Au pairs with a bit of nous (From The Northern Echo)

Au pairs with a bit of nous

12:22pm Friday 29th July 2011 in Sharon's View By Sharon Griffiths

IT’S such a brilliant and obvious idea, you can only wonder why it hasn’t been done before...

GrannyAuPair. Neat, wouldn’t you say?

It’s a German agency set up by Michaela Hansen who married at 19 and had her children in her 20s. Now in her 50s, watching teen and twenty- somethings setting off on their au pair adventures, she realised how much she’d missed out on. And if she felt like that, she was sure that others would too.

She was right. There are, in Germany at least, plenty of women in their 50s and 60s – mostly 60s, who’ve given up work, have no ties or responsibilities and are anxious to make up for the travelling they didn’t do when they were young.

The agency finds them jobs, just as they would for teenagers. The women receive free board and lodging and pocket money in exchange for helping with a little light housework, childcare or caring for an elderly relative.

Everyone wins. The women – who probably actually aren’t grannies or they’d have their hands full at home – get travel and adventure without dipping into limited pension pots.

And the host families get a grownup.

Which, let’s face it, is almost bound to be an improvement on the usual hormonal teenage au pair.

For every brilliant au pair, there’s one fairly average one, two sullen and homesick, three who are absolutely useless and one who gets pregnant.

So a sixty-something will surely reduce the odds of disaster at least.

And grown-ups know things – such as how to cook and iron and whether a sick child needs a doctor or just a cuddle and a story.

The sort of woman who ups sticks and goes to stay in the spare room of a foreign family at an age when it’s more usual to narrow your world rather than widen it, is more likely to be capable of coping.

She’s also more likely to interfere of course. Re-organise things, tell you where you’re going wrong with your children/husband/job/life, correct the children’s manners and mutter darkly about the inadequacy of your housekeeping, the laxness of your discipline and the chaos of your knicker drawer.

Bossiness and criticism is just a risk you’d have you take for the payoff of having the shirts ironed properly and decent food on the table.

Organisations are increasingly trying to make use of cheap grownup knowledge – from charity work or helping families to cope to recently retired professionals who take on specific projects for VSO. Newly retired grown-ups are a huge resource we neglect at our peril.

But Granny Au Pair seems different.

It smacks of catching up on lost youth, of fun and adventure and responsible irresponsibility. It can’t be long before someone sets up a branch in Britain.

The problem is that just when we’re fit enough and open-minded enough to give it a go, we’re going to have to carry on working for ever.

Even more reason then to consider Granny Au Pair’s motto: If not now, then when?

Go for it.

WARNING
DON’T pay for your European Health Insurance Card. There is absolutely no need.

You need your EHIC card if you’re travelling in Europe. If you’re ill or in an accident, it gives you basic health cover in state hospitals. Travel insurance providers often insist that you have it as a basis for insurance and if you haven’t, they might not pay up for any claim.

It’s very easy to get a card. Just tel 0845-606-2030 or go to ehic.org.uk.

But when you go online, the first site that comes up is one that charges you £14.99 for the privilege.

True, it mentions that you can go to the official site and get your card for nothing – if you’re prepared to check the information yourself.

As the only information you need is your name, address and national insurance number, it’s not exactly complicated. If you can’t manage that by yourself, then you’re probably not safe to leave the country alone.

Get your card. Don’t pay the fee.

£14.99 is much better spent on a couple of drinks and an ice cream.

Desperate Fergie scrapes the barrel

AFEW weeks ago I warned that Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York would soon be selling her children next. I didn’t think I’d be so right so soon.

She’d already tried to sell access to her ex-husband for £500,000 and blackened her late parents’ memory by accusing them of abuse to boost her American TV show. And now she’s done it. The two girls have been filmed distressed and weeping when discussing the disasters of their mother’s life for the Oprah Winfrey channel.

Fergie’s always been a joke, but we thought at least she was a good and caring mother. Not any more.

What compassion fatigue?

YOU can’t legislate against madmen with machine guns.

All the legislation in the world is not proof against someone crazy and determined with a grudge against his fell human beings. We can only sympathise with the Norwegians in their horror and admire the way in which they’re coping.

On the other hand, it’s reassuring to know that when we can do something, we get on with it. The Great British public has already given more than £30m to help the people affected by the famine in the Horn of Africa.

Compassion fatigue? What compassion fatigue?

And it certainly puts the hacking scandal into perspective, doesn’t it?

Too much reality

THE Advertising Standards Authority has agreed that airbrushing on ads featuring Julia Roberts and Christy Turlington has gone too far, that products from L’Oreal and Lancome never could get those results.

But do we really want less airbrushing in ads? I certainly don’t.

At least now I can believe it’s all done by trickery and digital cleverness.

If the people in the ads really do look like that, then that’s even more depressing for the rest of us.

Remember, remember

A MEDICAL breakthrough could soon mean that those senior moments could be a thing of the past.

No more losing keys, specs, shopping lists. Or standing at the top of the stairs desperately trying to recall why you went up there.

It could all soon be solved by a simple pill.

If you remember to take it, of course...