Ruining 4 people’s birthdays

Last month Percy turned 11. In France they have a 2 week half term in October, which is too long!

But this year Dan’s parents came over to visit and for 5 nights we stayed in a holiday park 40 minutes away by the sea. It’s a bargain to go at this time, or at Easter time, but it is chilly to swim in an outdoor pool. Luckily were hardened Brits and we did it anyway. 

On Percy’s actual birthday we began the day with watching the sunrise. The kids are up at 7ish anyway and we were 10 minutes walk from the sea, so it made total sense to get down there while it was still dark and watch the day dawn.

In the afternoon Percy had his birthday party at the Wave Café. It’s an indoor surfing place that we once went to for Dan’s birthday. The time we went for Dan I had booked it as a surprise. At the same time a party of 10 year old had also booked it, but they didn’t take the website’s advice to book it out for the maximum amount of people which is 8, even if you only have a party of 7. And the consequence was you have a random man called Dan in your birthday party. That’s 2 peoples birthday’s partially ruined. Dan’s -who everyone thought was the teacher, and the kid’s.

But Percy’s party was different. We booked the party package, which includes a chocolate cake, your own table set up with sweets, a free t-shirt for the birthday kid and the guarantee of no weird men being in your group. Except for the fact that Percy didn’t invite a lot of friends, so that same weird guy from the first story ended up in a party of 10 year olds again, along with his arguably more weird wife!

The wave machine was really fun. You stand at the top with a body board and launch yourself down a hill that water is being sprayed up, and if you’re lucky you can lie on your tummy for a while balanced between the forces of the water being sprayed up and gravity trying to pull you down. I think? I’m not a physicist. But I do know that if you’re not lucky you fall off or spin round and shoot back to the top which is also pretty fun.

There was a lot of trial and error and a lot of falling off. And at one point my boob came fully out! Just what you want in a party of 11 year olds. That’s the 3rd of 4 birthdays I’ve ruined in this blog. I actually think only Dan saw, so hopefully I got away with it.

The birthday continued with a trip to the second hand electronics shop where Percy spent his birthday money on a Pokémon Switch game, a little mcflurry at Burger King, or whatever they call their mcflurries. And Dan made Percy’s favorite meal, bbq chicken on macaroni cheese back at the campsite.

We did some nice other things during the week, two of which involved lying about Percy’s age, once for cheaper entry to the aquarium and once so he can get the kids menu. I’m really not ready for him to be having to pay full price for stuff yet, but it seems 10 is the cut off for a lot of things. 

The aquarium was cool, fish are fun aren’t they? Especially this guy on the right:

If a kid drew this fish you would not believe it actually looked like this.

One day it was a bit cold and windy so I thought I would take the boys to a park with a good pump track, as Percy got a new bike for his birthday. When I got there the park was locked, we later found out that this was due to strong winds. But I was determined to get in, we’d driven here with the bikes in the car and there was nothing better to do. Also I see rules as more of a challenge, and on closer inspection there were some kids on the pump track, no parents though. We asked the kids how they’d got in and they pointed to a ditch that went under the fence. That bit was fairly easy, but what I didn’t realise is that we would then have to climb over another fence which was really hard to do. 

First we lifted the bikes over to the other kids. Then you could get your foot in the railing, if you turned it on its side so all your weight was on the edge of your foot. My boys managed without too much difficulty with the help from the other kids, but I found it really hard, because my feet were bigger. You couldn’t sit on the top of the fence, because it was spiky, but I had to while I unstuck my feet from the railings so I could jump down freely. I had bruises after from sitting on the spikes.

Once we were in the boys cycled round a bit, but it was quite windy, and maybe not that safe, that’s why someone had decided to lock the park. I began to think about how I was kind of responsible for all the children now as the only adult in there. And if one of them was to break their arm or whatever it would be me who would have to phone an ambulance, if I could remember what number you have to phone. They have different numbers for the different emergency services. I know the police is 17 because I learned that at bingo. You know like we say, “88 two fat ladies” they say, “88 two peanuts” and they say, “17 the police.” I was wondering how you say in French, “I broke into a locked park,” and how someone with a broken arm might try and climb back over the spiky fence. 

But as with many real life stories, it was actually all fine, we got out a different and slightly easier way in the end. Boring.

The 4th birthday I ruined was this week. Since September I’ve started a new group where I teach English to kids. It was in a school that I was already working in, I asked back in the summer and they said as long as I got insurance, I could use a school classroom for free on a Wednesday when the kids aren’t normally in. So then I filled in all the forms and advertised my group, found 5 kids and started it. It was going well, they loved it, the parents seemed happy and five is enough money wise to be worthwhile. Just after the last lesson before half term, the head teacher came and told me that I could no longer do the lessons there. She is a lovely woman and it wasn’t down to her, apparently the owners of the school building are not happy about me using the room as I’m a business. I feel like the French really hate businesses. I would be happy to pay a bit to use the room, but that wasn’t the issue, the issue was I was trying to earn money. And I am therefore EVIL.

So then I had to try and find another room, because I didn’t want to shut it down when I had a good group. With the help of Dan’s mum (who is French) we phoned the Mairie (which is like the town hall). We asked about room hire and after a lot of back and forth I was told to go there in person with a cheque to pay for the term. Nothing is ever done online or by bank transfer in France. They showed me the room and it looked alright so I messaged the parents just to check they were all still up for it and then I paid.

Now I’m getting to the bit where I ruined a kids birthday… so a few days before the first lesson the mum of two of the 5 kids that go said their kids were in a school trip so wouldn’t be coming, and then it turned out another kid was also going. So we’ve now only got 2 kids left. And one of their Mums messaged to say that their kid was free, but it was her birthday so they wouldn’t mind if we cancelled. The problem for me is I would be making minus 25 euros if I cancelled and at least with 2 kids coming I might be making slightly over 0€ after tax and fuel costs. Is that worth ruining a child’s birthday for? I think so. 

I did try to make it as fun as possible for the birthday girl, but how fun can a two hour english lesson with one other kid on a very tight budget be? I took a birthday banner and I made her a her a hexiflexigon origami birthday card, and we learnt birthday vocab and then played games like guess who and happy families, so she was practising some English. And I hope happy families distracted her from how much happier she would have been with her family. 

I thought the awkwardness was over for the week after that, but at the weekend I took my kids to the natural hot springs. It’s right near the lovely thermal pools that are like a hot swimming pool that we’ve been to before except it’s just a big gravelly hot puddle. Free, but I’ve only been there once and I did not know how many naked Spanish hippys there would be there! Even one is enough, but there were a lot. Me and Eric had a lovely time despite the nudity.

Percy did not like seeing naked people and didn’t go in at all. Dan was also not really a fan and only dipped his feet in. I promised them that next time we go, we’ll go to the real baths where you can swim and people are forced to wear swimwear.

Thanks for reading. X

A new routine

Does anyone else find their lives are either full of too many variables and you’re constantly trying to get in a routine and just live a normal life, or your life is so stable it’s a bit boring and you’re trying to add in fun, or challenge? Before we moved to France I feel like we had a lovely life, but the idea of just continuing that life forever seemed a little dull, and so we decided to make everything 10 times more difficult for ourselves by moving abroad. And after a mad summer of not having anywhere to live, Dan being in a new job, Percy starting a new school and all our possessions being all over the place, we would just like a bit of normal dull life for a while.

We’ve finally moved all our stuff out of storage and our landlord kindly moved some of his furniture out of our airbnb to make room for ours. We’ve got our nice sofa bed back now so we can potentially host people. We’re going to put some pictures on the wall and we’re going to sort our own bills out so we can have a proper proof of address. Our post box is currently a metal box that just lies on the road getting pooed on by birds. It also doesn’t have a key, anyone can open it. Once a delivery guy asked me if that was our post box and then he just laughed at it. I’ve never been ashamed of a post box before. 

I spent all month trying to sort out everyone’s English lessons. There’s a couple of simple people who picked a date and stuck to it, but I have several people who constantly want to change their day or only want lessons every other week, or cancel at the last minute. The amount of time I spend planning and messaging people which I have to always do in French, is longer than the time I spend actually teaching. Also I spent quite a bit of money on Facebook ads for my kids group at my house and I had a few enquiries, but at the moment I am running it with just two kids. I love those kids and I would carry on with just those two, but one of them is moving away soon so the group will sadly have to close. But on the positive side, I’ve started a new group that meets in a school that’s going well and I’ve got a few new private students. 

There some moments when I do love teaching English. I have two teenage girls that speak good English and we were playing a game where you had to write down two truths and a lie and then work out what is true by questioning them. My lie was that I spoke German, which was immediately found out when they asked me to say something in German. And we all had a good laugh at me trying to remember any words in German. And then even more ridiculously one of the girls had misunderstood the task a bit and had written for her lie, “I have three eyes.” Which would have been an epic fact if it were true.

I’ve started making art again, it was quite a long break in the summer where all my art stuff was in storage. And then I was very busy trying to get stuff back to normal and advertise my English stuff. But I decided I need to make time to do art or else I will basically not enjoy life. Art’s not the only thing that makes me happy but a lot of the other things that make me happy are hard to do here, like being a comedian and seeing friends and eating hobnobs. On a Wednesday I work hard all day because primary kids are not at school so that’s the day everyone wants to learn English. I get home from my last lesson at 7:30 and then it’s really nice to have Thursday as mainly a fun day. I’ve just finished a new cactus oil painting. 

And I am in a big group exhibition in Port Vendres. If you know where that is you should go, it’s on until next weds. 

I’m hoping I’ll get a few more art opportunities this year. Every year I’ve seen some artists painting these big cubes with murals and I’ve always thought, “how do you get to be those people?” And this year I’ve actually found how you can apply so I’m working on that. I also have tried to get a bit of work doing painting on windows. In previous years I’ve tried this, but not very hard. This weekend I went round some cafes and shops in town, particularly ones that I’ve seen with terrible window art previously and asked them if them if they’re interested. One guy was definitely very interested. I’ve taken a photo of his window and worked out how to digitally draw an example on to it. If anyone local wants pretty windows message me!

A design I did digitally

A real life design I did last year.

Percy is doing well in school, he’s got given this little laptop that he’s very excited to have, unfortunately the school have blocked everything that’s fun on it so it can be only used for work. And it goes off at 8pm. Which is pretty cheeky when on some days school doesn’t even finish until 5pm. 

School is pretty strict in France, when a teacher walks in the room they have to all stand up as if it’s the Victorian times. What is the point of that? Is there any real life situation where you have to do that? If you fail the exams you have to resit the whole year. Not all kids would do well in that environment, I don’t know if I would have, but luckily Percy is doing well and got above average in his first exams in all the subjects which is impressive given that he didn’t know any French 4 years ago.

Eric’s doing ok too. I think he’s missing having Percy at school with him, but he’s really loving tennis which he does at school. He wants to join our local kids tennis club. I’m sadly not joining a club this year. My roller skating club that I’ve been part of for 2 years isn’t doing the roller dance bit now, which was by far the best bit.I tried out another club that had just the roller dance bit without the regular skating but the hall was pretty small and the dancing was mainly on the spot, just like you would for normal dance, except it was much harder and more annoying because your roller skates were weighing you down, and I just didn’t see the point. Whereas my previous group there was only about 5 of us in a big hall and we’d skate round fast with a partner one going forwards and one backwards but continually switching while moving to the music. Once I smashed right into the back of the old guy who taught us and we both fell over but it was really fun. (In general not specifically colliding into an old man.)

Dan has a new vehicle. It’s been a pain trying to share the car, and on the days I’ve had it he’s been cycling to work but it’s really way too far to cycle (14 miles). So he’s now bought a motorbike. It’s a 125. Which if you don’t know, it’s a bit lame but not the worst of all the vehicle options. Ages ago when we were first getting together he had a big motorbike, a 600. But when we moved to France and he switched his UK licence for a French one they erased his bike licence. It’s a big hassle to redo the full licence but to just drive a 125 you can do the training for it in one day, and for just going to work it’s a big enough bike.

La Rentrée

La rentrée is the word the French use for ‘back to school’. But it’s a whole big thing, it’s not just for kids, it’s like everyone has taken August off and everyone is back to school on the first of September.

Last time I blogged I was having a semi breakdown due to not having my own space for 2 months, but we finally moved back into our airbnb a few days before school started. It was weird being excited to have our own space and to be able to get to more of our stuff, but to still feel this is temporary. We were hoping to move to a proper rental house with a nice garden which is available from October but the landlord is terrible at getting back to us, so it seems unlikely this will happen now. We’ve sent him one final message saying we’re assuming it’s a no. Its a bit annoying because we were planning on moving all our furniture out of storage to settle here for a bit longer, and our airbnb landlord agreed to move out his furniture. But because we wanted to be in with a chance of the better house we didn’t and so we’ve payed for another month of storage. I don’t want to be unfair to the airbnb landlord though, so I think we just need to commit to this house now. If we can we will look info buying here, but I need to see if I can make it to at least 100 days in a row of wanting to be in the country before we think about that.

The moving back in day was weird. I was waiting for a call to say the holiday people had left the house, and we were free to move back in when I got a call from the primary school to say Eric was not booked in to have school lunches this term and was that right? This doesn’t just mean you might need to send your kid with a packed lunch (your not allowed to do that) it means you have to pick your kid up at lunch time and look after them for nearly 2 hours. They’ve got a new system and with everything that was going on this admin got missed. The school said it’s too late for him to get hot food but they can look after him and give him sandwiches for the first week. He told me he has to sit in a separate room with eight other kids whose parents are bad at admin to eat his lunch. And next week (and I really don’t know why) he can’t even do that, he has to come home. But from the 3rd week he can finally eat hot food with his friends again.

When we got back to the house in the early afternoon, I was desperate to catch up on sleep, so I was searching everywhere for sheets whereas the boys were desperate for their Pokémon cards. I knew I would not be getting any sleep until I found the Pokémon cards, so I started moving the first boxes I could get to. It was quite exciting, not everything was accessible so each time you took a new bit of furniture out it unlocked a new layer of boxes, until we finally found the box labelled Pokémon. They were like drug addicts fresh out of rehab going out for a big hit of crack, which is exactly what you want for your kids when you’re trying to take a nap.

We gradually started getting our house back to what it was before, swapping out a big double bed for our two desks to make an office room, and getting all our old clothes out. I asked Eric to put some books on a bookshelf for me and he put them all the wrong way round with the spines on the inside and the pages facing out. He also recently complained that there was only room for 3 socks on a radiator because he had put them long ways not hanging down.  And he thought that the purpose of ironing clothes was to make them warm. I don’t feel very qualified in anything but hanging out with him does make me feel better about the fact I do at least know some basic life skills.

If you’ve ever read the book ‘squash and a squeeze’, or you know the fable of the woman with a tiny house, who took in all her animals and then after they were gone her house felt big, it’s a real thing. This house annoys me, but it felt so nice to have our own space and to have an actual desk and more than two pairs of trousers. The next day I had two English lessons to teach, but the boys were occupied all day making “the Lego museum” basically filling all the empty storage in their room with a Lego display. If your kids are bored can I recommend hiding 90% of their toys for 2 months and then bringing them out. In fact if you want to do Christmas on a budget start hiding their stuff now and they’ll have a great Christmas Day when you reveal it all again.

We got a long list of things we need for the boys school. In France you have to buy everything, exercise books a lot of folders glue, paint, even tissues. They are very specific about what you need and it’s complicated. In English we just call a lot of different things “a folder” but in french there are several different words for the different specific kinds of folders. It’s expensive but if you are on a low or average income you get a really generous chunk of money to buy all the stuff with. And you get money towards extra curricular activities to do outside of school.

On a Monday Percy is in school from 8:30 - 5pm, and that just his normal school hours not the hours for an extra club. If he wanted to continue with basketball, which he has done for the past 3 years, he would have to stay after school until 6:30 on a Monday. But that seems mental so he’s not going to carry on with it, he’s chosen to do “plein air” instead, which is using an outdoor climbing wall and mounting biking. In primary school he got Wednesdays off, but in secondary school he has to go to school on a Wednesday morning and then the afternoon is optional, but that’s when he’s chosen to stay and do plein air.

The first day of school it was only the year 7s in, and we were told we could bring them or they can go on the bus, and he was happy to go on the bus. It turns out there was only one other kid on the bus with him! Every other parent had taken them in to make sure they were ok. He was fine though, he’s loving it so far. He has 3 hours of English lessons a week and his teacher has already got him to pronounce words for the class, because he can do it better than her. He also does 3 hours of Spanish. They do take languages more seriously in French schools than they do in England. They do quite a lot of sport, too. He’s doing swimming on Monday and he’s joining lunch time ping-pong club. They don’t do so much of the creative subjects though, only one hour of art and one hour of music a week, and they dont do any technology subjects like food, graphics, textiles, woodwork, etc. On my first week of cooking we made a milkshake, we had to bring in milk and powdered flavouring and then somehow spent an hour mixing them together and evaluating our drink. He’s really missing out there. 

This weekend we went to watch the sunrise. I think that’s going to be a new family tradition for the first weekend in September, because its not to early (7:20 am) for the actual sunrise but its nice to get there a bit earlier to see it getting light. If you’ve never seen a sunrise it’s like one of the best gradient fill effects from Word Art has been projected on a big screen for you to enjoy.

I guess when God started writing his document “creating a new world” he got inspired.  We took hot chocolate and brioche to eat during the main big show and then we went for a little walk round the headland and came back for some swimming.

Thanks for reading. 

Living out a suitcase

It’s the end if my 7th week of living out a suitcase and it’s roughly 1 million days since the kids broke up from school. I’m currently staying with some very generous friends in France waiting to be not homeless again which will hopefully happen on Wednesday. In my bedroom here I have a box of spices, a folder of all my important documents and some finger puppets. In the garage there’s winter clothes we needed in England but we don’t need here. In the car is some suitcases of Dans clothes and some camping chairs. A few miles away is a storage unit full of stuff we haven’t needed since April but still want, like furniture and skis and a sewing machine. In another house 45 mins away is some stuff in a fridge from when Dan lived there for a few weeks. In the house we’re going back to on Wednesday is our most useful stuff that we do need but can’t get to because it’s an occupied air bnb. And in my parents loft in England is a load of stuff we chose not take to France 3 years ago, but every time we visit we take something back. This time it was finger puppets (for teaching English) and the board game Risk.

Every day the position and contents of the bags change, because the room we’re staying in is an office in the day time and so I need to move the stuff I need out of it. And then every time I need a bag to go out with I have to empty my hand luggage bag somewhere so that I have a more empty bag if I’m going to the supermarket. So we’re forever losing stuff and re-buying stuff we already own somewhere. 

I was going a little bit crazy earlier in the week with the bag chaos, and general lack of sleep, and the fact I’ve not really had a moment to myself since the beginning of July.  

I was trying to plan English lessons but my folders are in the air bnb I can’t get into. It was raining but I wanted to get out of the house with the kids so I planned to go to the library in the next village, but the coats were in the garage because I thought we wouldn’t need them, and then I got very wet trying to open the garage door. Then my phone couldn’t charge in the car for me to use the sat-nav because there was water in the charging hole so I was rapidly running out of battery, and then the library which my friend said had very easy parking actually had zero parking because there was a big market on. And it was impossible to navigate the tiny French streets that were not made for big cars like ours. People were watching me trying to manoeuvre out of a very tiny street where traffic was backing up behind me. Eventually I managed to park miles away, and walk in.

In the library my German friend Marie phoned me. We had arranged to meet at the beach but had to change our plans due to the rain, and she was ringing to make a new plan. I told her I was having a bit of a breakdown and then embarrassingly I actually cried. She was super nice and said, “come round we’ll make you pancakes,” and she made the most delicious apple and cinnamon pancakes while the boys played on the Switch. And then they made me take a nap, which was so nice of them.

A few times people have done that for me when I had newborn babies, and I try and do it for other new mums when I can. If you ever go round to see a new mum probably the best gift you can give her is to hold the baby and make her nap.

I first met Marie 3 years ago when she put a post on the English speakers of Perpignan Facebook group asking if anyone wanted to play board games with her and her girlfriend Aurore (who is French but they speak together in English). Since then we have met up nearly every Wednesday to play games and they have introduced us to loads of new games. We’ve all been on a bumpy up and down ride navigating being new to Perpignan since then, but it’s been so nice to consistently see them and catch up on life together. 

They are moving to Montpellier next week because Aurore, who is studying law, is moving onto her masters degree which she fancied doing in a different city. They’ve had a really stressful time recently with their car breaking down while they have been trying to find a new apartment in Montpellier, and they just managed to get one only about two weeks before they needed to move there. Today Dan is helping them move as much stuff as possible to the new place. But it has not gone smoothly because our car had a flat tyre. I dont know why we have had so many flat tyres and general car problems this year but I think it might be time for a whole new car.

We are staying with Matt and Anais, and their two very cute kids aged 5 and 2. They very kindly had Dan for a while when me and the boys were in England, and now they are hosting us all so that me and Dan don’t have to be apart for any longer. They have a really nice house with a pool that the boys are loving. It’s sort of the party house, they like to host, I think the first party we went to here might be when they made a Christmas dinner for about 25 people. This week it was Matt’s birthday and he had a sort of surprise party joint with another friend, but he knew about the party for the other friend, so really the only surprise was there were some ballon’s that said 35 and he got a cake. 

The house is closer to Dan’s work than our house so he can cycle into work and leave me with the car and I can go to the beach which with the boys which is only 15 minutes away from here (whereas its 25 or 30 from our old house). Apart from the rainy day the weather has been lovely, in the high 20s not in the high 30s like it was a few weeks ago. Our closest beach from our old house was Canet, which is quite touristy and you have to pay to park in the summer months. Just north of there is Le Barcarès which our the closest beach while we’re staying in this house, we’ve been several times to there too. But I found 2 new beaches that I’ve never been to before by just failing to find the Barcarès beach we normally go to. And one of them was such a cute mini beach right next to a jet ski place, so we could watch some people whizzing around on jet skis in the distance.

Yesterday we were invited to two pool parties! Which has not surprisingly never happened to me in the uk. We went to one of a couple we know who were celebrating the wife’s 60th birthday with a bbq round their lovely pool. But because of that we missed out on the pool party that was happening in the house that we are staying in. Matt got a slushi machine for his birthday and made at least 4 different kids of slushis at the party that we unfortunately missed out on. We arrived back as people were leaving but the kids still got in the pool, for their second swim of the day. For homeless people we really are living our best lives.

The 60th birthday pool.

I am looking forward to the end of living out a suitcase and school starting back though. I don’t love the air bnb but I am grateful that it meant we could stay in our village and the kids can continue to go to their school. We have seen another house for rent in the village that we are going to try and get if we can. It’s available from October and so we’re trying to do everything we can to prove that we are good people and we can afford the rent and are flexible to move whenever. The landlord is not great at getting back to us, and he said he had 200 enquiries in 24 hours of putting up the advert, but he is a friend of a friend and he has said we can view it at some point so I hope we’re in with a good chance.

To all the exhausted parents at the end of the holidays, we’re on the home straight now. I was going to put something else about parents who work all summer because I know its a privilege to get the summer off with your kids, and the people who homeschool because schools cannot provide for the needs of their kids. but then I have to mention people who don’t have children who can never take time off in the school holidays because the parents take those dates, and aliens who’s had a hard time this summer because they live on another planet where the summer holidays are 45 earth years long. Well done everyone!

96 Friends

I’m nearing the final week of my 6 week tour, and my people count is up to 96 people that I have intentionally seen. (This does include the children of friends, some of which I had little interaction with.)

Dan just arrived in the UK and we will now be spending the final week in Preston to see his family. Unfortunately I’ve already seen them all, so they won’t count as extra people and I’m unlikely to make it to 100 people which would have been cool. One of his sisters is pregnant so maybe I can count her as 2 people? If she gave birth a few weeks early and it’s surprise quads I could reach my goal. But a surprise quad premature birth is probably not what you want at a family BBQ to be honest.

Since I last blogged I’ve been to a fake Centre Parcs near Blackpool called Ribby Hall, with my extended family. They had a little zoo and a crazy golf and a swimming pool and boating lake on site. The highlight of the zoo was the anteater, such a mad creature that poked its long nose through the bars while we and another family just laughed at it. 

The weekend after that we went to my cousin Lauren’s wedding. The boys didn’t come, I dropped them off at Dan’s parents. Weddings are kind of boring for kids and kids have been known to ruin weddings. Hopefully it was nice for my parents in law to have some time with the boys. The wedding was very beautiful, very fancy compared to my own wedding which accidentally resembled a school fete. But very emotional and personal as well. I didn’t really know much about my cousin’s partner and how they got together, but it was a lovely story. They were friends at uni and then housemates for years before they got together. Just a beautiful day in a lovely venue with very nice food, and some fun dancing at the end. It was nice to catch up with family. 

It was easy to see the Marshall descendants because we all had the same curly hair. It’s like they didn’t even need to ask, “bride or groom?” the hair gave it away.

Curly hair boomers

Curly hair millennials

 It was really nice catching up with other family there too, particularly two other cousins who were there, and are just both really interesting people. One of them, Marie, I’m trying to persuade to get into stand up. Whenever she tells stories they’re really good, and some stuff in her life is not going well right now, which is the perfect time to get into stand up. No one wants to hear stories when your life is all going great. 

I got to see my old housemate from my uni days Josh, with his fairly newly adopted boys who were a similar age to mine and got on well. It was super nice to see him as a Dad. I’ve always seen him around kids (working with, them not just lurking in playgrounds) so it was lovely and very natural to see him smashing being a Dad. He had been at a festival in the south and drove up in a big van full of crazy props and circus stuff, to where he lives near the Lake District, and stopped off on the way to visit me for a BBQ at my parents house.

After that I did a trip to the North East. I saw my sister in Leeds and my friend Lydia who got the train down from Gateshead to York with her two kids, aged 5 and 3. We went to the railway museum where you could see some big old trains from the olden days and there was one you could go inside, the Japanese bullet train. 

Eric was unfortunately feeling unwell, even though he was fine when we left that morning. He had a temperature, said he was very sleepy and wanted to go home, which would have been a massive shame given that my friend had made the effort to come all the way to York for this day. Obviously we didn’t have calpol on us but Lydia did have paracetamol. Which we crushed up and put in a ham sandwich. After a lot of bribery Eric ate a bit of the disgusting ham sandwich and he did improve a bit. We didn’t see a lot of York, but we did find a canal boat that was selling ice creams, which is fun but not as fun as if an ice cream was selling canal boats.

It was nice to hang out with my sister Jo in Leeds, but I can’t say it was relaxing. They have a two year old and a four year old and are in the middle of house renovations. The boys really loved their collection of board games though and wanted to play some very complex ones, which was not easy in a house of tiny people and renovations. One highlight was getting to make pancakes dressed as a shark. I didn’t have a dressing gown and the shark was the perfect over pyjama outfit. 

I’ve been enjoying seeing people in their own homes and seeing how different people parent and asking couples what they do for fun, and what they do on weekends in their family. The boys have also noticed that not everyone does things the same as us. Especially that lots of kids are allowed to get up earlier than them.

On the way back from Leeds we went to Dan’s sister’s baby shower. It was really nice and different to other baby showers I’ve been to. She had it in a community hall and she had a big table where you could make something out of clay and another table of flowers where you could make a bouquet of flowers to take with you, and some very delicious cakes. I tried to make a clay pot that was a cylinder but the hole in the middle was star shaped. It accidentally ended up being the perfect size and shape for an ash tray.

My next little road trip was to Staffordshire to see Abi and Jon and their girls who are the same age as my boys. We hung out a lot when they were little and we both were in Liverpool, and for a while we had a childcare arrangement. Both the older kids were in school and so I looked after their youngest with Eric a day a week, and then they had Eric a day a week so we could both have some child free time in the week. I highly recommend getting a deal like that if you’re in the toddler stage. It’s not twice the work to have an extra kid for a few hours, it actually kind of makes you put a bit more effort into doing some nice activities with them and your kid gets to bond with another kid and then you get time off, to do things like sit in a silent house.

Unfortunately my boys can now hardly remember their girls. Eric does have a great memory for what toys other families have though and asked me are they the family with the lego train, which they were. When we first arrived Abi said the neighbours were having a party next door and we were invited. So this was the second stranger’s birthday party we would be crashing since arriving in England (see my previous blog for the story of the first one). This was a BBQ with a bucking bronco and the family were so lovey and welcoming, getting us burgers and trying to speak to us in French, because initially they thought we were French. Bad French in a Birmingham accent is my absolute favourite kind of French, because it really makes me feel better about my own level of French.

Since moving to the midlands Abi and Jon have got a big fluffy dog called Dolly who we took for a mad long late night walk through the forest that was really fun. If it was just me and the kids they would have got bored and moaned straight away, but with kids their own age they loved it. 

I noticed all the families I’ve visited with kids the same age as ours are calling their parents “Mum” and “Dad” now not “Mummy” and “Daddy” and they just said it happened naturally. But I think it’s not happening naturally with my kids because they don’t see other English kids, so I’m intentionally trying to phase out Mummy and Daddy now. If you get to an adult and you still say Mummy and Daddy then you’re posh. I don’t know why this is true but it is. Why don’t we all call everyone by their actual names that is a lot more logical. It makes absolutely no sense when you’re in a park and someone shouts, “Mum” and everyone looks round.

I was really pleased to get a visit from Helen and Esther while I was at my parents. They are both good friends that had visited me in France and they’re both paddle board kind of people. Helen sometimes even does yoga on a paddle board and they both swim in ridiculously cold water for fun. When I started planning this trip I was happy that I would be able to see 5 of my 6 bridesmaids. Helen was the one I wasn’t going to get to see because she lives all the way down south and it is far, but it was really lovely of her to make the trek up north. Next time it’s definitely my turn to go south.

Helen and Esther

Me and Helen

I picked Dan up from Liverpool airport on Saturday afternoon, squeezing in seeing one more Liverpool family (the Ravens) that morning. They have 3 boys who are giant compared to my midget sons. Their youngest is 5 and was only a tiny bit smaller than Eric, who is 8, and their oldest, who is 11, was loads taller than me.

I’d been apart from Dan for 5 weeks, the longest I’d been apart since we’ve been married. To be honest I didn’t really miss him on week one, I was seeing all the other people that I miss all the time. But I did really miss him by the end. No one gets me like he does, and things just feel a bit weird like I’m not quite a full person.

We’re now in Preston. You never really expect to be holidaying in Preston, but it’s sort of the unexpected side effect of loving a Mediterranean holiday destination so much that you move there. Prepare to take your holidays in weird places forever.

Today we ate a full english and went to charity shops, that’s really the top things you can do while holidaying in Preston. Tomorrow we’ll take a day trip to the lake district because that’s the other good thing you can do in Preston: Go somewhere else.

Next week we’ll be doing more of living in random other people’s houses, but in France.

I love Liverpool

Week 2 of my 6 weeks of touring the Uk was in Liverpool. I will always have a special place in my heart for this city. When I’m in France and people ask me where I’m from I always say Liverpool and then if they’re British I have to follow it up with “I went to uni there and I lived there for 16 years but I’m not originally from there,” to explain the accent. I guess adopted children who are a different race to their adopted parents have to do the same thing. “Yeah she’s not my biological mum but this is the mum that raised me” that’s how I feel about Liverpool, it’s not really where I’m from but it’s the city that I choose that made me who I am. And I don’t really have many ties with my birth city Coventry anymore.

Someone recently asked me about why I didn’t want to sell my house in the Uk. They said “do you think you’re still emotionally attached to it” and the answer is yes I am, and I don’t really mind admitting that. There were years of stress and homelessness that went on before we got that house? Our previous house was in a really bad area someone was murdered right outside. I spent so long decorating every room of that house that we still own. So yep I’m emotionally attached, and also I think it makes financial sense not to see it.

I was really greatful that a friend who was going on holiday let me borrow her house. It was a beautiful house as well, she had so many plants and some many artefacts from around the world, and it was in a lovely area called aigbirth. (If you’re not familier its pronounced “egg-birth” other cool sounding Liverpool, places are “old swan” and “the dingle” ) this week was the only week we had a house to ourselves and it would have been pretty relaxing, had I not scheduled in seeing as many people as is humanly possible.

We arrived on a sunny Monday eve and after stocking up on food, driving through made me so happy and also a bit sad that I wasn’t still there, its got everything you could want from a city really. Apart from the stuff we moved for I guess: sun, mountains, and a sea you can actually swim in. We drove along the river past the docks to a climbing place called awesome some walls. 

My kids hardly remember Liverpool and I kept pointing out places I had lived or worked or done comedy which is a lot of places and by the end of the week they were sick of that. Climbing was really fun, and a perfect way to start the week. On Tuesday the romantic bubble surrounding Liverpool burst when Liverpool was grey and I had to go to the Argos in St John shopping center which, since they built Liverpool One (shopping district) is just a weird dystopian mix of terrible shops old people and despair. 

I got to see a lot of people, current people count of people I’ve intentionally seen including their children is 59, I think. In Liverpool I had Grace over for a meal, she has been on a similar journey to me, she moved from Liverpool to Cornwall (or Devon) please just assume any time I say Cornwall I mean somewhere in the south that isn’t London. Anyway she bought a house with her partner Laura and then it didn’t really work out and they are now in the Wirral, after having many of the same stressful moving situations and finding new friend dilemmas as me. I met Danni my old housemate from 2009-10 who now has a very cute one year old, and it’s so lovely seeing her being a mum after years of her thinking it might  never happen. I met up with Katie in the inflatable park that we got pretty much to ourselves because the Uk kids were in school. I saw my Godson Ben and he’s just turning 13 and is taller than me! In fact my boys and Ben and his sister Elodie played a fairly complex board game and me and Steph the mum didn’t have to supervise at all we just got to have a nice chat. I realised how far we’ve come from the day that Percy and Elodie were babies and we could never say a whole sentence at once.

2015 and 2025

I wanted to see my friends Zac and Jude who have boys a similar age, but since it was still term time they weren’t very free to hang out. So Jude suggested that on the Friday, which was her kids last day of term and they finished early, we could go to a trampoline park together. Her kids were actually invited there for a party, but we assumed the whole class would be there and no one would notice my kids being there as well. We were wrong, the party was the birthday boy, Jude’s boys and one other family, so we very much were noticed. The mum of the birthday boy was so welcoming though, she offered the boys party food and when I declined she insisted. My kids did not pick up on the weirdness and were happily posing for photos. The poor birthday kid is going to look back at these photos in years to come and wonder who these gatecrashers are. 

 I went to my old church Saint Stephens and saw a lot of people I used to know, unfortunately the boys hardly remember these people. I also went to see my old man old neighbour Geoff. He told me had had Cancer but he only whispered it because he didn’t want the kids to hear. Unfortunately I said “what?! You’ve got a hamster?” I wish I made that up for comedy but it’s true.

On the Saturday I organised a big picnic in Sefton park, but being England it was raining. It’s frustrating that all the good weather is in France and all the people I want to meet up with are in the land of rain. But we did it anyway we sheltered under some trees and we were near the cafe for if things got really bad. So many people came that I hadn’t seen for ages and you know they are your real friends if they come to a rainy picnic. The weather did cheer up and we had a great time, I just feel bad that I didn’t get to talk to everyone for that long. 

I saw keshia, who was a good friend when Percy was young, her daughter was 2 weeks younger than Percy and we hung out a lot, she even had Percy a day a week when I was working. When we became mums I was 28 and she was just 19 and single. She was a super good mum then, she read a lot more about parenting than me and she knew a lot more facts about breastfeeding and stuff. People assumed I knew stuff that I didn’t know, and they probably assumed she didn’t know as much as she did know. It must been really hard for her in many ways, it was hard enough for me aged 28 with a supportive partner. Now she’s almost 30 and has had another baby with partner Jamie and doing so well, I just feel really happy for her that things worked out for her, she’s actually in the process of buying a house round the corner from my old house that I still own, and I’m slightly gutted we won’t get to be neighbours.

Me Steph and Rachel went on a big night out, the relive our student days.  It was raining of course and I didn’t have an umbrella so I chose to tuck my hair into a sun hat the preserve the curls. And of corse it looked super cool. 

We had a few cocktails on 2 different places on blood street. The toilets in Albert Schloss were the highlight of the whole night.  We attemped to go out to our old spot “Hebbie jebbies” but unfortunately it wasn’t open. So we went to this place called “Teddy’s” instead which was fun but not quite enough party atmosphere for a big Dance. It was a rainy Sunday night outside of term time to be fair.

I finished my week in Liverpool with a Brunch on Lark Lane, I love lark lane, so many quirky shops, we went to Milo lounge one of the places I’ve done comedy before and the boys were made up to have a stack of pancakes Eric had it with blueberries and Percy had it with bacon.

 They were also chuffed with how long it took me to pack and tidy the house I was in because they had a very long time playing the switch. So long that we got to our holiday home near Blackpool about 4 hours later than I intended to get there but it was all fine.

This week just gone we’ve been in the holiday house with my extended family and then to my cousins wedding in Shropshire but I’ll write about that next time. 

My Uk tour begins

 I’m currently on tour, I’ve even made myself a tour t-shirt. It’s like I’ve given being homeless a rebrand but before I talk about that I need to talk about the last week of school which for us was the first few days of July.

It’s Percy’s last year of primary school, and it was a weird feeling getting to this point for many reasons. In the UK he would have another year at primary school which is a weird mind trick that’s kind of making me not accept that he’s leaving. Like this is just some kind of alternate reality, that doesn’t count. In the real world he’s still in primary school. There’s no prom like they have in Uk schools and no leavers assembly, they went on a school trip on a sailing boat all day, and then they had a graduation, where their teacher who is lovely and has been their teacher for two years, did a personal speech to every child. And a lot of the kids were really emotional. I was emotional too, we had promised Percy he could finish school here and we wouldn’t move and at times when we had no house and no job it seemed like it might be a real challenge to stick to that.

 I was also really sad when he left his school in England, it was a shame to think he wouldn’t be with those friends all the way through school, and he was doing so well in school there, we weren’t sure if we were going to mess everything up by moving him. But the teachers in France were saying how they just feel so lucky to have him which is super nice to hear, especially when you sometimes see UK headlines saying how immigrants our ruining our schools. I know if half the class don’t speak english as a first language, in a deprived area it’s not the same as one foreign kid joining a village school, but it’s still nice to hear that it’s been a positive for the teachers.

But he’s done so well with the language, he’s completely caught up with the reading and writing levels of the other kids. He’s super good at maths too, he told me he has a “black belt” in maths. And I laughed in his face, but then he explained how they did this kind of test and the highest anyone else got was purple belt which is two levels below black. I hope he never brings up his black belt in maths in a fight though.

On the last day all the kids in school form a kind of tunnel and the school leavers walk out through it and all high 5 the other kids. It’s so cute. As an end of term treat we went straight to the inflatables on the lake for a hour of mucking about jumping in water, going down slides and attempting to run over wobbly floating stepping stones.

The next day was a boring day of packing. I had spent the week moving all our stuff into storage in the loft of our air bnb for our return in late August. Dan took us to Carcassone airport for our flight to Manchester. On the way we drove past a pretty serious wild fire and Dan had to drive back a different way which took almost twice as long. 

The flight was annoying , it was delayed and then when we finally got on we had to wait for the plane to get fuel and then in Manchester we had to wait absolutely ages for our bags. We were next to another family in baggage who’s kids were losing it, it was around 9:30 or 10 at night UK time, even later french time, and we managed to engage this kid in a game of travel connect 4 to kill the time which was nice. Not as nice as if our bags were there and we could leave but it is nice to make the wait less boring if it’s possible.

The first week I was with my parents but I kept doing trips to see other friends, in that first week I went to Sheffield to see Ruth and Birmingham to see Bex, Ruth and Bex are my only 2 childhood friends that I’m still in touch with properly and it’s lovely to see them both with their own kids now between the 3 of us we have 7 boys and no girls. Here’s some funny quote from their kids:

Me: what kind of things do you like to play with?

Ruth’s 3 year old: I like to play with wheat.

Bex’s 10 year old: we listen to a podcast when we go to sleep, but if we’re naughty we just have to listen to the sound of rain.

That kid Zech got on particular well with my boys he was very encouraging, he taught them how to make stuff on Minecraft and then said to Percy “that’s so good for your first time bro” 

Me and Bex grew up as next door neighbours and sometimes I wish our boys could grow up next door neighbours too. 

The weather was great in that first week and I got to go out on my parents river a lot. As a birthday present from my mum to my Dad, Dad had half an hour on a jet ski, and he thought it would be a bit boring on his own so lucky me got to also go on a jet ski and the boys rode on the back. It was a lot of fun and even 20 miles an hour feels really fast.

I’ve been doing a lot of shopping as well, shops are just not that good in my bit of France so I much prefer to buy clothes here, and I still get the majority of my underwear from M&S. I’m also making the most of english food that is hard to get in France. So far I’ve been enjoying Mini Chedders, cherry Bakewells, sausage rolls, scotch eggs, and pick and mix - a healthy diet.

This week I’ve been staying in a very lovely house of a friend who is away on holiday but lives in Liverpool.  And yesterday I invited everybody I know to a picnic (if you didn’t get an invite sorry it wasn’t intentional) But I’ll write about that next time.

The tour t-shirt that I spent ages making but I’m a bit embarrassed to wear.