The best part of living in Monaco was being able to say ‘I live in Monaco’. Whenever I was in England and I had to give my address, it was always very interesting watching people’s reaction when I told them I lived in Monaco. The reaction would either be complete disinterest or ‘wow’. I think those that were disinterested either didn’t know where it was or felt I was showing off. Well I was showing off, I loved telling people I lived in Monaco.
I hate the look of the buildings in Monaco. Everything is high rise apartments. If there is the teeniest space in Monaco, they build on it. I personally think that if you stand on the port and look back at Monaco, it looks like a council estate. I don’t mean to offend anyone who lives in a council estate but I remember some of Birmingham’s council estates that had high rise apartment buildings in it and this is exactly what it looked like.
Monaco is made up of different nationalities the main one being Italian, then French, then British and then others. There are also a few Monagasque. These are the few people who have reached the criteria of achieving this status – I don’t know what this is, probably having lived there for a while, educated there and worked there and knowing the right people or it’s inherited. There is also a Monagasque language apparently. I’ve never heard it.
Of course the main reason people live in Monaco is to avoid paying tax. A lot of people think they can rent or own a teeny tiny place in Monaco and then have a huge house elsewhere and then give their main residence as Monaco so they can avoid paying tax. The authorities watch this quite closely. The rule in Monaco is that you must spend at least six months of the year there or you’re out.
Shortly after arriving back from our honeymoon, we enrolled me at Nice University in the October to learn the language. We bought a second car – a red Peugeot 106 and for eight months I made the journey from Monaco to Nice every Monday to Friday. Lessons were three hours long and we got homework. You were forced to speak in French in these lessons, as the students were from all over the world; therefore the only way to communicate was in French. Although this wasn’t always the case as a lot of students came from countries where English was a second language for them, ie Scandinavia and therefore a lot English was spoken in class and out of it. However, the course served its purpose and although I wouldn’t say I was fluent by the end of it, I could now go to the supermarket unafraid of someone speaking to me – I could now reply!
We didn’t live in Monaco because we could afford to, we lived there because Steve’s company paid for half of the rent in order for him to work there. We weren’t exactly poor either but when I walked down the streets of Monaco in my holey leggings and baggy jumpers I certainly felt like a charity case. It’s very posh there, every other car is a Ferrari or Porsche and most people walk around dressed to the nines. I always felt very out of place there.
In the February of 1995 I enrolled with the Open University. For those who don’t know how the Open University works, your books are sent from England by post and in those days, when the internet wasn’t so popular – you sent your assignments back to your tutor by post. At the end of the academic year you then sat an exam. Your end of year mark came from 50% of your assignments and 50% of your exam. To obtain a degree you have to obtain 360 points. Most courses are 60 points and this means roughly 15 hours of work a week. Therefore if you want to obtain your degree quicker, you have to do 2 60 point courses, but obviously that means being a full time student. The Open University has changed quite a bit from when I started, they didn’t have named degrees, you just studied courses you had an interest in to mount up the points to get your degree. When I started you had to start with a Level 1 course and there were only 4 of those. Because I was interested in computers I took the only subject that had computers in it – Living with Technology. Part of this level 1 course meant going to summer school – in England. Steve and I had driven back to England in August anyway as Dawn, my best friend in England was due to give birth in July so I drove to Bath university for my summer school. I hated it, well the academic side of it anyway; the social side of it was a good laugh. Fortunately for me that year because so many students were studying in the south of France they set up an exam centre down here which meant we didn’t all have to fly back to England to take the exam. The exam was held in Aix-en-Provence which is a two hour drive away from Monaco. Steve came with me the first time. We stopped in a hotel the night before and I took my exam the next day and went home.
I passed. Dawn had a beautiful little boy who is also my godson.
Whilst I was doing my OU course that year I received a letter from a lady who was looking for other students who lived in the Nice area that were studying with the OU. This lady, Michelle, also lived in Monaco; in fact just down the road from me and so I phoned her up. Quite a few students had called her and every so often someone would organise a lunch somewhere and we would all meet up and have a chat about life and the OU. People would join, people would leave but eventually the meetings fizzled out. However, I never lost touch with Michelle.
Through Michelle I worked for 2 weeks at a company called Orwell Shipping. I only worked there for two weeks as I was just replacing one of the girls whilst she was away on holiday. The company was owned and run by Michelle’s husband Bart and her son Dom. In the July of 1995, Dom’s fiancée Linda was due to come and join him. Bart believed that once she was over she’d be on the first plane back out. She was two weeks late joining him in the end but this was due to the fact that she had her own business and was winding it up.
Two days after Linda’s arrival, she phoned me up. Michelle had given her my number so that Linda could meet someone her own age. I will always remember the first time I met her – she was very bubbly and I think by the time we said goodbye she’d got my whole life story out of me. One of my most drunken experiences was with Linda. Dom’s brother had left them a keg of red wine, Dom had gone out one night and so I went round and between us we drank the whole keg. I can’t tell you how drunk I was, only that I’ve only been that drunk once since then. I spent the whole night on my bathroom floor throwing up. I couldn’t even throw up into the toilet, I threw up all over the floor. Anyway she proved Bart wrong, Linda is still living in Monaco. Dom and Linda got married in 1998 and have a little boy. The four of us are still good friends but we don’t see each other as much as we used to but we speak to each other every week.
Just after Linda came out, they bought a dog, a golden English cocker spaniel called Lottie. In January 1996 Steve and I decided to get a dog as well. We also bought a golden English cocker spaniel and we called her Maddie. However, after about four days I knew something wasn’t quite right with her. She was coughing a lot, not eating and had diarrhoea. After 24 hours I took her down the vet, I was really worried. She had distemper. I picked her up from the vet at 7pm and he told me to take her back to the shop first thing in the morning to prove what had happened. I was so upset. That night was a really terrible night; we could hear her crying in pain. The next morning we got up and took her down to the shop’s vet in Nice. It was a dark dank January morning and on the way the song ‘Miss Sarajevo’ by ‘The Passengers’ came on. It’s quite a depressing song and the two of us were crying. She died on the way down as when we got there the vet pronounced her dead. I burst out crying. We had only had her a week but I had got so attached to her. I still cannot listen to Miss Sarajevo without crying as it always reminds me of her and how she died a terrible death.
I swore after Maddie’s death that I wouldn’t have another dog but as with everything, time is a great healer and three months later in April 1996 we got another dog, this time a black and white cocker spaniel. I had her checked out the next day by the vet to make sure everything was okay this time, it was. We named her Hattie. Steve calls her a duff dog as she’s frightened of everything, especially men and she won’t go in water. Passports for pets didn’t exist in those days so when we decided to go back to England for a holiday in August I rang my vet for a list of kennels. She gave me the name of an English woman who lived about 15 minutes away from me between Monaco and Menton who looked after dogs when people were away. Hattie and I went to see Jilly for an interview and ever since then whenever we have gone away, Hattie has gone to Jilly. Jilly has also become a very good friend.
Living in an apartment with a dog is not an ideal situation as you can’t just open up the door to let them out and relieve themselves. We used to take her out into the car park opposite our building and keep walking her around until she’d done her business. Because the apartment was carpeted we were worried that Hattie would pooh all over it during the night so at the end of the evening one of us would walk her around Monaco until she’d done something. If she didn’t do anything we’d come back and hand her over to the other one to take her out. I would walk for ages sometimes just to get her to do a pooh before bedtime – and it didn’t always work.
In 1996 I also started my next OU course. I decided to do 2 courses this time. A 60 point course and a 30 point course. The 60 pointer was ‘Programming Languages’ and the 30 pointer was a beginner's French course. There were no summer schools for either of these courses. However, the French exam meant going to Geneva. We booked into a hotel up there – in fact the exam was held in the hotel and Steve, Hattie and I went up there. We also met Bart and Michelle up there as Michelle was taking the advanced French course. Two days after my French exam I had my next exam in Aix. I went up the night before again, stayed in a hotel and took the exam the next day. I passed with Distinction.
Steve has a bit of a fetish for cars. It’s not that big a fetish, I know other men who are worse. In 1996 we sold the Peugeot and bought a Fiat Barchetta. It’s a well-known deal in our house that Steve picks the cars and I pick the colour. I chose orange. If you’ve never seen a Barchetta, it’s a small open top two-seater. It was a great little car. In fact there seemed to be a Barchetta club, as whenever you’d see another you’d flash each other. I certainly felt very conspicuous in this car but then an open top bright orange car, you’re bound to feel a bit conspicuous in it!
I had my only ever car accident in this car. I was driving to Nice University for my French lesson. I was on a one way road with 3 lanes. The left-hand lane was for turning left, the middle lane for going straight on and the right hand lane was the bus lane. I was driving up the middle lane to go straight on. The cars driving in front of me were all going into the bus lane as there was a car in the middle lane blocking as he was trying to get into the left lane. There was a car behind this car waiting for him to move. As I approached these two cars I also went into the bus lane to drive around them as everyone else was doing. However the car that was stuck also decided to do the same thing without looking to see if anyone else was there. She hit me. Obviously the damage wasn’t too bad as she hadn’t been driving too fast. However she was insistent I went to her garage to give her an estimate on how much it would cost. She decided it would be cheaper if we went through the insurance. I dropped in on her on my way back from University where she had already filled out her side of the insurance form. I filled out my side and we signed. It wasn’t until I got back home that I realised she had made the accident look like my fault by saying I was in the bus lane when I shouldn’t have been. This is probably true but wasn’t she trying to get into the bus lane as well? We decided to leave it in the end. I’d been had and I chalked it up to experience. In future I would read the insurance form first before I signed.
In July 1996 I got a job. I was working for an ex-captain of ships. It was mainly to do his accounts and write up reports for him. He no longer worked on ships but helped settle disputes about goods arriving on ships not up to standard. He spent a lot of time away so I didn’t have that much to do so I installed the game ‘Loderunner’ on his computer and most of the time I played that, along with doing my OU when I could.
It was also about July that we decided to start trying to have a baby. We weren’t in any great hurry to get pregnant so to begin with we didn’t try that hard.
My job only lasted for six months as Steve now had a new boss who wanted him to come and work with him in Genoa. Steve was now spending a lot of time there that it became apparent that we would have to move there.
His boss made arrangements for us to come down one weekend so that I could see the town. His secretary spent all day Saturday with us showing us around various apartments. This was the first time I had met Steve’s Italian secretary. She was thin and dark haired, basically she had everything Steve liked in a woman except that she smoked. I knew I would have to watch this relationship carefully.
Steve continued to look at apartments in Genoa and had seen one he liked. He wanted me to see it too so we made arrangements to go and see one dark wet day in December. Steve’s company car was in for a service so we went across in a hired Ford Escort. The motorway from Nice to Genoa is very bendy as you approach Genoa and unfortunately on going round one of the bends Steve lost control of the car. We banged into the central reservation. On entering a tunnel we banged into the wall opposite before coming to rest straddling the two outside lanes. A lorry following us, stopped and started to run back to warn everyone to slow down. I remember seeing him have to dive under his lorry as someone was about to hit him. Because it was wet I could hear the cars skidding to avoid hitting us. Amazingly no one did. Steve was shouting at me to get out, as being on the passenger side I would be the first to get hit. However I couldn’t find Hattie, I kept shouting ‘Where’s Hattie? Where’s Hattie?’ I wouldn’t get out the car until I knew where she was. Steve was shouting ‘I’ve got her!’ Apparently as soon as Steve had opened his door she’d jumped out with him. It wasn’t until we’d run across the motorway for safety that we realised that nothing was actually coming past us. We walked back out of the tunnel and there had been a huge accident just outside the tunnel. With all the traffic stopped Steve went back to the car to see if it would start. It did and it was driveable. In hind sight, when the car had come to a stop Steve should have tried to start the car straight away and move it but his instinct was to get us out of there. The police arrived and everyone who had had an accident was asked to exit at the next exit. We duly did, they came round to see if anyone was injured and eventually after about two hours they let us go. As we were in a hire car, we slowly drove to Genoa airport and exchanged the car for another one! We then went onto the flat. I liked it and we decided to rent it.
I hate the look of the buildings in Monaco. Everything is high rise apartments. If there is the teeniest space in Monaco, they build on it. I personally think that if you stand on the port and look back at Monaco, it looks like a council estate. I don’t mean to offend anyone who lives in a council estate but I remember some of Birmingham’s council estates that had high rise apartment buildings in it and this is exactly what it looked like.
Monaco is made up of different nationalities the main one being Italian, then French, then British and then others. There are also a few Monagasque. These are the few people who have reached the criteria of achieving this status – I don’t know what this is, probably having lived there for a while, educated there and worked there and knowing the right people or it’s inherited. There is also a Monagasque language apparently. I’ve never heard it.
Of course the main reason people live in Monaco is to avoid paying tax. A lot of people think they can rent or own a teeny tiny place in Monaco and then have a huge house elsewhere and then give their main residence as Monaco so they can avoid paying tax. The authorities watch this quite closely. The rule in Monaco is that you must spend at least six months of the year there or you’re out.
Shortly after arriving back from our honeymoon, we enrolled me at Nice University in the October to learn the language. We bought a second car – a red Peugeot 106 and for eight months I made the journey from Monaco to Nice every Monday to Friday. Lessons were three hours long and we got homework. You were forced to speak in French in these lessons, as the students were from all over the world; therefore the only way to communicate was in French. Although this wasn’t always the case as a lot of students came from countries where English was a second language for them, ie Scandinavia and therefore a lot English was spoken in class and out of it. However, the course served its purpose and although I wouldn’t say I was fluent by the end of it, I could now go to the supermarket unafraid of someone speaking to me – I could now reply!
We didn’t live in Monaco because we could afford to, we lived there because Steve’s company paid for half of the rent in order for him to work there. We weren’t exactly poor either but when I walked down the streets of Monaco in my holey leggings and baggy jumpers I certainly felt like a charity case. It’s very posh there, every other car is a Ferrari or Porsche and most people walk around dressed to the nines. I always felt very out of place there.
In the February of 1995 I enrolled with the Open University. For those who don’t know how the Open University works, your books are sent from England by post and in those days, when the internet wasn’t so popular – you sent your assignments back to your tutor by post. At the end of the academic year you then sat an exam. Your end of year mark came from 50% of your assignments and 50% of your exam. To obtain a degree you have to obtain 360 points. Most courses are 60 points and this means roughly 15 hours of work a week. Therefore if you want to obtain your degree quicker, you have to do 2 60 point courses, but obviously that means being a full time student. The Open University has changed quite a bit from when I started, they didn’t have named degrees, you just studied courses you had an interest in to mount up the points to get your degree. When I started you had to start with a Level 1 course and there were only 4 of those. Because I was interested in computers I took the only subject that had computers in it – Living with Technology. Part of this level 1 course meant going to summer school – in England. Steve and I had driven back to England in August anyway as Dawn, my best friend in England was due to give birth in July so I drove to Bath university for my summer school. I hated it, well the academic side of it anyway; the social side of it was a good laugh. Fortunately for me that year because so many students were studying in the south of France they set up an exam centre down here which meant we didn’t all have to fly back to England to take the exam. The exam was held in Aix-en-Provence which is a two hour drive away from Monaco. Steve came with me the first time. We stopped in a hotel the night before and I took my exam the next day and went home.
I passed. Dawn had a beautiful little boy who is also my godson.
Whilst I was doing my OU course that year I received a letter from a lady who was looking for other students who lived in the Nice area that were studying with the OU. This lady, Michelle, also lived in Monaco; in fact just down the road from me and so I phoned her up. Quite a few students had called her and every so often someone would organise a lunch somewhere and we would all meet up and have a chat about life and the OU. People would join, people would leave but eventually the meetings fizzled out. However, I never lost touch with Michelle.
Through Michelle I worked for 2 weeks at a company called Orwell Shipping. I only worked there for two weeks as I was just replacing one of the girls whilst she was away on holiday. The company was owned and run by Michelle’s husband Bart and her son Dom. In the July of 1995, Dom’s fiancée Linda was due to come and join him. Bart believed that once she was over she’d be on the first plane back out. She was two weeks late joining him in the end but this was due to the fact that she had her own business and was winding it up.
Two days after Linda’s arrival, she phoned me up. Michelle had given her my number so that Linda could meet someone her own age. I will always remember the first time I met her – she was very bubbly and I think by the time we said goodbye she’d got my whole life story out of me. One of my most drunken experiences was with Linda. Dom’s brother had left them a keg of red wine, Dom had gone out one night and so I went round and between us we drank the whole keg. I can’t tell you how drunk I was, only that I’ve only been that drunk once since then. I spent the whole night on my bathroom floor throwing up. I couldn’t even throw up into the toilet, I threw up all over the floor. Anyway she proved Bart wrong, Linda is still living in Monaco. Dom and Linda got married in 1998 and have a little boy. The four of us are still good friends but we don’t see each other as much as we used to but we speak to each other every week.
Just after Linda came out, they bought a dog, a golden English cocker spaniel called Lottie. In January 1996 Steve and I decided to get a dog as well. We also bought a golden English cocker spaniel and we called her Maddie. However, after about four days I knew something wasn’t quite right with her. She was coughing a lot, not eating and had diarrhoea. After 24 hours I took her down the vet, I was really worried. She had distemper. I picked her up from the vet at 7pm and he told me to take her back to the shop first thing in the morning to prove what had happened. I was so upset. That night was a really terrible night; we could hear her crying in pain. The next morning we got up and took her down to the shop’s vet in Nice. It was a dark dank January morning and on the way the song ‘Miss Sarajevo’ by ‘The Passengers’ came on. It’s quite a depressing song and the two of us were crying. She died on the way down as when we got there the vet pronounced her dead. I burst out crying. We had only had her a week but I had got so attached to her. I still cannot listen to Miss Sarajevo without crying as it always reminds me of her and how she died a terrible death.
I swore after Maddie’s death that I wouldn’t have another dog but as with everything, time is a great healer and three months later in April 1996 we got another dog, this time a black and white cocker spaniel. I had her checked out the next day by the vet to make sure everything was okay this time, it was. We named her Hattie. Steve calls her a duff dog as she’s frightened of everything, especially men and she won’t go in water. Passports for pets didn’t exist in those days so when we decided to go back to England for a holiday in August I rang my vet for a list of kennels. She gave me the name of an English woman who lived about 15 minutes away from me between Monaco and Menton who looked after dogs when people were away. Hattie and I went to see Jilly for an interview and ever since then whenever we have gone away, Hattie has gone to Jilly. Jilly has also become a very good friend.
Living in an apartment with a dog is not an ideal situation as you can’t just open up the door to let them out and relieve themselves. We used to take her out into the car park opposite our building and keep walking her around until she’d done her business. Because the apartment was carpeted we were worried that Hattie would pooh all over it during the night so at the end of the evening one of us would walk her around Monaco until she’d done something. If she didn’t do anything we’d come back and hand her over to the other one to take her out. I would walk for ages sometimes just to get her to do a pooh before bedtime – and it didn’t always work.
In 1996 I also started my next OU course. I decided to do 2 courses this time. A 60 point course and a 30 point course. The 60 pointer was ‘Programming Languages’ and the 30 pointer was a beginner's French course. There were no summer schools for either of these courses. However, the French exam meant going to Geneva. We booked into a hotel up there – in fact the exam was held in the hotel and Steve, Hattie and I went up there. We also met Bart and Michelle up there as Michelle was taking the advanced French course. Two days after my French exam I had my next exam in Aix. I went up the night before again, stayed in a hotel and took the exam the next day. I passed with Distinction.
Steve has a bit of a fetish for cars. It’s not that big a fetish, I know other men who are worse. In 1996 we sold the Peugeot and bought a Fiat Barchetta. It’s a well-known deal in our house that Steve picks the cars and I pick the colour. I chose orange. If you’ve never seen a Barchetta, it’s a small open top two-seater. It was a great little car. In fact there seemed to be a Barchetta club, as whenever you’d see another you’d flash each other. I certainly felt very conspicuous in this car but then an open top bright orange car, you’re bound to feel a bit conspicuous in it!
I had my only ever car accident in this car. I was driving to Nice University for my French lesson. I was on a one way road with 3 lanes. The left-hand lane was for turning left, the middle lane for going straight on and the right hand lane was the bus lane. I was driving up the middle lane to go straight on. The cars driving in front of me were all going into the bus lane as there was a car in the middle lane blocking as he was trying to get into the left lane. There was a car behind this car waiting for him to move. As I approached these two cars I also went into the bus lane to drive around them as everyone else was doing. However the car that was stuck also decided to do the same thing without looking to see if anyone else was there. She hit me. Obviously the damage wasn’t too bad as she hadn’t been driving too fast. However she was insistent I went to her garage to give her an estimate on how much it would cost. She decided it would be cheaper if we went through the insurance. I dropped in on her on my way back from University where she had already filled out her side of the insurance form. I filled out my side and we signed. It wasn’t until I got back home that I realised she had made the accident look like my fault by saying I was in the bus lane when I shouldn’t have been. This is probably true but wasn’t she trying to get into the bus lane as well? We decided to leave it in the end. I’d been had and I chalked it up to experience. In future I would read the insurance form first before I signed.
In July 1996 I got a job. I was working for an ex-captain of ships. It was mainly to do his accounts and write up reports for him. He no longer worked on ships but helped settle disputes about goods arriving on ships not up to standard. He spent a lot of time away so I didn’t have that much to do so I installed the game ‘Loderunner’ on his computer and most of the time I played that, along with doing my OU when I could.
It was also about July that we decided to start trying to have a baby. We weren’t in any great hurry to get pregnant so to begin with we didn’t try that hard.
My job only lasted for six months as Steve now had a new boss who wanted him to come and work with him in Genoa. Steve was now spending a lot of time there that it became apparent that we would have to move there.
His boss made arrangements for us to come down one weekend so that I could see the town. His secretary spent all day Saturday with us showing us around various apartments. This was the first time I had met Steve’s Italian secretary. She was thin and dark haired, basically she had everything Steve liked in a woman except that she smoked. I knew I would have to watch this relationship carefully.
Steve continued to look at apartments in Genoa and had seen one he liked. He wanted me to see it too so we made arrangements to go and see one dark wet day in December. Steve’s company car was in for a service so we went across in a hired Ford Escort. The motorway from Nice to Genoa is very bendy as you approach Genoa and unfortunately on going round one of the bends Steve lost control of the car. We banged into the central reservation. On entering a tunnel we banged into the wall opposite before coming to rest straddling the two outside lanes. A lorry following us, stopped and started to run back to warn everyone to slow down. I remember seeing him have to dive under his lorry as someone was about to hit him. Because it was wet I could hear the cars skidding to avoid hitting us. Amazingly no one did. Steve was shouting at me to get out, as being on the passenger side I would be the first to get hit. However I couldn’t find Hattie, I kept shouting ‘Where’s Hattie? Where’s Hattie?’ I wouldn’t get out the car until I knew where she was. Steve was shouting ‘I’ve got her!’ Apparently as soon as Steve had opened his door she’d jumped out with him. It wasn’t until we’d run across the motorway for safety that we realised that nothing was actually coming past us. We walked back out of the tunnel and there had been a huge accident just outside the tunnel. With all the traffic stopped Steve went back to the car to see if it would start. It did and it was driveable. In hind sight, when the car had come to a stop Steve should have tried to start the car straight away and move it but his instinct was to get us out of there. The police arrived and everyone who had had an accident was asked to exit at the next exit. We duly did, they came round to see if anyone was injured and eventually after about two hours they let us go. As we were in a hire car, we slowly drove to Genoa airport and exchanged the car for another one! We then went onto the flat. I liked it and we decided to rent it.
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