And Now For Something Completely Different…

(& oh là là) 

Some of you may be old enough to remember this 1971 title stemming from the Monty Python TV series catchphrase! Today’s is an account of another M.P. – namely the Mary Poppins year of my life. 

Having spent many blogs reflecting on my recent observations in hospital, I thought I’d change things up a little and tell you about my year in Belgium working as an au pair in 1977/78. 

Having finished school after 5th year and being given deferred entry to start medical school in the summer of 1978, I took the opportunity to fill the year doing something completely different. At school, I loved languages and in particular French. I also really enjoyed art, creative writing and all sports, but my science qualifications along with the instruction to ‘do something useful’ with my life, led me to apply for medicine. 

In retrospect, I feel so privileged to have been able to have had the experience of helping people through my career in medicine but I also know that there are many other directions my life could have taken. 

In the summer of 1977 having just turned 17, I set off naively with my little case, taking the train from NE Scotland to London then setting sail for Ostend in Belgium. I had applied for the post of ‘mother’s help’ through The Lady magazine and was fortunate to get the post with a French/Flemish family living in Tervuren- about 12km from Brussels. My experience of having a little sister 15 years my junior, stood me in good stead for what lay ahead. I think it gave me the edge on landing the job and maybe my French origin name helped too! 

The Mary Poppins role consisted of caring for three very lively French speaking children then aged 6, 5 and 3. The older two attended school for part of the day. Each morning I had to cycle with the youngest on a rear bike seat, taking her to and from nursery. During the time she was there I did a bit of food shopping at la boulangerie, then some house tidying and kitchen clearing until the kids came home. Then we’d play and spend all the time together until bedtime when we finished the day by reading books like Lucky Luke or Hergé’s Adventures of Tintin- both famous homegrown Belgian classics. I picked up simple ‘kiddie’ French very quickly, having found school French not overly useful in my situation. ‘Where is the railway station?’ wasn’t a phrase I really needed although at times it may have served me well when I wanted to just escape the madness! 

It was a full on live-in job with a small amount of pay weekly. Both parents worked full time. I had Wednesdays off and went to a local charcoal drawing art class in the mornings then went into Brussels in the afternoon, getting a lift home from the dad of the family in the evening. My afternoons off consisted of indulging in comfort eating Leonidas pralines, Belgian waffles and pommes frites with mayo, whilst browsing record shops. Yves Duteil’s Tarentelle album became one of my favourites and also served as a good way to improve my French as some of his songs are so fast paced!  1977 was also the year of Saturday Night Fever and I remember listening and dancing to those album tracks with an American friend I made locally. No mobile phones or internet in those days so we had to make our own entertainment. ‘Stayin’ Alive’ was the theme tune of my year! 

We travelled a little as a family, mainly within Belgium but also had a short holiday in Luxembourg. I remember at the time thinking how beautifully green the place was and that I’d love to get married there!

Over the course of my year in Belgium my French improved greatly, especially as the lovely mother of the family didn’t speak much English at all. Her family originated from the DRC where she grew up. We became great friends and had some fun times together. Flemish was only used between the parents when they were arguing in front of the children! It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. Life never is. On reflection, I did find myself in a few potentially dangerous situations whilst there. I won’t recount them and have selectively deleted the details from my memory of the wider experience. But oh, the innocence and resilience of youth! I think I was supernaturally protected, though I had no spiritual life to speak of at that time. 

On return to the UK I got myself a summer job as a domestic assistant at the Royal Children’s Hospital which gave me great insight into behind the scenes of hospital life, before starting at medical school later that year. 

All in all, I loved the break from academic life and it did me the world of good and expanded my life experience greatly in all sorts of ways. All our boys took the opportunity to do similar between leaving school and starting further study and I think they’d all say it enriched their lives too. 

And like Mary Poppins promised;

🎶’Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down, in a most delightful way!’ 

 My au pair days, and those delicious Leonidas chocolate treats, certainly helped to sweeten the intensity of the five years of medical study that lay ahead of me.😊