Kid quotes of the year 2023

   It’s that exciting time of year again.

 The time where we reflect back on our hopes and dreams for the year? 

No it’s the time where I write down all the weird stuff my children have said. 

“Mummy how do you milk a ghost?” Was a classic from a previous year. Possibly the best question I’ve ever been asked. Often HMRC tweet “please tweet us with your general questions.” And sometimes like to pass on some of the general questions I’m having to answer “do tattoos last in heaven?” For example.

So anyways, let’s get on with it. 

Starting with Percy who turned 9 this year:

1) “I don’t know what it’s called….a woman willy?”

2) (When he was with me buying tights) “I guess M stands for Mario and L stands for Luigi” …it’s medium and Large you crazy boy.

3) “It’s a funny feeling in my willy but I like it!” (Percy describing being on the big swing)

4) “Well my mum’s got an art degree and she says it’s a crayon” ….day 1 of art school that.

5) Me: I really want to break a Guinness word record one day.

Percy: don’t worry mum if you don’t we’ll do most rubber ducks at a funeral.

6)  “Stop showing off Mummy you’re going to hurt yourself” ….but once you’ve mastered riding a bike all mum’s teach non handed bike riding right?

This year is the year they became properly bilingual so I’m probably missing some funny quotes out by not being fluent in french. I’ll work on getting some French ones in here next year but in the mean time here some quote from Eric who turned 6 this year.

1) “Hey see that black mark on the wall? That’s where I punched a fly to death”

2) (Dan had a rip in his shorts) “why don’t you poo yourself and let the poo fill the gaps?”

3) Eric: I think I’m going to go to Asia?

Me: oh really when?

Eric: when I’m 55. 

4) Me: what do you want to do today boys? 

Eric: get loads of money.

5) “Hey God, want a water fight? It’s time for one.” It’s safe to say Eric lost.

6) “If Jesus died in a waffle he could have just eaten his way out.” I guess that is a fact. Although the stone being rolled away does have more of a visual impact for Easter cards than just crumbs of a waffle.

7) “I’m playing the guitar with my willy”

8) Erics Joke: what do you call a statue made of sausages? …a pig.

And now for a few joint quotes:

1) Life plans:

Percy: I will marry a french woman because I want to live in France and if I married an English woman I would have to do the French paperwork for her.

Eric: I will marry an English man or woman and I will teach French in England.

2) unemployment advice:

Dan: I’ve lost my job so I will be looking for a new one.

Eric: Daddy what do you love to do?

Percy: It doesn’t matter what he loves to do Eric, he’s got to find a job so we don’t all perish!

3) Fun times

Eric: hit me with that pillow again!

Percy: where?

Eric: The tongue!

If you have enjoyed these you can see past ones by following these links:

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

And future ones as they happen by following @comedyhan on twitter.

3 Christmas Miracles

I thought I should write a quick follow up blog to the last one before the craziness of Christmas starts and I forget it all. Thanks for all the comments and messages after the last one, I really was overwhelmed by the response, some of it from people we hardly know. A lot of good things have happened since then and things are looking up. But before the good things happened things got worse…

First me and Dan both went to do some random work for some fellow brits we met recently, I went to do house painting and Dan went to do gardening. Dan returned for a second day, but on the way back he drove into a pot hole. He got a flat tyre but managed to change it on the side of the road and put the skinny space saver one on (apparently the French call it  galette, which is a savoury pancake) it was annoying. But these things happen, and Dan thought it would be easy enough to get it fixed. Except it wasn’t and it turned into a big complicated expensive thing, all the money we earned between us in those 3 random days of work went on fixing the car.

It wasn’t just a money issue though, the main stress was we are leaving for Barcelona tomorrow to get the plane to Liverpool. So it had to be fixed for that big journey, which we have already bought non-refundable car parking for. It wasn’t just a tyre that was flat the actual wheel was damaged. I don’t know a lot about cars but I imagined wheels are standard things you can just buy from anywhere. I’d say if a three year old can name the car part it’s not that specialist and should be available everywhere. But after a whole day of Dan driving round the city on the pancake tyre he still couldn’t find the kind of wheel we needed. We looked at ordering one, and it might have come in time for Barcelona but it might not have, and I didn’t want to deal with the uncertainty, so we were about to book the bus to Barcelona when we saw some guy selling the right kind of wheel second hand, so Dan managed to get over to him and buy two and fit them himself. That was the first Christmas Miracle.

The second Christmas miracle happened while he was fitting the wheel. He got an email saying he had an interview for a job with Bla bla car, (doing writing stuff not driving.) he’s now had that first interview and is through to the second round.

And the third Christmas miracle was money related. I mentioned last time Dan did this trial job for an english speaking magazine, he did 3 days a week for a month about 96 hours. He should have got minimum wage plus commission but his boss has decided that 500€ is enough. After social security contributions it comes to 4.06€ per hour, less than half of minimum wage. I was up for fighting it but Dan just wants to move on. However we have been very blessed with some unexpected money from several different places, and we’ve both been offered some extra short term work in January. So even if Dan doesn’t get the new job, January will be ok, and we have a bit more of a buffer to feel more relaxed about doing some Christmassy things, like taking our kids out to a big Christmassy market/fun fair thing today. So overall we’re feeling very grateful.

November

Back in July I wrote a blog called “losing a job and finding a job” about Dan losing the job he had when we moved here and me finding a little job teaching English. (They were in no way equivalent, Dan’s was well paid full time and mine was 4 hours a week.)

Then the last blog I wrote was about Dan starting a three month trial working for an english speaking magazine, unfortunately the trial ended after just a month because she didn’t feel like it was working. He’s not sold enough advertising, but he’s never worked in sales before and he’s not been given any training, so it’s hardly surprising. She’s now refusing to pay him the full amount which is only minimum wage anyway and is asking him for an hourly breakdown of everything he did in November. What psycho can remember what they were doing at 2pm on 3rd November? It turns out he’s actually joining a big group of people who have all had a bad experience of working there. Not a fun club to be in.

We began the month of November so full of hope, it was still sunny - I was out roller skating with Eric just wearing a t-shirt. (And bottoms of course I’m not a flasher.) Imagine roller skating in JUST a t-shirt! 

I started another new mini job at a school in Prades (towards the mountains) just on a Tuesday morning. The school has the best views, one morning all the kids were out in the playground facing the mountain doing yoga, what a cool way to start the day.

Anyway I now have that job teaching English in a School, I teach 3 old ladies (which I really enjoy) and I teach at two different Wednesday English/fun clubs. There’s no school on Wednesdays so kids are free to go to extra circular stuff like sports clubs or English. So my work is going ok, with all the planning and doing TEFL it felt full time but in terms of hours I’m being paid for it’s not really. But it felt like we had turned a corner, I had work, Dan had this new trial job everything was going to be ok.

Except it wasn’t. Without wanting to over share too much, it’s not going well at all, we’re living off our rapidly disappearing savings and something needs to change. We still have received no help from the government because we haven’t quite been poor or French long enough. The irony is they have such a good and generous system for people who lose their jobs. It’s kind of too good, good enough for people to get a contract job and then not do it well and be looked after by the state at a cost to businesses. But if you’ve not been here long enough or you’re self-employed there’s no safety net.

This week a load more things have gone wrong too, I got my first ever speeding fine for doing 86km/h in an 80km/h zone and I have to get a point on my licence and pay a fine. We did something wrong on a form and now we don’t get free health care, and the car got a flat tyre today. It’s been a mad week.

I remember feeling a bit like this at Christmas time 2016. A different situation, we had jobs but no house, we had been living with a family since May after buying a house had gone badly wrong. I was heavily pregnant and Percy was 2 years old. We had found a different house to buy but it was taking forever and there were many stressful complications. It felt like we would never move. When I was clearing away my Christmas decorations from our bedroom in January 2017 I wrote myself a little note to find the next year. If I thought I was ever going to share this I would have written more neatly. 

In 2018 as I got out the decorations and pulled out the note that I had totally forgotten about, I cried! Maybe I need to do it again this year. (Except for the fact I didn’t bring any Christmas decorations stuff here it’s all in my parents loft) I hope next Christmas we can look back on this time and feel blessed with what we have. Apart from money right now we are very lucky. We live in this incredible place, our kids are so happy here, we’re making friends and meeting people. I don’t feel like we need a lot more to be happy and when things do start looking up for us I really want to embrace life, do fun things and live in the moment. I’ve been reflecting on our time here when Dan still had his job, and even though there were loads of amazing times, where I felt very grateful, I also often thought about what times would be like if we were still in England. I went through phases of missing my job or my friends or being a comedian when I should have been just enjoying the fact I was in the south of France, not having to work because Dan’s job allowed me to spend over a year just learning French and making art. I do need to work now and that’s ok, even if we didn’t need the money it wasn’t ever the long term plan for me to not work. But when we can I want to embrace everything that’s great about our lives because there really is a lot to be thankful for.