With friends like these...

If you’re known by the company you keep then ours hasn’t been particularly salubrious. Among our motley friends are gasbags, kleptomaniacs, pretenders and charlatans. There are those who’ve pinched our ideas, jobs and friends. We’ve been asked out for dinner to a restaurant but left to pay the bill on some flimsy pretext. Our cars have been borrowed and returned battered and bruised. Some have asked for loans of clothes, others of furnishings, some even our home for setting up meetings with prospective suitors for their children whose weddings we haven’t been invited to. 

“I like maverick people,” I’ve explained to my children when they’ve held them up as examples of people not to fraternise with. (Truth is, I find it difficult to pass moral judgement on others.) “You don’t give up on people simply because of some tiny flaw,” I’ve explained to them. Only to be reminded of the time one “forgot” to return a considerable sum of money he’d borrowed on the promise of returning it the following day. Another was found lurking in the neighbourhood bushes after inviting us home, to be informed by his wife that they weren’t in the mood to entertain that evening, and slamming the door on our face. Or the night that a neighbour asked to be allowed home to watch the World Cup on our television because his TV was bust, then asked his friends over, who helped themselves to our bar and left the home trashed.

There are some we’ve supped with, or had a drink or coffee with — often as a professional courtesy — who are cooling their heels in judicial custody in London, Mumbai or New Delhi. It’s enough to cause you to lose faith in mankind. Those are the ones who flew too close to the sun, but our intimate circle is less prone to such grand malarkey, more likely to pinch hotel towels than shareholders’ wealth. 

The proof of our pilferage is confined to the odd toilet roll, ashtray or salt-and-pepper set — pinched with confidence rather than guilt. There has been the occasional robe too, but only when the hotel has helpfully initialled it with the letters of one’s name, making recycling impossible. I don’t really like the slippers provided in hotel rooms, so I’ve never had the urge to pick those up — but my wife has managed to save a set of fruit plates purloined one visit at a time from her hotel room, when buying a dozen might have been simpler — and less expensive. 

And what does one make of an acquaintance — my wife’s — who, when invited to spend an evening with us, left behind a large gift bag which, when opened after she had left post several hugs and endearments, turned out to consist of several years’ assiduous collecting of hotel pickings — soaps, shampoos, conditioners and moisturisers? At a loss, my wife did the only sensible thing — promptly shared the spoils with the staff. A seasoned thief when it comes to pinching plants from her varied circle of friends, she stands vigil when her kitty gang visits to ensure they don’t return the compliment. Unfortunately, she isn’t always on her guard when inside the home — which is why we don’t know who made off with the cutlery at the last party. Be warned: She’ll be watching closely when we visit next.