Alison Craig: There's no room for these Fringe friends

In the rare moments of peace in the city, maybe first light or deep in the night, if you listen carefully you can hear the collective inhaling of Edinburgh residents as we brace ourselves for the onslaught of the Festival.

The Fringe kicks off on August 6, the launch is on August 4 so it is seven days and counting.

We have just waved goodbye to our neighbours, who packed their cases and jetted off for a month-long holiday paid for by the Festival rent they will receive for planning ahead, vacating their home and using their loaves.

We do a similar thing in our house, a sort of festival rent too, the main difference being there is no rent, we just hand our home over. And we never learn.

It is about now the phones ring, e-mail inboxes ding and the text messages of a million forgotten friends begin to emerge from the past, wearing convincing smiles, sounding fun and sociable and just calling on the off chance you might be around during the Festival.

"Oh you are? That's great. I don't suppose you'd have a small upright cupboard in which I could stand between the hours of midnight and 6am, you see we're coming up and haven't got anywhere to stay?"

A cursory look at the state of the under-stairs cupboard and you know you have to do better than that. And besides, you've nowhere else for your mop and bucket? So caught off-guard before you know it, the words "yes of course you can stay" blurt out of your mouth and you realise you've done it again. You have agreed to open your doors and home to people you can barely remember. People you likely exchanged numbers with in a temporary state of holiday delirium. Hot, half-cut and in a sun-drenched bar when the realistic possibility of them turning up was so far away you never seriously considered it.

I used to hand my number out with gay abandon assuming, as I never look up people I meet in these circumstances, that they won't either. But they do. And how. So the day arrives and they duly turn up bursting with energy and desperate to trail the streets and clubs of Edinburgh all day and night for the duration of their (over)stay. My dad used to say guests and fish go off after three days - don't over stay your welcome. But you can't say that when they turn up can you? "Hi who, erm sorry I mean, how are you? So when are you leaving?" Against your better judgment you let them come without the exit plan in place.

Of course, it ends in tears. It always does. Either they want to be at the Gilded Balloon's Late 'n' Live until 4am playing air guitar on stage with some comedian who inflates balloons with his rectum or, more worryingly, they want to attend the actual Festival. You know, the mythical one we hear about and never go to. The one where the highbrow Brian Sewell types swan about, eyebrows aloft, in crumpled linen suits speaking incomprehensible nonsense before attending the production of an obscure Japanese opera company. We had a well-known comedian, who shall remain nameless, who came to stay with us for several years in a row. He would suddenly get in touch as described a week before the Festival and a little starstruck we would say yes, of course, Jerry (oops) of course you can stay.

He would pitch up bearing no gifts whatsoever and treat our home like a doss house. One night he even took an exotic dancer home, which we didn't find out until the following morning. Just as we were scoffing into the Weetabix the kitchen door opened tentatively and in shuffled a sheepish half-dressed Thai girl who joined us for coffee. The comedian didn't apologise. She did. He didn't buy a bottle of wine. He didn't take us out for a bar supper. In fact, the point was he didn't even say thank you.

But be it a freeloading comedian, a stranger from a Greek taverna or someone you haven't seen since primary three, the truth is, no matter what your house guests want to do, it ain't gonna be the same as you, which, in our house, is get on with your life. Eat, work, lie on a couch, watch telly, argue with your family about the PlayStation, go to bed vaguely sober before midnight to get up the next day and do it all over again.

So the hatches are battened down, the answerphone is on, and the message any potential interlopers receive this year when they phone, because they will, will be short, succinct and to the point. Suffice to say the second word will be "off".

• Margo MacDonald is away