As the first Americans of the season got out of their car I scrunched up my face and groaned. ‘They’re all like that, remember?’ said the builder boyfriend.

‘What if the bed gives way?’ I demanded. ‘How will they even fit in the bed?’

The BB shrugged. ‘Who cares?’ he said, with his usual sunny attitude.

I don’t mean to suggest these people were overweight. I mean they were giants. I’m sure their depth was right for their height. There was just an awful lot of them, and we are not the Premier Inn, with super-king beds that sleep two medium-sized horses.

She was in sportif wear. He was tousle-haired and bearded, dressed in a flowing shirt and baggy trousers.

He came at me like Gulliver, slamming his bags against the hallway walls, gouging chunks out of the paintwork. He didn’t answer when I greeted him – maybe I was so small to him he couldn’t see me at first. I said I was sorry if he’d had a long drive. He grunted and went on smashing walls as he swung bags. He was going to begin by complaining, I knew that.

Americans always hold me responsible for ‘Everything’ with a capital E. When they arrive they question me about their hire car charges, or berate me about the roads.

This one was not happy that there had been no free parking in Cork city. ‘We didn’t see any of it because we couldn’t stop the car. We drove around for hours and then just gave up,’ he said, and his tone suggested we better have a good excuse.

‘There is no free parking in Cork city,’ the BB explained. ‘You have to use the multi-storey car parks.’

‘I didn’t come to Ireland to park in a multi-storey car park,’ said the Yank, crossly.

I understand what’s going on. They’d come in search of the real Ireland – but what they mean by that is a thing of their imagination and doesn’t exist. The real Ireland that does exist is terribly interesting, but you might have to park in the odd car park in order to see it.

They had clearly watched Waking Ned or that dreadful series produced by the Obamas called Bodkin, which they filmed in a village a few miles down the road. That was unrealistic enough.

We once had a young Canadian girl who told us she had come to Ireland because she had watched The Holiday – a film set in the Surrey Hills. It was obviously way too much to start unravelling that so we let it be.

I tried to help the Americans. I didn’t want them to pass the real Ireland by because the real Ireland involved driving on main roads past concrete bungalows and stopping for lunch in pubs playing pop music.

In search of leprechauns, they would be turning off the main drag onto boreens where they would have to reverse back down farm tracks as men in very dirty trousers shouted incomprehensible directions at them, and they would tell themselves they were enjoying it, but they wouldn’t enjoy it.

We suggested they went to Glengarriff, where there are novelty wool shops, diddley-dee pubs with lads playing the fiddle and, halfway along the mountain pass from there to Kenmare, Molly Gallivan’s cottage, with poitin-tasting, donkey-petting, a tea room and a souvenir shop selling shamrock-shaped knick-knacks.

They’ll go there and say they found the real Ireland and they will enjoy it. So we recommended they went there and they said that sounded lovely.

But first we had to have them take an hour-long series of showers, emptying not one but two tanks of hot water after I boosted the system three times.

They were in Room 4, which has a pink scatter cushion on the bed embroidered with the words ‘Oh-la-la!’ I suppose we should have one with ‘Chucky-ar-la!’ on it, but Dunelm doesn’t do them. I think the en suite hit the spot, however.

They emerged from their room that night looking refreshed. They walked through the farmyard and met us doing the horses.

He was smiling and petted the dogs. I guessed the bad mood was because they hadn’t had a fully working hot shower during their trip until they got to us. You see, that’s the real Ireland.

They said they were going to walk to the pub so I told them: ‘The small bar is the traditional one. The bigger one plays loud pop music.’

In fact, the small bar would be playing pop music too, just not as loud, because the owner would be standing in a daze watching the racing highlights while his wife served old ladies toasted ham and cheese sandwiches.

That’s the real Ireland. However, if you come in September, I tell people, there is one week of the year where, for three nights, they all stand up in the pubs and sing Irish songs. It’s not as nice as it sounds, mainly because there are only so many times you can listen to ‘She Moved Through the Fair’ in one sitting, but also because they all bitch about who should win and the worst one always gets the prize because the locals don’t like a show-off who can actually hold a tune.

The next morning, I gave the Americans breakfast and he cancelled his previous order of a fry-up. The wife gave him the look. They all get it these days, the men. The wife nearly always vetoes their fry-up. They ate their cereal and I went out to do the horses.

When they had gone, the BB came to say they had set off for Glengarriff as advised, but were going via __ and he named a minor road that is no more than a mud track.

‘What!’ I erupted. ‘Why did you tell them to do that?’

‘I didn’t! I told him to stick to the main road but he said he wanted to…’

‘See the real Ireland? Oh for heaven’s sake! If they go that way we’ll get a stinking review!’

The last time someone tried it, two Canadians, they ended up repeatedly reversing out of farmyards full of old tires and muck heaps. It took them all day to do a 45-minute journey. It was the real Ireland, but they didn’t like it.