a brief prologue

This blog is about my life on the road, travelling and working as a PA to a senior banker who works with the rich and powerful, and the lives of those around me. There are some crazy things that happen on the road, and this blog is about some tales from the journey.



I used to work for an NGO based in Scotland. It was voluntary, but it was an amazing job. I was in charge of an entire project based around promoting youth leadership. While I was doing it I knew it was almost like a test for myself. I wanted that type of globe trotting, high powered job that also made a difference in peoples lives. I was young, both actually and mentally, so it was almost like a test for myself to see if I could perform at that level.

I could, I definitely could, because I am doing that now. I achieved a lot, but I was let down by the team around me. It was all other young people working on a voluntary basis. Not ones chosen by me, I hasten to add, but ones who were already ‘involved’ in the system.

You see theres a system. A certain number of young people rise to the top of the NGO ‘circuit,’ because most of the organisations want to be seen as involving young people. It’s a good aim, but unfortunately the type of young people that are involved are not much different to any other people they could get. They are just as cynical, just as self interested, just as un imaginative and in some senses incompetent as anyone else, but they are in the ‘system.’

Often, not always but often, these young people in the system are from relatively privileged or well off backgrounds. I don’t have a prejudice against them for that, but when it comes to discussions around anti social behaviour or poverty there is a certain lacking in the equivalence principle.

Im from a fairly typical Scottish working class background, although it was extraordinary in some ways. My dad was involved in the criminal underground, money laundering, drug running and the like, and eventually skipped the country. Before that I lived with him when I was at school, because I left my mums house after I came out as gay. Her boyfriend at the time and I did not get on.

Before I had left high school, I went on holiday with my dad to visit some of his family in Texas. While I was there, I fell in love with the most beautiful boy I had ever seen; Sam. I was 16 and he was 17. We were all in McDonalds, and he was waiting for his meal while I ordered. He commented on my thick accent, and we started talking.

I fell in love with his charm, with his laugh and his life and everything about him. We spoke on the phone every day for another week until it was time to go home.

But I wouldn’t.

I stayed with my Texas family for a few months while I got to know my new boyfriend a bit more. I got a job, we rented an apartment together, I was living an amazing, an ordinary life…until I got a place at University I was never expecting, back in Scotland.

I went for it. My partner was meant to move back over with me, but in the end he never did. My life that was mapped out was suddenly in pieces.

Just at Uni, young free and single with all the other students just out of high school, It wasn’t for me. I wasn’t the same as them. I had been fending for myself for almost two years, and I couldn’t go backwards. I needed more to my life than working for a degree that would not guarantee me anything.

After a few months of listfullness, I got involved in activism, and it changed my life again. It was my calling.

So by the time I was 20 I was in charge of this great project. There was so much I wanted to do with it, and so many opportunities I wanted to give to people who were like me, but the ‘system’ wasnt for me. In some way I resented that I had worked incredibly hard for everything that I had achieved, and sacrificed so much, but other people seemed to have it easy, they could achieve less and do less, but could allowed to continue in the system.

So August this year found me heading off to Rio di Janeiro for a week for yet another international conference. It used to be a perk of the job, but conference after conference all about making change in the world, hosted all over the world, and the only thing they were getting us closer to was climate anhiliation.

It wasn’t just job dissatisfaction that was on my mind as I headed to Brazil with a few other ‘system’ colleagues, my love life was in a bit of a pickle.

Now my Sam, my Texas ex was my first real boyfriend, my first great love, and it took me more than a year to get over him. Maybe as a result of that, maybe not, I had a fairly chaotic love life at uni. It was exciting, but it took an emotional toll. If you’re really interested in it, I wrote a blog chronicling my love life adventures. It’s pretty explicit, so I wouldn’t recommend it to everyone!
As I left for Brazil, my heart was in tatters over two lovers; a closeted and emotionally abusive junior doctor called Paul, and the ‘perfect’ man, a fellow student called Simon, who I had betrayed by very briefliy getting back with Sam when we bumped into each other in Manchester.

To cut a long story short, I was heading to Brazil in the same headspace as I had headed to Texas all those years ago; desperate for a new life, and just waiting for the right person to offer it to me. Sam was that person then, Pierre was that person in Rio.

Pierre is the man I work for. He is a senior executive for a large, multinational bank. He spends his days on the road, travelling the world, meeting with the rich and the powerful, or at the office in New York; and I am his PA. I am on the road with him, every step of the way. It offers the amazing opportunity to see and do things that I thought would take me a lifetime, and I want to share that. I want to share it because I love writing, I love stories and the things behind stories. I love looking at whats behind people, their motivations, desires, fears. Working with an international banker gives a unique opportunity to study some incredible characters, Pierre being the least of these.

I still see myself as an activist, now I feel like an activist under cover. I want to do so much, but I have to remember that life is a learning process. I’m 20, and I should keep learning. One thing I have learned that there is evil in the world, and I am in the thick of it.

I stopped writing my last blog in August, before I even met Pierre. Then I was a totally different person than I am now, which is why I am starting a fresh with a new one. I used to always tell my friends everything, all my secrets and thoughts and ideas. Now Im in a situation where my friends are the ones who are doing the things that need to be spoken about.

I want to tell you all about my life, and the lives of those around me. Im on the road, on a strange, crazy wagon hurtling towards the unknown. I dont no the direction, I dont know the purpose, but I know I want to share it.

so these are some Tales from the Road...

But first, I need to tell you about how I came to work for Pierre.