Bohemian couple ‘distraught’ after home smartened up by Facebook party gatecrashers

Former hippies Will and Judith Sanders have spoken of their upset after a secret home makeover planned by their grandchildren got out of hand.

While the couple were away from their Letchworth home for a Pilates weekend in Monmouthshire, 17-year-old Tabitha and her younger brother Caleb set about ‘tidying up a bit.’ When they saw the mess caused by four decades of partying and drug-taking, the youngsters issued a Facebook shout for assistance from their friends. But the message spread rapidly.

Within an hour, the quiet street was full of decorators’ vans while hundreds of home improvement specialists swarmed over the shabby house and its overgrown garden. Powerful worklights illuminated the night sky as the house was stripped of its grubby furnishings and faded Jimi Hendrix posters and modernised by the shrieking interior designers who led the invasion.

A clearly shocked Will said: ‘We left behind our comfortable shambles of a home and came back to a nightmare of tasteful wall-coverings, chandeliers and decking. We feel betrayed, violated even. We’d left our grandchildren the keys so they could invite hundreds of people for a ‘happening’ – we left stashes of drugs all over the place, hired a Rasta sound system and alerted the neighbours to expect trouble. We feel so let down.’

Tabitha and Caleb admit they are horrified by what has happened. ‘All we wanted to do was spruce the place up a bit,’ said Tabitha, ‘put up new Grateful Dead posters and Che Guevara wall hangings, a bit of paint here and there, that kind of thing. Grandpa and Grandma – or Will and Jude as we call them – have done so much for us: tabla lessons, regular tarot readings, taxi service to drama and dancing…We just wanted to say thank you. It all went horribly wrong.’

Will and Judith admit that it is partly their fault. ‘We’re taking them out of that informal vegetarian school for starters and setting up our own commune where they’re not exposed to reactionary ideas. They’ll grow up into poets and alternative therapists soon enough, but before that they need to work on the basics.’

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