Learning to live with a stranger in the spare room

Tens of thousands of Britons have registered for a government scheme to house Ukrainian refugees in their homes. Although only launched by Michael Gove on Monday, the nation has promptly proved itself an antidote to Home Office bungling over a humanitarian crisis which had shown the UK in a very poor light compared to other European countries, such as Poland and Romania.

Families across the land have offered whatever they can to accommodate fleeing survivors — mostly women and children — of Putin’s madness.

The vast majority of these kind hearts will remain anonymous, except perhaps to their nearest neighbours, as is usually the way with the genuinely altruistic.

Alongside such modest selflessness, we have the more public point-scoring of a growing list of politicians who have pledged to open their doors to Ukrainians.

Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon (who also promised to put up Syrians a few years ago), and Labour leader Keir Starmer have come forward so far.

Gove himself sounded willing but as his ex-wife, the journalist Sarah Vine, explained, he no longer lives in the family home so is not really in a position to help. 

Boris Johnson said his security arrangements precluded him from getting involved, which is fair enough. Imagine escaping the shelling in Mariupol in search of sanctuary and ending up in Number 10.

Others in the public eye, for instance, actor Benedict Cumberbatch, Match of the Day host Gary Lineker, and former Women’s Hour presenter Jenni Murray, have used high-profile platforms (including the BAFTA Awards and a newspaper column) to advertise their spare rooms.

To all the above, whether trying to set an example, jumping on the benevolence bandwagon, or truly overflowing with human kindness, I would say bravo. Sharing your living space with strangers, as those of us who have had experience in this field well know, can be fraught.

About ten years ago, when our youngest daughter won a place at a specialist school, we had to raise funds fast. My neighbour suggested letting a room to a foreign language student and as she herself seemed to be doing okay out of this system, we decided to give it a go.

Overnight the playroom became the (paying) guest room, and the downstairs bathroom their “en-suite”.

In compliance with the protocol, you take whoever you’re sent so when our first lodger turned out to be a 50-year-old Frenchman called Thierry, we did not protest. He seemed charming, he asked to borrow my hairdryer and we told him our home was his home, not meaning it literally, of course.

It was the summer of 2012 and the London Olympics were on the TV all day. Thierry, who had a television in his room, soon settled down on our sofa, where he sprawled for the next three weeks.

At dinner, every night, he held court. I had worried before embarking on the room-letting that my husband’s inner Basil Fawlty would soon scupper the arrangement. But the problem with Thierry was mostly mine.

There was just no escaping him, he was always there, always talking. He talked when I talked. Once I told him off and then, feeling bad, took him to a concert, where he talked over the music.

When he left eventually, he implored us to visit him in France but he left no address and we never heard from him again.

After that, we established a few more boundaries so our guests kept to their own quarters. We still ate together — part of the deal —but managed to maintain some privacy. 

Many people, of all ages and nationalities, passed through the playroom. Most stayed for weeks rather than months but the longest-lasting was, in fact, everyone’s favourite, a young Turkish woman who was scared of our cats but keeps in touch to this day.

We put up and put up with a rebellious Russian teenager, who told us her father was in the Russian navy and wasn’t allowed to join her and her mother on foreign holidays. She started seeing a German boy from the language school and I had to impose a curfew; she was more trouble than my own girls.

There was a Japanese woman so delightful I delivered tea on a tray to her room every afternoon; more Russians; a ferociously independent but blind Turk who would have been run over were it not for the neighbours who kindly stalked her to the bus stop; an elderly chap from Reunion (this was long before Covid); and several Chinese, nearly all exemplary apart from one girl, so entitled that I severed our contract early, drove her across town to new (unsuspecting) hosts, and swore never to take in another stranger.

But that was then. The ethical dilemma when considering signing up for the Ukrainian scheme was why we hadn’t volunteered before, for Afghans, Syrians, Sudanese and other deserving exiles. 

Then we wondered, with our house emptier than it was a decade ago, how we could refuse to offer shelter to desperate mothers and their children.

There was, for me though, something overriding all this. In the Sixties, my own family sought refuge in England after my father was given a one-way exit permit out of apartheid South Africa, where he had challenged the Nationalist government.

We benefited from British generosity until we found our feet; it seems only fitting now to extend that same hand of friendship to others in a far worse predicament.