TRAVEL WORDS

Several people commented last week that they would love to hear about my life as an au pair in Geneva. Sadly there isn’t much to tell. I only lasted until Easter and I didn’t keep a diary. I found it a lonely life. My family were pretty good, an English woman married to an Italian man and both working for United Nations in Geneva. I worked long hours from 7am until 7pm with Saturday afternoon and Sunday off for £7 a week. Two young boys aged three and seven. Unfortunately the seven year old was showing signs of distress and bad behaviour. I guess that having different au pairs each year to whom you get attached and then they disappear is not good for a young child.

I was expected to provide a cooked lunch for the family each day, a list of ingredients and a recipe would be left for me and I would walk to the nearest shops for the food. I learned to cook many things that I had never done before including stuffed hearts, artichokes and oxtail. Not your normal Yorkshire grub. I cleaned and I did the laundry. The three-year old was at nursery in the morning and home during the afternoon and I would take him out for a walk, often to collect eggs from a farm close by. Did I mention it was winter? The ground was often covered in snow and it was cold, but a dry cold unlike the damp of an English winter.

I would make tea for the children around 5 pm then bath them and get them ready for bed. I don’t recall any TV. Once a week in the evening I went out for French lessons. And I became friendly with a young English girl in the next block of flats, Lorraine, and I used to go out with her on a Saturday. Sometimes we would visit a live music bar in a cavern in the old town which was pretty good. (Unlike the very few photos I have from that time)

I had a small room to myself in the high rise apartment not too far from the airport and with easy transport links into the city. With a view out to the Alps it was better than my box room in Yorkshire. Saturday mornings would involve an intense cleaning session where dining room chairs were upturned and dusted. Usually it involved a trip to a supermarket and a drive into France (passports at the ready) to buy bottled Avian water.

Some Sundays I accompanied the family to a ski resort in the French Alps where I was left in charge of the little one. I do recall once stepping into snow up to my thighs whilst pulling him along on a sled!

Once I had a weekend away when I visited a girl I had met on my European travels who was working in a ski resort in Les Diablerets at the far end of Lake Geneva. It was an interesting journey there, the last part on a cogwheel train. She also worked long hours, but at least didn’t have to look after young children.

My job came to an end when the mother decided to take a break from work and stay home with her children. So I contacted the son of a friend of my father’s who was teaching in Lyon and happy to give me a lift home as he was going home for the Easter holidays. It was quite funny though, as I was sneaked into his room in the boarding school overnight (most of the pupils had already gone home).

After that I took a job as a white collar worker in a factory in Bradford, living in a minute bed-sit before hitch-hiking to Zurich in September to fill in for another au pair friend whilst she went on holiday. I desperately tried to find work there without success so had to return to England until I could find another job, preferably abroad.

The most surprising thing about living in Geneva? Seeing cockroaches in the kitchen when I came home at night and switched the light on. Apparently they come up though the air vents.