My Comedy life (2018-2021)

I wrote the prequel to this a few weeks ago now, but I've finally got round to part 2.

So 2018 was a fun year for me, I mean compared to the start of 2017 where I was a homeless pregnant mess. (Skip back to this blog if you didn't know me at the time.)

I did my second hour long show and I was really proud of it. I'm actually going to release it on youtube soon. I wasn't going to originally because I was booked to do it at 3 other comedy festivals, but that got canceled due to covid and now too much time has passed for me to go back to that material now. I decided after the show to spend a year taking as many opportunities as I could in comedy, traveling everywhere and doing everything for a year. My goal was to do some paid work by the end of the year, and I reached that goal after about 4 months. The other bit of my goal was to run my own night...

Early Risers Comedy Club

Over 100 people had come to my show and so I thought if I put on a night with some other comedians with my demographic as the target audience it could do well. I quickly realised it's a lot harder to get people to come to a regular thing than a one off thing.

I wanted to make my night different to other comedy nights, friendlier, quirkier, high quality, in a nice venue and most importantly with a definite early end time. My demographic (parents in their 30's) would rather pay to have a nice venue than have a free night with horrible toilets, like the night I learned to do comedy at. I never liked not knowing how long a night would go on for, especially when I was still breast feeding. But I found most men in their 20s that put on comedy nights didn't at all think about this. Surely everyone would want to stay out as late as possible?

What I realised after a few months of doing Early Risers was that everyone liked the early end time, not just parents. Anyone with a 9 to 5 job wanted to know they weren't going to be back to late and acts who had traveled far wanted to finish early too.

I started off trying to market the night specifically to parents. I even said you can bring babies, which someone did to the first one and it did not go well. The baby cried and it was pretty distracting. I should have specified sleeping babies only. But yeah after a while I was conscious of trying not to alienate the people who weren't parents, so then I tried to drop the parent thing.

I really didn't want to MC the night at first. Being an MC is scary, I'm not great at improv or dealing with heckles. So the first few I got a guest MC and I put myself on as an act. The people I got did a good job under the circumstances, but they didn't know the acts that I booked so they couldn't introduce them with a anecdote or big them up. Also the MC has to be the time keeper and if an act goes over really it means the MC has to do less. Everyone appreciates the early end time but it is a challenge to do. So after a while I felt like I should just MC after all. I wasn't good at it to start with, I still wouldn't say I'm amazing at it now, but by the end I felt confident to do it and did really enjoy it. I wouldn't feel confident with someone else's night though. Early Risers is like my baby and I think I know it's needs and how to look after it, but MC ing another persons night would be like me looking after a teenager. It might be fine, but it might be awkward. 

Early Risers has had 3 venues (4 if you count the one off Christmas special.) We started in Blackburne house and then 7 months in had to find a new venue an hour before the show started! Our headliner that month had come all the way from Surrey and the night had just been mentioned in the Echo, so I knew people were coming. Every month for the past 7 months it had been in Blackburne house but in August I arrived to a sign on the door saying this venue closes at 4pm in August. Cheers for the heads up guys. So me and the guest MC literally walked the streets pleading with any venue to let us in, and that's when he managed to get us into the basement of Grilla which was such a perfect venue. It was too late to tell people about the venue change on social media, so I had to just stand outside the old venue and redirect people. And it actually turned out to be such a brilliant night. Quite a big crowd and the venue change really put people in a good mood. I managed to negotiate us being there every month, and the night really started going well there and I began to feel a bit more confident MCing it.

There were two pretty terrible ones (July 2019 and November 2019) and two people (Hannah Sloan and Harriet Gilmore) that just went to one of the terrible ones and I still feel awkward that you went to a bad one. Conversely my friend Sean Mullins went to two of the best ones and has a much higher opinion of my night than he should do.

Some of the best bits were the headliners genius musical comedians Jollyboat, Kate Mccabe, Sian Davies, and comedy rapper MC Hammersmith.  I really enjoyed the awkward moment when Grilla no longer wanted us in their venue anymore and I decided to make it even more awkward by writing an Adele parody and singing it to this poor guy who wasn't really responsible for that decision. (See that here) And the Christmas special that was very special.

It was sort of like an offensive nativity play where me and Dan were MCing the show in character as Mary and Joseph . The premise was that we'd travelled to the venue by donkey and I was allowed to stay the night and give birth there if we hosted a comedy show. Very believable. The show was actually like a competition between two teams of comedians: the Shepherds and the Angels. Every comedian got 5 minutes to do their best set and then we voted for a winner. It was so much fun, but so much stress. I actually cried on the morning of it because there was so much to do. I had 10 acts to communicate with  and a load of stall holders to communicate with because I decided to add a Christmas craft fair into the mix. The stall holders were continually dropping out all over the place and then I kept replacing them. I couldn't keep up with the messages and I was a full time parent to a toddler at the stage, so it's not like I had a relaxing time in the day to organise this stuff. I remember my friend Steve coming to my house on the day to stuff a million little stickers (which were used for voting) into tiny crackers while I was going a bit mad.

Anyway it was any amazing night and such a good laugh. All the acts were brilliant and I got to live an unrealised dream of being Mary in a nativity. The finale was giving birth to Jesus, who I'd been wearing up my top the whole time, and then giving birth to the placenta shortly afterwards. Because that's what's missing from all nativity plays everywhere: placentas. I made mine from red jelly and pomegranate in a zip lock bag and yes I did eat it, that was part of the script.

We moved venues again to Allerton and had our first show on 13th March 2020. We were all having a good old joke about covid and we gave away toilet roll as a prize. A week later people stopped joking and stopped going out to anything and we didn't return until September 2021. I enjoyed doing my last 3 shows there, but only because I knew it was coming to an end. After the big break of covid I realised how much comedy I had been doing, how exhausted I was and how much I hadn't seen Dan. And although I'm really sad to be giving it all up soon, I don't think I could have carried on forever.

The Circuit

As well as my own night I did a lot of open spots on other people nights, on an average night this involved driving about an hour, doing 10 minutes of stand up in a pub to strangers for no money, which normally went fine. It's a weird thing to do with your life though if you think about it.

So mostly it was fine, not that exciting but not terrible. But I'll tell you about some memorable ones.

The good ones

Beat The Frog is a big competition that happens every Monday in Manchester in a venue that's been doing comedy for 25 years or something. It's a gong show, so it means that 3 people in the audience hold up cards  when they don't like you If no one hold up a card you get to do a whole 5 minutes. If you win you get to come back again and open the show with 8 minutes at your own expense, and you get into the end of year final. And maybe if they really like you, you get offered a 15 minute spot on a Thursday for £20. If you think comedy is an easy way to earn money you are wrong. So I turned up, it was I think my second ever gig outside of Liverpool. I was really nervous, I didn't really understand the format, it seemed scary, but I won and it felt amazing! 

Other great gig's were the Comedy Store Manchester, which I did very early into my year of doing everything. It felt like a really big deal. There was a dressing room with a mirror with lights going round it. It's where I first met Anna Thomas. We were both very new (unless you count my secret years) she was just great and also one of the loveliest people in comedy. I got her to do my night when it started and then begged her to headline when she had enough material. She headlined on the terrible night when there was hardly any audience and the sound equipment was playing up and she still smashed it. She has just won the BBC New Comedian of the Year award and I am super chuffed for her.

I did a fair few nice gigs at Hot Water. They always get a great crowd and sometimes I was on with semi famous people from the telly. It's very blokey, run by man, virtually never a female MC and in my opinion they don't really try and get women on. But having said that, people have always been very welcoming, and a male MC persuaded me to do some of my breastfeeding material, which actually went really well and a random male audience member said he liked my set at the end so that was pretty nice to hear.

One of the gigs I'm proudest of doing is when I did tour support for Harriet Kemsley, she was so lovely to me and it was just a really fun friendly night.

One of my favourite nights was when I did something like a 6 hour round trip for 2 minutes of stage time at a gong show. It sounds like it should be on the bad list right? But it was just a fun road trip with nice people, and a really big gong show, in a proper theatre. but the banta on the road trip was the best part.

.

The Bad/ Weird Ones

The worst one by far was a gig in Burnley where it was a trial for more paid work. The audience was nearly all men, a few women and a dog. The acts were all men. As I got up I was immediately heckled, and after I was done a man came up to me and just said "you were shit" and walked off. And then I got an email confirming that I would never get more work from them.  

Other bad ones were just more annoying, like leaving a barbecue with friends, to travel over an hour for no money, to go to a gig in a pub where no one was there to see comedy and the mic didn't work.

A pretty weird one that ended up good in the end was when I headlined a gig in an upstairs room of a pub in Nottingham. I was getting paid £50, roughly the cost of petrol to Nottingham. It was a super long drive but having Alex (the girl who's taken over Early Risers) in the car with me made it a lot more fun. We arrived and all the other comedians were men. We all sort of said hi and some of the guys did that classic thing that comedians do when they big themselves up and say about all their achievements. (I would say 5% of people and 20% of comedians haven't yet learnt that listing your achievements when you first meet someone is not the way to make people like you.)

The gig started and the audience were awful, they were very drunk and heckley. Then in the break they all left which was a relief for some, but a bit of a worry for me. I knew that if the gig got cancelled I would not get paid and I could not afford that £50 of petrol. So before the woman in charge had a chance to cancel it I went to the pub downstairs and persuaded as many people as I could to come upstairs for the gig. It was mainly older ladies but they made for a better audience. I did my set and actually I did a really good gig. It's the best feeling in the world to know that you've made people laugh and you can afford to drive home.

If you want to book me for gigs I'm still here! The France thing is taking forever, the earliest we will be leaving now is easter but we may not leave till the summer.

My Comedy Life So Far (2007-2018)

Last week I had my last ever Early Risers, which is the comedy night I set up in January 2019. This week I handed over all the social media accounts to the new owner of Early Risers - Alex. It's a strange transitional time for me, but here's the story of my comedy life so far:

2007 (age 21) 

I had just got together with Dan and was trying to impress him. Dan liked comedy so I got us surprise tickets to see Ross Noble at the Empire Theatre. It was quite a lot of money to spend for a student and wasn't even for a special occasion. I thought it was unfortunate that I probably wouldn't enjoy it. How could anyone really enjoy watching just one man on a stage saying things. If I was going to go to a theatre I ideally wanted costumes and several people, songs and a set and a story line. Not just one man. But I was in that sickeningly in-love stage where I was trying to impress him. I also took a whole day off uni to make him a birthday cake that looked like a piano with keys made from white and dark chocolate. And he hired a car from Southport and drove it all the way down to Heathrow just so he could pick me up from the airport. Disgusting. Ross Noble turned out to be better than my very low expectations.

2011 (age 25)

I was going to a poetry night with a bunch of friends from my church. My church had recently split into groups depending on interests and we were part of "studio" the group of creative people. Every month we went to see a creative thing, we went to exhibitions and stuff. Once we went to see something that described itself as "a piece of magical live art theatre" which turned out to be a naked woman just wearing a pair of red heels and a horses head. Anyway the poetry thing we were going to got cancelled and so we quickly had to find an alternative. It just so happened that a comedy night was running at the same time and almost in the same place. It was not a polished night of high class entertainment, it was a sketch troupe of 3 comedians Rob, Lee and Oli doing their alternative comedy sketches and a few stand ups and the occasional comedy puppet show where you were asked to donate £1. It was amazing and often very clever and very funny, apart from some times when it was awful. But thats what made it amazing because you never knew when a drunk open spot was about to do too long on stage and have to be forced off. It was in a semi-abandoned building with terrible loos and no heating and I once took my own hot water bottle. 

I didn't realise then this was not a normal comedy night. This was my first experience of comedy so I had nothing to compare it to, but if I could go back in time to that night now I would. I carried on going to it as much as I could until it stopped about 5 years later.

2012 (age 26)

After a year of going to this night I thought I'd like to try comedy. I was show off as a kid, always putting on performances for the grown ups with my younger sisters and cousins, but I hadn't really performed anything for 10 years. I was quite into drama all through secondary school but around the time I was doing my GCSEs I stopped being a show off. I didn't want people to look at me, I quit my after school drama group and pretty much stopped liking myself. I had originally wanted to do drama for A-level but it didn't work on the timetable with the other subjects I wanted to do. Me approaching that situation now would be like, "ok what's the solution maybe I could go to a different college" but me as a 16 year old just went, "ok well I'll probably be rubbish at it anyway, so why don't I just pick a random subject that I don't care at all about and do that half heartedly?"

I stayed away from showing off for a long time. I loved art but I hated having to talk about my work. I gradually got better at that stuff and started liking myself again. Doing art exhibitions in second year helped me because it was sort of like putting on a show, but a show where you do all the work beforehand and you can't mess up some lines: you only put on the wall what your happy with. By age 26 I was ready to be a show off again. The standards were varied so you didn't have to be great to be not the worst person on, you just had to be fairly sober and have done a bit of prep.

I started this blog in 2009 so I had been writing funny observations for a while. So when it came to writing a 5 minute set I just sort said some things I said on my blog. I used a flip chart too with pre drawn out cartoons, because drawing was something safe to me. Dan also did 5 mins on the same night. 

I cringe at some of the set now but I went home with the biggest buzz I've ever had. I imagine it's like drugs, you can never get a hit like that first hit again, even it you sell out Wembley arena. Rob and Lee still refer to me as their comedy godchild, because I was "born" at their night. Aww. you can watch a set from that night here.

2016 (age 30)

I carried on for years doing comedy at this one comedy night, but I did a few other nights too if people asked me to. There was a night set up in the back room of a pizza place and a night in a little tiny theatre that I used to do too. They were all in Liverpool city centre. I did consider then wether I should try other nights in Manchester and stuff, and whether I should try and get paid for it, but at the time I was quite new to doing art projects in schools and I loved it. It was easier to keep that the thing I did for money and comedy the thing I did for fun and not try and mix them up. I traveled to Manchester enough for work already, I didn't want to be traveling there in the evenings too. I enjoyed doing comedy when I was pregnant with Percy. 

If you fancy watching my heavily pregnant comedy from 2014 click here

I went to the Edinburgh fringe (just to watch) when I was heavily pregnant and Percy came with me to the comedy night when he was 6 weeks old. Then there was about a year when I didn't go, and it was never quite the same after, partly because Dan couldn't go with me and I was out of the scene a bit. I really wanted to go to Edinburgh and do a hour long show but I knew it would be impossible with a baby, so a friend suggested doing Liverpool comedy festival. One show in Liverpool is a lot easier that 3 shows a day for a month in Edinburgh. So I wrote my first show in 2016. It was called "Best days of you life" and it was about going to school in the 90's and 00s. It was fun! 

Lots of people came, I was proud of it at the time and I'm relatively proud of it still, unfortunately the camera switched itself off, so there is no record of it. Which is a shame because Dan even had a small part as the Suez canal in a surreal dream sequence. 

2018 (age 32)

This was the year I decided to go for it properly. In 2017 I had another baby and moved house, there was no time for fun in 2017, it was just a survival year. I knew the real fun wouldn't start till 2019. You just can't do stuff you want to do when your kid is under 2, in my opinion. The art job was hard to get back to, childcare is expensive and you can't just do it whenever you have the work. I wanted to do something with my life that was not parenting. I had time for one hobby and that was it, and I decided to go back to comedy. I thought "I'll write another hour long show." I realise now that this is not the normal way people go about doing comedy. It's much more normal to write 10 minutes and perform it everywhere straight away than to spend 6 years writing 2 hour long shows before ever performing outside your own city, but no one told me this. It's not one of those careers that are mapped out for you by a careers advisor

The nights I used to go to had all stopped. All the venues we used to create fun in were had been made into student flats. I had to find a new night and go out without Dan, who was home with both kids, and I had to get back in time to breastfeed in the night, because baby Eric would never ever take a bottle! So I started going to this night at the Unity theatre. It was a monthly night I could test material at. I didn't know many people and it felt like a weird thing to do, to just go out by myself and try jokes, but I tried some new stuff, I got to know some new people and I stated putting together my new comedy show about parenting "job done".

The show was coming together and the theatre was booked when I found out I had cancer (read my hiarious account of this here). So it was a strange time. I did my show, which I was really proud of and I still am really proud of. It sold out, so I added an extra night. Over 100 people came in the end and it was just lovely. It felt like a proper achievement and I didn't want it to end there. Unfortunately it had to end there, because the next week I had the cancer removal operation followed by a month in bed. 

Watch a little 6 minute best bits from this show here

I'm bad at resting, so I spent that whole time booking myself into as many comedy nights as I could. I decided I was going to spend a year taking every opportunity, going to everywhere that would have me. Two people encouraged me to go for it at this stage, the sound guy from The Everyman, who I can't even remember his name. He said this is exactly the kind of thing The Everyman should be putting on and encouraged me to start my own night. The other was one of MCs from Hot Water Comedy Club, Freddy, who told me to enter competitions and get practise in all different kinds of audience. He even said my breastfeeding stuff was good, because it was different. and I never would have considered doing that stuff in a hot water audience but it did actually go really well.

So I set myself a target, to do comedy as much as I could for a year and see if I could make money from it by the end of the year. And to start my own monthly night. 

I'm going to write all this in another blog because I've already written loads. Part 2 will cover the highs and lows of actually trying in comedy, and how my comedy night evolved, and what happened to comedy in the pandemic.

The Recce to France

What a weird stupid word "recce" is. I've only seen it written down recently and I really think it should be spelt "recky" like Becky.

If you can get over that, you might be able to tolerate this blog. Over half term we spent 6 days in France visiting 3 locations in the hope that we would "get a feeling" for one and decide to move there. It felt pretty extravagant to go away for half term, given that lots of people haven't been abroad since before the pandemic and we went to Greece at the end of August, but I made myself feel better by telling myself this wasn't a holiday, this was a recce. We were going to go to a bank and an estate agent, not just sit around all day eating pain au chocolat. Although we did a lot more eating pain au chocolat than visiting banks. We flew to Carcassonne and as were were going through the baggage check they asked us if we had any ipads or electronics in the kids bags. We we said "no they don't even own an iPad." Then Dan started saying about how we're pretty old school and they just have books and card games and stuff, and they guy seemed surprised and maybe a bit impressed. Then Dan went to far and said we just have chisels and stone and I had to reassure the man that we did not have a bunch of chisels in our hand luggage.

The places we visited were all quite close together in the middle south, which is the more affordable bit of the south coast. We basically just wandered around looking at the town centre and then a bit at the outskirts, trying out public transport, and places to eat and parks and then judged them all against each other like a game of top trumps. Why don't you play the game yourself? I'll give you a paragraph of description and 3 photos for each place and then you tell me which one you would choose...

1) Carcassonne.

The furthest away from the sea (an hour by car) and the smallest population, but the cheapest place to live. There's an airport so you can fly directly there from Manchester. There were lovely old city walls on a hill with nice touristy shops and cafes inside.  It had a river and a canal, it had a nice square with loads of restaurants and a fountain. The streets were very narrow. Only one car can fit down at a time so a lot of the roads were one way.

2) Narbonne.

Slightly bigger population than Carcassonne. Only a few miles from a lovely sandy beach, so you can get there on the number 8 bus from the city centre. No airport, so you would have to fly in from Carcassone or Beziers. Big square in the centre by the river with restaurants all round it. There was a permanent indoor food market and an (I'm guessing weekly) outdoor market.

3) Montpellier.

A much bigger place than the other two. A city with a tram network so that you can easily get all over the city, just like you would get a tube in London. City bikes that anyone can hire, (you get two hours for free) a lot of students, a very young aged population on average. Not far from the beach but you can't get directly there from the centre on public transport. You'd have to get a tram and then a bus. Lots more things to do just because it's bigger. Not many houses with outdoor space though, the majority of people live in apartments and it's more expensive to live there than the other two places. There is an airport but they don't fly to the north of England, so you would have to go to Beziers to fly to Manchester.

So which one would you choose?

I'll tell you our thoughts later, but in the mean time here's some of my general observations about the differences between the French and the English that I spotted on this trip:

The French are much more likely to have very round Harry Potter style glasses, especially children.

Red trousers are more common in France especially among men. You don't have to be a hipster to wear them, or maybe all French people are hipsters?

Smoking seems to still be cool in France. There seemed to be a lot more people doing it publicly in parks and stuff.

Gingers are pretty rare in France, although people did still assume I was french before I spoke, so I don't stick out as much as I have done when I was in the Middle East.

The places we went in general all seemed a bit more multi-cultural than Liverpool.

Public transport was really good value, but we got 3 trains and all of them were delayed. 

Food in supermarkets was generally more expensive than in the UK. A french homeless person asked me to buy him cheese... I don't think that would happen here.

Restaurants don't open till 7 at the earliest. So if you want to go out to eat at 5 or 6 you have to eat from a lunch place, so you could get a sandwich or a crepe, but not a proper hot meal. 

Loads of shops shut for a hour or two around lunch time!

The french were a lot more stick about covid, we had to wear masks everywhere and show that we've had a vaccine in order to eat out.

Deciding where to live

Before we left we had emailed a few international churches, because it is important for us to find a good church there. We got responses from all of them and they were all happy to have us and very helpful and welcoming, but the one in Montpellier seemed to have a better mix of people, i.e. not just old people, some families and stuff. So I went into the trip thinking "I hope Montpellier wins and that we can afford to live there."

We liked Carcassonne, and then we liked Narbonne even more, but all the time I was hoping Montpellier would be amazing. We weren't the on a Sunday unfortunately to go to the church, but I did go to a ladies thing at the church, which was food, chatting, a bit of Bible study led by a really nice American lady. I met women from all over the world, a lot from French speaking Africa, some American, some other Europeans and one other Brit. There was a good age range and they were all really lovely and welcoming. So I would really love to be part of that community, but there are two major things in the way:

1) It is quite expensive to live there. The problem with Liverpool being so cheap is that everywhere else seems expensive. So we could probably only afford a 2 bed apartment, or that kind of thing.

2) I don't love the city that much. It was fine, there were lots of nice things about it (like I love the trams). There was nothing wrong with it, but I just got a better feeling about Narbonne. 

It's really hard not to be influenced by the weather though, it was 19 degrees and sunny in Narbonne and I swam in the sea! Whereas in Montpellier it was grey and rainy.

So our next steps are to look into the towns near by Montpellier. Is there somewhere we could live quite near the city, that is more affordable? Then maybe we can get a bit of outdoor space and still be a part of Montpellier international church. That's the next thing we will research. Nothing's decided, we might completely go back to the drawing board and look at another city that we previously discounted for being a bit far north, for example, but that's where we're up to. Thanks for reading.

Percy's big party

I've been in France all week trying to decide where to live, but before I write that blog here's one that I started just before we left:

This weekend was the first time we hosted a proper big birthday party. This year Percy requested a hall party. So far we've only ever hosted parties in our house or he's taken a couple of friends out, once to Gulliver's world (a kids theme park) and once to Mattel play (a really good sort of soft play place). We've been to a lot of hall parties for people from his class, some with a bouncy castle and some with an entertainer who would do games or be in character as a super hero. 

trying to stop kids going on the bouncy castle before it was fully inflated.

I actually can't believe the effort people put into parties these days. I don't know if things have changed party wise since the early 90's, or maybe my experience was different to other people my age, but I can only remember one whole class party from my childhood and that was in a big soft play. 

Almost all of my parties were in the house, apart from one swimming party I had joint with my sister. I had a few friends round and we played games like; the chocolate game, where you have to take turns going round the circle rolling a dice. When someone gets a 6 they have to put on gloves and a hat and eat a bar of chocolate with a knife and fork. They eat as much as they can before the next person rolls a 6. It's such a great game! Occasionally I meet people now that haven't heard of this game and I just can't believe it, what were you doing in the 90's if it wasn't that? I was thinking about doing this game at Percy's party but it isn't very covid safe to all be dribbling on the same bar of chocolate. Also, given how aggressive pass the parcel got I think this was a good choice.

I felt very grateful to be able to use our church hall. It's 5 minutes walk from our house and a good size, they actually don't normally rent it out at the moment, but because they know us, and we were willing to just have the keys and do all the setting up and cleaning up afterwards, they let us have it. We paid to hire a bouncy castle and then everything else we got for free or made ourselves. Percy chose a space theme which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately we couldn't get a space themed bouncy castle, but Percy choose PJ masks because, "they come out at night" and space is like a huge night time world, right? I hope everyone at the party got that tenuous link. 

My sister Sarah did face painting which she's very good at and everyone loved. I'm surprisingly bad at face painting considering I'm an artist. A 4 year olds face is really the most annoying canvas. I never consider it as a surface, although maybe I should. Sometimes I do the food shop with Eric in the trolley seat facing me, if I wrote my shopping list on his face maybe he'd feel like I was engaging with him more.

I loved that a boy requested that Sarah paint a black hole on his face and I love even more that when Sarah made a facebook status about this she accidentally missed out the word hole. She said "today I went to a 7th birthday party which involved painting a child's face to look like a black." I think facebook should have permanently banned her for that.

I did the "entertainment". I used my sound system and mic that I own from comedy and I led a few party games. It was a lot of pressure being the person who decided who was out in the games, I was relieved when I thought to delegate that job to another kid so that I didn't have to feel the guilt. There was a lot of tense tactical playing going on in pass the parcel. It's crazy how competitive kids will get for a sweet when theres a table of sugary treats right in front of them.

We had glow in the dark temporary tattoos, which I really loved the designs of. I wonder if I should get a real tattoo. The problem is though I could only get one on the upper half of my body because I had my pelvic lymph nodes removed when I had cancer, which means I have to be careful not to get any cuts on my legs because the magical bits that go and heal cuts don't work properly. So I'm only allowed to permanently scar my upper body.

I made a lot of stuff for the party including this photo thing. I don't know what you would call it, but comedian James Acaster calls it the opposite of a mask. 

If you want this thing please get in touch, I can re paint it with a different name and number.

I also made this fun alternative to a government slogan as a sign for the face painting. 

I made some alien biscuits and alien space crafts from a Tunnock's tea cake and a meringue and a grape, not as one child asked me, an olive. That would be a pretty disgusting snack. Because I made all of this stuff I delegated making the cake to Dan. Percy wanted a cake of the solar system, just a nice easy 9 planets plus the sun and moon. It took so long to make and I am a bad delegator. I like to delegate but I also like things done the way I would do it. Dan has really no cake decorating experience, so watching him was like watching a 4 year old. It was a tense time but we managed to make it through without getting divorced. Hooray for us. 

Fun game: If you had to date one of these guys which would you pick?

Dan's solar system cake, this photo doesn't really do it justice. it was pretty impressive and the inside of the a lot of the cakes were coloured too.

We really have upped the bar for parties though, on the way back from this party Eric was describing his dream party. He's pretty new to parties because he was 2 when we went into lockdown and cant remember the before times. on his 3rd birthday (which was his second lockdown birthday) we asked him what he wanted to do for it and he just said "play with toys" because he actually didn't know what a party is. Now he's asking for a mario themed party! Hopefully by his birthday (May) we'll be in sunny France. More about that soon.

If you came to Percy's party thank you. He had the best day ever.

France update

In August Dan, who had been made redundant, got a new remote job based anywhere in Europe which means we are going to try living in France (if you want to read a previous blog about Dan's job and our decision to move click here).

People now keep asking us, "how are the moving plans going?" It's like when I was engaged people always asked, "how are the wedding plans going?" and in the first 6 months of being married people always asked, "hows married life?" No one asked me anything about my job the whole time I was engaged and no one ever asks me now "how's married life?" I think people are scared to ask that to people who have been married over a year in case it's not going well.

But to answer the question the moving plans are going slowly. The major thing that needs to get done before we can go is our French identity documents, which is a very long process that we could have done years ago but never got round to doing. Like writing a will. (If I die Dan can have my stuff I hope this blog will count as a legal document.) So the first step in the process is Dan getting his french ID card. And even though the whole world has been doing everything remotely for the past 18 months, you still physically have to go to London to do this. Trying to get an appointment has been a nightmare. You can only book online and all the slots are always fully booked. There's a French consulate guy in Liverpool who you can meet, but he only works Thursday afternoons, doesn't respond to emails and also takes long holidays. 

Dan went to visit him in one of the short windows of time he was meant to be in and he still wasn't there, so we gave up on him and emailed the Chester woman. She responded to the email with useful info we wished we'd know weeks ago: there's no way around going to London, you have to use the online booking system, if you look in the middle of the night you might be able to get a cancellation. After 3 nights of getting up at midnight we finally had an appointment. Dan managed to get the train down see the consulate and continue working without his new job realising. From that day which was the end of September it takes 4 weeks and then the document should arrive. They can't just post it to you though, that would be way too easy, they wanted to post it to the Liverpool guy who's never there but we managed to get it posted to the woman in Chester who sometimes responds to emails. Woohoo!

Once we have Dan's ID we can begin all the other bits of getting the boys ID and my visa. We might even have to go to London 2 more times because I'm don't think they can do 2 kids ID cards in one appointment. How ridiculous is that?

Other stuff we've done to prepare: I've started online french lessons, which are actually really fun. The teacher is lovely and we play games like we split into 2 different zoom rooms and each think of a celebrity and then we play a guessing game asking things like "c'est un homme?" "il est anglais?" Last week we had to order something from a menu but ask for some changes, so for example say something like "I'll have the salad but please swap the peppers for tomatoes." I accidentally reverted back to GCSE Hannah and suggested to my partner who I was meant to be practising with that we do silly ones. e.g "instead of the peppers I would like some horse meat." Then I realised this is the kind of stuff I did at school and told him and he said "What, you covered up a bad french accent with humour?" Then I realised I cover up everything awkward with humour and admitted to being a comedian. It sort of turned into online therapy until we were back in the main zoom again and I was making everyone laugh with my outrageous french orders.

I recently performed some new material about learning French at my comedy night. I ripped into the masculine and feminine thing. Did you know that the word vagina is masculine? Yes, some old French guys have decided that my vagina is a man. Rude. I also talked about the different ways you say "you" for formal and informal and that I wasn't going to learn both and so I have to choose between having loads of acquaintances or just a few close friends. Naturally most people would choose a few close friends, but how do you make those friends when it's rude to say "tu" (the informal you) to someone you just met. SO my plan for moving to France is to go up to strangers and say "voulez vous le binge drinking sur le weekend?" (yes thats an actual french phrase!) Then if the say yes, we go out and have fun, but if we become friends to the point where they start using "tu" then I will cu them out of my life completely, because no friendship is worth learning two different verb endings for.

The boys on our campervan trip to France in 2019. The van was too small and Dan had to sleep in an "L" shape around Eric for the whole trip.

I've also just started trying to sort out the house. We're going to rent it out, probably unfurnished, so that means every single thing that we own needs a decision on if it's coming with us or going to a charity shop or being stored for a bit. If we were buying a house we'd probably just get everything shipped over, but I think we'll be staying in an airbnb first and then renting a furnished house. so we don't want to just move everything. There's things that I'll obviously take like clothes and things I'll obviously get rid of like toys the boys are too old for, or big furniture. But theres a lot of stuff in the middle sized stuff that I just don't know like my fruit bowl, pots and pans, the bathroom bin or a duvet. Cheap enough things that I could buy again but small enough that they could go in the car but not all of them. I got a bit stressed about it all last week and at 1 in the morning couldn't sleep so went downstairs listened to some music drank a hot chocolate and did some doodling. It was the best emotional breakdown I've ever had! Our current plan is I fly over with the boys and Dan drives with a car full of stuff, and then next time we're in England Dan drives back and we all four fly back leaving our car here to sell. Then we all fly back and buy a french car. Everything is complicated and expensive, it would be some much easier to just stay here but where's the adventure in that?

Last blog I wrote about the places were considering living. A few places, like Lyon and Marrsielle, are off the list now mainly for being too expensive. So we now have 3 places on our short list Montpellier, Narbonne and Carcassone. We're going to visit all 3 in half term and hope that wandering around them we will just know which one is right for us and that we won't disagree! We're going to do some boring thing while we're there, like go and ask questions in a bank and an estate agents, but I've also invented the patisserie challenge. The boys have been doing well at learning French online with Mr Innes French on youtube, so I said we could go into a patisserie and they can have whatever they like as long as they ask for it in French. I forgot they have learnt numbers, until I heard Percy practising "Je voudrais trente pain au chocolats, s'il vous plait."

A bientot.

My Weirdest Job

I meant to write this two weeks ago but I've been so busy with my random jobs that I've had no time to write about them. With Eric in school I now have 5 days a week where I can do random stuff, and on my first full day of freedom I did the best job ever, I was paid to put on a surprise Taskmaster party where I got to be Alex Horne. 

If you don't know Taskmaster it's a TV show on channel 4 where comedians and other celebrities do silly tasks. Some are creative tasks like recreating your favourite video game in real life, or painting a picture of a horse while ridding a horse. Some are more like logic puzzles; get a basket ball through a hoop without using your hands or empty a bath tub without removing the plug (or tipping or damaging the bath tub). Some even involve random members of the public that happen to be near the Taskmaster house in Richmond.

I love the show, I especially love the creative tasks where you can interpret them in different ways. I would love to be a famous enough comedian to be on the show. I'd love that much more than actually being a famous comedian, but the next best thing is coming up with a load of tasks for people to try. This is the 3rd time I've done a version of this. I first did a taskmaster day for the kids during lockdown which was fun but a bit limiting with young children. We did "eat your biscuit into a shape of a dog", and "invent a new Mr man." 

Then in Jonesfest (our annual garden festival) I hosted a night called "Mockmaster" where I got 4 comedians to do the stand up challenges from Mock the Week and some Taskmaster style games. The best of the games was called Burgle Our House. The 4 comedians had to sneak round our house in the dark and then fill their bags with the most valuable things they could find without waking 3 sleeping children. It's one of the most fun things I've ever done, and I really need to get round to editing down the footage of the whole night so I can share it. Anyway with 2 Taskmasters under my belt I managed to get the job of Alex Horne and the surprise birthday Taskmaster.

What made the day so epic was bribing my parents to go out for the day so I could use their house. Everyone should get to use their house because it was paid for by the government as my parents were forced to relocate due to HS2. So if you've ever paid tax you are allowed to borrow my parents riverside house. Its the perfect Taskmaster location...

The first task involved me throwing rubber ducks into the river every 30 seconds while they had to collect them in a net and put them in a bucket. We were all on some kind of boat.

Another one of the games I did here and at Mockmaster was blind connect 4. I scented the pieces so the red pieces smelled of peppermint and the yellows smelled of perfume and you had to play a game by picking your counter from the mixed box using your sense of smell. Every 3rd go a seeing person gets to put a counter in. It's surprisingly interesting.

And here are the results from the decorate your cake to look like a celebrity round.

All in all it was a lovely day. Thanks to Rob for letting me do my dream job and to Gemma for having great taste in birthday fun.

No job could compare but my other jobs at the moment are pretty fun too. I'm starting a new mosaic project at Woolton primary, even though I just made them the biggest mosaic I've ever made...

I'm doing a Super Mario kids room mural and will soon be running 2 after school art clubs. I was a Covid tester for a bit in a school, that was a lot less fun, and I've got 2 more comedy nights to run before I start getting ready for the big move to France. 

More about that in the next blog.

The First Week

Eric started reception class last week, it really is the end of an era for us. I actually wanted to call this blog "end of an era" but I already used that title on a blog post I wrote years ago. I wrote it when I decided that I wouldn't wear bikini's anymore. An update on that... an airbnb guest from Italy left a bikini in our house. I probably should have posted it back to her but instead I wear it. I don't feel great about it body wise or morally, but I guess the bikini thing wasn't the end of an era after all. Just like when Percy started in Reception and I thought that was the end of an era, then 6 months later I was spending all day every day homeschooling him. 

So anyway, Eric has been very excited to join his big brother in school, he said "I have been waiting for this for about 2 million days." I said, "how many days do you think are in a year Eric?" and he said "5?" The school do this staggered start thing, which is very annoying for pretty much everyone. The first week that Percy was back Eric wasn't. Then Eric was in for 2 hours a day in the afternoons, then this week he's in 8:55-1:30 and then this coming Monday is his first whole day. He was so desperate to go but by day 3 he said, "oh school again, I've been for soooo many days." I think it's just hitting him that he has to go 5 days a week for 3 times his life time, and that's quite a lot.

So far he seems to have done crafts and a lot of playing in the sandpit and theres a few boys names that he mentions that he plays with. He's coped with it really well considering he's one of the youngest and possibly the smallest in the class.

I remember being really emotional about Percy's first day. It felt like a really big deal that I wasn't going to see him so much anymore and he was going to make all these new friends and like he was going to lose his innocence. I didn't have a great experience of primary school - I was dyslexic but didn't find out till I was 16 so I always found reading and writing really hard work, and also I joined a new school in year 2 and struggled to fit in. But so far Percy doesn't seem to have had any of the issues with reading and writing that I had and he loves school. Hopefully we won't ruin that all for him when we move him to France! I thought I would be really emotional about Eric starting because it's such a life changing thing to have them both in 5 days a week and I don't really want him to grow up, I miss him being tiny. Not like a baby, I don't miss those days at all, but I really miss two year old Eric. 

The staggered start made it less of a big deal though, and then it turned out I was actually working as a covid tester on that day, so Dan took him.  I felt no emotion taking him in for day 2. I'm weird like that sometimes, I can be really emotional thinking about something that might happen. I remember thinking about the day when we would get a house, in the days where we were sort of homeless, and then when we actually got given the keys and it was just me and a tiny Percy who didn't realise this was significant, it felt like that was not the time for emotion. And then my head quickly moves to all the things we need to do and maybe that pushes out the emotion.

It's been quite a different experience for me - Eric starting school compared to Percy. This time I've made Facebook friends with some parents who have kids starting in the same class, we've had a few play dates and theres a class whatsapp group and I think everyone is enjoying getting to know each other. Whereas with Percy, I knew two other parents from his class and I didn't really make new friends. We've been to loads of whole class parties and I'll obviously say "hi' to other parents but I actually think it would be a bit weird for them if I started trying to make friends now.

Today Eric came out of school saying "mummy I got a sticker for bumping my head!" We asked how he did it he said he didn't remember. Not a great sign. I also find it hard not to read the "wow" and "terrific" without sarcasm.

Both boys have already been to class birthday parties this term. Percy has had so many invites, but one less than I thought. He came out of school one day saying he was invited to this girl's party, but we couldn't find the invite anywhere. I thought it must have gone missing so I messaged a friend who had the invite and they sent me a photo of the invite. yesterday I messaged the Dad of this girl to say "thanks very much but we unfortunately can't make it." He said "thanks for letting me know" Then Percy tells me that this girl said he was actually never invited, and he just saw an invite and thought he was invited. EMBARRASSING.

Thanks for reading x

Sailing with kids

On Sunday my extended family all got back from a sailing holiday around the Greek islands, we've all shared beautiful photos and it looks absolutely idyllic. We were very lucky to go, there were some amazing moments, but before everyone feels jealous I feel a bit of a duty to share a bit of the reality of what 8 adults 2 kids and a baby living on 2 small boats in a pandemic is actually like.

How we got into sailing:

me in 1993

My Dad has always been a big sailing fan, he was in a sailing club as a kid and learnt on small dinghies. When he was a student he helped his rich uncle sail from Guernsey to Malta. Rich people generally love to owe yachts but don't know how to sail them.My Dad tested all of his many girlfriends out on boats and my mum passed the test. 

My Dad aged 21

Women who unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of my mum

I went sailing in the womb and all through my childhood, but because my Dad was such a good sailor I didn't pick up that much. I did my RYA (royal yachting association) level 1 when I was about 12 that was very basic sailing on a topper, which is a small boat that is easy to capsize, but it's like fine to capsize it - you actually have to capsize it and then make it the right way round again as part of RYA level 1.

1987 when I was bald and my Dad had hair

1995 mum stayed at home with baby Sarah and me and Jo and a load of men sailed to the channel islands. I did that pose on every single picture of that holiday.

2005

Dad regularly hired boats from near Southhampton with us and a few friends and sailed to France or the Channel Islands and back in a long weekend. It would be like a 14 hour over night sail, go out to a French restaurant for tea and then sail back. I loved it. I love adventures, I really like the rocking boat thing, I like roller coasters and stuff and it's cool to get somewhere for free just by the power of wind.. Some people we took did not like rocking so much. I remember sailing to France on the day of my last GCSE with a school friend Duncan where everyone except me and Dad were sick, and I remember Duncan shouting "pass me the saucepan, I'm going to be sick."

When we were planning our big trip cycling to the middle east it seemed the obvious thing to ask Dad for a lift across the channel, we packed our folding bikes onto the boat in Southampton and 4 days later we got dropped off on the river Seine and began the cycle to Paris.

The Channel is a difficult bit of sea to sail in. It's a busy shipping lane, it's never really warm and like most seas it has tides which you really have to think about or you might run aground. The Mediterranean on the other hand is normally warm and doesn't have tides because it's really like a huge lake.

In the year 2000 we went on our first flotilla holiday (that's when you sail with a load of boats), and the kind we went on is when you have a lead boat that tells you what to do and fixes stuff if it goes wrong. So each morning you meet up in a outdoor cafe in Greece or Croatia and the 3 people on the lead boat tell you 'today we're going to sail to this island, it will take 3 hours if you do 6 knots. Steer on the compass point 160 degrees and watch out for this rock here.' And then you all go there. The lead boat helps you come into the harbour by telling you exactly when to drop your anchor and being there for you to throw your ropes to, and then you all jump in the sea for a nice swim and then go out for a meal. It's the easiest way to sail, you can even do it as a complete beginner. I did it twice as a teenager but this holiday was the first time I did it as a parent. It was pretty hard work. We did have a great time and I'm vey grateful to have had the chance to go, the boys absolutely loved it but here are 4 things that make sailing with kids in a pandemic not the most relaxing holiday:

1) Space

This is the layout of the boat.

and this is the reality of putting 6 people in that space:

We intended the boys to be in the front, me and Dan to be one side, and Sarah and Luke the other, but we quickly realised the boys can not share a little bed. The first night it was very warm, quite noisy and a bit rocky and they were just rolling into each other and poking each other, so we had to separate them and so the rest of the week Dan slept with Percy and I slept with Eric in a triangle shaped bed. The worst shape for a bed. Especially when sheets are famously rectangular. I'd carefully put Eric to sleep on one side only to find him completely in the middle and I basically had to work out what shape to sleep in after he had gone to sleep. It was reminiscent of the time we hired a camper van and Dan slept in a "L" shape around Eric for a whole week.

2) Covid

Greece is on the amber list, which means you can go there if you jump through some very specific hoops but if you accidentally jump through the wrong hoops you will be fined. So we had to take this special test that you have to pay for, it was vey similar to the free ones except you had to pay for this specific one and take it 72 hours before flying back. So on that morning everyone got out their red and white covid test box and we got our green and white one. Yep we had the wrong one, and if we didn't get hold of the right one soon we would get fined £500 per adult. So that was a tad stressful. My sister Jo managed to accidentally capture the moment we realised this. Luckily the sailing holiday crew came to the rescue and we managed to buy a test off them and take it just in time.

3) Down time

In a normal day at home, even in the summer holidays, we get a bit of a break from the kids when they watch T.V. for 45 mins to an hour a day and then they go to bed at 7 so we get our evenings to ourselves. And they're getting better at just playing together, so it's not like when they were babies and they needed watching the whole time. But on a boat there's no T.V., the only screen time was the etch-a-sketch (which is really fun by they way, I got into it). But yeah no real space to play. And we had communal meals out at 8ish and so they boys were not going to bed until about 9:30 most nights. 

Lakka harbour on Paxos in case it wasn't obvious

4) Actual sailing

I love sailing, but I'm used to having my Dad around who knows what he's doing. Because we were on 2 boats and my Dad is only one person... you do the maths. We were on the non-dad boat and my sister Sarah had been picked as lead skipper, purely because she didn't have children. It was quite a lot of pressure on Sarah on the first day to go to all the briefings and learn all the stuff, but she did a great job. 

We didn't really do much actual sailing at all because we were only doing short hops. Dan is also not a great fan of sailing because he gets very seasick. On our first ever sail together across the Channel he was sick about 10 times. He also didn't know that when you sail it's normal to be on an angle, so you would normally sit on the side of the boat that is right up in the air looking down. So the whole time he was in a constant state of fear thinking we were going to capsize, but we were wizzing along loving it. This time he was much better because it was shorter bits and he took anti-seasickness tablets but he still felt rough.

all worth it for this though

When we got home Percy lay out on the floor like a star fish and said it's so good to lie down without mummy's suitcase on my feet. For at least a day afterwards we were all gently swaying. I had the best nights sleep I love sleeping on a rectangle.