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.