Brighton

Planning a family holiday this summer?

Worried about what might happen to your house while you’re on the beach? Well, worry no more because Whittle and Daughter House-Sitting Services are here to help. We take house-sitting to a whole new level.

To illustrate our innovative approach to customer service, and our dedication to going the extra mile, some highlights of our recent house-sitting engagement in Brighton:

On day one, we arrived at the property shortly before bedtime, so we had a quick dinner (setting off the fire alarm in the process) and Flea went to bed in the room with white walls, white floors, white bedding and white blankets. And then had the sort of nosebleed that makes Nightmare on Elm Street look restrained.

The next morning, while I was unpacking, Flea watched a DVD, and it got stuck. The DVD player had to be disassembled (using a combination of scissors, hair clips, keys and profanity, since I didn’t know where the screwdrivers might be) to remove the disk, and then gave up the ghost, refusing to turn on again.

That night, I decided to watch a bit of TV, what with the DVD player being broken and all. The Sky+ box wouldn’t start. By the time the home-owner texted me to say it could sometimes be a bit slow, but there were lots of movies on there I could watch, I’d completely reset (and wiped) the Sky+ box to try and get it working.

Our key responsibility as house-sitters was the feeding of the cat, and the fish. The cat, Chloe, was terrified of Flea, who has decided she no longer wants a cat but a hamster because, “they won’t run away when I try to stroke them”.

For a few days, all went well with the fish. Crucially, none of them died.  Then one day we noticed, suddenly, the fish tank was only half-full with water. And the pump was making a strange noise. And there was a faint smell of burning.

Using all the expertise gathered from exactly zero years of fish ownership, I quickly topped up the tank with a bucket of water, and put some towels around the tank to soak up the murky water that was escaping from somewhere, then texted the home owner who said, under no circumstances just put water in the tank. Oops.

So we finished our stay with the faint smell of bleach pervading the house, some slightly stained bed linen, a broken DVD player and Sky+ box, and some fish being slowly poisoned by a bucket of tap water.

Oh yes, I see a flourishing career ahead of us.