My maternal grandmother, a.k.a. Nanny, wasn't much of a cook. As a kid I remember her making only a handful of things, mostly dishes with Ashkenazi Jewish origins like kasha and bowties (which, for the record, only my dad liked).
I get out of the pool after a workout and look on my BlackBerry to see if the nanny called and to make sure everything's okay. My child is always on my mind.
Living most of my life in New York, I witnessed plenty of nanny state laws. Later, I lived in D.C. for a bit and saw even more. I assumed when I got to Colorado, the Wild West, there would be a rejection of such intrusive legislation. I was wrong.
I've done everything from cater, wait tables, pre-school teacher, painting, to being Cinderella, Elmo, a clown, nanny, selling hair... I would do kid's parties and entertain and do magic and paint faces and balloon animals. The highlight of my life.
When I was very young, my nanny was a big Newfoundland dog... whose task was to keep me from drowning.
I went to university in Leeds, and I graduated in 2016 and moved to London with the intention of applying to drama school. I was living at my friend's house; then, I was working as a live-in nanny for a couple of months because I had nowhere else to live.
The thing that influenced me most in relation to 'Nanny McPhee' were the Westerns I watched with my father. All the Spaghetti Westerns; all the Virginians; all the High Chaparrals. Because if you think about the form, it's a stranger from out of town.
When I was three years old, a nanny took me shopping and I saw large cut-outs of Mary Poppins in the store and yelled, 'That's mummy!' These women walked by and said, 'Oh how cute. That little girl thinks that Mary Poppins is her mum.'
This modern mania for interfering in other's lives, usually under the guise of health and safety concerns, is highly irritating and counterproductive. Down with the nanny state.
I want to judge the nannies that's around my child. I don't want to pay for a nanny that I never met, that I never got a chance to interview. That's not the life I want for my child. I want to be involved 100 percent in all decisions made. This my flesh and blood.
