The perfect host is tall, dark and handsome, and he greets you with the most welcoming warm smile in spite of the fact that he has tons of work to do (fixing up his house); and, it being a Saturday, he has limited time in which to do it, especially so as his expert house-fixer dad has given up his day to come over and help. Also, the perfect host is a loving grandson and he has his dear old granny there for lunch. Speaking of lunch, he has a dozen fresh croissants just waiting to go in the oven should an aunt and uncle from England decide to pop around and see how he has been getting on with his house repairs since their last visit. 

The house is lovely – freshly painted in white with a deep sea blue trim on the fascias – and inside it is clean and spacious with lots of light coming in from the rows of windows and the glass sliding doors. The present work is being carried out on the bathroom, which has been stripped, and a vanity unit is going in. Amongst the comfortable sofas in the lounge is a piece of furniture that doesn’t quite suit its surroundings – it looks like a chair from the bridge of the “Star Ship Enterprise”! There are even special indents for arms and legs…. in my mind’s eye I could see Sigourney Weaver strapping herself into such a machine in order to fight off aliens.

After a delicious lunch of hot croissants and real butter, followed by a sponge cake (brought along by the aunty), the perfect host’s father disappeared outside to cut a length of plumbing pipe to the precise size. At approximately the same time the handsome host turned on both of the air-condition units; he then made sure his grandma was comfortable lounging on one of the sofas before assisting his aunt into the gigantic black leather chair with indents, wires and remote controls. Without showing any sign of urgency or undue haste, the perfect host discerned the appropriate strength and type of pummelling suitable for aunts, and set the machine into action; noting, of course, that his aunt was showing the expected reaction to his design (see photo below).

Fifteen minutes later the perfect host informed his chilled out aunt that the session had finished (although the beautiful music was still emanating from the speakers by her ears) and he invited his uncle to take possession of “The Bridge”. And after the uncle from England had “oo-ed” and “ah-ed” for fifteen minutes the kindly host reappeared and set his aunt back in the contraption of pleasure for some additional attention to her neck and shoulders, which he had correctly ascertained needed more work. Again, the perfect host left the lounge room.

“Where is William?” asked the dazed aunt after the neck session had ended and her English husband had helped her out of the alien (and ailment)-killing device. “William?”, she called as she poked her head around the door frame into the bathroom and, seeing that the bathroom was empty, she was somewhat surprised to hear the perfect host respond, “I’m under the bath!” With that he raised a hand from a hole in the floorboards.

“Don’t you think William is a perfect host?” I asked Chris as we drove off. Chris nodded and turned up the air-conditioning in the car, our friend Roland’s car – another perfect host (he always lends his favourite guests his new car!). Thank goodness for air-con – it was thirty-five degrees today. My nephew William said it was much cooler under the house; once again, thank goodness!