Six

 "When I was one I had just begun,

when I was two I was nearly new,

when I was three I was barely me,

when I was four I was not much more.

when I was five I was just alive,

But now I'm 6 I'm clever as clever,

 I think I'll stay six forever and ever" 

- AA Mille

Last week Percy turned six, he hasn't had a lot of luck with birthdays, he's only really had two normal ones.

When he was One he had pnemonia and was in alder hey hospital.

When he was Two we were sort of homeless (that was still quite a nice birthday, but it is weird to put on a party in someone else house.)

When he was Three we had a lovey pirate party in our current house.

When he was Four I had cancer and was recovering from an op so Dan took Percy and a few friends to a soft play.

When he was Five it was great, he took two friends to Gulliver's World and had a Toy Story cake.

But now he's Six it's a global pandemic, I hope zoom parties won't last forever and ever.

In a few more months everyone will have had a Covid affected birthday. Eric's birthday is in May and he also had a zoom party for his 3rd. I really wan't to give him another one. Imagine 50% of your birthdays being zoom parties, I bet he can hardly remember what normal birthday parties are. Do you think we'll ever blow candles out again? You're basically just spitting germs onto a cake that you share with all your friends.

But back to Percy's big day. Over the last month the restrictions got tighter and tighter until we realised we wouldn't be able to see anyone on Percy's birthday. We still managed to go to the zoo which I thought might have been shut down as a circuit breaker thing. You're not really meant to travel outside of your region but I don't think it's actually illegal.

I wanted to make the zoom party as fun as possible so I made party packs which I gave out beforehand. They had party hats and party bags and stuff to to play games with.

So for example a game that worked well was charades. Everyone had an envelope with the same 8 films listed on different bits of paper. We all had 2 minutes to choose one and decide how to act it out while everyone was muted and then we came back together and one by one acted out that film and people held up to their screen which film they thought it was out of the 8. Pass the parcel worked less well, and ended with me saying "ok everyone just open your present."

We had a lot of fun, and it went on longer than I had planned. This meant that Percys Godparents came to the door with a gift while we were still on the call, so we had to quickly sing happy birthday so we could cut the cake and give it to Katie and Mike who were stood outside in the cold. Everyone on zoom had cake in their party bags to eat too. The best thing about a zoom party is at the end you just say bye press a button and everyone disappears, no one stays chatting for another half an hour or forgets their coat or can't find their shoes, its amazing.

This years cake was a lion. Percy is very into animals at the moment mainly because he's really into the show Andy's Safari Adventure (and all the other Andy shows) it's like David Attenborough for kids. This was actually one of the easiest and yummyiest cakes I've made.

One the Saturday we went to Chester zoo, the day started well. We all said which animals we wanted to see most, Percy's favourite animal has been giraffes for a long time. The boys were running around very excited. 

But two hours in they were difficult to motivate. The weather was bad and we had to queue outside for half an hour to get into monsoon forest, which was a tropical climate indoor bit with orangutang and gibbons that were my favourite. We made the mistake of leaving the giraffes till last and by that time it was really raining, Percy had a hole in his welly and had wet socks, we got completely lost, Eric had fallen asleep on Dan's shoulder and then Percy completely gave up on the idea of looking for giraffes and just wanted to go home. 

We probably only saw a quarter of what there is to see at Chester zoo. Luckily he cheered up a bit in the car once he was dry.

This week we have stolen my parents house something, we often do when they go off on their canal boat. Because Dan is working from home all the time now he can just work from Cheshire and it's a bit of a change of scene to see a river out of the window, even if it is a rainy cold day. 

Well done to the parents who have nearly survived half term in lockdown 2. Its so hard in bad weather, missing you all. xx

Fatima and Me

My last 2 blogs were super positive about life, having recently reached the magical stage of free nursery hours. I had so many hopes and plans and I had a brilliant first day off where I did a long cycle and another day off where I went out for brunch with my good friend Katie. But in between those days has not been great. I've mainly spent them working on lots of things that haven't resulted in actually earning money. 

Being self-employed means I am often going to meetings and planning projects, or spending time on advertising or emailing, and not all of that results in actual paid work in schools. The majority of the time it does, so I don't mind if sometimes I go to a meeting to pitch my ideas, or even design a mural and in the end the school doesn't want anything. That's just self-employed life and that's why my day rate is quite high, because there is a lot of work that happens outside of a days work. I won't bore you with all the details, but the last few weeks have all been filled with planning, emailing, spending ages on designs for several different school and a cafe, that have all resulted in absolutely no work, even though some of it looked like it would be certain to go ahead.

So I thought it's time to Rethink Reskill Reboot, as the government would like me to. Except that the things I have thought about reskilling in are things you can't teach on zoom. Like plastering for example I've though about learning that. And I need money now, I've got no time to re-train, so I've signed up to a teaching assistant supply agency. A lot of people are off sick at the moment so I thought there might be some work going there. I've also signed up to be a modern day Santa's elf. (Christmas temp work at a Royal Mail sorting office.) This has resulted in me having 3 DBS checks this month. I paid £23 for one a while ago when I thought the big mural project was very likely to go ahead. Then when I joined the school supply agency they told me if I only paid £23 than thats just a basic DBS and would be no good to me, if I wanted to work in schools I had to pay £50 for an enhanced one. At the same time Royal Mail did me another basic one, because there was no box to tick for "I already have a basic one". I now also have to pay £13 for the update service, so that I continually have a DBS forever. But that's no big deal, to quote a worker from the agency "it's less than £1 a month." I was so angry about all this work I'd lost and money I'd spent on DBS checks, I went out and committed loads of crimes, to make my money back.

While I'm over here grieving the loss of what was once a great career, my 5 year old son has endless enthusiasm and confidence about his future job prospects. He came out of school one day saying something like this:

"Mummy when I'm bigger I'm going to save the world. I've got a 3 step plan. Step 1: save the animals. Step 2: plant some trees and Step 3: clean up the oceans." 

He thinks that no one has bothered trying these things before and that he single handedly can do it and fix the world. Of course I've told him theres no money in saving the world and he should retrain in cyber.

Which brings us on to Fatima. A lot has been said already about this dream crushing government campaign, but the best thing about pissing off a load of creatives is all the wonderful memes that have come out of this. Here are a few faves:

I just feel like I can't help being creative, it's how my brain works. It would be great if I had a passion for economics like my Dad and just learned to move money around in a way that creates more magical money and end up retired early in a lovely riverside house. But we can't all be magical money movers can we? You need someone to design and make the lovely riverside houses.

My neighbours left an old broken globe on the street at the weekend, and I knocked on to ask if I could have it. 

I could have just repaired it but we don't have much room for it so I've decided to make it into a lamp shade and a small side table. I just can't help myself when I see something beautiful, and I've stopped the globe going in landfill and I've stopped myself from buying a side table. I was always a maker, it's what makes me happy, and I haven't made physical stuff for ages because I spent the last 2 years making comedy, but now the comedy scene is not what it was and all my work has been canceled, making art again is keeping me sane. And I'd rather take a minimum wage day job that pays the bills and doesn't take up too much brain space so I have the time to create, than retrain in a "proper career" that I have to give my all to, just so that I can have the money to pay for all the extra childcare I'd need and afford to buy new side tables off Amazon.

In other making news me and Dan are making a podcast. It's called "I wouldn't watch". We take it in turns to force each other to watch film we love but our spouse wouldn't watch. So far I've made Dan watch Titantic and Moulin Rouge and he's made me watch The Matrix and I'll soon be watching Gladiator. After watching then have a big chat about the film and some of the themes of the film, surprising facts, silly stories and we do a credit shout out to a minor character with a silly title. Once we've got those 4 done we'll start releasing them weekly. I hope you will enjoy it!

This is Dan giving Rose a Hi 5 in that well known hand print Scene.

Shout out to all my creative friends, working hard, living their dream, we need you! xx