Meet The Nanny

By Lily Patrascu

Poor Lily!

After a series of adventures growing up in communist Romania, she emerges from University as a bright young woman with a degree in French and English Literature, and a teaching degree.

So what’s next? A job as a teacher, surely ...

Well, no. Teaching in Romania wasn’t going to pay well enough even to cover the cost of living! So Lily set her sights further afield and came to England to be a nanny.

Once there, our redoubtable heroine threw herself into English life and was soon having new adventures and experiences, and learning a great deal about herself, the world and the people in it. Join her as she makes new friends and learns new things, enjoys triumphs and suffers disasters. One thing’s certain — her life is never boring!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lily Patrascu
• Release date: Nov 10, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301888832

Book preview

MEET THE NANNY

Copyright Lily Patrascu 2012

Cover design and photography Copyright Paul Weaver 2012

Smashwords Edition

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All rights are reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission of the author.

Contents

1. Introduction

2. An au pair's first day in England

3. My childhood

4. My family

5. Holidays in Romania

6. School

7. The gypsies

8. Beatings

9. Dates

10. The old French teacher

11. University

12. The haircuts

13. Life after university

14. Life as a nanny in London

15. Dates and friends

16. Interviews

17. Jobs

18. Teaching English to Spanish People

19. Nanny blunders

20. Other cock-ups

21. A new lifestyle

22. Language misinterpretations

23. Weddings

24. Partying

25. Travelling the world

26. Silly stuff

27. Conclusion

Introduction

This story is the true story of my life.

The names of the people have been changed to protect identities but everything else is accurate.

It all began when I realised that the stories I kept telling people about my life could be put in a book.

I was unsure anyone would be interested, but I wanted to prove that I could write the book, once and for all.

I have a dream...

I have a dream that I will no longer be the black swan, the black sheep of the family…That I will be famous for making a difference to society as a whole, that I will go further than anyone in my family ever has.

I have always had this dream in my head… That I was one day going to be pretty and successful. It sounds trivial but it’s very important to me.

When I was at school, I used to be the odd one out, the one people used to always laugh at, especially girls…

I have had acne on my face from the age of thirteen. It made me feel uncomfortable and ugly. At one point, it was so bad that people were talking about me on the street, and they were saying my face was covered in mosquito bites.

I was the one with the trousers four sizes bigger, with the hair up in a ponytail or in some ridiculous twists; I was the one with the granny underpants you could easily notice…

I was the one wearing white long johns all winter; I was the one in the weird outfits my mum would create; and I was also the nerdy one, always asking for more homework and always asking silly questions…

I grew up in Romania, in a very negative background; I used to be quite forgetful, absent-minded, disorganized, a rather spoiled brat, and yet independent, polite and a mostly introverted person.

My life turned around the minute I came to the UK. A new world opened up for me all of a sudden.

Beauty was not restricted so much to one pattern. I didn’t need to be very slim. Being different was exciting enough.

For the first time, I felt beauty was not solely a quantifiable thing that could be dictated by your body.

It was your beauty within that made you shine and stand out.

I figured that the energy you create when you are happy attracts more positive energy and the people who have it, get attracted to you.

So I started focusing on developing my inner beauty and I became happier and more content with myself.

I was no longer looking to please other people, just turning into the best and nicest person that I could possibly be.

And that is how it all began…

An au pair's first day in England

I departed my hometown in the hope an angel would accompany me on the most important journey of my life: the trip to England.

I had one hundred Euros in my pocket and thirty-three kilograms of my worst clothes. English people don’t dress well. At least that was the rumour.

I left my fur coats at home, my nice dresses and a ton of emotional baggage. I was ready to leave it all behind. A new world was commencing for me. I was departing Romania in the hope I could escape everyone there. I was ready for a catharsis. My soul needed too much healing. I was not strong enough and not determined enough to achieve anything. I had lost my ambition and I was looking for something else.

I was ready to change everything: my look, my hair, my clothes, my name, my attitude. I wanted to fit in. I was a different person: the new, natural, sexy Lily.

Some of my friends will be surprised to find out my real name is actually not Lily; it is Lacramioara, (yes, try pronouncing that!) which means Lily of the Valley in English, and as it happens I actually grew up in a valley…

I did a lot of things in a month that I should have done over years. I lost weight, permed my hair and turned into a completely different person…

***

The guy I was supposed to work for as a nanny picked me up from the airport. I felt lucky. Stern-looking and extremely serious, he could not quite grasp my excitement.

I got to his house, and there she was. His wife was chubby and she had a very strong French accent. The first thing she said was: Oh, you look a bit different!

Yes, I did. The only recollection of me she had was of a chubby blonde with straight hair. And there I was, slim, good looking, with a cheeky smile and endless enthusiasm, high heels and permed brown hair!

The typical stereotype of an Eastern European nanny was standing on her doorstep. There I was, ready to fulfil her English dream: a lovely house, nice husband, nice kids, lovely location and a dirt cheap au pair.

I saw the look in her eyes and the first thing that came to my mind was that I might need to change this family.

The agency I came through had specified you can only change families three times. I asked naively: Why would you want to change families?

They were English. What more could a Romanian person hope for?

The answer struck me like lightning: I was there only to fulfil a purpose; to be as cheap as possible.

My childhood

Life in Romania was very different. I mean, my brother and I spent a lot of time alone, while my mum went to work. She used to leave sweeties and small chocolates on the table next to our breakfast. I was a highly addicted chocoholic: I sometimes used to sneakily wake up earlier than my brother and eat some of his chocolates too, to even them out...

We had varying levels of wealth, depending on whether my mum’s company was doing well or not.

She was an engineer, but she would normally work much longer hours than anyone else I knew. She seemed to live at work. At one point we actually did literally live at her work, in the official guests building. It was quite convenient for a while.

My mum had a new boyfriend at the time and there was only one double bed. We all slept in it and it was seriously hard to turn, not to mention sleep, with the four of us in it, especially if one of us peed in it.

All my mum’s boyfriends beat her up quite badly, and she did eventually ditch all of them. I have to say I disliked them leaving as my mum would become bitter for a while, but I liked the extra room in the bed.

My mum was incredibly relaxed and she would frequently leave the door unlocked and the window open. Nobody ever stole anything, apart from our doormat and a giant chocolate ball.

My mum was divorced, and she didn’t have enough money for a nanny. She worked very long hours. Sometimes she left before I woke up and came back for a couple of hours to make sure we ate dinner, then went back to work.

She left breakfast on the table. There was always something nice and sweet to go with it. That was sometimes the only thing I ate. Everything else went into the bin. Until my mum discovered what I was doing and began punishing me for it.

So I started putting everything behind the radiators…for a while, until she discovered where the smell was coming from…

I started getting creative with the places I was hiding the food. I started putting it under furniture, behind the cabinets. That was usually if I had forgotten to eat, and I could hear my mum’s keys rumbling in the door. I knew I would get punished with a belt if I got discovered.

The kingdom

My mum always treated me like a princess. Maybe it was the fact that she was compensating for her own awful childhood.

I had the nicest, comfiest and warmest room in the house which had a very nice stove with firewood.

The room had a nice red and black carpet, red and black blanket, and green walls, since my mum took a spontaneous decision to paint the walls green with a broom one day before I got home from school!!!!

She was incredibly creative and would regularly and randomly come up with things or ideas, which she would immediately put in practice, as opposed to me, who would procrastinate as much as possible.

The walls didn’t quite match the rest, but did it really matter?

All that mattered was that my brother and I