This happened. The editor thinks it's a book of dog sitter stories waiting to happen. I am scribbling away at same... I first house-sat by accident. I was originally at Haven House, Lembton, as a live-in safety net for Lady Olive Simmonds, a seventy-nine year-old Bostonian with a lilac afro, a Temazepam habit and leg ulcers. Haven House was by the sea. Eighteenth century, elegant, comfortable. But there was Olive... Always in pain; either drunk, hungover or both; barely educated. She had married a man who was knighted, and believed this gave her a licence to be a twat. According to Olive, her fellow Lembtonians were all dull academics - this group having reading ages older than hers, which was thirteen - or failed schizophrenics. She had serious monophobia, with staff working (unnecessarily) every day apart from weekends. At weekends, first thing, anxious, she would ring round the Lembtonians that were still speaking to her - six in number - inviting them for coffee, ...
I do cabaret, sing opera, write and dog sit. Sometimes all at once.