorcee who arrived in a whirlwind of chaos via a booking from a Beijing agency, ostensibly searching the West Country for an international school for her young daughter. She was clearly wealthy, handling cash like a croupier. 

She owned properties in China the size of Somerset, always dressed in couture and was an inveterate photographer.

Commandeering my husband to drive her around all the local tourist attractions, including a 40-mile round trip to Bath to get a humidor for her Havanas, she took pictures of everything that crossed her path, from the smallest thatched cottage to the grandest cathedral.

But he noticed she also photographed the nearby naval air base, the local mainline railway station and the county police headquarters.

She stayed so long on the grounds that it was apparently ‘difficult’ to get a direct flight back to China. For some reason, I didn’t question it and we began to treat her as one of the family. 

Gradually, though, we noticed she was trying to take over our home, bossing me about to the extent that some mornings I took to hiding under the duvet rather than get up and face her.

On a rare night when all the other rooms were empty, we invited a few friends over for a kitchen supper, only for her to burst into view and claim our Aga for the preparation of one of her expansive Chinese dishes. 

This could not go on and, after a stand-up row, she finally left. When we later mentioned her ever-busy camera to a friend in contact with the security services, he said, ‘Almost certainly, you played host for a year to a Chinese spy.’

To this day I still wonder how I became a B&B hostess, for it crept up on me, in the same way the smell of coffee lures our guests down for breakfast. 

If I had to pinpoint the date it started, it was in 2006 when I was a single mum, moving from that jet-set London life to the small market town of Castle Cary in Somerset with my young son, Jasper, now 28. I wanted him to grow up attending a country school in the West Country, where I myself had partly grown up. To help pay the bills, I took in lodgers. From there I moved to Airbnb hosting.

It was only when I met my husband, Martin, a local businessman, that I felt emboldened to run a full-on, old-fashioned guest house. 

He is the perfect front-of-house partner, with an infectious affability that bestows a glowing welcome on visitors the moment they enter the hallway, and makes them feel one of the family by the time they have come down for breakfast the next morning.

Many guests look up at us fondly from the breakfast table, saying, ‘This is what I can imagine doing when I retire’. However, I can’t stress enough about the strains of turning your home into a business.

Suddenly, your sanctuary becomes public property, every nook and cranny poked into by strangers, your personal possessions on show to the world and your space invaded at every turn. You’re on call round the clock, sheet-changing is a constant chore, and our washing machine is endlessly breaking down under the strain.

It’s also a precarious business proposition. Bookings vary violently. From affluent weeks of having to turn people away can come nail-biting days of waiting for the phone to ring.

And guests are not always grateful. An apparently jovial Dutch couple were stern-faced when they came down for breakfast and demanded a 50 per cent reduction in their bill unless we wanted them to post a hostile review online.

There was nothing wrong with their room, they were just trying their luck, so we called their bluff and refused. 

Then there were the four young women who booked two double rooms but on arrival all four decided to share the same bed. So they were only willing to pay for one room. They were not even the worst offenders. Once we had an entire family of 11 turn up having booked just one room.

For every guest like that, though, there are dozens who restore your faith in humanity. Most people who come through our door are lovely – but it’s easy to forget that when the bad ones make such better stories.

A former senior Conservative MP stayed with us once and, in trying to force open a sash window in his top-floor room, he managed to dislodge the whole thing from its setting and send the glass crashing down on to the terrace. 

Thank god no one was actually on the terrace at the time. The former minister offered no contribution to cover the repairs, but his secretary finally did afterwards.

There also seems to be no dress code for people staying at a B&B.

We’ve had gentlemen turn up in black tie and women in full evening dress en route to a local wedding; tattooed Hells Angels heading for a music festival; and novice nuns returning from an obscure religious convention. 

The most unexpected, though, was the visitor who went to bed as an immaculate businessman and came down for breakfast dressed as a voluptuous woman. The other guests never raised their eyes from their scrambled eggs. We merely asked what name to put on the receipt.

However, by far the most glamorous of our guests was the elegant woman who wanted that extra night. I felt I should recognise her but couldn’t quite place her face. She had registered under her married name, so there was no clue. 

But as she was leaving, there was something about her that made me blurt out, ‘Did anyone ever tell you that you look just like Twiggy?’ To my eternal embarrassment, she gave me a gracious smile and replied, ‘I am Twiggy. Thank you for having me.’

How many people can claim to have shared their bed with a supermodel? My husband does – frequently.

Visit ellesmerehouse.co and follow Melanie on Substack at melaniecable alexander.substack.com