[imagesource: Jane Fox Photgraphy]

Kathryn Lord is no longer a nanny for some of the world’s wealthiest families.

The 35-year-old Briton was a full-time nanny for eight years but then she wrote two parenting and home organising books that received royal approval from the late Queen and Kate Middleton, so she quit.

But during those eight years as a nanny for billionaires and millionaires, Lord travelled to gorgeous locations all over the world in luxury, was driven around by personal drivers, and was given credit cards to spend on the kids without any limits.

If you’re wondering why she is Lord-ing over the Mother City in the image up top, she was “gifted” a sunrise trip up Table Mountain one Easter Sunday when working for a rich family who visited Cape Town.

I love how she added that experience as one of the many others that she was granted on the job, like swimming with sharks in the Maldives, being served by butlers in Mozambique, and going on a luxury safari at a five-star, eight-bedroomed lodge “with a private chef and animals roaming in the garden”.

So I guess billionaires love coming to Africa for vacation?

 

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Anyway, she mentioned all that and more with OK!, reflecting on all the adventures and skills that eventually gained her royal approval:

“My first job as a full-time nanny was for a family of Russian billionaires in London. They lived in a mansion filled with chandeliers and marble floors in Belgravia – growing up in Lancashire, I’d never even heard of Belgravia and thought it was abroad, embarrassingly! And that was just their temporary home while they renovated another of their homes adding a ‘billionaire’s basement’ with a swimming pool.

I am with her on that Belgravia mistake.

The family called her their governess and expected her to wear formal indoor and outdoor clothes at all times:

On my first night, the mum pushed me out of the door with her 9 year old to take her to the pharmacy. They aren’t even open on a Sunday up north, so I was confused, but they had three drivers on call, and one of them called ahead to say we were coming.

Drivers on call? Exclusive access to a pharmacy? Nice.

She was also a nanny on a cruise ship for a billionaire family who took 50 of their closest friends and family all over Europe. One of the other nannies that she was with at the time had to be flown home with the child quickly because the parents had “forgotten” that they needed to go to school.

For one family, there was a ban on saying no:

I was also given a credit card to use on their child and told that I couldn’t say ‘no’ to anything they asked for. They genuinely said ‘Don’t say no to my child’, but, of course, I did. You have to instil boundaries with children, though when they have such an abundance of money, sometimes you think ‘OK, actually they can have that’.

When the boy asked for some expensive walkie-talkies, I agreed, and we played the biggest game of hide and seek on the cruise ship with them.

Fun and games aside, Lord was expected to work for long, gruelling hours at times:

In some jobs, I’ve worked up to 96 hours a week, and I worked about 20 hours a day on that trip. I’d sit in the child’s room to babysit them while they were sleeping until the parents got back late and then they’d expect me back at work at 6am. I put my foot down and said I needed more time off, and they said ‘OK, can I pay for a massage for you?’

Another family she worked for had three chefs, three housekeepers, and three nannies, so the children had 24/7 childcare.

 

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Insider also picked up on her high-flying nanny life, recalling how she once worked for a family who had a chef on call 24 hours a day, who they would call at ungodly hours to make them a snack if they felt the urge.

She’s also been “flown first class too many times to count” and has experienced the joys of a private jet, which took some adjusting on her part:

Lord said that some of the vacations she embarked on with one of her clients involved being waited on by butlers, which she struggled to get used to.

“It was a bit weird for me, because obviously I’m there to look after the children, but I’m being told to sit down and be served on and I don’t quite like being served on,” she said.

“But it’s the dynamic, and that happens,” she added.

Then there was that time she was flown to St Petersburg and put up in a five-star hotel where she “drank Prosecco for breakfast to the sound of a harpist, and given my own personal driver” – all for a one-hour job interview.

It appears as though we have all chosen the wrong vocation.

[sources:insider&ok!]