In 2022 we swapped our normal life in Britain with the kind of place we normally go to on holiday and moved to sunny Perpignan on the Mediterranean coast, but since then we have been confused as to what to do with our holidays. Packing for a summer holiday in Britain is strange. I actually had to go emergency shopping for trousers for Percy, he’d only been wearing shorts for months and I realised while packing he hardly had any decent warm clothes. It was weird packing coats that we don’t wear at all for about 6 months of the year here.
We flew from Carcassonne to Manchester and when we walked out of the airport in Manchester Percy said, “I accidentally stepped in a puddle because I forgot what they were.” It was so grey and cold. Me and Dan just can’t cope with the grey. It’s like living in an abusive relationship. Once you know there’s better and that becomes the norm you don’t know how people put up with the grey.
What do you think is the optimum amount of friends and family to see in a two week trip? We saw 52 people which was about 30 people too many for introvert Dan. Even for me it was a bit much but I wanted to make the most of our time there. There’s actually one more couple I wanted to see but forgot to message, I’m not going to name them though because what if there’s another couple that I also forgot and I’ve still forgotten them, I’d like them to think they were the couple I forgot. The problem with publicly saying you’ve seen 52 people is it’s pretty offensive if you didn’t make the cut.
We planned the visit around seeing our families, but also borrowing my parents house for a while when they weren’t there and borrowing Sarah (my sister’s) house when she was away too. That way we could invite people over, and see some more friends. It’s hard to imagine losing touch with our families but I feel like if we didn’t see friends for a while we could easily loose touch.
So we did a lot, we had a day at the crocky trail, which is like a big outdoor adventure playground thing where we invited other families, we had a secret house party in my sisters house. Shushhhh. It might have ended with three drunk people in a bath together (with clothes on) but I kept my promise to not snort drugs off her cat so she can’t be mad.
We also hired a tiny girl’s car (Fiat 500) for a day and drove to see my sister Jo and family in her brand new house. Last time I saw her was when I flew over for a few days to meet my new niece Miri (short for Miriam) who was a tiny newborn in May and now is the build of a tiny sumo wrestler.
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| This is either her arm or a croissant |
We had lots of fun with big brother Zac too, he is two and finds Dan putting his hand through a cat flap and wiggling it at him absolutely hilarious, even on the one hundredth time. My sister was alarmed to discover she had accidentally named her kids after the 2008 film “Zac and Miri make a Porno” we all told her don’t worry no one will remember that film, it wasn’t a big hit everyone has forgotten it. So if you know her, make sure you don’t mention that greatest hit film of the late naughties.
Miri is the first of three new cousins the boys will be getting within a year. Dan’s sister Rebekah is due in December and my other sister Sarah is due in February! It’s super exciting but I am also sad I’m not closer to see all these babies more.
I saw 5 out of my 6 bridesmaids in the last month, and it was very nearly 6. I saw both my sisters of course, my friend Ruth visited with her super cute little boy who I’ve only met once before. My uni friend Rachel visited us in France the week before we returned to England and I got to see my lovely oldest friend Bex and her 3 boys. They stayed with us at my parents house and so we had five boys in total and all of them loved messing about in kayaks and paddle boards on the river at the back of the house. Her boys seemed a bit more fearless than ours, they straight away asked to be in a kayak on their own, something which we had never really thought to offer our boys. They were also not afraid to fall in and did so several times and the eldest even said that was the best bit of his day!
We played a hilarious game of cards against humanity with our good friends Zac and Jude. We laughed so hard! If you don’t know the game you have some scenario type cards e.g:
The school trip was completely ruined by…………
Or ………… is how I want to die.
Or white people love …………
And then the other cards have answers such as:
Camel toe,
Daddy issues
Bum Cancer
Squirrels eating pizza,
A dinosaur shooting laser beams.
It can be a bit offensive but with the right people it can be amazing. But what made it extra funny was that we had forgotten the scenario cards, so after finding a few on Google we started making up our own ones, that were specific for us and the fact that we’d all been in a slightly culty church together once.
I might write a blog about my cult days one day, I’m not sure. I wish it was more universally relatable because I could definitely write an hour of stand up about some weird stuff that went on.
Look how funny it is….
On the last day I went on a pilgrimage to the big Asda. And it was actually quite an emotional journey. Even though I spent the last 5 years of our time in Liverpool on the outskirts, this bit of Liverpool between Penny Lane and Smithdown Asda must have the most memories. I felt like almost every street was somewhere I’d lived or had a friend that lived there. Every day when I was a student I cycled down it. As I went past the little Tesco i remembered the time me and a friend I bought dried parsley and Rizzla papers at to see if it was possible to smoke it. There was the coffee shop that Dan was once in thinking about whether he should ask me out, while I went past on the bus at that exact moment and did the weirdest “surprised to see you awkward stare” at him from the top deck. There was the little scouse old man pub “the willow bank” that on a Sunday nights was filled with Christian’s in their 20s in a very weird cultural clash. The first time I ever went there an Australian man thought a great conversation starter with a stranger would be just him shouting “Oi Ginny” (the ginger girl in Harry Potter) at me. 6 years later he was best man at my wedding.
I passed the medical center where we took Percy to when he was a baby with pneumonia and they got him an ambulance to hospital. And then I arrived at the jewel of Smithdown road itself: the big Asda. So many memories, from my student days of trying to carry a whole weeks shop on the handlebars of my bicycle to the birthday treasure hunt I did when one of the challenges was to buy the cheapest possible thing from Asda. We found a sprout that was half the size of an average sprout that was priced at 1p! Then there were the days of mindlessness wondering round with Percy in the pram because he was pretty happy in a pram and it was something to do. And then my most recent significant Asda memory was being in the early stages of labour with Eric, sitting in the Asda cafe with a friend thinking I hope I can drive home before this all kicks off.
I walked back a different way, through a parked called “the mystery”. They should probably rename it “Google it” as there’s no mystery left in the world anymore. I’ve got some nice memories in that park too but not as many as I have in Sefton park (I’ve sledged, I’ve unicycled, and I’ve smoked parsley there) or Greenbank park (the location of me and Dan’s first kiss, and where the police once told us off for playing with fire, and then they actually watched and enjoyed our fire circus tricks).
I do miss Liverpool, when people in France ask me where I’m from I like to say Liverpool. And then if they’re British I have to explain that I didn’t grow up there so that’s why I don’t have the accent, but I’ve lived all my adult life there and it would feel weird not to say Liverpool. I have no emotional connection or desire to ever see Coventry again, they only bit I would have felt connected to was the woods I used to play in as a kid and they have now been destroyed by HS2. But I think Liverpool will always have a little place in my heart. Big up people with purple bins. You are boss.
