Dear Diary - A Care Giver in England

23rd June, 2011.

I am not sure what happened when I uploaded my last Blog, but the first sentence got garbled…something like my brain feels at the moment, totally scrambled, because I am feeling like the walking dead today.
I went back to edit it and it was fine; perhaps I am at my wits end.
At two am I bolted out of my bed as I thought I heard Molly shrieking and visualised her tumbled out of her bed, bare butt in the air lying prone in her blue nightie on the plush Persian bedside rug that languishes lavishly in her large boudoir.
No, there she was snuggled under the duvet where I had kindly tucked her in at midnight.
Mystery, had she been sleep talking and yelling “Susan come here right now!”
I stumbled back to my room and was just dozing off.
The shriek sounded again right outside my bedroom window.
It was a pheasant…can you believe it?
I opened my window and hissed at him, “Go away you fool, I’ve just got Molly to sleep, - just bloody go away!”
The handsome fellow shook his tail feathers and strode off into the night, leaving me to toss and turn until I finally got back to sleep.
It’s soon to be shooting-season in the countryside and the gamekeepers are fattening the pheasant up in cages.
Before the shoot, they shall be released. As tame as tame could be.
Then a group of men called beaters round them up and steer them into the field where all the gentry are sitting on numbered seats with their rifles, - waiting.
The beaters flap their arms and brandish sticks frightening the pheasant up into the air. Then the gents shoot the birds as they take off.
Wow, that’s brave hunting…
The beaters rush around and bag the creatures, but only a few are turned into a meal for the table.
Most of them are buried in a large hole that is previously dug by the gamekeepers and gardeners.
In the fabulous Estate homes the cooks have sumptuous meals prepared for the brave shottits.
After the “Shoot” they grandly gather over their good sherry, eating whatever the hosts have provided, they discuss and boast of their exploits of the day.
Hanging on the surrounding walls the forbears in ancestral portraits look benignly down upon the gathering in silence, reflecting on their long ago days of yore.
Jolly-ho!
(You can tell I’m from Africa, there you generally eat what you have shot for the pot. Unless it’s a snake…I don’t eat snake.)
If anyone ever says in my presence that Care Givers earn too much and hardly have any work one more time I’ll pop.
Molly told me yet again today I was lucky to have such an easy job where I have so much time off.
I thought, “Yeah Moll, I wish!”
My sister-in-law Elsie has been Caring for a year and is a wise woman.
She advised me before I left South Africa for England that I should only accept 2 week Assignments with a Client, or face total burn-out.
I thought one extra week won’t hurt, surely?
Now I understand and humbly bow to her experienced knowledge as I shall have been here two weeks tomorrow and it’s time to leave.
Actually, it was time to leave the day after I arrived!
I believe there have been six Carer’s here before me and not one of them have lasted ten days, I still have a week to go and I’ll boast a survival rate of three weeks, so watch this space…

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