Checking for 'work' emails. Illustration: Stefano Goodman

Continued from Part 1 – living with strangers and shopping

From Telegraph.co.uk

Part 1 – living with strangers and shopping

Anger management

I remember the moment I knew I had a serious problem with my new PA, Zvonimir.

Near the end of his third shift he asked if I wanted a game of chess. I remembered him talking about chess before and, detecting that he was a fairly accomplished player, I had already mentally prepared myself for a nonchalant defeat. I convinced myself that I really should have been working anyway, and so any loss was going to be down to a lack of concentration.

We played and in no time he was beating me like a bad habit. Every now and again I made a show of checking for ‘work’ emails, emphasizing the point that I was actually being polite in playing at all. I did mount one serious attack, but I knew I was doomed. At one point I made a desperate/stupid move and he stifled a deep sigh. Three moves later I resigned.

Breezily, I congratulated him and said that I really should get back to work. This didn’t even register with him. He just stared at me. “Why did you do that?” he asked. I told him what my attack plan was. “I understand that,” he said. “Yes, I understand that. But you knew you didn’t have enough time to develop that attack.” Disgust and anger laced his disappointment. He didn’t blink during the whole exchange.

A few weeks later, Z left our working relationship. The agency that arranges for these placements does very thorough background and criminal history checking, but I am not sure where his anger management issues would show up on a normal application form. Z always treated me with respect and, despite his general intensity and occasional temper flare-ups, we got on OK, even if I had begun to be slightly wary of him.

There was no such (fragile) harmony back at the shared, off-shift volunteer house. Threatening behaviour to the housemates and staff at the local bank was a quick route out of the country.

Tea time

I await the first cup of tea from a new PA the way I await the first game of a new football season: anything could happen and the result will be a signpost for the season ahead, Gary.

More than two weeks in with Raoul, I still couldn’t get through one of his afternoon cuppas. He noticed. “No better?” he asked. “Getting there …” I said, unconvincingly. It had taken a full week to successfully remind Raoul to let the kettle boil fully before using the water to make tea, and three or four days before that to convince him that water from the hot tap is not a substitute. “Really?” he had asked in genuine wonderment. “Really,” I had said. “But it’s so hot, almost too hot to touch!”

Sometimes I fantasise about buying every tealeaf and bag available, and ordering a scientific endeavour hitherto unknown to tea technology. Locking ourselves in the kitchen, we would try every possible combination of brewing time, temperature and method. Once we discovered the perfect process, I would get the PA to video it and post it on YouTube. From then on, it would be available to all the new PAs at the click of a mouse. One day, my friends, one day …

The last supper

It’s year-end for Gustav. He is a really easy-going guy and I will be sorry to see him go, even with his onion breath and addiction to pornography. Often it is very hard to say goodbye to someone who has been sharing my life for a year. Unless it has been a really difficult placement, I am genuinely sad as I see them leave for the last time. I have had intimate physical contact with them for a year, but I will probably never see again.

I offered Gustav his choice of our last meal together, as is my tradition. Secretly I hoped he would pick something that I usually forbid myself, thereby allowing me to gorge guilt-free. This gambit usually works very well, as almost every one of my PAs has had the appetite of a nursing sow. (I do not put Raoul in this bracket; his appetite is a mutant thing and belongs in a different league completely).

Unfortunately, Gustav was under pressure from his new girlfriend Ursula to become a vegetarian, and so he picked some macrobiotic stuff from a place run by people with hairy arms. I think I hid my disappointment very well, and I’m proud of the mental strength that prevented this incident souring my memory of a pretty good working relationship.

• Stefano Goodman is a pseudonym. All other names have been changed.