Best Kid Quotes 2022

It's that time of year again, when I list all the funniest stuff my kids have said so you can know the joy of having children, without any of the inconveniences. You're welcome.

The boys school photo

Lets start with Percy currently age 8 He has a lot of questions:

1) "What's stronger a gorilla or concrete?"

2) "If you fart with your mouth full should you say "pardon me" or should you wait till you've finished your mouthful?"

3) "Do you poo in heaven?"

We used to have a regular spot in church where Percy could ask these kids of questions and the vicar had to answer without knowing what it was. So since we live in France now I texted him this one...he said it says in the bible we eat in heaven so if we eat we have to poo. That make sense, but then when you start thinking do they have toilets then and is it someone's job the clean the toilets, it raises a whole lot more questions.

4) "Do robots have souls?"

5) "Do you know why there's an overload of feminism in this house? Because there's not enough in the rest of the world"

Thanks Percy, although I really don't think there is an overload of feminism in our house. I'd say there's a lot less now that I'm not working. 

6) "Do you think they could have ended the war earlier but they were just waiting for 11/11/11?" 

I thought this was an interesting question so I looked into it and it's true! And someone got shot that morning, before the ceasefire, all because 11/11/11 is good time to end a war.

Now time for five year old Eric's quotes.

I would say this is the first year Eric has overtaken Percy in the funny and surreal quotes. 

1) "Does the queen have elves?" 

A genuine question from Eric.

2) "If I grow up fat I'd like to be a policeman, then I would just flop onto the bad guys and they'd stick to my belly."

It's great to have life goals at such an early age.

3) "Im going to miss you so much when you're gone" 

- was this Eric taking about his move to France? No, it was Eric talking to a cream egg before he ate it.

4) "My least favourite game is punch your pants" ... I still think I'd prefer that to scrabble to be honest.

5) Dan: water and electricity don't mix

Eric: what about electricity and honey? good combo?

He later followed this up with another physics question....

6) "What would happen if lightning struck a cheese triangle? Would it become a genius?"

7) "I know 5 Eric's ... 3 of them are my imaginary friends one of them is me, and I can't quite remember the other one.

8) Me: can I iron your t-shirt Eric, you look like a scruff? 

Eric: no thanks mummy I'm already warm.

That's not actually the reason for ironing Eric.

9) Eric: mummy I love that muesli you bought

Me: oh good what's in it? 

Eric: raisins and weed

10) Do tattoos last in heaven?

We spent a long time discussing this one. If you really regretted a tattoo then I guess it wouldn't be there in heaven (if you believe in heaven) but what if you loved a tattoo? And can you get a new tattoo in heaven? And would a heavenly tattoo look shinier than an earth tattoo?

11) "I think I could survive without a head, I'd just throw food down my neck"

I really admire his optimism. 

and finally from today:

12) "Granny could you imagine me with more arms?" 

And then we had a big chat about if everyone had 4 arms would it take granny less or more time to knit the jumper she's currently knitting for him.

If you enjoyed this you can follow me on twitter to see the best funny quotes as they happen.

Or you can look back at the previous years top quotes with more deep questions like "do ice creams don't like snow? and how do you milk a ghost?"

Really makes you think doesn't it.

top quotes from:

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

The Best School Trip

The kids new school is amazing at school trips. In their old school Percy went on one trip to the local park, in the rain. When I was at primary school my school had a school trip to a sewage farm. The bar was really low.

Maybe it's unfair to judge them against their old school because it was covid most of the time we were there, but so far Percy has been on a trip to the picturesque port of Collioure (on his second ever day of school), he did forest school, a trip the the aquarium, a sailing trip on a catamaran and now skiing!

The school won some funding for skiing, so we have to pay a small amount towards it but it was heavily subsidised. He's going on three separate days because we're only about an hour and 20 mins from some ski resorts, so it's near enough to do a day trip.

I've volunteered as a helper parent for almost all of the trips we've been on because I've got free time, it helps to practise my French, and it's nice to see the kids with their classes and meet other parents. But this was such a cool opportunity. I noticed there were a lot more Dad helpers on the trip than normally when it's been 90% women.  I doubt as many Dads will be there when I am a volunteer parent on Monday for Christmas baking with Eric's class.

I spent the previous few weeks trying to source ski clothes as cheaply as possible. We bought the thermal under layers from Decathlon, and got the goggles in the sale of last years stuff. The we got Percy's all in one coat thing second hand and I managed to borrow ski trousers and a coat from a lovely friend, Erica, who had just bought that stuff and not even worn it herself yet. How kind is that! We hired the ski boots and skis and helmets so that was all free.

I've never skied before, I feel like it's something you have to be born into, like being a horsey person. I asked my mum if I could do horse ridding lessons once and she straight away said no. I'm not sure why, probably money, but I also think there's only a limited amount of hobbies that normal people get to try: stuff like football, dance, swimming, and playing the flute. I don't know anyone who got into curling or shooting or playing the bassoon as a child. I reckon I was potentially middle class enough to ski but just the wrong kind of middle class. I was born into sailing, I went sailing in the womb, (and out of it). I regret not learning much about how to do it, I learnt a bit like how to do an anchor and how to cook at a 45 degree angle, but the problem with sailing is that only one person really needs to know what they're doing, and the rest of the people in the boat can mainly just chill out and occasionally follow instructions. So it's easy to grow up in a sailing family and not become a sailer. Whereas you can't really grow up going skiing and not learn how to ski.

My experience of snow as a kid was it would occasionally snow and we would immediately go out and sledge. The one hill that was walking distance from our house was at the electricity substation, it was an odd place to go and not even a great hill. One better option was the big hill in Kenilworth that was always rammed with people, but it was a good hill if you could manage to not fall in the lake at the bottom. I realised when getting off the bus in all my ski gear that this was the first time I was properly dressed for the snow. When I was a kid I'd wear wellies and tights under jogging bottoms and woolly gloves which immediately got wet as soon as you picked up snow and then it made no sense to wear them, and you'd just stay out for about 3 hours and then when you couldn't take the cold anymore you'd come back for a bath. Dan said he had the exact same experience.

Me and Mum 1991

I do like the idea of skiing but I just don't really see what's wrong with sledging. Sledging is really fun and anyone can do it, that why me and Dan sometimes talk about a snow resort idea "whizzneyland" - I must have mentioned it on here before. It's like a ski holiday for people who don't feel posh enough or can't be bothered to learn to ski. It's just a load of hills and tyres and sledges and inflatables and maybe a ski lift for the uphill and you just mess around and have a laugh.

We arrived at school just before 7am. Percy was told he could come in normal clothes and change on the bus when we got to the ski place. I had the job of checking everyone's bags to make sure they all had googles and gloves, but they all seemed to be already wearing all their ski gear. We had a nice ride there, we're right on the main road to Andorra so it's a very simple journey, an hour on the main road travelling west which gets windier and snowier as it goes, and then a right turn and 20 minutes north. I was sat behind Percy and his best mate Eva. I've been on a few school trips so I feel like I know his friends a bit and I enjoy trying to practise my French with them. I find it less pressure than when I chat to adults and I think they like chatting to me. Some of the kids were singing "We Wish you a Merry Christmas" which they have been learning in English at school. It sounds very funny in a French accent.

When we arrived they were all very excited and immediately got off the bus. Percy then panicked that he and one other kid and me were the only ones that weren't dressed properly and all our clothes were in the bag storage under the bus. It's a good job I was there because he really needed calming down, he was worried the bus was going to drive off and he was very annoyed that he wasn't already changed. I also had to change but I at least had the foresight to wear my base layers so that I didn't have to strip down to underwear on a school bus. Anyway it was all fine and we headed over to the place to hire skis from. 

I was under the impression that I wouldn't get to ski at all so it was great when the teacher said I could get skis. The people in the hire place asked me what my level was and because I didn't know the French for beginner I just said, "bad" and then I remembered I knew how to say, "it's my first time" which sounds a little better. 

Waiting to go up in the cable car.

The weather was absolutely perfect, so beautiful and sunny and actually pretty warm. I was in the group with Percy and all his year which is only 12 people. We had a ski instructor and one Dad helper. I was worried I wouldn't be much help, not knowing much French or any skiing skills, but I found my niche in helping the girls tie back their hair. I have spare hair bobbles and yes I know how to appropriately style hair with a helmet. In your face brilliant skier men. I also helped them get into their skis and picked them up when they fell over. We started with just one ski on going down a very shallow slope and then waddling like injured ducklings back to the top again. Then we moved onto 2 skis and did some more.

One ski practise

The kids didn't have any bags with them but I did so when one kid told me she was thirsty I let her drink from my bottle.  Mainly because I wanted to prove to her that I understood the French word thirsty. A few others drank from it too, but it was soon time to be reunited with all the their food and drink for lunch in a cabin. The cabin was like a a big barn with a fire in the corner. I saw two really old men in ski clothes eating meat they'd barbecued on the fire and I thought they are living the dream, I hope I can do that when I'm 70.

Heading to the lunch barn

I filled up my bottle at lunch but within 20 minutes of the afternoon class it was empty because the whole class was thirsty. I went to tell the teacher they were all really thirsty but she wasn't really interested. The poor class! One boy was so thirsty he was eating snow! Percy, who had been fine all day, then hit a bit of a wall where he was just done. He said he hated it, and he didn't want to do it again. The struggling uphill bit was really annoying, but when that bit was over I thought it would be fine. In the last bit of the day we were going on the ski lift thing that you hold onto and put between your legs. I was pretty excited, this was real skiing! We got to do a good few hundred meters of fun not-too-hilly down hill and then get the lift up again. 

Percy was not excited about the ski lift thing. He really struggled to do it and kept falling off, he just was not happy at all and started to cry. I tried to be encouraging and reminded him it was his first day and that on his first day trying basketball he nearly gave up, but now he's on the team. There wasn't really much I could do and after a while the other parent and the ski instructor told me to keep away from him. At one point they almost shouted at him to stop crying. I've noticed the French (in my experience) are more like this. Kind of like old school parents who just make you get on with things, and I can see both pros and cons to this approach. 

I tried to enjoy a few goes round the slope, but I was a bit concerned for Percy and also every time I saw a kid who'd fallen over I had to help. This trip would have been perfect without the kids! I did think about pretending I'd lost control just so I could go off down a fun big slope but I restrained myself. At the end of the afternoon we regrouped with Percy's teacher who had taken the older class. She saw Percy pretty fed up and was very kind and caring towards him while I was pretty far away, because I had been told to stay away. So it must have just looked to that teacher like I didn't care about my own child. We went back down in the cable car looking out over the little town and the lake, which looked incredible. 

Percy cheered up a lot on the way home. He had Wednesday off school (because French schools aren't on on Wednesdays) so it was nice for him to have some recovery time. We watched a few youtube videos with skiing tips. One of them was presented by a 4 year old which was a little patronising. By Thursday morning he felt ok to go back again for day two. I was gutted not to be going again. The school had only said I could do one day, and I had my French class anyway. The weather conditions were worse that day and so I wondered all day how he was getting on. A few whatsapp videos of the class were going round, but it's hard to tell from that if Percy was happy or not. So I was really happy when he returned home and said it was a much better day. He said he managed to do the ski lift right a few times and he got to go up a different slope where you take an escalator. I was so jealous! He's doing his final day next week. I really want to get into skiing now. Me and Dan were already talking about whether we could do it while they're in school one day.  If I had the money I would totally go on ski holidays all the time. I'm feeling very lucky to be living in a place where you can either swim in a warm sea or ski at least 10 months of the year. (Ski Dec-Feb swim in a warm sea May-Oct) and very lucky that my kid gets to go on better trips than to sewage farms.

Jones family updates

It's been a busy time seeing a whole load of family.  The summer was a long summer with no visitors and then in October we had my sister Jo with her husband and little boy Zac, followed by Sarah followed by Dan's parents. I'm not going to write a load about it, but it was fun as well as a bit tiring, but we always appreciate people making the effort to visit. Here's a few highlights:

But now for some family updates starting with the person who has the most exciting news: 

Percy

1) He has finally lost his front tooth age 8! He last the 2 bottom front ones ages ago, but they're not very noticeable, but now I feel like it's really noticeable that he's the only one in his class that still has baby teeth. Kids have even asked him about it, not it a horrible way, they're just curious. So he was very happy with this news and he told me in French. 

2) He's going on a ski trip! His school won some funding to take kids skiing for a very discounted price. It's 60 euros for 3 days. The normal price would have been 300 euros. I still have to get him some ski clothes though, which is expensive, but I'm trying to get a few bits second hand. It's 3 random Tuesdays rather than a 3 day trip. They have to be at school for 6:45AM for a 2 hour coach ride to the mountains. In his old primary school he went on one trip to a local park in the rain. At this school he's already been to a castle and to the aquarium and sailing and now skiing. I'm also going to go on one of the days but I doubt I'll be much help seeing as I don't ski and I'm bad at french.

3) He played his first basketball match at the weekend! He was super chuffed to be chosen to play with some of the kids who have been doing basketball a year longer than him. His team Thuir (pronounced twe-er) were playing against anther small village Toulouges. Unfortunately they got beaten 34-4. Dan even thinks the 4 goals they got was down to the other team's coach telling them to let them get a few goals. We're super proud of Percy for giving it a go though. He'd pretty much written off sport in England because the rules in Scouse playgrounds are play football with the boys or play make believe with the girls.

Eric

1) He's really into art now which I'm very excited about because Percy has now declared art, "not his thing." He's aways drawing, making cool stuff up from his imagination and he's tried copying from photos too. Here's some lino printing he did:

It's a robot that shoots ice creams out of his arms.

2) You know when a toddler might make sounds or connect words randomly? He's doing that with French,  he's just saying gobbledygook. I google translated something he said today and it came out as, "I have paving."

3) Eric is very interested in the idea of heaven right now and asks questions such as, "will tattoos last is heaven?" And now when I tell him he can't do something he'll say, "I'll just do that in heaven then." Like when I told him he couldn't slot his drawings into some kind of hole in the back of the TV to make a program. He told me he'd just do that in heaven and then I felt bad and told him one day we can make a stop frame animation and put it on youtube and he can watch it on the telly.

Hannah

1) I currently have Covid, for the first time ever (that I know of). It's like the symptoms of a normal bad cold but with the added bonus of not being able to help out so much with housework and kid stuff. Annoyingly though the day I felt the worst was Sunday and it was impossible to get hold of paracetamol because everything is closed on a Sunday. We had to get some off a couple we know who also gave us a Covid test that they advised us to take.

2) Before all this I had a great day helping out on this refugee lunch. It was one of the first days that felt like I had a bit of a purpose and community. I did screen printing with some of them, both adults and kids, while others were making a huge meal. Most of the people I know seem to be refugees at the moment because I am also going to French lessons with refugees.

3) I'll do another whole blog post on this sometime, but what shall I do with life life now? My goal was to move countries but I didn't really think about what to do when I got here.

Dan

1) Dan is very busy trying to do everything, paperwork wise we're still not done, the medical stuff isn't sorted yet for us if we needed treatment and we're not getting the equivalent of child benefit yet which we eventually will. Tomorrow he will be collecting his National insurance number.

2) Just to add to all the things Dan has to do, he has to take on another job. In England he was employed by a Czech company, but they don't have an office in France so he has to be self employed. And just like in the UK you can't be self employed and only have one client, so he has to do a bit of something else. Last month he met up with a guy about doing some kind of business together.

3) Dan is still wearing shorts everyday. It is still hot in the middle of the day, like sometimes 28 degrees (in November!) but it's odd because that feels like summer, but then it still goes dark early and is cold at night. 

P.s 8 out of 10 episode of of podcast are out here.

Percy's 8th Birthday

Saturday was Percy's 8th birthday. Eight is the age you can best get away with eating a bit of their cake before they do....

He didn't even think to ask what happened to the middle bit.

Last year on his 7th birthday we knew we were moving to France at some point in the near future, so it was nice to give him a big party in a hall with a bouncy castle and lot of people. It was a huge amount of work to do party bags, space themed food and decorations, including a thing you put your face.

Anyway I delegated the cake to Dan as I was doing everything else. It was actually nine cakes, (the eight planets of the solar system plus the sun -obviously) but watching him make and ice them really was difficult. I get you can't delegate a job and then tell them they're doing it wrong, but aghhh it's hard to watch someone pour sprinkles onto a cake with no kind of icing for glue, and then just wrap it up in cling film to stop them falling off. What I'm saying is I'm glad the cake job was back in my control this year. 

Its not the most profession looking cake but at least the chocolate is sticking stuff together.

It would have been tricky organising a class thing this year, because we don't really know what there is to do for parties and what is normal and how to go about it. Also our house here is not as big as our old house, so it would be hard to host something. We gave Percy the option of doing a class thing and he chose not to. I was slightly disappointed because I want to try and make friends with the other parents and it's a good opportunity, but I was also relieved that it would be a much easier job. All we had to do was have a fun day.

We got him a basketball net, because since being in France he has really got into basketball and goes to basketball club on a Wednesday when he's off school. 

So he began to day by unwrapping that and a few other gifts. Then we moved onto a family game of Taskmaster. If you don't know it, it's one of my favourite shows, where comedians get to do random competitions against each other. I would love to be on that show, either as a comedian or just the person who makes the props or thinks up tasks. It's a petty unlikely dream, seeing as I'm not pursuing being a comedian any more and I live in France. This is not the first time I've made a Taskmaster game for someone, I did one last year for an adult on my parents river and it was so much fun (read about it here). We've just got into watching the new series as a family. It's a show for adults, but they do a bleeped version with no swearing and our kids are now at the age where they find this kind of show interesting. 

I placed the tasks up the stairs with a medal for the winner.

 The first task was this:

You have two minutes to go round the house looking for an item beginning with "P" and an item beginning with "S". You get a bonus point if your item is yellow. You get a bonus point if your item is the smallest of all the items.

We went one at a time round the house with a backpack on to put the items into and then we sat at the table for the big item reveal. I thought I was super clever with a pea for "P" it must be the smallest item too, right? But then Dan trumped me with sand. Small and beginning with "S" but we deemed it not yellow enough to get the bonus point. We did a few more tasks including a team task: rescue the paw patrol from an ice block while holding onto you partners hand. 

It was all going so well until we did a more subjective task (design the most unusual but fun water park) and then there were tears because Percy does not take it well when he doesn't win, and the game had to be abandoned.

After a big chat with me he did do a good job of getting over his disappointment, turning the day round and moving on to enjoy the afternoon. In the middle of the waterpark task there was a knock at the door and a school friend came over to deliver an envelope for Percy. We all assumed it was a birthday card but actually it turned out that she didn't know it was his birthday and it was a hand written note that she's written in English, inviting him over for a playdate on Monday. He came back pretty exhausted it was 6 and a half hours of speaking french (we did offer to pick him up earlier!) I didn't get much out of him about what they did, they played some games ate chicken nuggets and went to the park, him and three girls. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall, not in a nosy way, but I'm just intrigued as to how much French he's speaking and stuff.

After Taskmaster was abandoned we thought cake would be a good shout, and then we headed out for some more unhealthy food at Buffalo Grill. 

From there we headed to a soft play place we'd never been to before. There was a big hall filled with different kinds of bouncy castles and other inflatables, and then another room with a kind of adventure play with a zip line and stuff. But the best thing was that these two rooms were joined by a room with a bar in it. I've spent a lot of time in soft plays in my time as a parent, but I've never thought to combine alcohol with soft play before, but it is absolutely what soft plays are missing. I'd love a kids party with all my mum friends where the kids were playing and we all have a few wines. Apart from one responsible driver of course, who has to keep an eye on all the kids and parents. 

In the evening we got back and watched Percy choice of film, Harry Potter 2. Last year he received Harry Potter book 1 for his birthday, and is now already reading book 4. 

Happy Birthday Percy Jones.

Teacher's pet

For the first time in my life I've been the teacher's pet this week in my new French classes. I was often a bit naughty in school, not the cool smoking on the bus kind, the playing pranks on teachers and being cheeky kind. My top prank was when I wheeled this big sign that said "injections taking place no entry" from a place where it wasn't being used, to in front of some stairs. This was at a time when the school was experimenting with a one way system where one set of stairs was for going up and one set were for going down. So this messed up the whole system. No one saw us move it, which meant we could then stand around and watch the whole thing unravel. At first people were just confused, then people started disobeying the sign and then a teacher saw people disobeying the sign and took it upon herself to enforce the sign. But there was no way for people to get upstairs and so more and more angry people started clogging up the area, then more teachers got involved and started arguing. It was an interesting lesson in conformity which I late referenced in a psychology exam about conformity.

The closest I've got to being a teachers pet was A-level art. I was never that great at art at GCSE, I only got a B. I didn't spend much time on it because there were so many other subjects to focus on, and then at A level I really enjoyed it, and did it every day (and got an A). The geekiest thing I did was read a book about African batik where they use starch, and then I experimented with loads of different starch based things. I found one that worked and started dying fabric that way, and then I had to demonstrate my findings to the class. But for some reason you don't get bullied for being an art geek, so that's nice, because I did get bullied for plenty of other stuff. 

A-level art was the last time you could get good marks for painting nice pictures. When I studied it at uni they didn't care about nice pictures anymore, it was all about the concepts and I went back to being average again.

awkward teenage me with my GCSE art work.

Some of my art from second year of uni.

This week and last week I started two different French classes. The best thing is that they don't know about each other, so they might both think I'm making great progress, not realising I'm making the expected progress for someone doing 4 days a week of French. First I started a very local French evening class, which is like a club you sign up to. The teachers are volunteers and it only cost 20 Euros for the whole year, for two evenings a week. No one else in the class is an English speaker. It's two chatty Spanish old ladies, one Dominican lady, a Mongolian guy and me. The teachers speak zero English and so it's like a massive game of charades/pictionary. It's ok for me because I speak enough French to work stuff out, but there was a 10 minute game of charades just to try and explain the past and future tense to the Dominican. I'm still not sure she really understands anything.

My other class is the one I legally have to go to, to get my visa. A few weeks ago I had a medical and a french test at the OFII and after doing the test I was award 200 hours of free French lessons.

This is the office for immigration and integration logo, but look closely at it....

why is that guy with creepy Mr tickle hands trying to grope the blue lady's boob?!

It's always nice to do a test where if you fail you get free stuff, though last time I did one was my dyslexia test. Basically if you fail a spelling test, you get a free laptop. I'd narrowly missed out on dyslexic money a few years earlier because the test included the word "Psalms" and my Christian upbringing had scuppered my chances, with my knowledge of spelling Old Testament books. 

I started these free lesson on Thursday, it's mainly refugees from Afghanistan and a few others like a couple from Georgia and me. There are no other native English speakers again, but some of the Afghan guys speak a bit of English. The teacher is really nice and I managed to get a reputation for being one of the good ones. At the beginning of the first day she asked me name, I said, "Hannah" she said, "can I call you Anna?" The French really struggle with "H." She asked if it was a British name, which it isn't really it's from the Bible, so I think it's a Hebrew name. But I looked it up today in the French bible and Hannah (in the book of 1 Samuel) is called "Anne"- what's that about?! You can't just go changing names like that. Also John in the French bible is Jean and James in the Bible is Jacques. It makes me wonder how close "Hannah" is to what they said back in the day. Guess how they spell Psalms though? .....PSAUMES! I really hope that for someone reading this, this comes up in a pub quiz or as the final question on a tv gameshow and you will millions all because you've read my blog. French spellings of Bible books is a common topic on pub quiz's, right?

While it is a nice novelty to be the good one in the class, I do think it's slightly unfair on the people who have to learn a whole new alphabet. I do have the advantage of GCSE French and the privilege of having the money to do some online lessons before I arrived. We had to go round and say why we came here and what we like about France, and some of the them mentioned fleeing war and that they loved the freedom of France. I felt bad to say I just moved here for fun to enjoy a wider variety of cheese.

The teacher also speaks Spanish (and a little bit of English), she was saying how English is hard though and gave the example of the work "knife" and said how this was a stupid way to spell it. Which gave me the opportunity to explain everything that it stupid about French (in French). 

For example, time. I've learnt time before, but it's only this week I noticed when French people answer the question, "what time is it?" they don't say, "it's 10 O'clock." They say, "he is 10 O'clock." Time is a man. 

There are many stupid examples of the masculine feminine thing being ridiculous, I'm sure I've mentioned before that the French word for vagina is masculine. 

At one point we were learning about household jobs. She taught us the word for "washing" and "stain" and "clean" and "dirty." She has to teach all this though mime and explaining in French because we all speak different languages. When I worked out she was explaining the word "dirty" I said it out loud in English, because sometimes it helps the Afghans and then she said, "oh? like dirty dancing?" and then I had to explain what "dirty" in the dirty dancing sense means in French, which is always fun.

I think the boys French is coming along, they understand a lot now and are starting to say short sentences.

It was Percy's birthday yesterday, so I'm going to write about that in its own blog.

A Visitor and an X-ray

Hey, I haven't written for a while, I've been putting more time into recording and editing our new podcast. We're doing 10 episodes (we might do more later on but for now we're just doing 10). They're out every Monday for the next 10 weeks, but the recording period was from February until October, because we wanted to make sure we had enough interesting things to say. If you follow my blog you will know lots about our move, but there are lots more funny stuff that I've included in the pod that I've held back from sharing on here. We talk about my french fails, times when I've said stupid stuff to the kids teachers because I can't remember the right word. A disastrous time when a french family knocked on my door and Dan was in the shower and I made a proper fool of myself. Every week we do a feature called "French for maniacs", where we teach you a completely mad French phrase and dare you to say it to a real French person. If you do know anyone moving countries please share it with them too because as well as the silliness we have tried to include some actual useful tips about the logistics of moving countries. It is here

Last week has been a super fun week for me, mainly because the lovely Esther came to visit just for a couple of days. Esther is actually the first visitor we've had that isn't a parent of me or Dan. (We were meant to see another family in August but that plan was ruined by chicken pox.) Esther is someone I've known since my early 20s and I respect a lot. She is an actor and director and works and lives all over the place including sometimes in a van with her adorable dog Robin. After a crazy and difficult lockdown time when she fled from London like everyone I know did, she is on a kind of pilgrimage to find out about herself and life and God. Doing a lot of walking and thinking and stuff. You should really follow her instead of read this secondhand nonsense from me.

We were in a nearby park when we saw this: Esther's plane arriving 15 mins early, we raced off and managed to beat her to arrivals.

We picked her up and went straight to the sea. It's still warm enough to swim, but it was a bit windy and it wasn't burning hot, but it is burning hot today (about 30). On the way back home we picked Percy up from his first ever French birthday party. It's so sweet to see how his classmates really love him. I'm very proud of how he's doing in school. He had to read the poem below out loud in front of his class last week and he did really well.

This is how he has to write now. The French are very particular about handwriting and so, alongside learning that letters make slightly different sounds in French, he also has to learn this curvy writing that I can hardly read.

On Monday and Tuesday the boys were in school and Dan was working which meant that me and Esther got to go on some little adventures by ourselves. On Monday we set off to a gorge, stopping on the way to check out the view from the big hill you can see from our house. Driving on a tiny very steep road is not my favourite thing but it was worth it for the views. 

The difficult drive continued as we made our way to the the gorge. I've only been there once on a very hot August Saturday when it was rammed. This time I followed the sat nav, and it took me not the way I really wanted to go. I ended up on little windy path in a vineyard with a parked tractor blocking the way. There was a small gap but neither me nor Esther thought I could squeeze through without hitting a big rock. Then a guy appeared and waved me through. If I had better language skills I might have tried to argue that it was a bad idea, but I thought it was better to just try and I made it! 

I then discovered that the road lead to nowhere because the car park I was trying to get to had been blocked off with a giant rock, and you can't just park in a vineyard. I mean I was going to, but Esther said I shouldn't and then I saw "we'll tow away your car" signs. So I had to try and 3 point turn and squeeze past the tractor again and find a different way then. (Luckily the tractor had actually moved.) Eventually we got to the gorge a different way, but the entrance was all fenced off as if it just shuts in September. But as I said as a child, you can't pray the bit in the Lord's prayer that says "forgive us our trespasses" if you haven't been trespassing.

It was totally worth it to have this whole absolutely gorgeous gorge all to ourselves. There's like a long interesting rock corridor that you can swim down and then 2 places where you can swim and jump into a pool and the water is the most beautiful colour ever, and still warm enough to be ok at this time of year. After a lovely swim we climbed up the hill to try and find some caves, unsuccessfully, but we got some ace views.

The best colour in the world

The view from our climb

The next day we went on a long walk to a very cool waterfall. We had some deep chats about life, reminiscing about our 20's and the fine line we walked between having a genuine Christian faith and accidentally being in bit of a cult and how we make sense of all that now. (I've got no plans to unpack all that in this blog anytime, but happy to have real life chats with anyone who wants to.) At the end of the walk we reached this beautiful waterfall and some surprising things happened. But what happened at the waterfall stays at the waterfall (Its really Esther's story so I'll let her share it on her blog.)

I'm writing this now on the coach back from Montpellier, where I went for a meeting with the immigration and integration board. Before going I read a blog from someone who has been to this meeting (which also includes a medical examination and a french test) and she said it was incredibly stressful and disorganised, no one spoke English and she cried afterwards. But I've actually had a pretty good day, and yeah there were moments where I thought if they had translated the word "breastfeeding" then it would have meant a middle aged guy with man boobs wouldn't have had to mime breastfeeding to me. But then where would I get all my blog and podcast content from? HE CUPPED HIS MAN BOOB AND SUCKED HIS THUMB - honestly it was hilarious! And I will be doing a full in depth analysis of the many humorous moments of the whole day on the podcast, but not till episode 10.

Would you let me have a long stay visa based on this picture of my boobs? Well the French think it's good enough. Whoop whoop!

This week we're having a couple that I met online over for tea, just because they're from Warrington. Imagine doing that in the UK. Imagine going to Ikea for example (I really can't think of another reason you would go to Warrington) and imagine you got chatting to someone in the queue and then you just invited them over for tea. That's weird right?

C'est tout. Bisous.

French Septembers

 September was sometimes a bit of a sad time of year, as a person who loves the summer I always felt in September like I didn't get enough sun to go into autumn yet. But this year is different because my love for the sun has taken me to a place with much more of it. So now it's like some kind of sun inflation has taken place, where the sun has no value now. I could stay inside and play board games on a sunny saturday without feeling like I'm wasting the day. It's 34 degrees today, I think the temperature will stay in the low 30s or high 20s this month. Going down to very variable in October before it's finally cold by November. but by then it's only 4 months until it's sunny beach weather again.

The kids started back on 1st September, they were more than ready to go back by then, Percy said "7 weeks off is fine but 8 weeks off is too long." It was a very long summer especially given the fact I saw hardly any other people in that time I had 3 play dates in 8 weeks. I normally have 3 a week! 

In the UK the boys would be going back into year 1 and year 3, but the french school system is different. In England Percy is one of the oldest kids in his year with a birthday in October and Eric is on the younger side with a birthday in May. But here everyone born in the same calendar year is in a class together. So in England Percy's class would all be 7 in September and turn 8 that year, but here most of his class are already 8 and they will be turning 9 from January. So he's sort of skipped a year and if we stay in France he would start secondary school a year early, I feel like I've lost a year of his life!  Eric on the other hand is still kind of in nursery here. He doesn't legally have to be in school until next September. Even though the building he goes to is part of the school Percy is in, and they share a playground and play with each other at break time. Also this is all free, not like nursery in the U.K which is really expensive.

Percy had a good first day, it was very cute taking him back after lunch and seeing him play tag with his classmates pointing at himself and saying "moi" to show he was on. Eric was extremely tired after his first day and had a tantrum about the positioning of his ketchup at tea, they take away naps now he's in the "La grande section de maternelle" (big class of nursery) last year he had his own tiny bed in school!

At the moment they still come back home for lunch but they will be staying in for lunch soon. The first morning at drop off it was really nice, it's so relaxed compared to their old school (it's about a quarter of the size) They were playing music in the playground including john Lenon's Imagine, it's like they were trying to make parents cry. I also think the teachers seem happier. I'm a big fan of the no uniform thing for kids and teachers . The reason schools always give for uniform is "it prevents bullying" this is massively undermined by the 2 or 3 times a year you have to pay a pound to wear your own clothes. My mum also clearly wanted me to get bullied in primary school because even though 95% of people had the school sweatshirt with the school logo, you were allowed to just wear a red jumper. Or a red cardigan your mum knitted. I remember a dinner lady commenting on how lovely it was and just thinking "you are the last person in the world I want to impress"

 Dan went to chat to the headteacher about how we sign up for lunches, and asked how she was, and she said something like "I'm great, I'm in my element" I just don't think a British head teacher would be that happy on the first day back. but when you get to wear shorts, have a 1 hour 45 for lunch, Wednesday's off and an 8 week summer holiday I bet teaching is not that bad. I don't think the teachers have to do lunch duties either, I think they go home for lunch too. There's a different organisation that's in charge of lunch times, after school clubs, Wednesday club and holiday clubs. So now that we have just signed the kids up for lunch club we can apparently just email on the day and say can my kid attend after school club today, or we need them to go in for one random Wednesday.

At the end of the day Percy's teacher gave us a big list of things he needed that we should have seen in July:

That's a lot of stuff right? if you don't speak french here are some of the things we had to buy:

 I actually think this is a good thing because I worked in school and school never have glue sticks in the summer term. I've asked to borrow some before and I had to use the office staff's secret stash of 3 good ones for a group of 20. But if every kid has to bring two sticks in in September that does get rid of that issue, and probably kids will look after them a bit better. French kids get given about 300 euros in August to buy all this with. Unfortunately we didn't know about this until a few days too late so didn't receive anything.

One of the things on the list was a calculator, Dan was packing Percy's stuff this evening and wrote "boobs" on it you know 58008 upside down, that classic. It made me wonder what do the french write on their calculators upside down? Any suggestions? Tell me!

In Britain in September freshers fairs will soon be taking place for students, in France the whole nation has a fresher's fair in September. What I mean by this is every Marie (town hall place) has a list of clubs they do, our local one doesn't have much I'm interested in, they have a walking club, a knitting/sewing one, petanque (a french ball game) and a few others. but you aren't limited you your local one. One in a bigger village near us has loads more great ones to choose from including horse ridding and rhythmic gymnastics! They almost all have an open day some time in September where you can see a demonstration of the club and meet people and sign up, just like you would join a society at freshers fair. Then you have to pay for a year's membership in September. It's going to be an expensive month because we're going to all try and join clubs so that we can get to know people and integrate, Dan is going to do a Marshall art, Percy has in the last few months got super into basket ball and wants to do that. Eric wants to do rugby and I'm going to do french lessons and thinking of joining a gospel choir as well.

I would say Dan is pretty integrated into french society now though, he went for a haircut last week and the hairdresser started complaining about foreigners to him. That's when you know you've truly integrated. I wonder if I will ever reach that level of french. I was at selling art and an art festival at the weekend and a woman said "C'est Jolie" about by work. I replied "Merci" and she just said "English"

my lino prints
(let me know if you want one £10-£15 and easy to post without the frame)

Acrylic Paintings

It was a fun festival to be part of, in a really lovely random town called Amelie-les-bains. I didn't want the kids to be bored so I go them to do portraits of people and they totally stole the show. They might have been the only people there that made any money. They made 8 euros between then but they felt like they were millionaires. Erics already spent half his takings on chocolate yoghurts.

Thanks for reading. 

p.s I've started an instagram for my all art stuff since I moved here, plus a you can see more of the boy's portraits.  @artisthannahjones