Why there's no such thing as an 'Entertainer's Paradise'

When we bought our house, we’d been told it was an “Entertainer’s Paradise” because it had a patio, a pergola, and a back door to get in and out.  And we believed it: our minds swam with happy images of the Paradise of Entertaining we would soon be enjoying – all the balmy summer evenings we would share with good friends, laughing and partying under a silk-lined marquee, enjoying pricey wines and fancy foods that our good friends brought themselves.

But we got dudded, we were deceived, the house turned out to be an Entertainer’s Paradise Lost.  There were no big glamorous Yalumba-ad parties, no wild all-night shindigs, no fancy feasts presented on rustic cutting boards – not even a photo-spread of a quince-glazed duck torn from a Donna Hay magazine.  Clearly this house was not entertainment-paradisey enough.  So we called in a tradie to knock out the back door and replace it with big bi-fold accordion-doors to “enhance our entertainment needs”.  These were huge doors, wide enough for a whole chorus-line of friends to step through at the same time, during one of our Sondheim Showtunes Sing-a-Long Sundays, which we planned to run bi-monthly, alternating with our Flamenco n’ Fajitas Fiesta Fridays.

But the tradie conned us too: our bi-folding fantasies never unfolded.  No singing of selections from Into the Woods, no flamenco hand-clapping speed-battles, no dining on deep-pan paellas which we would pronounce “pa-ee-ya” to impress members of the Gypsy Kings who we’d flown in for the weekend.  Clearly it was the house again: this was an Entertainer’s Paradox.  So now we’ve got a house with big bi-folding back-doors, and each day of summer we fling open those doors and the only guests who come to visit are small, fast and exoskeletal. Our house has become THE Entertainer’s Paradise for every blowfly, moth, mosquito and face-flying Christmas beetle in the Bayside and South Eastern suburbs – occasionally the outer-east if they manage to catch the 6:25 p.m light-breeze from Wantirna.

Day and night, flies party hard in our kitchen, laying eggs in the fruitbowl and vomiting in the watermelon dregs. Moths go clubbing in the living room, flapping under lightbulbs, the uglier ones hanging around the curtains, hoping to get lucky on the way home.  Mosquitoes queue up in the hallway, preparing themselves for the Midnight All-You-Can-Eat Ankle n’ Forehead Bedroom-Buffet.   The house is abuzz with love and laughter and larvae, and I guess it’s nice having visitors, it’s nice hosting the festivities, but these guests never know when to leave, never read the signals when it’s late and I’m doing my “Look, I’m In My Pyjamas, I’m Ready For Bed, I’m Holding a Can of Mortein Fast Knockdown (Low Allergenic)” let’s-wind-up routine.

So to all househunters out there, do not be fooled into buying an “Entertainer’s Paradise” unless your idea of paradise is living inside a giant Bug Catcher, and your idea of entertainment is running around with a cup and a Dominos Pizza flyer, trying to trap bugs inside and throw them out, like tiny drunk guests who never know when a party’s run it’s course.

Danny Katz is a newspaper columnist, a Modern Guru, and the author of the Little Lunch books for kids, now a new TV series on ABC3.