This is my first June in France. We moved here in April 2022, but because of a misunderstanding of the visa appointment system, I had to spend almost the whole of June 2022 in the UK. I've done quite a few weird things recently so I thought I'd tell you about them. Firstly, I did stand up in French! This took weeks and weeks of practising and I still didn't get it all perfect, but it was ok. I got through it, I got some laughs and all the people I met were super supportive and lovely. I don't think I'll do it again in French any time soon though.
French comedy is odd. Maybe not all comedy nights in France are like this, but this one started with tapas, they didn't serve any lemonade, but they did serve orangina. Then everyone went to a 300 seat theatre. The show didn't start until almost 9 and there were several kids in the audience. There was no compere, we just knew the order and the acts introduced the next acts. I was politely clapping along to the guy who came on after me until Dan pointed out they were clapping for me. There was a guy doing a short intro, then me doing 7 minutes, then two stand ups doing at least 30 minutes each, and then a hypnotist doing an hour and 15 and NO INTERVAL, that was the weirdest thing. I spoke to the hypnotist beforehand, he was French Canadian so he spoke to me in English. He told me his bit had to be a minimum of 1 hour 15 to work. You can't hypnotise people in less time than that (unless you're the snake from Disney's Robin Hood). I wold have been really interested to stay, I don't think my French is good enough to be hypnotised in French, but I was intrigued to see what went down. But in the end after doing my set and then sitting through over an hour of stand up that I didn't quite get, my need for a drink was stronger than my curiosity to see if I could be hypnotised in French. So we managed to sneak out.
The next weird thing I did was a favour to my weird but cool artist friend Flick. She wanted to shoot a video where she was going for a great day out with her best friend in the world... her painting, and I was there as the gooseberry/camerawoman documenting their love. What I love about Flick is that I come across as very normal and sensible next to her, and that's a nice change. In my friendship groups in Liverpool I was always the weird one:
"Please Steve will you come with me to film a little promo video for my comedy club, can we ride together on a tandem and can I wear a horse's head?"
"Dan I had a dream where you were the Suez Canal but I was still me, and I want to reenact it for a comedy show, you're cool with that right?"
So we began the day with the painting which was on a huge canvas wrapped up in a roll in the back of her car wearing sunglasses and lipstick. The we drove to a well know tourist destination Colloiure. It's a beautiful picturesque little cove where you can take a rolled up painting on a skateboard, sit on the harbour wall and share an ice cream with the painting. You can dance with buskers and a painting, and a random passer by who joined in, and then you can get to the little beach and unroll your painting, roll around on it and then get in the sea and swim with it. The most surreal bit for me was when I was filming Flick in the sea with the painting while trying to explain, in French, what was going on to a random older lady who asked a lot of questions.
The weekend after that was a special art weekend, in Port-Vendres, the sightly uglier big sister of Collioure. It's actually very pretty as well but doesn't get the same amount of love from tourists. We had signed up for a weekend of plein air painting, and our works will be exhibited in September. On the first day we went to the beach so the kids could play while we painted. I had brought some canvases but last minute I decided I wanted to paint nature's free canvases (some rocks) instead. The boys also were doing portraits for 1 euro for passers by. They made 3 euros each and were very happy about it.
On the second day Dan took the kids, ours plus Flicks 6 year old, to see soap box racing in a local park while we went back to Port-Vendres (to the actual town this time) to do some more painting. I've no idea if this painting will turn out good or not, we'll see.
Ive also been doing some embroidery recently, which has been fun. The main benefit compared to painting is I can half watch programs I don't really care about at the same time, so I've been watching a documentary about the Tour de France with Dan and I don't even resent him for it.
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Friday was Eric's last rugby training, so they were having some kind of bring and share tea together. In England this would be everyone bringing shop bought sausage rolls and quiche and eating it off paper plates in a sports hall while in rained. In France it was everyone making absolutely incredible flans and quiches but so much better than I've ever tasted, slices of watermelon and then a barbecue they just did on the ground, where they cooked a load of delicious Catalan sausage. And then there were the desserts. I made some flapjack but there was some amazing pastries and chocolate crepes to. The kids were having a water fight because it was still boiling hot even at 8pm, they were filling the rugby cones with water and throwing them on each other.
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| Eric's in the front in the blue hat |
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| The ground bbq. |
Ive only got 2.5 weeks left now before the start of the summer holidays. I think this summer will be the opposite of last summer. Last summer it was boring, we didn't know anyone, we didn't go back to England or have any visitors and I wasn't very confident about driving anywhere with the boys. This summer will be packed with almost non-stop visitors, all visiting from the end of July until the second week of September. Hopefully it will be fun! After that I need to find a job and if that goes well maybe we can stay forever and buy a chateau. I don't know. Watch this space.
