What’s next?

One of my goals for the year 2024 was to live in the moment more. It was a goal because I felt like all the time that we were in France and Dan had a good job, I was enjoying a lot of life but I also was comparing my French life to my English life, and think, “well I would be doing this work project now or this comedy night now if I was still in England.” I kept thinking, “this thing would be easier in English, I would get to hang out with that person on their birthday etc.” And then when Dan lost his job things got really stressful and I regretted not just enjoying the great things about doing life here, when things were relatively unstressful. So I really wanted that as soon as Dan got a job that I just enjoyed life and lived in the moment and didn’t worry about little things.

And is there anything better in life than building a hole?

I really am trying to do that now, we’ve booked some French adventures to go on. In May we’re going to go west to the Atlantic coast to Biarritz and San Sebastián, and then in July we’re going to go to lake Geneva and several places on the way. We’re going to try camping which we haven’t done before unless you count campervanning. 

But it is a challenge to just enjoy the now and not think “what’s next?” We haven’t really made a conscious decision to stay in France, but we’ve come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t make sense to go back to England in the next couple of years and so by default I think we’ve chosen to stay. And I can’t see us being more likely to want to go back in a few years. Maybe I would, but I don’t think the boys would, they’re only going to get more and more integrated here. 

But if we are going to stay what’s the plan? We signed a 3 year rental contract and we’ve done almost two years already. We live in the tiniest village because this is the house that happened to be free when Dan came to look for houses.  But do we want to be in this village forever? Much as we love it (the school is great, there are some lovely views and they put on a great party every year) it’s not exactly the most happening place. I’d like to be able to walk to a boulongerie or get some public transport after 7pm for example. We’d love to buy a house here but where would we move to if we moved a little bit?

We could go to a slightly more populated village with a few more shops, if we went east we’d be nearer to the city centre and nearer to the sea. Or we could go west if we wanted to be more in the mountains nearer to the ski slopes and generally cheaper prices.

We know people in every direction so whenever we consider somewhere it’s sad to think who you will be further away from. Ideally we don’t want the kids to have to move schools again but Percy only has a year and a bit left of primary school, so if we were going to make a bit of a move next summer would be a good time. It will still be a big deal and it would be sad if Eric had to move, but I guess it would be sadder to live in this tiny village for the rest of our lives just because we couldn’t be bothered to make a change.

Village life on 14th July

It’s hard to make a decision for the future too, like trying to think of where the boys would be happy to live as teenagers. I loved living in a village as a kid, I was free to explore the fields and woods and make my own adventures, but then when I was a teenager who kept failing driving tests I hated living there. The most out there option would be to move to Toulouse. This was a much more likely option when it seemed that Dan was going to have to commute there two days a week at his own expense, but now that he doesn’t have to do that, we don’t have to, but……would it be cool? Dan would like to be in the office more he said it’s hard to follow French conversations online sometimes. And I would like to move to a bigger place. It’s also better connected to other cities and would be easier to fly to England from. But it is very far from the sea, and I don’t know if I can be bothered to start completely from scratch again in a city where I don’t know anyone.

Toulouse 2022

It’s like I’ve been dating Perpignan for 2 years and it’s not perfect but I’ve got a special little place in my heart for it and I just don’t want the hassle of getting with a new city. Yeah a new city is a good laugh at first and there’s new exciting places to discover, but then you realise you’re going to all the same places, and some stuff about it irritates you and then you think back to leaving Perpignan, all because of it’s size, and it’s a bit smelly in places, but does size really matter that much? It was good to you, it was there for you it picked up the pieces after a 16 year relationship with Liverpool. You start scrolling back to photos on your phone of you in Perpignan, were you happy then? Will you ever be truly happy? Or should you stop thinking that geographical locations will truly fulfil you. 

Wow that started as a joke comment and got deep really quick.

Other things to consider are: what I should do for work? My options are very limited here due to my lack of French. When Dan lost his job I threw myself into anything that might earn me money without really thinking much about what I wanted to do. So I now have a series of little English teaching gigs and some work designing a colouring book. I enjoy elements of the teaching, I like most of the people I teach and I like it when I can make teaching fun and creative. I didn’t like it when someone asked me what a past participle was. But I’ve googled it and good news I think we can live without them.

Instead of singing along with Natalie Imbruglia “you’re a little late I’m already TORN” you’d say “you’re a little late I’m already TORE” it’s only one letter different.

The Disney film/musical would be called “Froze.”

The Liam Neeson film would be called “Took”.

I know it all sounds a bit weird but I think we could get used to it. Maybe I’ll do a past participle detox for a month and see if I think I could live long term without them. It’s definitely easier than trying to learn them.

I’m really enjoying the colouring book digital drawing. It felt very much like I was cheating on real art for a bit but I’ve got used to it now.

A page from my colouring book

So my options to explore, work-wise, are more teaching opportunities, I am trying to get a new group of adults who want to learn through fun at the moment but so far there’s been no interest. I could try and get more schools work or online work. Or I could try doing more stuff with my paintings or with digital drawing, like do some designs for t-shirts and start an Etsy shop. But I really don’t want to be the stereotypical wife that does a bit of craft on the side and earns some kind of lame lady pocket money.  

I’ve got an idea for an art project about doors. This is not really something I’d try and make money out of it’s just something I’m into at the moment, there’s some really nice doors in our region they’re aDOORable. And I’m thinking about trying to get photos of doors from all over the world and put make them into linoprints. Have you seen any good doors recently? Can you send me a pic? Especially if you live in a country that isn’t France or England. I’d love to have a good collection of photos of doors of the world that are really different from each other, to make some kind of art from.

My favourite door so far.
I’m going to England tomorrow, mainly to meet my new nephew. Night.

Treating Ourselves

After six months of unemployment Dan finally has a new job. He is working for a company that makes software that manages stock. By stock I don’t mean stock cubes or invisible money stuff I mean, real life stuff. I had to try and explain this in French to a school run mum in the supermarket and as we were standing by the chicken aisle I said something like: for example, you want to count these chickens, this company can help. Then she thought he was working in a supermarket and was very confused as to why he was going all the way to Toulouse to count chickens.

The interview process for this new job had a lot of stages to it. It was two online interviews, and then he had to do some work and present it in Toulouse. That day went well and he was feeling pretty positive but it was annoying not to know. Then the phone call that we were waiting for came on a Friday and they said… “You have a confirmation call with the big boss on the Monday.” That was such a weird weekend because it seemed like he had the job but he just needed to go through the details of exactly what the pay is and how often he would have to go to Toulouse. But we weren’t quite sure if we could celebrate.

We’ve spent the last 6 months saying, “when you get a job we’re going to do this, or buy this.” The list of things we were going to do and buy was long and I feel like our spending over the past few weeks has been a lot. On the first weekend, (the weekend when we still didn’t know for sure) we bought new clothes for the kids, me and Dan went to a spa, a really nice warm pool with a sauna and steam room and then we went out to Spain for a meal. (We live an hours drive from the bit of Spain we went to, we didn’t take a private jet.) 

We found a restaurant outside the Salvador Dali museum that was very reasonably priced. The burgers were about 5 euros so I said to the kids, “you can have what you like from this menu.” So Eric said, “ok I’ll have the seafood paella then.” 

We sat outside and ate and then it began to rain, the guy put up the umbrellas but it was still cold and we weren’t really taking our time to enjoy it. By the time we were done it was tipping it down. We ran in to use the loo and then realised there was a whole restaurant inside kind of hidden away down some steps that we could have moved to.

On the Monday Dan had his confirmation call, which turned out to be just a chat and nothing was confirmed! I was so annoyed! I just wanted to know the deal so I could get on with my life and sort out when we can have people to stay, when I can go back to England to see my new nephew and work out if the kids need extra childcare now for when we’re both working. We had been discussing if long term we should move to Toulouse. If he was going to make good friends there and if he was going to need to be there two days a week then it would save us money to move there. I would be happy to live in a bigger city but I would miss living by the sea and I wouldn’t want to up-root the kids again. That evening he finally got the call with the details including the fact that after a month of working in Toulouse they would let him work fully remotely. This was big news. It wasn’t the original deal at all, they were looking for someone who was properly part of the team, that’s why the job was advertised as “hybrid”, but they really liked Dan and didn’t want him to be tired. It would save us a lot of money and also just make everything less complicated.

The random spending continued, because the next weekend there was a lot of snow on the mountain which there hasn’t been for a while and we really wanted to get in one more day of snow this season (we had one day on my birthday). We found a place that was free to ski on the beginner slopes but we did still have to pay for ski hire. It was a super fun day though, the boys love it and they can do it by themselves now.

And we treated ourselves to one more extravagance: apple crumble with a Mars bar ice cream on top! One day a few weeks ago we were eating apple crumble and Dan asked if we had any cream or ice cream to go with it. When he looked in the freezer we only had Mars bar ice creams. I said there was no way we could eat apple crumble with Mars bar ice creams while being unemployed, so obviously that went on the long list of things we would do when he got a job.

It’s mad what people spend money on isn’t it? Loads of people would buy a car that they can’t really afford on finance but could not bring themselves to indulge in an apple crumble with a Mars bar ice cream on top. Maybe for health reasons or maybe it’s just too decadent. I don’t know, but I would highly recommend it as a luxury treat, that would still cost less than buying a pudding at a restaurant.

Dan did his first day this Monday and he was in Toulouse for four days staying over at a hotel in between. It seems like it went pretty well, they have long 90 minute lunches and work late, which is not what English people choose but it is quite sociable. It’s quite a young team of guys mostly in their 20s. All the communication is in French which has been hard work. Dan is very good at French but it’s not his first language, and he doesn’t know slang or business French. He said it was very weird being in an office again because he hasn’t worked in an office since before Covid.

On his last day in the office this week they threw him a welcome drinks thing after work, which was very kind but he would have rather just started his long journey home. The train takes 2 and a half hours but his train home was delayed and then when it got halfway it decided to be a bus. Our village is not great for public transport so I had left the car in town and cycled back earlier in the day. Which was a good job because the door to door journey took him 5 hours 45. I supported Dan emotionally with messages all the way.

  

Nothing Toulouse

Hey, I haven’t blogged for a while because every week I keep thinking Dan will get a job this week and then I’ll write about that. Well he still hasn’t, but it feels like it’s getting closer. 

He widened the search a lot so he applied for a few short term jobs which he was interviewed for but didn’t get, although one of them has come back to him with a possible other opportunity. He applied for a job with Amazon that sounded horrendous. It was to be one of their warehouse guys, but he’d have to wear steel toe cap shoes and walk 12km a day, working from 5am to 1pm for minimum wage. They were having a big recruitment day and 200 people were being interviewed at once. He also applied to work for a Muslim aid agency which advertised as “hybrid in Pairs” but had to turn them down when they said it was 3 days a week in Paris. But best of all he applied for a job with a sex shop! Hahaha sex. (It was just content writing not being in a physical shop.) Still funny though. He’s still waiting to hear back from them actually so it could still happen.

But anyway this week he had two interviews for a normal boring company based in Toulouse to do a job very similar to his last one. Unfortunately Toulouse is two and a half hours away and he might have to do 2 days a week or maybe even 3, but hopefully in time either they would trust him to not come in so much, he could find a more remote job elsewhere or option 3 we could move to Toulouse. There would be a lot of things to consider, I’d miss the sea, and we’ve started making some nice friends here now, but it’s a possibility down the line, he might not even get the job. He will go there on Wednesday to do a presentation for them.

We’re currently in the middle of a two week half term, which has been taken over quite a lot by interview stuff and me needing to look after the kids while Dan works on that, but we managed to get out for a nice family day last week to the mountains. We were hoping to sledge but there was no snow, so we went to this town called Llivia which is a tiny blob of Spain surrounded by France, mainly for the cheaper fuel. And also to the hot springs, which is a bath temperature pool with mountain views. I was surprised that it’s not actually deep enough to swim in so it’s more like a bath temperature bath actually. Which I loved because our house doesn’t have a bath. 

See a little video of our day Here

I wrote all that yesterday while waiting for my sister Sarah to announce her big news: She’s had a baby! A massive hairy but adorable baby. She had a difficult labour with him because he was 9lbs! But don’t worry I helped her through from 1000 miles away with my hilarious jokes. 

There was a lot of chat in our family WhatsApp on the 14th (Ash Wednesday/ Valentine’s Day) about the baby being called Ashley Valentino, if he was born that day, that’s such a cool rockstar name right? But he was born of the 16th. If you don’t already know the name would you like to play the name guessing game?

First name = a common Irish surname

Middle name one = a paw patrol character 

Middle name two = a disciple 

Last Name = Gillard.

Comment with your guesses, or scroll down to see the answer.

The hair!

His name is Murphy Marshall James Gillard.

Welcome to the outside little man.

Falling down a mountain (part 2)

After practising a little bit on the beginners slope I wanted to try the between the legs ski lift that takes you up over bridge onto a bigger hill, it was tricky getting into this ski lift, you have to go through a turnstile thing which I found tricky with by big clown feet (skis) on. I had also accidentally dressed as a clown. I got some ski trousers for 2 euros from a charity shop which I was super chuffed with as they were such a bargain. They looked normal with my blue coat but when I took off the coat (because it was actually hot) and I was just wearing purple trousers with elastic straps over a red and white stripy top I did look a bit clown like.

Anyway I got on to this ski lift, which looks like a zip line seat from a kids park except your not ment to put all your weight on it, you just put it in between your legs and let it pull you. I managed this fine and even managed to film a little bit of me going up for my TikTok (see here). I put my phone safely back away in my pocket and then, I don’t know how but I just ended up on the floor. I thought about grabbing on and being dragged up but decided this was not the thing to do, so I just crawled out of the way of the person behind me who shouted “oopsie!” I didn’t even know the French used “oopsie” but that’s nice. And then I skied down and got in the queue again hoping not too many people saw. The second time I made it to the top but coming down was a problem. I fell over twice and the second time I could see the rest of my family were all at the top of the beginners slope which was just across from where I was, so I gave up on going down and crawled sideways to suggest to them we took the cable car now.

With the beginners pass you get one free cable car return journey, so we hobbled over the road to get on it. It was a beautiful view on both sides, as we went up we could see the little town surrounded by mountains and on the other side, close to the mountain, we could see this toboggan track which looked a lot of fun. At the top we stepped out onto a flat bit which was busy with groups milling around and a few ski school groups, it was a bit of a party atmosphere with music playing loudly. 

I found the bit I had gone to once before with Percy when he did his school ski trip last year and I was a volunteer helper. It was this very gentle slope with another zip line style ski lift. After going for one day on this bit I thought I could ski. I don’t think I ever fell over because the slope was so gentle, and I always had to help other kids that had fallen over, that is what I was there for so I never got to really discover what I could and couldn’t do. So we had a bit more practise on this bit and then Dan took the cable car back with Eric while I skied all the way down the mountain with Percy. I massively misjudged how far this was and how long it would take. There were a few lovely bits but mostly it was too steep. I went too fast and then I fell over, and then I couldn’t get up. Percy was much better than me and had to wait patiently for me. One time I fell into such a big heap of snow that it went all up my back and down my clown trousers.

I was relieved that we finally made it down it one piece, actually in two pieces, we haven’t been one piece since 2014. We had taken a wrong turning at some point and didn’t come out exactly where we wanted too but luckily phones exists and we managed to meet up with Eric and Dan. After giving back our ski stuff we headed home. Stupidly I had planned to host a dinner party that same night as it was my birthday. But cleverly I had made Dan agree to cook for it. There was still a lot to do when we got back including all of us showering and changing into party appropriate clothes.

We had three families round, for the first hour or so we had my artist friend Flick, with her 6 and 16 year old daughters. They are English, and then we had a couple who Eric refers to as “our board game family.” They are two girls, one French and one German, but the language they mainly speak to each other is English. Every Wednesday we play board games together. So for a while we were all English speakers and we played our new game Herd Mentality together. It’s a game where you have to answer questions and you get points by having the same answer as the majority. For example “what is the heaviest fruit or vegetable?” Most people said pumpkin so they all got a point, but I said watermelon and someone else said pineapple so we get no points.

We ate this lovely Gordon Ramsey sausage rice dish that Dan made, and then another family arrived. I know the mum from my French class, she is Spanish/Senegalese but speaks good French, and has a French partner and two young kids. So then I tried not to speak too much English as everyone there at least knew some French. Our German friend Marie also spoke good Spanish so they could talk together, and the kids all talked together in French. 

It did get chaotic, but in a lovely way. At one point I let the kids draw on our big sliding door window with Posca pens. I thought it would be a nice non language based activity that would keep people amused for half a hour but within 5 minutes the windows were filled with doodles.

I had a massive rainbow cake. Good food colouring is really hard to get in France, so when I was back in England for Christmas I stocked up on the good gel food colouring, thinking it would last for years and I’d use it for all the kids birthdays. But then I was just too tempted to use it on my own cake and it’s now nearly all gone. I got sung to in English, French and Spanish. 

Good night, Bon nuit, Buenas noces.

Falling down a mountain (Part 1)

Hello welcome to my first blog of 2024. It’s my 15 year blog anniversary and my 38th birthaversary.

 I feel blogs are dying a little now, because there’s podcasts and TikToks and vlogs, and to be honest the page views have gone down a bit since the glory days of the 2015-2020. I’m going to carry on with it though, even if no one reads it, just because I enjoy reading it back sometimes and remembering things that I would have definitely forgotten otherwise.

According to page views you guys love a bit of tragedy though. You like it when things go well for us but you absolutely loved it when things were going badly for us a few months ago, you loved it when I was going out of my mind stuffing frying pans in public bins just before we moved countries, but you loved it the most when I had cancer in 2018.

Well sorry to disappoint but things are going ok right now. Not great, Dan is still out of work although he has a bit of temporary work for this month which we’re very grateful for. It was my birthday yesterday which I want to write about but I never got round to writing a Christmas blog so I’m going to do a quick Christmas summary:

I painted my pregnant sister’s stomach.

I had an argument with my mum about pie.

I held 2 new nieces one 7 months and one 2 weeks old.

We had a fun new year with our friends Zac and Jude.

Dan had a job interview but didn’t get it.

We went to London to see my extended family, and while we were there saw some penguins, a film about the moon and Rachel Goodsall. 

We got evacuated from a canal boat because the river was flooding. I realise this sentence doesn’t make much sense, but we were sleeping in my parent’s canal boat to give others room to sleep in the house. The river was rising fast and this was our last chance to walk off the boat onto the decking and back to the house before the water went over the decking level.

My sister Sarah had a baby shower where I made a quiz. You had to guess from multiple choice questions where my kids think babies come out of, or what they think is good parenting advice. I filmed them answering these questions, see the video here if you want a laugh:

Percy and Eric’s views on birth

Ok Christmas summary done. Let’s talk about Skiing.

When I was growing up I didn’t know many people who went skiing, I’d never been and that was normal for most people I knew. I’m not trying to make out I’m from the hood, we went sailing which is arguably more elite. But when I think of snow I think of sledging. Any time it snowed I’d put on my tights under my jogging bottoms, a pair of wellies, t-shirt, jumper, coat, 2 pairs of socks and woolly gloves that got wet in a second and then made you cold. And we’d head out to the electricity substation which was our nearest hill. We’d mess around for a few hours until we couldn’t stand the cold any longer and then come back for a hot bath. 

Did you know snow can be better than that? Did you know they actually make trousers that are  waterproof and warm and base layers that are intended for the purpose of wearing in the cold? They make boots that are both waterproof and warm! This was a revelation to me and Dan who grew up with the exact same experience of snow. But if you are growing up in the village I now live in it is completely normal to go skiing every year. I think almost everyone will have at least tried it. Percy got to go on a government funded 3 day trip with school last year and I got to be a parent volunteer helper for a day.

I’ve always been envious of people with summer birthdays, I’d love to have a nice barbecue birthday party, but I’ve always had to do indoor things. But living here is redeeming the January birthday for me. The boys loved yesterday so much that they both asked if they could go for their birthdays (May and October) sorry boys. Eric’s now asking if he can go instead of a Christmas present, that’s how much they love it.

We live about 80-90 minutes away from the ski resort we went to (Les Angles) so it’s near enough to do a day trip which makes it more affordable. We got the beginners pass, which was 28 euros each, and actually allowed us to go on some really big slopes and using a few different ski lifts. We had to buy some skiing clothes and the goggles but most of that we’ve picked up second hand, none of us had “ski coats” we just wore our normal everyday coats. But it was actually really warm in the sun so I didn’t wear a coat hardly at all. We hired ski boots, skis, helmets and me and Dan had poles, this cost around 15 euros per person for all of it. If we stay here long term I’d love to buy this stuff so that we didn’t have to pay to hire it but for now it makes sense to hire.

I was under the impression I could ski, because on my one day as a helper parent on a school trip I didn’t  fall over. I have now realised that on the school trip I didn’t really go downhill. I went on the gentlest hill you can imagine. And I was supposed to be helping the kids when they fell over, so I just assumed that I could ski and if it wasn’t for stoping to help the kids I’d be amazing.

So we got to the beginners slope which I think was still pretty steep and I thought, I’ll ski down holding Eric’s hand, he’s never done it before so he’ll need loads of help. He fell over, I fell over and I couldn’t get back up. I was completely useless at helping him because I didn’t know anything. Percy started just getting on with it and doing it with no help. Dan had to take over helping Eric and I had to try and teach myself how to do it. All I know was make a backwards “V” shape with the skis to slow down. But sometimes I got so fast and out of control I had to do an on purpose fall over to prevent just going at 60 mile a hour into a tree. But then I really struggled to get up from the ground when I was down and so sometimes just bum slid down for a bit.

I feel like this blog is long enough and I want to sleep and rest my achy old body, so I’m going to make it a two parter.

Next time…

Falling off a ski lift, going up to the top of the mountain in a cable car, taking 40 minutes to get down the mountain. Rushing back to host a dinner party, bilingual party dynamics and my rainbow cake.

Kid quotes of the year 2023

   It’s that exciting time of year again.

 The time where we reflect back on our hopes and dreams for the year? 

No it’s the time where I write down all the weird stuff my children have said. 

“Mummy how do you milk a ghost?” Was a classic from a previous year. Possibly the best question I’ve ever been asked. Often HMRC tweet “please tweet us with your general questions.” And sometimes like to pass on some of the general questions I’m having to answer “do tattoos last in heaven?” For example.

So anyways, let’s get on with it. 

Starting with Percy who turned 9 this year:

1) “I don’t know what it’s called….a woman willy?”

2) (When he was with me buying tights) “I guess M stands for Mario and L stands for Luigi” …it’s medium and Large you crazy boy.

3) “It’s a funny feeling in my willy but I like it!” (Percy describing being on the big swing)

4) “Well my mum’s got an art degree and she says it’s a crayon” ….day 1 of art school that.

5) Me: I really want to break a Guinness word record one day.

Percy: don’t worry mum if you don’t we’ll do most rubber ducks at a funeral.

6)  “Stop showing off Mummy you’re going to hurt yourself” ….but once you’ve mastered riding a bike all mum’s teach non handed bike riding right?

This year is the year they became properly bilingual so I’m probably missing some funny quotes out by not being fluent in french. I’ll work on getting some French ones in here next year but in the mean time here some quote from Eric who turned 6 this year.

1) “Hey see that black mark on the wall? That’s where I punched a fly to death”

2) (Dan had a rip in his shorts) “why don’t you poo yourself and let the poo fill the gaps?”

3) Eric: I think I’m going to go to Asia?

Me: oh really when?

Eric: when I’m 55. 

4) Me: what do you want to do today boys? 

Eric: get loads of money.

5) “Hey God, want a water fight? It’s time for one.” It’s safe to say Eric lost.

6) “If Jesus died in a waffle he could have just eaten his way out.” I guess that is a fact. Although the stone being rolled away does have more of a visual impact for Easter cards than just crumbs of a waffle.

7) “I’m playing the guitar with my willy”

8) Erics Joke: what do you call a statue made of sausages? …a pig.

And now for a few joint quotes:

1) Life plans:

Percy: I will marry a french woman because I want to live in France and if I married an English woman I would have to do the French paperwork for her.

Eric: I will marry an English man or woman and I will teach French in England.

2) unemployment advice:

Dan: I’ve lost my job so I will be looking for a new one.

Eric: Daddy what do you love to do?

Percy: It doesn’t matter what he loves to do Eric, he’s got to find a job so we don’t all perish!

3) Fun times

Eric: hit me with that pillow again!

Percy: where?

Eric: The tongue!

If you have enjoyed these you can see past ones by following these links:

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

And future ones as they happen by following @comedyhan on twitter.

3 Christmas Miracles

I thought I should write a quick follow up blog to the last one before the craziness of Christmas starts and I forget it all. Thanks for all the comments and messages after the last one, I really was overwhelmed by the response, some of it from people we hardly know. A lot of good things have happened since then and things are looking up. But before the good things happened things got worse…

First me and Dan both went to do some random work for some fellow brits we met recently, I went to do house painting and Dan went to do gardening. Dan returned for a second day, but on the way back he drove into a pot hole. He got a flat tyre but managed to change it on the side of the road and put the skinny space saver one on (apparently the French call it  galette, which is a savoury pancake) it was annoying. But these things happen, and Dan thought it would be easy enough to get it fixed. Except it wasn’t and it turned into a big complicated expensive thing, all the money we earned between us in those 3 random days of work went on fixing the car.

It wasn’t just a money issue though, the main stress was we are leaving for Barcelona tomorrow to get the plane to Liverpool. So it had to be fixed for that big journey, which we have already bought non-refundable car parking for. It wasn’t just a tyre that was flat the actual wheel was damaged. I don’t know a lot about cars but I imagined wheels are standard things you can just buy from anywhere. I’d say if a three year old can name the car part it’s not that specialist and should be available everywhere. But after a whole day of Dan driving round the city on the pancake tyre he still couldn’t find the kind of wheel we needed. We looked at ordering one, and it might have come in time for Barcelona but it might not have, and I didn’t want to deal with the uncertainty, so we were about to book the bus to Barcelona when we saw some guy selling the right kind of wheel second hand, so Dan managed to get over to him and buy two and fit them himself. That was the first Christmas Miracle.

The second Christmas miracle happened while he was fitting the wheel. He got an email saying he had an interview for a job with Bla bla car, (doing writing stuff not driving.) he’s now had that first interview and is through to the second round.

And the third Christmas miracle was money related. I mentioned last time Dan did this trial job for an english speaking magazine, he did 3 days a week for a month about 96 hours. He should have got minimum wage plus commission but his boss has decided that 500€ is enough. After social security contributions it comes to 4.06€ per hour, less than half of minimum wage. I was up for fighting it but Dan just wants to move on. However we have been very blessed with some unexpected money from several different places, and we’ve both been offered some extra short term work in January. So even if Dan doesn’t get the new job, January will be ok, and we have a bit more of a buffer to feel more relaxed about doing some Christmassy things, like taking our kids out to a big Christmassy market/fun fair thing today. So overall we’re feeling very grateful.