Читать книгу The Mumpreneur Diaries: Business, Babies or Bust - One Mother of a Year - Mosey Jones - Страница 37

Returning from the shops I find a waif and stray on my doorstep. I often find friends and acquaintances loitering on my doorstep as it’s a conveniently warm place to hide if you miss your train, what with the station being barely a two-minute walk away. Anecdotally, ours seems to be the coldest station in England with an icy wind howling past the platforms as frequently as the trains. Of course, being of good Scots stock and naturally well-insulated, I don’t find this a problem at all. I am, however, surrounded by soft, southern Sassenachs.

Perched on kerb is in fact the Partner in Crime’s husband, the Family Friendly Businessman. Though he’s often away for days at a time on business, when he is home he’s a real hand-son dad and you can tell from his expression that he genuinely loves kids. Mind you, he’s quite slender so he clearly couldn’t eat a whole one.

I invite him in for a coffee and small talk while we wait for the telltale horn sounding at the bottom of the garden that tells him his next train has arrived. He reveals that he and the Partner in Crime have been discussing this mumciergery idea already. As it will affect his family finances as well as mine, and therefore he has a pretty big say in whether or not she goes ahead with it, I tentatively ask him if he thinks it’s a goer, really not wanting to hear the wrong answer.

But Family Friendly Businessman thinks that a mumciergery should fly with no problem. But…

And then he spends the next half-hour coming up with all sorts of questions that I have no idea how to answer. It shows how little I’d thought this through. If I charge a booking fee but I’m not there to enforce it, what’s to stop people bypassing me and going straight to the source? Have I got a criminal record check and do I realise how hard it is to get one? What about insurance – what would happen if a child choked while in my care? Could I cope with offering all these services at once – shouldn’t I think about starting out smaller?

I try to keep smiling in the face of this onslaught but in my head all I can think is ‘What the hell have I let myself in for?’ Finally, the horn sounds and Family Friendly Businessman shoots out through the door to catch his train. I’m left with a head swarming with more questions than answers. To shut them out I self-medicate with a large glass of wine and crappy telly. Am I going to have to rethink the whole thing?