If you are seriously considering work as an au-pair, you will find this review totally worthless. You are advised to do another search on Ciao, and see if someone has done this review from a different perspective.

Clearly, you have not read any of this author's previous attempts at humour.
And clearly, you have not met anyone who has - most have become hermits, nuns, or Tibetan monks in a desperate attempt to escape. Koshkha is already planning a six month escape to Outer Mongolia and is even prepared to do so with BadCompany if need be.
Those who have survived outside of such occupations, have all volunteered for medical experimentation on their eyes, hoping that they will never have to read the like again. !

The Encarta dictionary is more helpful in our quest for a definition - " foreign student working as domestic helper: a young person from abroad living with a family to learn the language, and helping with childcare and domestic work in return for board and accommodation. "

I began my life as an au-pair in the early part of 1969.
Arriving at Belfast International Airport, I discovered that in this foreign country, things were very strange. There cannot be a capital city in the world, whose main airport - and the only one in those days - is so far from the city. There was no connecting motorway, not even a dual carriageway at that time.
Don't forget, that it was still possible to see folk travelling by donkey and cart in Ireland at that time... more Celtic Ass than Celtic Tiger !!

I would spend the next 35 years learning the complexities of the local language(s).
I would feel in every fibre of my body what it was like to be treated as a foreigner - especially since the locals could never decide whether I was Scottish or even worse, English.!
Protestations that I was Cornish, would be met with all kinds of verbal abuse - 'Pastie', 'Corny', 'Clot' - ( as in clotted cream ) and such like.

But servitude I can defend.

I had to buy, wash and iron clothes.
OK they were all my own, I know, but that had never been my job - one of the few compensations for being an only son with three sisters.!
I remember buying one of the early 'Non-iron' shirts that hit the market in the 70's. Made from this new stuff - "nylon" - the manufacturers claimed they were so easy to wash and keep their looks !?? - so long as you didn't mind living in what was the nearest thing to a plastic bag you could imagine !

I had to keep my room tidy.
What an awful task these foreigners doled out to me.! I had always had a room where every document or schoolbook I needed was within sight - on some part of the floor. The window sills were mini science labs, with several experiments taking place at the same time - crystal growing and battery dissection the most common.!
I had always been able to keep my socks worn evenly, by keeping used ones under the bed, until I had only got one pair left in the drawer - and then they could all go to be washed !
But as an unofficial au-pair, I was there as a foreign student doing household chores, in return for accomodation. And I had to keep my own room tidy - drat.!

There is nothing more scary for an au-pair than the prospect of being in a foreign country, working for the locals, and then suddenly finding oneself imprisoned.

But one of the facts of au-pair life, is that you are not really in a position to refuse any task allotted.
I lived with that constant sense of insecurity that derives from being dependent on other people. If I did not do as I was told, I might not get any tea; I might be failed in exams and prevented from graduating ( something I had already experienced in Glasgow University - another review, sometime ).

When one of them offered me a lift back to college , I was innocent enough to suspect nothing.
Little did I realise that a plot to entrap me was already under way.
The lift was followed by an anonymous birthday card with lipstick all over it, followed by telephone calls from the same secret agent, and by then my fate was sealed.
Within 4 months I had been forced to buy an engagement ring, and another 8 months later, I began my life sentence.

Now, at this point, I will slightly digress and comment on the prison regimes of the modern world.
'Hard labour' is an unknown term in UK prisons today. I am not suggesting prison is a nice place to spend a few years - it clearly is not. If you have decided that what I have written deserves a six month incarceration, I would plead with you to have some consideration for an old frail man like me.!!
But the shift from the toughness, and sheer hard work of a former age, which made prison fearsome punishment, is a sad departure.

I state the following proofs, not by way of boasting, nor to gain your sympathy, but just so that you can get a feel for what my hard years as an au-pair have been like.

I have looked after my boss's offspring - changed and washed their towelling nappies; walked them round the house, singing to them ,to get them to sleep; taken them for drives in the car when the above has failed. Helped with their homework; bought them presents to take to their teachers - ( yes, I read what you said in your review, Fiona - I'll help you out of that plastic bag in a few minutes time ) - listened to their music lessons, took them to gymnastics and athletics, took them camping one year - and the next - and the next - repeat 15 times.! Went to a gite with all four females at once - drove 400 miles to prove that it WAS snow on the Alps not a cloud formation; taught them to walk, taught them to swim and taught them to drive, showed them how to use a computer, listened to their teen-age tantrums, sympathised with their boyfriends, got them married and even abseiled for them - and all without a single cross word or complaint.