For five years, I lived
as a servant.
There really isn’t
another word for it. I was politely
called a ‘home companion’, and I never actually scrubbed floors, so maybe I’m pushing the term a little. But I lived with lonely, elderly individuals;
cooked, cleaned, ran errands, drove them around, on duty seven nights a week
and six days, from seven in the morning until ten at night, with three hours
off each afternoon. These precious hours
were spent writing endless letters to my friends back in New Zealand, since I
knew virtually nobody in the UK, and my job frequently put me in isolated
villages in the middle of nowhere. The
pay was abysmal, but when you have nothing to spend it on, it adds up quite
satisfactorily after a few months, and then you can use it to travel the world.
During these years, I
lived in all kinds of places with all kinds of characters. I lived in a mansion, whose owner once bred
racehorses, and who still (at 85 years old) shot her own pheasants and caught
her own Scottish trout (which I had to then cook on the aga for her lunch
guests, a challenge in itself, especially when felt obliged to pretend that I
had cooked on one before). I was instructed to use the servants’ stairs and
live in the servants’ quarters (there were only two of us in this mansion, I
hasten to add), and I had spoons thrown at me with remarks like ‘you stupid
girl!’ as frequent punctuation. I was
interviewed for one job at a National Trust property, driven to the residence
by the chauffeur, past acres of rolling hills and woodland with roaming
deer. And I worked in London in an
apartment below Kylie Minogue’s (which, being a Kiwi, really didn’t impress me
as much as it might have done). On the
other hand, I also worked in cramped, damp flats with hoarders who had terminal
illnesses. On one occasion, when nearly
homeless myself, I accepted the invitation of a feisty elderly woman I met on
the street of London and stayed for three nights in her tiny council flat. Believe me, I was very grateful to her for
this, in spite of the fact that I had to share the space with ten cats whose
excrement was covered by newspaper all over the floor, and whose neighbouring
couple beat each other up after a night at the pub.
All this is to say,
it’s a wonderful way to gain perspective.
To see life through as many different pairs of eyes as possible. To widen your own view, rid yourself of
prejudices, realise that everybody pretty much does the best with what they’ve
been given, and that generosity often comes from the most unlikely strangers in
the most unlikely places. And if you
want to write, stepping outside of your own perspective is essential. For how can you effectively put yourself in
to the mind of your characters if you are locked in the prison of your own
views and values? So get out there and
experience as much of life as you can, if you haven’t already!
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