Fifty Shades of Domination - My True Story by Mistress Miranda Read Free Book Online Page A

at which I truly excelled. Seeing gymnastics in particular I would ask my grandmother, ‘How do these girls end up in competitions and stuff?’ and she would reply ‘Oh they’ve got personal trainers and do nothing but practice all day.’
‘Wow… can I get a trainer and do that?’
‘Oh, don’t be silly Miranda; we haven’t got the money for anything like that.’
I had endless enthusiasm to do a variety of things with my life but my grandmother had neither the money, nor the know-how, to encourage or pick-up on my interests.
None of the above means that my grandparents did not love me to pieces and I enjoyed a surfeit of emotional warmth and affection from them. Some of that may have come my way because my nan had herself been raised in an orphanage with no mother-love whatsoever after her own mother died and her father had remarried. She always told me that being in the orphanage was better than the abusive life she had led at home with her father and the original evil stepmother. My granddad had been in the Navy and had then worked at the local Hoover factory before being made redundant when I was very young. He was never able towork again because he suffered from chronic pulmonary obstructive disorder (COPD) which meant that his ability to breathe worsened progressively year after year. At heart he was a fun-loving person but as time passed he was completely struck down by the limitations of his illness. His lung capacity was terrible, really bad, so that even walking up a flight of stairs would cause him to puff and pant. In his later years all his efforts were expended in just trying to breathe, which cost him his sparkle and brought on depression. ‘What bloody use am I to anyone? I can’t do anything,’ he would sometimes say. ‘My bloody legs are no use to me at all, I can’t go anywhere.’
I was asthmatic from an early age but never suffered remotely as much as my grandfather did. Whereas I might trigger an asthma attack by sudden exertions such as running for a bus, his breathing troubles were continuous and would leave him struggling for air in the day and coughing through the nights. His one regular pleasure was a trip to his local pub where he would play dominos and down a pint or two prior to coming home and falling asleep on the sofa. He used that pub for nearly 50 years and yet never had any sort of drink problem – he just enjoyed the company and the routine of that part of his life. Even so, some of my funniest childhood memories are of teasing him when he was a little too much the worse for wear before those afternoon naps. I would put all his hair in elastic hairbands as he slept and try to draw on him before my nan realised what I was doing. She took my joking in her normal good-natured way until the day I drew a picture of Granddad and wrote a note across it: ‘Too Drunk To Remember.’
‘That’s not funny Miranda, it’s just rude’ scolded my nan. I still have the picture – complete with the replacement caption words with which I calmed her anger: ‘God Save the Queen’ was my slightly surreal attempt to get back into her good books. My grandfather loved children and when family came to stay he would welcome my cousins with open arms. He called us all ‘bairns’, a hangover from his upbringing in the north of England.
Much of the advice my granddad gave me throughout my childhood did stick and has been of use to me in my business life – even though I cannot always follow his golden rules on never getting into debt. ‘Never borrow money Miranda; never lend money; do not get seduced into asking for credit; don’t spend what you do not have.’ It was a reflection of the fact that he was probably the most honest man I have ever known. In his younger days he passed examinations to be a police officer but the starting pay was then so low that, with a young family to look after, he could not afford to take the job. His grasp of mathematics was excellent and family legend has it