Now that summer is vanishing, it is time to look back on the guests who come to cottages. If you are a cottage owner, you will have met some of these. Or, sad to say, you could be one yourself.

My cottage is on an island and it’s not on a fancy lake and I pick up people by boat. So this evening when I pull up at the marina I see my guest already there and chatting to someone.

“Hello,” I say.

“Hi,” she replies. “I hope you don’t mind but I brought a guest. I’d like you to meet Brad.”

What can I say but welcome and hope on the way back to the island that I might catch a fish to add to supper. And I hope that Brad doesn’t mind sleeping in the shed with the paint and the squirrels and racoons.

Then there are the guests who mean well. Once again you pick them up at the marina and you notice they are travelling light. “Gosh,” they say, “we felt we could get some steaks and wine and some beer at the marina. But all they sell is peanuts and potato chips.”

“True, enough,” you say, “this ain’t Muskoka.” And you eat a peanut.

Then there’s the family — parents and two young girls that are coming for the weekend because my sister asked me to show them cottage country. They are due at the marina but they never show and at dusk I return by boat to the cottage to see if there’s a message on the machine. There isn’t.

But as I look out at the lake I see a pontoon boat lumbering my way and on it a group of four plus the driver. Turns out they missed the marina by two miles and were blundering along the shore when someone took pity on them.

Oh well, these things happen.

However, they want to come back next weekend and, amazingly, I agree. This time, I tell them to come the back way through the woods and only a two minute canoe ride from the island. I draw them a map, exquisite in detail.

They are due by dusk on Friday but dusk turns to night and no family on the shore. I paddle over and search the woods. No family. So I get back into the canoe and paddle along the shore listening for voices. Past the big rock, past stumpy bay, under the fallen tree and there they are. One quarter of a mile from where they were expected.

And at the end of the weekend when they say they would like to come back I explain that I am selling the cottage, goodbye forever.

Next comes the man who cooks. Always a welcome guest but sometimes aggravating. “Let me make breakfast,” he cries, “I can do marvels with eggs.” So you hand him a dozen.

“Excellent,” he says, “now we just need some smoked salmon and fresh basil. And where do you keep your truffle oil.”

“I keep it,” I reply with light irony, “in a gourmet shop three hours away in Toronto beside the smoked salmon and basil.” Then I hand him a tin of tuna, a handful of chives and some rendered bacon fat. He grumbles but sets to work and shortly we have something known as scrambled eggs. With tuna on the side.

Last, we have the man who comes late. The man who comes late was a surprise to me because I didn’t know his reputation and was at the marina at nine in the morning. Eager to meet him because he claimed expertise in carpentry and said he could put in a window.

So I waited from nine to ten. Then I called his home. No answer. So I waited and waited some more.

At noon he rolled in. “You’re a bit late,” I said.”

He laughed. “Don’t you know I’m always late?” he said. “Everyone knows that.”

“Not me,” I mutter. Then he asks where the closest beer store is because he forgot to get some and putting in a window gives him a thirst. “It’s an hour away,” I tell him. “Drink mine.”

And so he does — 19 in all. And he puts the window in backwards. Which is not so surprising. “Nice place you got here,” he says when I drop him at the marina the next day. “I’d like to come back.”

@page_break@“Love to have you,” I lie, “but I’m selling the place this afternoon.

It was a busy summer. IE