St. Aubin - Summer 2009

Well this next tenancy was brief but humiliating, as things continued to get worse.

• I was now freelancing successfully and being offered freelance work, not all of it suitable for a lone female gardener with few tools, so I went through a lot, trying to communicate with potential customers, being an autistic freelance female gardener is very hard, especially with communication about work.
• The new tenancy was never suitable for a lodger, they had never had a lodger before and only offered because they desparately needed cash, which is always a bad sign. but I had no choice. This tenancy was brief and it wounded me further, it was not like the lodging house, it was a different kind of all wrong.
• This tenancy was cheaper though, which helped as I was hardly earning much at the time, part time freelancing was not a high wage.
• Well, how do I explain? The house was a bungalow, the people there were a divorced mother and her 11 year old daughter. There was an ex-husband somewhere else, and another daughter, but they barely communicated, and so the woman was working in a bank and raising the 11 year old on her own, they had two smelly dogs that lived permenantly in a room at the back of the house. 
• It was a sad home, it was a sad sad home, cold with cold fake wood flooring, and it was a misery.
• The woman was working hard and unhappy, but the daughter was a nightmare.
• The daughter was a 'little adult' who thought she was in charge, which was kind of funny in that for an 11 year old she could barely read write or anything academic and had no interest in her homework, she went to first tower school and I just thought that was a bad reflection on that school, both that she was rude and arrogant and that she obviously wasn't learning much, excuse my criticism but I was treated like dirt by this little brat and her friends, as if I needed any more beating down.
• This little kid and her friends used to laugh and jeer at me as I prepared for work in the morning while they waited to go to school, and she used to shout at me, telling me to turn my music down etc, not that it was up, but there was no please or thank you, and the mother basically ignored me, I was a source of money that disrupted their lifestyle and nothing more, I hated every embarassing minute in that house, and I had to park my car down the road. Basically it was not suitable as lodgings, the room was tiny and not private and I was unhappy and embarrassed, I quit the tenancy within weeks, and I hope they never took another lodger, I doubt they did as it was a whim to get money.
• At least there were no ants or rats, just a brat and two smelly unhappy dogs and an unhappy woman.
• In the meantime I was awarded a grant from the horticultural benevolent society, and I also landed a job.
• My move from St. Aubin was to an upmarket lodging house in St. Ouen after weeks in St. Aubin.
• So, with a new home and a new job, I thought things would improve, and in some ways they did.