» Tightwads

11 million in the bank, but...
Now, I have nothing against tightening your belt when finances are low, and depriving yourself of those lovely pastries on display when doing the weekly supermarket shop...

HOWEVER, when the deprivation is not you, but your 9 year old daughter, and you have 11 MILLION in the bank, AND you've just spent a rumoured seven figure sum on what can only be described as a new pet, that is a little different.

I worked for a rich family as a nanny/slave for a while, and their adorable 9 year old daughter (who was incidentally always dressed in hand-me-downs from relatives) loved painting. So she and I would while away the hours making Blue Peter inspired card models, and painting them with acrylic paints. This because her parents were too cheap to ever give me free rein to take her nice places.

Whilst out in town one day I happened to venture into WHSmith, who had a set of acrylic paints, 24 different colours, reduced from £16 to £3.60. Great, thinks I, the little girl will love these! I get back and check with her mother it's ok to buy them for her.

Now this woman has a reputed £11 million in the bank, drives around in a top of the range range rover, and likes horses. So much so that she is rumoured to have spent a 7 figure sum on her latest acquisition.

Her response?

No.

I explained how cheap they were and how the little girl needed them for the stuff we were doing, but the woman continued to put up such a fuss OVER £3.60!!! ..that I decided to screw her, pay for the damn paints out of my pittance of a wage, and give them the girl for her birthday. She was delighted.

I also told the mother to shove her job up her arse pretty shortly after that too.

Oh, and since leaving the job I still chat to the little girl regularly, as she often calls up for help with her homework - because her mother can't understand it.
(Fri 24th Oct 2008, 10:36, More)

» The Boss

THE best boss in the world... at least the most generous, anyway.
I simply cannot get over the generosity of this man. Although I'd like to win the lottery myself, if I had to choose a stranger to have that wealth, I know of noone more deserving than my boss.


I've been working for my boss for 18 months. His wife who had suffered with depression, committed suicide 6 months before I started working for him. He hired me to help out with his personal accounts, running the house, looking after his kids etc. It's fair to say he's very wealthy, but he is also exceptionally generous. The hours I work are long, but the work is easy, the pay is fair, I get separate accommodation, bills paid, and I get to take my dog for a long walk most afternoons.

I was contracted to work for him until September, when I'd planned to move to London.

And here's where it all starts. I've loved working for him, but things have been changing as his new partner has come onto the scene. It felt a bit like my old boss, who in truth was more like a father than my own father was, had disappeared, he'd started cracking the whip, being more demanding etc. At the same time I was tentatively looking at the sort of housing available for me in London, and starting to feel a bit crap about how things had changed.

Potentially mind-numbingly long story short(er), he asked me if I didn't mind finishing working for him at the end of June, but, of course because I'd originally been planning to stay til September, he'd pay me through July and August... Because... he thought I needed to have a little more time than a couple of weeks' annual leave to move down to London, and this would mean I wouldn't have to stress out while I was getting sorted.

I've now found a house, and the fella and I are due to move in on the 1st July. It's unfurnished, and we have nothing.

Tonight my boss and his partner (who I now get on with quite well) have let me know that, should I want them, the brand new corner sofa in my cottage can go with me, as can my new-when-I-moved-in bed and mattress, a rather lovely king size bed and mattress, a table with 4 chairs, a desk, 2 bookshelves and a futon... If I want them.

This 18 months has been a recovery period for me after a rather nasty incident at a law firm I worked for previously, and not only am I walking away more confident in myself and my abilities, with 2 months' pay in my pocket, but also a few grand's worth of furniture to boot.

I feel quite guilty about doubting him over recent months.

And all that leaves me to say is ...

My boss is better than yours, nur nur nee nur nur.
(Tue 23rd Jun 2009, 21:52, More)

» Housemates

Doggy peanut butter
Soooo I live with my boss's son (free rent - with the job), who just about has the sanitary know how of a blob of e-coli.

After moving in the housekeeper and I decided to tackle his room. This man is in his mid-twenties.

His father had just paid for a brand new suite to be put into his bedroom, new bed, mattress, wardrobe... all top of the range lovely stuff.

We attacked his room because I had discovered, upon shoving his shit back in there from ALL OVER THE REST OF THE HOUSE that, after getting the housekeeper to wash his stinking sheets (and iron them) he hadn't bothered to put them back on the new mattress or duvet, and had managed to dye a patch of the new mattress pink.

We got our marigolds on and set to. He'd used the floor as a bin (there was a bin - empty), under his bed as some sort of ecological warzone, and had weird shit marks up the wall, on tissues, on boxers - I can only assume he'd been giving himself a pokeybumwank and not wanted to get his fingers dirty so wrapped them in whatever was closest to hand.


But I digress. That is all background information so that what follows won't sound too naughty.


Roll on a few months. The shithole is back to being a shithole and I've given up. But coming home from a weekend away, after leaving the place spotless to find it utterly trashed I'm not in the best of tempers. My dog is pestering me, so I go to give him a toy that I fill with dog biscuits and peanut butter (to make them stick). Now I KNOW that there was lots of peanut butter left on Friday, but there is none there now.

This mysterious peanut butter vanishing continues for a couple of weeks. I don't mind GIVING people stuff, but if they don't ask first it's stealing.

So when I buy the next pot of peanut butter, I fill the dog's toy, then give the dog the pot, to lick. And leave a good layer of doggy slime on top of what's left.

I've been doing this for 3 weeks now. The pot keeps going down in between doggy licks, and it's about the only thing that has prevented me from murdering the bastard.

I'm planning on ltting him "catch" me giving the dog the pot of peanut butter in a few weeks. Just so he knows.


Ahh, that little rant was cathartic!
(Thu 26th Feb 2009, 13:47, More)

» Darwin Awards

Gunpowder, treason and plot
When my little sister and I were little, my biological dad (we'll call him Gay Dad from now on, because he was), who was divorced from my mum (because of the gayness), used to play some really good fun games with us when we used to visit him of a Saturday...

Little sister was a bit of a pyro (at 6), so he used to mix this stuff up together from a chemsitry set, then we'd set fire to it, and it'd bubble and fizz.

I still remember the ingredients and the care in which he used to mix them. We were to grind some caster sugar right down into fine powder, then add a spoonful of potassium nitrate to it, and here we were given strict instructions to stir it in VERY CAREFULLY, because we weren't to make any sparks. Then later we were allowed to light it (with a taper) and watch the yellow bubbles burn and fizzle up.

It was only a few years ago that I realised we were messing around with one of the key components of gunpowder. Aged 6 and 8.


Oh, and there was also the time that he took us picking "magic mushrooms" for "daddy's friends". Only we weren't supposed to eat them. Once again, I remember the care he took to instill in us the dangers of picking the wrong shrooms, including giving us a little pocket book of wild mushrooms, and pointing out the similarities and differences to death caps. I was 9, my sister 7. We were told not to eat them, and I kinda understood they were drugs for grown ups. We picked HUNDREDS. And that was the end of the story... Or so I thought.

Turns out that little sister hadn't really got the "drugs for grown ups" thing; she thought they were mushrooms that would instill magic powers in the eater, and had munched her way through a few in the hope she might become magical. She only confessed this to me a few years ago. Said nothing happened and she was quite disappointed at the time.


The same man gave me his tips on drugs once (I was 18 and had not even smoked a cigarette)...

Gay Dad - "I keep the stash over there..." (cue pointing at stash and pipe)
GD - "If you need any advice on drugs, you can ask me because I've done them all"
Me - "Er, oooohkaaay... What do you mean you've done them all?"
GD - "Well, put it this way, I found cocaine to be more addictive than heroin"
Me - "........"
GD - "And when you take LSD..." (note the use of WHEN and not IF) "make sure you are with good friends because..." and then he went off on some story tale of when he was high one time...


AND he had the nerve to have a go at my mum for taking us little 'uns pony riding, because it was dangerous... while he was practically getting us cooking up crystal meths on our Saturday visits! Bless him.
(Tue 17th Feb 2009, 23:08, More)

» Bullies

As a child/teenager
I was a bit of a geek. (excuse the long rant and lack of funnies)

In my defence I had been to a very inbred primary school, where being clever wasn't just cool, it was a status symbol. And I honestly thought school was about learning stuff. I was clever, too. Faults no 1 & 2 right there.

So I went to a very respectable public girls' school, knowing only one other girl there - Fiona R. Within a week she had cronies, and I was the butt of each and every joke.

Altho (thank god) I was never physically hurt - I was humiliated day after day after day.

The local radio station did an "Everybody Hurts" sad story telling each night at 10.30, and I used to cry myself to sleep to it most nights.

When my lovely mum found out about all this, she went to the school and demanded something be done about it. To be told, wait for it...

"It is not the fault of the girls saying these things to your daughter, Mrs Psyche, it is Psyche's fault for not being socially gifted."

I don't know what her response was, but with 2 other kids, and a demanding husband, I guess as long as I was coping, she was too scared to confront the witches at the school. I was put in a different class the following year.

Roll on 2 years - I was still a geek, but had good friends, the three girls (Fiona R, Nicola S and I can't remember the other girl's name) had bullied a different girl each year, and the one they picked on in third year had parents with connections. Put blankly, they said if the school didn't expel the girls involved, they would go to the press. Girls were duly "asked to leave".

That year I scored the top mark in the (pretty damned good) school for my maths SAT, English end of year exam, and just missed a level 8 for my science SAT. None of my grades were below an A.

We went on some sort of field trip and ended up in a big theatre with a load of other schools, and I saw Fiona R in there. She was fat, ugly, and looked like a total chavvy slapper. I imagine her like that even now. And Fiona R, if you're reading this, I now realise it's because you were a jealous, insecure bitch. But that wouldn't stop me spitting in your face if I saw you now.


All I can say is that I'm happy with who I am now, I'm not afraid of being clever, have a great fella, good life, amazing dreams... Don't know how much more I'd ask for.

OH yeah, and being treated like shit DOES help you realise that treating other people well is hugely important. I now tolerate little crap from others, and *hope* that I treat everyone I meet with respect. Maybe I could've learnt that another way, but I know I'll never forget how it feels to be shat on, and more than that, hope I'll never be the shitter.

As bad as it was to be bullied, at least I'll never have the shame of being the bully.
(Thu 14th May 2009, 17:43, More)