If you tire of your Cotswold manor, JD, my Airbnb cottage is all yours

Vance, not a fan of “childless cat ladies”, is unlikely to love my spinster’s cottage. As it is, it’s exhausting scrabbling around, getting my ramshackle place ready for guests; frantically hiding my knickers and sticky-taping dog hair off the sheets. With Vance, it’d only be exacerbated. Imagine how furious he’d be if he opened the bathroom cupboard and spotted The Pill.

Americans often make tricky guests anyway, arriving in Britain with fantasies of cream teas, Wimbledon and butlers. Only to be horrified by the reality of spiders, rain and the disparaging looks when they ask for Pimm’s in the pub. They book my cottage after watching The Holiday but find the reality of a rural British cottage a shock.

They’re bemused by the kettle, frustrated by how tiny the fridge is, confused by the concept of a duvet: “Where’s the top sheet?” They expect coffee machines as standard and ask wild questions such as “Where is the A/C?”. The what?

They complain that there are no window screens and barely one plug socket. As for the signal: “What was that? You’re breaking up…”

They find the tight country roads panic-inducing. “The hedges in the lanes are claustrophobic,” one guest complained to me, as if expecting me to tackle them with the strimmer. Thinking about it, Vance would find parking an issue; I’m not sure his motorcade will get through my gate. Also, at 1.9m tall, he’s going to have a problem with the beams.

The basic facilities at my cottage are no match for Mar-a-Lago; there are no marble bathrooms – just a chipped enamel tub.

Vance is a country boy, so at least he wouldn’t protest about the smells from the farm next door, the shooting or the mud in the road. I’m just not sure he’d like my liberal elite taste. I’d have to hide the Lesbian Sex Bible and my Margaret Atwood books. I’ve already had one guest complain that they found my art “offensive”, turning a naked portrait in the bedroom to face the wall and sending me a message saying they were appalled by a kitsch plate on my kitchen wall with the jolly motto: “Fuck the patriarchy.”

“We completely disagree with this,” they furiously said.

Still, at £150 a night, my place is small change for Yanks – in Washington, that’s probably a parking ticket. But God knows (sorry, blasphemy!), I’m not complaining – I could use the cash.

Photograph by Greg Balfour Evans/Alamy