Leaving and Arriving.

 

We've arrived!

Thursday (21st April)

This was the day all our stuff was being shipped. The van was arriving at 8am at our house in Liverpool and we were living with my parents in Cheshire. We left the boys with Granny and Grandad and headed off, nervous about whether everything would fit. On the way we discussed what stuff we would leave behind if we had to. Dan had been taking phone calls from France over the last few days trying to make sure we had electricity when we arrived, it seemed to be needlessly complicated. Apparently our house, number 4, didn't exist on the grid even though 1, 2,3 ,5 and 6 did. It's a very new house, built in 2020, but we're not the first people to live in it. We needed to find the name of the previous tenant to sort out our electricity and connect us. We also had to find away to connect to the internet straight away, because Dan's job is online and I really like to watch Netflix.

The Van arrived minutes after we did and they started packing up everything in the dining room, which was completely full of boxes, bikes and small bits of furniture. outside the room was also our mattresses and the fridge. One double bed was being left by a pervious tenant in the French house, so we decided if there was room we would take our king sized bed and use the double as a spare, but if there was no room we could at least sleep on the double. It turns out there was loads of room, which I was happy about but also a bit annoyed that I could have taken more stuff (or paid less). We had agreed on 20 cubic meters, which is hard to imagine, but the guys packing said everything in the dining room was 10 cubic meters, so I'm guessing with the extra bits it was around 13 cubic meters. So sort of annoying but I guess I should be thankful it all fit. 

I was so happy when the van left it finally felt like the most stressful bits were over and we really were moving. This is me literally jumping for joy as the van left. 

I feel really proud of myself that I managed to pack up a whole house. Dan has done all of the difficult french admin stuff but in terms of packing he really only did his own stuff. I did mine and the kids and the stuff in the loft and the shed and everywhere. We're a good team, if Dan was in charge of packing and I was french admin we would still be in Liverpool. I kind of wanted to celebrate that it was finally done, but it was 9 in the morning and I was just in an empty house I didn't even have a kettle. We stayed for quite a few more hours as I had to paint over all the holes that I filled in from all the shelves we'd taken down. I also had to paint over the kids bedroom space mural, including their rocket heigh chart which was a bit sad. 

I kept thinking we were done and then spotting more jobs. The estate agent that we're renting out the house with came to see it. He is responsible for putting in the new kitchen before they get us a tenant. Just before we left Dan got a call about the electricity they said it will be switched on on Saturday, hooray!! But that it will be between midnight and 11:59 pm- not so great. So we still didn't know if we would arrive to a house with electricity.

Friday

"WE'RE MOVING TO FRANCE TODAY!" the boys shouted as they danced round in circles. We tried to pack the last of our bags up. We went for the Ryanair family package which meant 1 20kg bag between us, a 10kg bag each and a small backpack each. In retrospect that was way too many bags especially as we had to get a train once we were in France. Carrying all these bags around was especially annoying because we had about 7 square meters of shipping that we didn't use and 90% of the stuff in our bags we didn't immediately need and we could have just shipped. But we had all our stuff from the last week of living in other peoples houses. As we'd last minute shipped an extra king sized bed, we also had another duvet we wanted to take, but hadn't been organised enough to put in the shipping so most of our biggest bag was taken up with that.

We said goodbye to my mum who was ill, so Eric gave her a hug he learnt in covid times (where you hug yourself). She is really sad about us leaving and (falsely) claims that she first heard about our plans to leave by reading this blog. My Dad gave us a lift to Manchester airport and we said a quick goodbye because if you park up for more than 10 seconds Manchester airport charge you!

We checked in our many bags and the Ryanair woman said we didn't really get the best deal and it would have been much cheaper to take two big bags. Easier to carry as well, but I swear that wasn't one of the options when we booked it. I have a fear of flying, not a like a normal persons fear of flying, I just have a massive anxiety about being late to a flight or having the wrong size bag or wrong documents. This is because I once missed a flight, and I once turned up at an airport with a ticket for the previous month and had to buy a very expensive last minute ticket. And then after they sold me that they said "run because you might not make it!" Anyway this time it was all fine, and were were in the departure lounge for longer than we were on the flight.

A cool lady with dead locks from Dan's Grandpa's town Malpas took this photo

The flight was fine and we arrived in Carcassonne around 5pm. This was Dan and the boys first time travelling on their french ID cards. They gave them in so they didn't get a stamp in their UK passports which means they can stay forever. 

I got a stamp and have to come back in May to get my visa. After we'd got through that bit we walked out to a group of Hari Krishnas all singing ready to welcome this guy on our flight, who was wearing entirely orange, including orange socks and crocs. That was surreal. We got onto the transfer bus to the station and Dan said "I can tell you this now, I didn't know if that ID card thing would work, I've never done it before." We got to Carcassonne train station and there were no trains until 8:20pm which was over two hours away. We strolled off with our many bags in search of food.

Moving countries sounds like it should be the most exciting day of your life, it's definitely one of the most significant ones, but actually this was just a full day of waiting around. Really nothing exciting happened. The kids had a little play on a nearby playground, (we know the area a bit from our recce) and then we ate at a restaurant, sitting outside so as to not annoy people without our nine bags! Then we headed back to the station the train said it was delayed 15 minutes but just as we arrived on the platform a good 10 minutes before the delayed time of leaving, it arrived and then left, so we actually could have missed it which would have been a nightmare. 

We got into Perpignan around 10pm and we were all very tired! We had another little bit of a walk to our airbnb, the kids did so well considering how late it was. We stayed in this really trendy little flat with two tiny loft bedrooms off an open plan room. Eric was giddy with excitement seeing how cool the flat was and then immediately fell asleep with the light on the moment he lay down.

Saturday

This was the fun exciting day we'd dreamt of. Dan got up early to collect this hire car which was tiny and electric. He absolutely loved it and we all thought it was pretty cool too. He then went to buy car seats in a big supermarket and paid the same for them as it was to hire them for one day! 

the way the doors open is really cool.

He came back to get us and we sped off to see our new house for the first time (even Dan had never see it in real life before). The surroundings were very rural, fields and country roads and tractors and beautiful mountains in the distance.

We met the estate agent there and went to look round. It's super modern, all white with black tiled floor everywhere. Three bedrooms that are all a really good size. The garden was bigger than expected which made me both happy and annoyed that I hadn't bought my hammock. I really love my hammock, its one of my favourite things, but it's on a frame that takes a lot of space. When I saw photos of the garden I thought if I took the hammock they'd be no space for anyone else's stuff so I left it with my parents. The house is great though and the electricity was working! I love that it has electric shutters on all the windows that properly block out all the light, and I really love that you can see a snow topped mountain out of the window! This mountain is called Canigou, which we have been joking is like a Scottish person saying, "I cannee go." 

The view from our bedroom window!

The kids immediately filled the floor with lego, they had been given a couple of new kits which I was saving for when we arrived at the house and our other toys had not arrived. 

full house tour before our stuff arrived.

Our stuff arrived two hours after us and the driver helped us carry a lot of stuff upstairs. Unfortunately the TV snapped off the stand and is pretty unusable and a computer screen has cracked. The company are not being great about fixing it, saying it's our fault because of the way we a packaged it but the screen was wrapped in bubble wrap and cardboard so I'm not sure what more we could have done. We went to a massive super market to get some essentials in and stared the unpacking, tired but feeling very grateful to be in.

how we are eating until we get a table 

Sunday

Nothing is open in France on a Sunday, not much anyway so it was nice to have this day as a day off. We went to visit an English speaking church, where we had been invited for lunch after. The church was around 25 people meeting in the really big home of the church leaders. It was kind of a similar style to the church we came from. The church is run by a couple who moved to France around 24 years ago. The english speaking church is connected to a bigger french speaking church which we will also check out. It would be easier to just go to the English one but we do want to integrate and know French people, and if there's more kids at the French one then once our kids know French, they might enjoy that one more. 

One of the guest speakers was this lady about our age from Newcastle who was an A&E consultant doing medical work, including helicopter rescue, and then just as a hobby because that's not dangerous enough, she takes 3 months off to help in a war zone. She's just back from Ukraine, but she's also been to Iraq and the Bahamas (after a hurricane) and a load of other places. We had lunch outside in their court yard: us four, the couple who run the church, the war zone doctor and her friend who was also really cool and interesting (she left her job as an accountant to work in community theatre). I respect that a lot. I feel like everyone at the table were interesting cool adventurers, and the fact that we had just moved into a house without seeing it, the day before, made us part of the adventurous crew. 

The couple who run the church know someone giving away a dining table and chairs too so that's a bonus. We've been haemorrhaging money in the last few weeks, paying for a new kitchen in our old house, and shipping our stuff. We didn't bring that much furniture, so we still have a lot of stuff to buy including a car, so I'm very grateful for a free table.

Because we had the electric car I suggested we went somewhere cool after church, so we headed to Ille-sur-tet, about 15 mins west of our house. It's an area with a little town/village and some crazy rock formations. We parked up and started climbing up this big rocky path, the views were incredible and I can't believe we live so close to a place so beautiful. It was such a lovely day, and I really can't believe that we get to live in this amazing area of the world. I guess the lady in the pharmacy was right (see my previous blog) I really am lucky.

Ille-sur-tet

Next blog: dragging the kids round 8 shops in a day, meeting the mayor of the village, my terrible french, exploring our local area, buying a car, and whatever happens when I take the kids to town on the train today.

P.s we're going to make a Podcast about moving to France with tips about how to move, and funny stories. We've love suggestions for a name for it. The best one so far is "ex-scouse my french" 

Lucky and Brave

I'm writing this at the airport. We've got through the stressful bits and we're sat in the fun shopping bit. I have 49p of English money I want to get rid of but the cheapest thing you can buy is chewing gum for 60p. We've emptied out all our waters to get through security and are now drinking warm water from the toilets. mmm.

Two phrases that people have said to me a lot recently that I think are slightly weird are, "you are so lucky," and, "you are so brave." Brave is a funny word. I'm not quite sure in what situation I would call someone brave but it wouldn't be in my situation. I'm basically retiring to the south of France. I'm giving up work for a while to live somewhere sunnier because I want to, and I'm in the privileged position to be able to move because Dan is half French and we have enough money (we hope!) to pay for the cost of moving. It's hardly brave, I'm not moving to a war torn country to do humanitarian work.  I get that I'm taking some risks, financially and leaving people and also putting myself in awkward French situations, but I already put myself in plenty of awkward situations in the UK anyway. 

Lucky is an interesting word too. I am lucky in almost every way, I'm lucky to be with Dan not just because of his EU status but he's actually quite a nice guy! We've been lucky to have two healthy boys who are pretty chilled about all the change and the idea of moving. A few weeks ago I was sitting on the sofa reading a story to them when a man turned up to buy the sofa, and we had to continue reading on the floor, and they were kind of fine with it. 

We're lucky that Dan has a job that is remote so we can actually choose where in the world we want to live. Hardly anyone actually chooses where they want to live, I'd say at least 90% of people live somewhere because either that's where they were born, that's where they found a job or that's where their family or partners family live. 

But when people have heard I'm moving to France and have said "I'm jealous" or "you're lucky" its felt a bit weird, because the last month has felt like one of the most stressful of my life. I don't want people to see nice pictures of us on the beach without having seen the time about two weeks ago, when I was manically trying to shove a frying pan into a public bin by a bus stop because our bins were overflowing. But funny enough I didn't take a photo of that. There were days I woke up motivated to get stuff packed, and days that I woke up so overwhelmed by the task of packing or getting rid of everything I owned, that I just couldn't get anything done.

For most of March I was constantly putting things on facebook marketplace. Some things sold well and when it works it's great, but then there's other times when a man comes to the door to buy a house plant and as you bring it out it's shedding it's leaves everywhere, and he asks if it'd dead. Oops.

The last two months have been so stressful, with the stress peaking around three weeks ago when we didn't have a move in date, the boys french ID cards hadn't arrived, and I found out it was impossible to get my visa sorted on time. Even two weeks ago we still didn't have a confirmed move in date, and the shipping people were threatening to give our dates to someone else if we didn't pay our deposit immediately.  

The visa issue never got sorted, which means at the end of May I have to come back for 25 days which is a super long time to leave Dan and the boys for. I'll make the most of my time here seeing people, staying at my parents house on a river and maybe doing a bit of paid work, but poor Dan will have the kids and still have to work.

I had to got to the pharmacy to pick up some medication and I explained it was more because I'm moving to France and she said "lucky you!" and I really am lucky, but really most people can do fun exciting things with their lives if they are willing to put in loads of work and stress to make it happen.

The last Days

Dan's last day at work was 12th April and we got our flight on 22nd April, so those 10 days were mainly filled with mad packing and French admin. We had to completely clear our house, the estate agent we're renting out house out with wants it to be unfurnished so everything had to go including the loft stuff and ideally it needed to be painted white, so there was a lot to do, but we did have a few nice days off within that time. 

Eric's birthday is 3rd May, but we wanted to do something nice for him before we left. He originally wanted a whole class bouncy castle in a hall party, which I was not thrilled about (his class are lovely but I really didn't have the capacity to organise that the week before leaving the country). One day he mentioned he wanted to go to lego land Manchester and I was so happy when we agreed to go there with another family, instead of a party. It was a lovely chance for him to hang out with his best school friend Theo, and for us all to hang out with a family we love and will miss, and I didn't have to make 30 party bags!

The next day we had off packing was my sister Sarah's wedding on Easter Saturday! She was originally meant to be married in Easter 2020 and managed to get legally married then with just two witnesses, then she had a little garden party wedding with just her household (Luke's family) where she wore the dress and got on the news. But this was the big party that she paid for ages ago. It was so lovely to finally get to celebrate it. She looked incredible in her dress and the whole day was beautiful. I was a bridesmaid and the boys were page boys. Percy and Eric got super into dancing in their very original way (sort of skipping mixed with breakdancing) and a lot of people including me were very happy to watch a totally uninhibited 7 and 4 year old go crazy on the dance floor rather than dance themselves. I'm really happy Sarah and Luke finally got to celebrate.

The next day was Easter day we had our last day at our church, they all prayed for us and they bought the kids some lovely gifts, and took this photo. 

Then we had lunch with the legends that are Zac and Jude. They are the loveliest friends. They let us live in their house for a few days while we cleared everything out of our own house, they were on holiday for a bit and then we lived together for a few days too. We were the worst guests. We were tired and stressed and only brought the dregs our our fridge to their house and they looked after us in every possible way. On the day of our big leaving party I had planned to make a big cake, but then there was lots of left over wedding cake from Sarah's wedding and Jude spent all day making cookies with her kids for the party too. They even gave us a spare fridge they had which has made its way to France, meaning we could leave ours for the new tenants. 

The day of the party was crazy, I was awake at 5:30 am feeling anxious about everything. By 7.10 am I was on my bike cycling to the house to do more sorting, which mainly consisted of walking room to room wondering what to do with the bits that were left that we weren't shipping, like all our post, a half empty bottle of shampoo and an old pound coin. I went to Morrison's to pick up some helium balloons and bumped into a mum friend Jo. I was embarrassed to be seen un-showered and with no make up on. In the hour before the party I was manically trying to get the kids ready in their little suits while Dan was at the venue. I also had to get myself ready and pack a bag for the kids to go straight from the party to stay with my parents. At one point I was shouting at the kids, "where are your socks?! you were wearing socks earlier, where are they!?" They both didn't know, so I grabbed some new ones from Zac and Judes tumble dryer. At this point Eric innocently asked "are they dark socks?" and Zac smiled remembering the wedding two days earlier when Dan was in charge of dressing the boys and I told him, "you could have put them in dark socks!" (instead of lime green ones). We then got in the car and just as I was strapping them in I noticed Percy had his trousers on the wrong way round. 

Then began the least relaxing party I'd ever been to. I arrived late and they were a lot of kids running round trying to take the helium balloons off chairs, which I'd carefully arranged in the colours of the French flag. We had a ceilidh which we had at our wedding, it's like a barn dance where they tell you what to do which I like because I'm bad at real dancing. It was fun and lots of people came that I hadn't seen for ages, even people who didn't really know anyone else came and that made it really special. 

The band were great and they adapted it to make it easier because there were so many young kids. I have to say it was a relief to get home. After that we spent one more night with Zac and Jude and then moved in with my parents who had the kids all day while we were at our house again and then fed us at night which was a real treat. They've also already booked to see us in July and Dan's parents are coming in May.

I've written a lot, sorry. I can't wait to get onto the next blog where we actually leave and arrive. Spoiler alert: it's amazing and shoving a frying pan into a public bin is now just a distant memory. 

Bonne Nuit.

Dan found a house!

Since my last blog things have been a bit crazy. Sometimes I'm so excited for this adventure and sometimes I'm so bored of the logistics and I'm not really sure if its a good idea anyway. 

Dan came back from his four day trip to find us a house on Tuesday/ early Wednesday morning (I picked him up from the airport at 1:45 am, yawn). I had to drag the poor kids out of bed, I let them go to school a bit late, but not quite late enough. School starts at 8:55am we arrived at about 9:05 which looks like we were just casually late whereas I wanted to give the impression we were intentionally late for a good reason. Oh well.

After doing a recce in October to Carcassonne, Narbonne and Montpellier we decided that we would go to none of them and Perpignan is the place we will live. We initially discounted it because you can't fly there from the North West, but we changed our minds because it's just such a beautiful place. Here's a photo I took there in 2019, when we did a camper van trip from Nice to Barcelona. Who wouldn't want to live in here:

From April you can fly from Birmingham to Perpignan, but not in the winter months, so Dan flew from Manchester to Barcelona and hired a car to drive up Spain and over the border, which takes about two hours. Perpignan is only 30 mins from the border. He had four days to find us a house and spent the last week trying to arrange viewing with estate agents.

There was one estate agent doing viewings on Saturday but it was in the morning and Dan didn't make it on time, so day 1 nothing really got done. Day 2 was Sunday when everything in France is closed. Dan went to a Church though, and had lunch with the leaders of the church, so Day 3 was the big day. Dan was planning to walk into all the estate agents he could. The first one had nothing to rent the second one "looked a bit weird" but just like the story of Goldilocks the third one miraculously had a house that was almost exactly when we were looking for: a 3 bed in budget in the outskirts of Perpignan with a bit of a garden. It wasn't even on the market yet and so the estate agent said he could see it and if we liked it we could get it. Dan sent me a few excited video messages, I couldn't believe it it was 10:30 am and he'd smashed it. Some of the positives are we can sign for just a year, a lot of places want you to sign for 2 or 3 years, it's walking distance to a school, its energy efficient and a new build.

It's 15 minutes from town, 20/25 minutes from the beach and 10 or 15 minutes from this very cool lake:

 and maybe 10 minutes from this cool area:

A few negatives are: it is unfurnished which is a faff, it doesn't have a bath and the garden is tiny, but overall great and we don't have to stay more than a year if we decide it's not for us. 

I thought we might be in Airbnbs for a while we we tried to find somewhere, but getting a real house has changed a few things. Our original plan was for Dan to take one car load of stuff while the 3 of us fly but now we have a real address we have decided to change our plans completely. We're going to get our stuff shipped so we can take some furniture and mattresses. We'll all fly and we won't buy a car until we're there. It was stressful trying to decide if shipping was the right option as it's pretty expensive (£2600) but the idea of trying to get rid of all our mattresses and then immediately buying a load more as soon as we arrive sounded too annoying. Currently the shipping people are desperate for us to confirm by paying our deposit but the estate agent hasn't 100% confirmed our paperwork and approved the moving in date we want yet, even though it looks very probable for 22nd April. 

The boys French ID cards are done but we haven't managed to pick them up yet. Hopefully they will arrive in Chester next Wednesday for collection (they can't be posted to your house you have to collect them from London or Chester and you can only collect from Chester on Wednesdays.) 

I've previously said that my visa "is easy, it takes a maximum of 20 days and you only have to go to Manchester." So with a date almost confirmed and just over 20 days to go Dan went to get me a visa appointment. That's when we discovered it's 5-20 days FROM THE DAY YOU CAN GET AN APPOINTMENT and the next available appointment was 29th April. As we were staring at the computer screen wondering how we had made such a massive error, 29th April disappeared and the next available appointment was 4th May. So frustrating because if we'd have thought about this a month ago it would all be fine. Now the plan is when I come back for a wedding in June I will have to stay up to 20 days while getting the visa sorted.

There was no real time to process that, because I had to go straight to my last ever day at work, teaching art in an after school club that I do every Friday. Then I went home for a quick tea before getting the train to Southport for my last ever comedy gig. Which actually was a lovely gig and considering the only practise I did was listening to my own set on you tube on my headphones on the train, it went pretty well and was a nice one to end on.

So much to do next week: builders will be knocking down a wall in our kitchen in preparation for putting in a new kitchen to make it nice for our tenants, and I have to make two easter bonnets! As if I have time for that!

I hope all this stress will be a distant memory when I'm swimming in the Med with the boys.

Please come to our leaving party!