Crappily Ever After (2 page)

By nine we decide that it’s best to open our presents for each other under the tree. Saves taking them all the way home to Ireland and Scotland to open them and then bring them back. Ten o’clock and we‘re dancing to one of Becky’s gifts from me – titled something along the lines of, ‘
Cheesiest Christmas Songs Ever, Volume Two’
– and wearing the suitable attire of one of the gifts that Becky has given me. Stripy socks, one each; matching gloves, one each; and, to complete the set, a bobble hat, taking it in turns to wear – at the moment it’s mine. We really did wish it would be Christmas every day. 

Well, ‘til approximately ten o’clock the following morning, that is. I awoke to a stripy-socked leg draped over me. The bobble hat had slipped over her eyes so all I could see was the tip of her nose and a wide snoring mouth. Sitting bolt upright, I shouted:

‘Late! … Work? … Shit,
train
!’ I frantically put together the pieces of today’s planned events. I had one hour to get to King’s Cross; luckily, Becky had three hours to get to Heathrow. Shoving her off me, I made the dash to the shower. Gagging at the exfoliant effect of hairy soap grazing my body. I bolt back to the bedroom, throwing my wet towel onto Becky with the aim of hiding her eyes from the sight of my bare backside on a morning when I’m sure she couldn’t deal with it.

‘What’s up?’ her muffled voice queries from under the towel.

‘Get up! You have a flight to catch, I have a train, we have to go.’

Becky shot out of bed as if she’d been electrocuted and did a similar shower dash. Luckily, in a separate bathroom from me, one shared by clean and sweet-smelling girls. How unfair. I was living there first. Luckily for her, Stu the Serial Shagger had been evicted two weeks after she moved in; his presence was why I hadn’t taken her room over mine when the last idiot who inhabited her room left – and she moved in. Sharing a bathroom with the hairy Italian who left more skid marks down the toilet than you’d see at Brands Hatch had seemed, at the time, infinitely more appealing than constant sleep disruption from the squeaking springs emanating from Stu’s room as he entertained his latest conquest.

Fifteen minutes and two hastily packed cases later and we’re standing at the bus stop, squinting in our hungover states through the low winter sun in the direction our buses will arrive. As the Number 27 lumbers up the hill, Becky gives my arm a squeeze.

‘Here’s mine. Merry Christmas Luce, sweetie,’ and she was off. Jammy bugger, I thought. Some of us landed on our feet in life. Some – and I was one of them – were arse-landers. She, who had infinitely longer than me to get to where she was going, was on her way first. 

Somehow I made it. Rushing through the doors of King’s Cross Station, dodging tourists, business people, suitcases and buggies. I skip the queue as I know fine well that waiting at point A, B or C will only result in being directed to the platform that I can find instinctively by now. Another veteran ‘Scot going home for Christmas’ pulls up in position beside me. He hasn’t booked a seat either – I just know it. I have learned a lot since the first Christmas Eve train I had taken from London, when I had to spend six and a half hours sitting on my rucksack. Obviously, I hadn’t learned enough since then to make sure I had actually booked a seat! Each year I had done the manic-eyed dash through the train to find the Unreserved Seats – until, that is, they introduced the Holy Grail for disorganised passengers.  The Unreserved Carriage!

Platform announced, fellow Scot and I make our way as swiftly as we can in a nonchalant ‘I’m not in a hurry’ kind of way. Eyeballing each other occasionally. Less seasoned travellers dwindle metres behind. If getting to the Flying Scotsman’s Unreserved Carriage was ever made an Olympic sport, I would be a five times-over Gold Medallist.

‘Which is the unreserved carriage?’ fellow Scot bellows at the guard.

‘There isn’t one! It’s Christmas, we’re full.’ He rolls his eyes, baffled by the stupidity of non-booking travellers. This bought me precious seconds. I wasn’t involved in the niceties of conversation so, with a most unladylike snort and a duhhh! look at fellow Scot, I made my way to the train like a bat out of hell. 

Sitting smugly in my seat, I watched through my eyelashes as he attempted to shove his bag into the storage compartment, before making his way down the aisle looking for any vacant seat without a ticket on the top. I was pretty sure I had the only one in the carriage. I couldn’t help but mumble:

‘Messing with the big girls now, huh?’

‘Sorry?’ he said, throwing me an attitude-laden glance.

‘Oh nothing,’ I sympathised. ‘Just saying what a pain it is to find a seat when you haven’t booked. That’s all.’

‘You know for an extra £20 you can upgrade to First Class,’ fellow Scot ventured. ‘How about we go find out, crack open a bottle of wine and make our journey less traumatic?’

We make our way towards First Class with our upgrades. Annoyingly, it was practically empty. All these people standing in the corridors, yet all these seats sitting vacant. Mike, I now knew his name, provided the bottle of wine – at a staggering £17.50 – and we exchanged life stories. Mike was an Advertising Consultant for a Victoria-based company. He had been in west London, living just off Chiswick High Road, for six years and was originally from Aberdeen. He lived with his fiancée of two years, a beauty therapist, who had gone off to Hampshire to spend time with her own family. For no apparent reason, they hated Mike with a passion. 

‘Sam would sort those eyebrows right out for you,’ Mike offered generously.

I told Mike about my job in Highbury Fields as a nanny for three children, aged two, five and fourteen-years- old.

‘I‘m so over nannying!’ I moan. ‘Look up dysfunctional in the dictionary and you would find their family portrait.’

I explained how the two-year-old boy, Georgie, threw the most spectacular tantrums you have ever seen and regularly called me ‘Mama’. This seemed to mainly coincide with the exact moment that the cutest guy I had seen that day walked by.

‘No. Not Mama. Lucy,’ I’d say every time, with great deliberation. Throwing a ‘he’s not mine, please ask me out’ kind of look in the direction of aforementioned man.

I continued with how the five-year-old girl hadn’t been able to stand me since the second day of my employment. Once, on the walk to school – and in an attempt to break the ice and bond – I had spotted a patch of oil mixed with rain on the road. In mock horror I had turned to her and wailed:

‘Oh no! A dead rainbow! It must have fallen from the sky and…’

Cue fifteen minutes of tears and a shamefaced new nanny explaining to Miss Smith that, ‘Katie tripped on the way in and…’

‘No… she… she said,’ sobbed a hyperventilating Katie.

That’s the problem with five-year-olds. They have far too much damn vocabulary.

I have since discovered that the no-go areas – and their potential demises – with five-year-old girls include:  ponies, kittens, puppies, fairies, butterflies and, of course, rainbows.

The safe list includes: snails, slugs, spiders,
boys
! (I nodded a bit too agreeably at that one) and Daddy when he’s grumpy – and Daddy is not grumpy when?

‘My third child and problem,’ I complain, ‘is fourteen-year-old Henry. Who also hates me. Well, most of the time. After a particularly virulent week of acne, I enquired if he was attempting to grow another head – or perhaps it was an undeveloped conjoined twin seeking revenge? Jeez! Fourteen-year-olds really have no concept of humour. I actually would prefer it if he hated me full-time. It would keep him out of my way. Let’s face it, he doesn’t need a nanny apart from to make his meals and wash his clothes (I don’t even want to know what those stains are). What can he possibly need? The downside is that he goes through these phases of fancying the pants off me. Snapping away on his crap excuse for a camera phone whenever I load the dishwasher and finding any excuse to brush past or touch me in some way.’

‘It’s like looking after the reincarnation of Benny Hill,’ I observe with a frown.

‘Hmm,’ muses Mike, in a ‘get the hell away from children, Social Worker-type manner.’ ‘So quit then. What’s your real love?’

‘To go back to college, train to be a chef and eventually open my own restaurant,’ I reply. ‘However, my financial situation won’t allow it; until I find a rich husband, I’ll just have to carry on wiping arses, noses and tending to the needs of those spoilt brats.’

I tell Mike about the previous week at work and how I am becoming increasingly frustrated with my job. Funny how an entire week of my input and good work can be undone in just two days of the children being with their parents. Gone is ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and in their place is  ‘I want!’ and an angry snatch whenever they receive something. All in the space of a weekend.

Things reached boiling point two Friday mornings ago. Georgie threw the most horrendous tantrum in Sainsbury’s over a toy he wanted, but I wouldn’t buy. I had struggled to get him back in the buggy, but the harness is broken and, despite many requests by me, it hasn’t been replaced. I guess it doesn’t matter when you’re so used to going everywhere by jeep. 

Wait a minute, now I think of it. Can someone please explain to me why so many London families feel it necessary to have 4 x 4s? I mean, just how much off-roading do they expect to be doing in Notting Hill or Putney? Of course, this means they also have to have the standard uniform of Barbour jacket and wellies combo for the school run. Certain things I will never get about London. Another of them being: you find the perfect partner to either marry or cohabit with. Great! So far, so normal. Then, certain rules seem to apply: 

Buy a house: get a cleaner.

Have a kid: get a nanny.

Adopt a dog: get a dog walker. 

I mean, when did people become so lazy that they could no longer take a dog out for a pee? What grates so much on every nanny that I know is that dog walkers and cleaners get the same hourly rate as us. Can you believe it? I mean, put it in the perspective of responsibility: 

Cleaners
: 

Aim
: To not break anything.

Objective
: To leave the home shining like a new pin.

Main responsibilities
: To not mix cleaning solutions together (can cause chlorine fumes which can kill). Do not use the same cloth you used for the toilet on the kitchen surfaces. 

Dog walkers
:

Aim
: To not lose anything.

Objective
: To leave the dog exercised and having done it’s business. 

Main responsibilities
: Clean up said business accordingly. Return animal intact and without having mauled the leg of a toddler. 

Nannies
:

Aim
: To not kill or allow anything to do permanent damage to itself.

Objective
: To cater to all physical, intellectual, emotional and social needs. Organise activities and outings with the skill and expertise of Sir Edmund Hillary embarking on a climb up Everest (and with a similar amount of equipment). Educate within the constraints of the National Curriculum. Possess the ability to change a nappy, tackle a pile of ironing containing miniature items, put on a load of washing, discipline, tackle homework that you didn’t understand first time around, provide fun activities without the use of television, praise, reward, sort out fights, arrange play dates for the next week, make up bottles, put a plaster on a knee, take phone messages for employer and collect dry cleaning. All while making an organic pot roast. 

Main responsibilities
:  Spend ten hours a day averting danger from the combination of small people and trains, buses, cars, swings, climbing frames, plug sockets, kettles, cookers and each other. Ensure that they are fed, watered, sweet smelling, pyjama’d and in a good mood for when mummy and daddy return, crack open a bottle of Chablis and tell you how crap their day has been. While you slobber like one of Pavlov’s dogs at the sound of a cork popping.

Do you see what I mean? It’s not that I begrudge cleaners and dog walkers the money they get. Just like us, they provide a necessary service to the middle and upper classes. Nor do I think they should get less money for what they do. It’s just that nannies should get more. People think it’s a design flaw that so many career nannies remain childless and/or single. It’s not. Equate it to a frustrated housewife who has spent 20 years raising a family and putting up with the mood swings of a husband who thinks you are beneath him because you don‘t have a ‘proper job’. Then, imagine the liberation when the kids all leave home and you boot out said husband. Who would want to recreate that 24/7 scenario? Nobody.