The new job

It’s so nice to be able to wake up every morning and be excited for the day to come. It’s like the feeling you get when the sun is shining the birds are singing and you feel that everything is right with the world. All I need now are little animals to come out of the forest when I sing and I’m in a Disney cartoon!

I started my job with Mrs Jenkins, oh, two and a bit weeks ago now and it’s just great. Mrs Jenkins reminds me of Mrs Pepperpot but with style. At least style enough for an eighty-something year old! She’s cute as a button but feisty along with it and some of the things that she says make me blush to my very toes! She tells stories of when she used to go skinny dipping with the local lads as a young girl, when she was caught kissing the vicar’s son – and then seems shocked when she thinks my tops are too revealing or my skirts are too short. And my skirts are rarely above my knee – it’s still winter after all and even then, I’m not sure I have the legs to carry off short skirts. But that’s irrelevant. She’s completely confusing but that just makes her interesting and already I don’t think of it as a job but as something that’s just fun to do – I should have been doing this volunteering thing ages ago.

I normally head over to Mrs J’s about 3 times a week and spend at least a couple of hours there. She eats like a bird so the cooking isn’t too demanding but as soon as she learned that I could bake cakes, she’s always after me to make her scones, cakes or buns. Since I get to eat them too, I never argue.

I took Fudge (my bichon frisé) up to her house one time and she seemed a little wary of the little ball of fluff and told me she was watching her closely to make sure she wouldn’t, and I quote, “whiz” on her couch! When I offered to put Fudge out in the car she said that I didn’t need to bother myself. I’m pretty sure she likes Fudge more than she wants to!

This afternoon she made me water her flowers (because it was sunny!) and then, after I’d fixed the lightbulb in the loo and cleaned up the kitchen, we ate cake while watching the telly. The snooker is on at the moment and Mrs J decided to watch it since Steven Hendry was playing and she thinks he’s hot. This disturbed me immensely. I’m not saying Stephen Hendry isn’t hot – I’ll admit I’ve never even thought about it – but it’s just not something you expect to hear from such a small, elderly woman. It’s never going to be dull, that’s for sure.

Here’s hoping things continue on like this and the sun is here to stay!