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.