My week as a Granny Nanny

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I've just got back from the week in Bournemouth looking after the granny. And OH MY GOD - what a laugh. This guy is obviously used to having someone around to do all the errands. From the moment we stepped into the hotel (4 stars, right on the beach) he was giving me orders (in a nice way). Some of the things that were said and done were hilarious. Here is a list of just a few of the things I had to do:
Sort out room allocations;
Round up the kids for breakfast, lunch and dinner (a big performance as they were 12 and 15 and needed about 2 hours to get ready each time, but we usually only had about 30mins);
Reserve a spot on the beach each day (one day in the pouring rain, the other in blistering heat) with deck chairs and umbrellas
Reserve tables for lunch for 7 people - in the right place, with an umbrealla or in the shade
Do shopping for his ex-wife who came down a few days later (products included foaming shower mousse for sensitive skin)
Exfoliate the ex-wife's back before she showered
Stand in the rain supervising the children while they swam
I was given an itinerary the day before we left (I had to meet with his secretary to get the train tickets etc) and everything was planned down to the last minute. On it it also said that the 2 of the girls and their friends got a 'sea facing twin room' while I had a 'single room' and it was certainly not sea facing - my view was of the roof of the building next door. I also think that the hotel staff knew I was the help because I didn't have a mini bar or complentary water and my room was cleaned very quickly while we were at breakfast, while the others were done while they were out for the day.
The meals were tiny (I now have a theory that the more expensive the food the less you get) - but I wasn't paying so I didn't care. We also had a team of about 5 or 6 waiters standing behind us at dinner each night - one to pour the water, one to serve the bread, one to do the wine, etc...
The son (who came with the mother) is going to be staring in the next Harry Potter movie so all he talked about was the different actors he had met (which is fair enough but it got a bit boring). The youngest girl was an absolute brat - for example on the last day she threw a hissy fit at lunch because there was cream on her cake and she didn't like cream, so she just refused to eat it, all the while complaining that the menu hadn't said that it had cream on it - I couldn't believe it, there are children in Africa who don't even know what cake is!? There were also a few arguements over the protable DVD players the father had bought (new) for them (each with about 20 DVD's) - the youngest one's didn't work so she kept asking her sister if she could use the spare that she had bought but the eldest girl refused - the father just watched them fight - I would have taken them off them, they were lucky to have one let alone 3.
I did get some time off and spent most of it by the pool so I now have a great tan, which is a plus. And I suppose you could say that I got a four star holiday with all meals provided and I got paid for it. So that was my week as a Nanny/Carer/Goffer.
I'm off tomorrow to Bath to start my next job in the pub. I've realised that this is the first time that I will actually be living away from home, where I have to think about getting food and cleaning the bathroom and doing laundry - I've always either been with family or on holiday.
Onto the next adventure...

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