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.