'Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days': Your guide to the successful adult sleepover (2024)

Photo caption for Benjamin Franklin pic: An old adage attributed to Benjamin Franklin — “guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days” — has never been taken more seriouslythan in modernhospitality sensibility.

When, in my teens, I discovered Jane Austen and read about people staying with each other for months on end, I thought of it as quite odd. Two hundred years after Austen’s death, families and friends no longer need to decamp to each other’s houses for days, let alone weeks on end, in order to see each other.

Article content

[np_storybar title=”Rules for a successful Dine &Sleep” link=””]

Article content

Hosts

Always make your invitation absolutely clear: “Why don’t you come at five on Saturday and we can have a really lovely evening and leisurely breakfast, then we might have to part company as I’ve got to go out to lunch.”

Give your guests an extra special welcome: after all, they have travelled, risked leaving teenagers home alone, and are not there for long.

Don’t let your guests lift a finger during a D&S; again, they’re not there for a whole weekend, so make it a real treat.

Guests

Make it crystal clear when you will be arriving and leaving, so no one is in any doubt. There’s nothing worse than guests whose departure time goes unstated; hosts can worry it will never come.

Arrive with more booze than you’re planning to drink. A pudding for supper is always helpful, or several different cheeses.

Always make your bed so that it looks as if you’ve never been there. The host will almost certainly want to keep the sheets on it if it’s only been one night.

[/np_storybar]

So, withthe long weekend inMay ahead of us, those planning on spending it either being or receiving guests may be keen to hear that the traditional Friday-to-Sunday stay of even a few years ago is falling out of fashion.

Article content

Article content

In its place, all hail the new Dine & Sleep: a one-night stay, starting on either a Friday or Saturday night, and including supper, a bed, breakfast and perhaps a morning constitutional, before leaving on a high. In essence, a grown-up sleepover.

“A whole weekend is too long for guests and hosts alike,” says Miranda Thomas, 52, a former science teacher who lives in Wiltshire, England with her husband, Martin. They have five grown-up and teenage children and a lot of family and friends.

“Time is precious,” she says. “The joy is, we can enjoy having a couple of friends here for a Dine & Sleep, then they go home and we still have the rest of the weekend to ourselves. Now, 90 per cent of our guests come for only one night. People start by thinking we’re mean and weird, but then recognize it works for them as well. They can leave their teenagers for one night without worrying they won’t have a house fit to return to.”

And as Dine & Sleeps are so much easier and more casual than whole weekends, Miranda says, they have them more often. “Cooking five meals in a row is a frightful bore and our house is too crowded and below par in terms of standards. Someone came the other night and fur was running out of the bath taps — a bat in the water tank — so the bath and basin were out of order. People are prepared to put up with anything for one night, but it wouldn’t have been fun for longer.”

Article content

Miranda’s father and stepmother have gone in for Dine & Sleeps for years — among their friends, in their seventies and eighties, it is largely due to no longer being able to drive in the dark (for reasons of eyesight, as well as alcohol intake).

But the whole concept is relatively new for people in their 40sand 50s, possibly because their children have only recently hit their teens. When they were too young to be left, parents were keen to flee from the city for a whole weekend; to join forces with others with young children for the relief of fields, sky and adult conversation/consolation.

But while a whole weekend away with good friends always promised so much, the reality was often hell. I remember the hassle of packing up the car for the Friday night drive into the country. Then a divergence over children’s bed times and eating habits could give rise to tensions among the oldest of friends. My three sons, now aged 17, 16 and 14, did not respond well to late nights when they were toddlers. Tantrums in the privacy of one’s own home are bad enough, but are extra-painful chez others.

Article content

If they went to bed late — “Oh, chill, what can it matter for a couple of nights, Candida?” my hosts would say winningly — they inexplicably woke at 5am, and then there was the horror of having to get up with them in case they shouted the house down.

I remember the freezing early mornings spent in unfamiliar kitchens desperate to shut up energetic boys for fear of them waking the house. The eternity till the appearance of anyone else — let alone breakfast. The return home, my husband and I feeling as though we had been wound through a mangle, weighing up whether or not it had been worth it.

From the hosts’ point of view, they are left knackered by the cooking. A friend who lives in Yorkshire says: “I don’t expect any help for one night, but if people come for a weekend and are reading the papers while I’m peeling the potatoes yet again, I can feel resentful they’re not lifting a finger and they’re annoyed I’m not giving them my full attention.”

Media consultant Sebastian Scott and his partner, interior designer Peter Mikic — an enormously hospitable couple — have Dine & Sleep down to the finest art: Dine without even the Sleep. Their weekend retreat is a cottage in the Chilterns — “near enough for people to come to lunch from London,” says Sebastian, “but too small for people to sleep in.

Article content

“We like people to arrive for a walk around noon,” he explains. “A delicious lunch, and tea by the log fire, then I am very encouraging about them beating the traffic home. Five hours is lovely. That cuts out queues at the bathroom door and hangovers at breakfast. The last thing I want is people making themselves at home, going through our kitchen cupboards and fiddling with our remote controls.

“As a guest, I am very keen on one night because a whole weekend is a relatively long commitment, unless there are hot and cold running staff and enough different people to sit next to. Quite apart from the fact that guests have high standards of service expectations, these days. They’re used to Soho House and expect weekends to be similar.”

Though many adult guests “get it” and do their bit, others are as bad as children and sulk at being riven from their own pillows, singular food fads and high-speed wi-fi connections for too long. As one consummate hostess concluded: “We still want to see our friends, but one night is perfect — everyone’s got a box-set they want to get back to, haven’t they?”

Our website is the place for the latest breaking news, exclusive scoops, longreads and provocative commentary. Please bookmark nationalpost.com and sign up for our cookbook and recipe newsletter, Cook This, here.

Article content