A houseguest

For the past few days an old friend of mine from Sydney has been a houseguest.  She visits London about once a year and it's always lovely catching up with her.  My wife and I feel very strongly about keeping up good links with Australian friends and family and nothing beats chatting with someone face to face.

But for the person who works from home houseguests are always going to be a mixed blessing.  My friend is having a holiday at my place of work.

There's no easy solution to this.  London real estate is far too expensive for me to have a flat large enough for my workspace to be isolated and my friend is here to see me not Nelson's Column.

The best and politest thing I can do is arrange my workflow such that I'm not especially busy for the time we have a guest.  Where that isn't possible I try and stick to my 5am starts and get work done before my holidaymaking friend wakes up.  Otherwise all I can do is close the door, put on the Bose Noise-Canceling Headphones I wear on planes and work quickly.

When we have visitors it's all too easy for me to adopt a curmudgeonly or even misanthropic persona and leave my wife to play hostess.  But that defeats the whole point of self-employment.  One of the chief joys of working for yourself is arranging life so that you get to have wine over a midweek lunch with an old friend when the opportunity arises?

Houseguests are a good thing.