Hello welcome to my first blog of 2024. It’s my 15 year blog anniversary and my 38th birthaversary.
I feel blogs are dying a little now, because there’s podcasts and TikToks and vlogs, and to be honest the page views have gone down a bit since the glory days of the 2015-2020. I’m going to carry on with it though, even if no one reads it, just because I enjoy reading it back sometimes and remembering things that I would have definitely forgotten otherwise.
According to page views you guys love a bit of tragedy though. You like it when things go well for us but you absolutely loved it when things were going badly for us a few months ago, you loved it when I was going out of my mind stuffing frying pans in public bins just before we moved countries, but you loved it the most when I had cancer in 2018.
Well sorry to disappoint but things are going ok right now. Not great, Dan is still out of work although he has a bit of temporary work for this month which we’re very grateful for. It was my birthday yesterday which I want to write about but I never got round to writing a Christmas blog so I’m going to do a quick Christmas summary:
I painted my pregnant sister’s stomach.
I had an argument with my mum about pie.
I held 2 new nieces one 7 months and one 2 weeks old.
We had a fun new year with our friends Zac and Jude.
Dan had a job interview but didn’t get it.
We went to London to see my extended family, and while we were there saw some penguins, a film about the moon and Rachel Goodsall.
We got evacuated from a canal boat because the river was flooding. I realise this sentence doesn’t make much sense, but we were sleeping in my parent’s canal boat to give others room to sleep in the house. The river was rising fast and this was our last chance to walk off the boat onto the decking and back to the house before the water went over the decking level.
My sister Sarah had a baby shower where I made a quiz. You had to guess from multiple choice questions where my kids think babies come out of, or what they think is good parenting advice. I filmed them answering these questions, see the video here if you want a laugh:
Percy and Eric’s views on birth
Ok Christmas summary done. Let’s talk about Skiing.
When I was growing up I didn’t know many people who went skiing, I’d never been and that was normal for most people I knew. I’m not trying to make out I’m from the hood, we went sailing which is arguably more elite. But when I think of snow I think of sledging. Any time it snowed I’d put on my tights under my jogging bottoms, a pair of wellies, t-shirt, jumper, coat, 2 pairs of socks and woolly gloves that got wet in a second and then made you cold. And we’d head out to the electricity substation which was our nearest hill. We’d mess around for a few hours until we couldn’t stand the cold any longer and then come back for a hot bath.
Did you know snow can be better than that? Did you know they actually make trousers that are waterproof and warm and base layers that are intended for the purpose of wearing in the cold? They make boots that are both waterproof and warm! This was a revelation to me and Dan who grew up with the exact same experience of snow. But if you are growing up in the village I now live in it is completely normal to go skiing every year. I think almost everyone will have at least tried it. Percy got to go on a government funded 3 day trip with school last year and I got to be a parent volunteer helper for a day.
I’ve always been envious of people with summer birthdays, I’d love to have a nice barbecue birthday party, but I’ve always had to do indoor things. But living here is redeeming the January birthday for me. The boys loved yesterday so much that they both asked if they could go for their birthdays (May and October) sorry boys. Eric’s now asking if he can go instead of a Christmas present, that’s how much they love it.
We live about 80-90 minutes away from the ski resort we went to (Les Angles) so it’s near enough to do a day trip which makes it more affordable. We got the beginners pass, which was 28 euros each, and actually allowed us to go on some really big slopes and using a few different ski lifts. We had to buy some skiing clothes and the goggles but most of that we’ve picked up second hand, none of us had “ski coats” we just wore our normal everyday coats. But it was actually really warm in the sun so I didn’t wear a coat hardly at all. We hired ski boots, skis, helmets and me and Dan had poles, this cost around 15 euros per person for all of it. If we stay here long term I’d love to buy this stuff so that we didn’t have to pay to hire it but for now it makes sense to hire.
I was under the impression I could ski, because on my one day as a helper parent on a school trip I didn’t fall over. I have now realised that on the school trip I didn’t really go downhill. I went on the gentlest hill you can imagine. And I was supposed to be helping the kids when they fell over, so I just assumed that I could ski and if it wasn’t for stoping to help the kids I’d be amazing.
So we got to the beginners slope which I think was still pretty steep and I thought, I’ll ski down holding Eric’s hand, he’s never done it before so he’ll need loads of help. He fell over, I fell over and I couldn’t get back up. I was completely useless at helping him because I didn’t know anything. Percy started just getting on with it and doing it with no help. Dan had to take over helping Eric and I had to try and teach myself how to do it. All I know was make a backwards “V” shape with the skis to slow down. But sometimes I got so fast and out of control I had to do an on purpose fall over to prevent just going at 60 mile a hour into a tree. But then I really struggled to get up from the ground when I was down and so sometimes just bum slid down for a bit.
I feel like this blog is long enough and I want to sleep and rest my achy old body, so I’m going to make it a two parter.
Next time…
Falling off a ski lift, going up to the top of the mountain in a cable car, taking 40 minutes to get down the mountain. Rushing back to host a dinner party, bilingual party dynamics and my rainbow cake.
No comments:
Post a Comment