What a Tory Government means for us.

Today is a sad day for most people who will be reading this, because unless you're a millionaire or someone who believes things written by millionaires, you will probably be planning how you will survive or escape the next 5 years in Britain. Before the election I made this half statement/half joke...

"If the Labour get in we'll have another baby, if the Tories get in we're moving to France."

but this is the longer more truthful statement: If Labour get in I feel like we can consider the 3rd child thing, currently the cost of child care is making it not really possible for me to work, it would just make our lives more complicated and wouldn't give us much more money. But, in September when Eric gets some free childcare, then I can work and even if it's still low paid it makes sense. So having another baby would add another 4 years until I get to that point again. Which is a bit too long, not just financially, for my own sanity too. I'm not saying I definitely would have had another baby if Labour had got in, but it would be a discussion I'd be willing to have. I met another mum today who felt the same.

I'm not saying I'll be moving to France tomorrow, but it's something we've talked about for a while (Dan is half French so we could get in there). I'd miss load of things and people and I think I'd be a bit lonely, but I'd be up for it because I like change, and sun, and it would be amazing for the kids to learn a new language, and I don't really want to be part of Tory Britain. But we're the lucky ones, we're not minted or anything, but we're quite good at saving and so I feel we have options. Some people are properly stuck here.

I tried to explain the election to Percy (age 5). I tried not to be biased, I tried not to say "goodies and baddies". We talked about the blue team and the red team and that Mummy and Daddy were voting for the red team. In the morning I told him the blue team won, he said, with the optimism only a 5 year old can have, "well maybe they'll change and start caring about hospitals and poor people". 

Under Labour I would definitely be in work. I started doing freelance art stuff in schools just at the end of labour. There was more then, I taught loads of different kinds of art as one off lessons - sculpture, mosaic, textiles etc. I sometimes taught drawing skills where I got the kids to draw a face and then I taught them step by step how to draw a face and get the proportions all right and then they compared the two. Obviously the second one was better, but a teacher once told me that their face drawing was then always better, even when I wasn't there to talk them through it and that even their general drawing skills for other things (not just faces) had improved just from me doing one lesson. For a few years I worked almost full time, then every year since 2014 it got worse. I used to just advertise to Liverpool and then I had to keep advertising further and further away to get anything. Then I had 2 months of no work while still paying £46 a day 2 days a week for nursery. So that had to end. If I had either free nursery or a well-funded school I could work, I don't need both but I need one. This is one of the reasons I do stand up. It fits around the school run.

It's pretty ironic that the Brexit vote was won from a lie on a bus, and that some people voted because they wanted to help the NHS, but then this vote was more like "do you want Brexit so much that you would sacrifice the NHS for it?" and people still went with that.

My Brexit bus prop made for my comedy night's spooky special

It would be disastrous to lose the NHS. A year ago I had cancer, I only knew about it because I went for a smear test. It was relatively easy to treat it was only 8mm, if I had not been for a smear test I wouldn't have known it was there until about a year later, when it would have grown into a difficult to treat bigger ball. If you had to pay for smear test I would't have gone. Not because I completely couldn't afford it, I just don't do that kind of thing, I didn't feel at any risk of getting it. I'm only 33 and I have no history or risk factors associated with it. I put off things that cost money, I went to the dentist when I was pregnant with Percy and then didn't go again till I was pregnant with Eric (it's free when you're pregnant). When my TV licence runs out I live without BBC for a few months and then eventually get it and watch everything I've missed on catch up. I'm just not the personality type to go for smears as often as I should but I know I would really put it off for a lot longer if I had to pay to go. Imagine if you had to pay for baby scans or anything where you'd probably be fine. People wouldn't go and most of them would be fine. But some of them wouldn't, some of them would have complications and some of them would die.

One positive about being in Liverpool is that almost everyone I would bump into feels like this, so when striking up a conversation with a stranger (which I did twice today) you're on safe ground. I love that we're the only place in Britain where you can't buy the sun newspaper, and maybe thats a factor in why Liverpool is a sea of red in a world of blue. Because we haven't seen lies and boobs for 20 years. I mean not from them anyway, I'm sure there are multiple places you can purchase lies and boobs.

I've read load of social media stuff of people's views, some funny some sad, all left wing. I really do wonder what Tory Facebook looks like. I mean I doubt people put stuff like "I just voted tory because I want poor people to die" but really what do they put? But the one that stands out to me is this one about what will happen if the tories get in....

"It will be like a terrible alternative ending to a Christmas Carol, where the ghosts don't have an impact on Scrooge and Tiny Tim dies. Except it's real."

The one tiny silver lining in the depressing blog post is that at least my parody song will still be relevant for another 5 years. This is the bridge to my independant women parody song.

"The patriarchy, makes it tough for mums like me,

We don't get a lot for free, with the Tories"

Merry Christmas

Chicken pox, Gas leaks, and Potty training

It's been a mad few weeks, beginning with a lovely trip to Cadbury world to see my good friend Bex and family, and then at the end of the day Bex messaged me to say her middle boy AJ had chicken pox. My boys had not had it yet so we were holding out in anticipation. 2 weeks passed and nothing happened and then we discovered Eric had it. In some ways I was relived, we needed to get it over with and now was as good a time as any. If I was still doing self employed stuff in the day, I would have been so stressed out. When you're paying for nursery and getting paid well per day but not working everyday something like this can end up costing you hundreds of pounds and you feel guilty for thinking about money when your kid is sick.

The first full day of spots went fine, I decided since we wouldn't be going out I might as well potty train him at the same time, which is actually going loads better than it did for Percy, he was a nightmare. Eric actually seemed fine in himself chicken pox wise, I kept Percy of school too because I was sure he'd get it in the next few days. I also personally think 5 days of school is a bit much for a 5 year old and that what they learn in school is not very varied... this is sort of a whole other blog post in itself, but in my opinion they learn too much phonics and maths and not enough of everything else in the world that there is to know.

Have you got a primary school aged kid? Ask them to name the colours in the rainbow. I once asked a whole class of year 4 or 5s, only one kid knew, he was Polish and had learnt it there. Another questions you can ask: "what is charcoal?" You might get the answer "its a tool from Minecraft" and I bet if your kid knows that blue and yellow makes green they've never actually been allowed to do it for themselves. If you ask them to mix a skin tone colour they will have absolutely no clue. It's one of the things I used to teach kids to do, back before there was no money for anything but maths and phonics. If you asked a specialist in humanities or other forms of arts I'm sure they would say the same kinds of things.

Anyway that was a huge digression, all I really wanted to say is that we all stayed home and invented chicken pox the board game, which was fun for a bit. But after Percy had 2 days off I phoned the school and they told me to send him in (even though he would probably spread chicken pox) but that's all I wanted: someone to blame.

Then just after Eric started getting better we had a new long burner thing put in. It replaced a ugly old fire that just made a noise and a smell.

I'm a tiny bit in love with that shade of green.

Unfortunately when they took the old one out they detected a gas leak under the floor boards. It couldn't be fixed without ripping them up, so they just re-piped the whole thing for quite a lot of money. It meant that for about 5 days we had no gas which meant no heating or cooking or hot water or showers. Except after 3 or 4 days I thought I'll just test the shower...and guess what it's electric! There was one day when Percy had a swimming lesson that I thought while me and Eric wait we might as well have a shower. Eric normally loves showers but this time because it came on when he was not prepared he hated it. I realised this whole thing looked bad, me with a screaming child who is skinny and still coved in chicken pox scabs trying to have a sneaky shower in a pool, because we had no heating and no way of cooking anything nutritious. We could have been out of a poverty documentary.

The day after that I went to pick up an electric heater after school pick up, and then I was going on to a gig in Nottingham which I needed to leave at 5pm for. There was no spare time in my schedule which is why Eric pooing himself in the car just after school pick up was REALLY ANNOYING! If it was in a nappy I could have changed it, but in pants is really hard to change in the car even if you have all the stuff, even though school is pretty close in rush hour it take a long time. This resulted in me eating burning hot microwaved lasagne while straightening my hair when fellow comedian Alex (a girl) came over.

We left late but managed to get to the gig just in time, the venue was a room above a pub. We arrived to find a room full of male comedians, we said hi and one comedian told me everything he'd ever achieved in comedy. I find 5-10% of adults have not yet learned that saying everything you've achieved to someone you don't know well doesn't make them like you. (The way to make people like you is usually to ask about the other person and take a genuine interest.) I don't think these people are bad people, they just didn't learn that when they were like 15 or whatever. Like I never learned how to tie a tie or do long division.

The lady in charge of the night went down to get people from the pub, she managed to get a crowd of really weird drunk men. They heckled often and badly. I was headlining so I was nervous to do 20 minutes in front of them, no one could do well with this crowd. It was reminiscent of my days teaching kids that had been expelled. In the break they all left which was sort of great but also not so great because we had no audience. The lady in charge was talking about cancelling it and I was not sure where I would stand payment wise if they cancelled the gig. I needed the money to reimburse me for my petrol costs, so me and the girlfriend of another comedian went down to the pub to see if we could get a new audience. On the way down she asked me who I was here to support, I said myself.

We went up to everybody in the pub and invited them even to a couple who were clearly in the middle of an argument and the woman had been crying, whoops! We managed to get a nice group of older ladies and 3 lads - the show was back on. I did my set and loved it, the audience were great and it was just a lovely atmosphere. I felt happy that I'd done ok even though I sort of don't look like a comedian. It was probably the best time I've ever performed my parody song "dependant women"(since then I've done it 3 more times, all worse).

It was a nice road trip too. It's pretty intense talking to a comedian for 5 hours on one day, but sort of nice to have that time. It would take me 2 weeks to have 5 hours of meaningful conversation with my husband. Sad face.

I was about to write a paragraph listing my achievements in comedy last week, but I have to be careful after writing the paragraph about the 5-10%.

So all I will say is if you're free on 11th December and live near Liverpool, me and Dan are hosting a comedy competition/ slightly offensive nativity play/ craft fair. Its a great mix!