Thirteen Letters. Chapter Six.

So, to mentions some of the other rules and regulations of my job description, not in any particular order:-

When I leave my home, I must have in my hand a small bottle of water, I don’t have to drink it, but it looks good, so if I want to, I can tip a bit out before I come out the house.

Outside of the home I am vegetarian, goodness knows why, and speaking of why, I am not allowed to ask, “Why?” She has told me, “I would never ever hurt you, just like I would never hurt myself.

A really strange one is that once a year, Maxine will call me by a different name, just once in the day, and the name will be Solomon. Before I leave the house each day, the last thing I do before I leave the house it to sign the small noticeboard on the inside of the front door, the words above are, “Will it be today, that I will be called Solomon?” And then I am to sign and date it, I suppose it would be like a secret game, only known to me and Maxine, for people would ask the inevitable, “Did you just call him Solomon?” And Maxine has already prewarned me, “We are not to reply, but just to carry on as usual with whatever we were doing or talking about.” Leaving everyone puzzled, and scratching their heads.

I am a smoker, but I am not allowed to smoke outside the house! I think this single lack of cigarette, I will find the hardest. Maxine doesn’t smoke, nor has she ever, so she can never understand what it is like to want a fag. Although I am not allowed to smoke outside the house, Maxine has informed me, “Three times each year, when you are at work and outside, I will have an emergency cigarette kit with me, this will consist of one cigarette, white cotton gloves, and mints.” I replied, “OK,” Maxine then added, “Don’t try and bank on it, after the third is used up, so smoke as much as you need to at home,” I replied, “OK.”

I am not allowed to swear outside the house, nor blaspheme, I have to portray as part of my acting, a clean-cut image.     

I must be in bed each night by 10pm, with or without Lisa.

I will also be weighed, each month, and while the chef is cooking, “For I will always be standing next to you, if I signal for you, not to eat anymore of the finished meal, then you are not to eat another morsal.”

MJG, thought she was giving me a list of strange, controlling rules but, hey, I already had all this information written and sealed in my bank, all she did was gave me the other half, or filled in the blanks. It was an unusual relationship, but it worked. Truth is stranger than fiction!    

I work six months of the year, with every weekend off and then I have, six whole months off. To do exactly what I want, so of the five years in reality I will work only two and a half, for the weekends off, the first six months, technically I am still working for Maxine.