May

So much has happened since I last blogged, its hard to remember the funny and interesting details and not just write a list of things we did, but today I had to act out squirty cream to the shop assistant in a supermarket. I said “crémé” and made the noise and did the action of pressing down. She got it imediatly and I was relived because if she didn’t get that I would have to start acting out all the risqué things you can use squirty cream for. Turns out I did know the word actually it’s “chantilly”.

Another funny moment from this week was when I had to tell Eric to “stop punching the cheese” a sentence you never thought you’d need to say.

Percy has been away on a 3 day school trip to the mountains wher he learnt some survival skills, like how to make an arrow from a stick to hunt for animals. I feel like he should learn the skills to cook a simple pasta dish or to phone for a pizza before using the skills to hunt a deer. Apart from if you volunteered to be on a reality TV show, when would you ever need to hunt for food?

But the useful teaching didn’t stop there, he also learnt how to tell from a nibbled pinecone if the squirrel that was eating it was left handed or right handed. I’m really glad we moved here and he’s not learning useless stuff like the wives of King Henry the 8th. His favourite part of the trip was the “boom”, the disco he went to that didn’t start until 9pm, that’s very French in my mind.

Dan and Eric have both had birthdays since my last blog. I took Dan on a trip to the wave surf cafe as a birthday treat, it’s indoor surfing. Which looked super fun, we 3 just watched but it was made much more fun by the fact it was him and 4 10 year olds in the group. They asked him if he was the teacher!

Eric had an Olympic themed party, which was a cool theme and I enjoyed doing the decorations. Percy made a quiz, but his love of rule keeping did slightly overshadow what was meant to be a fun activity. I  had to keep reminding him that it’s not an exam, it’s just a bit of fun. He insisted on marking the quizzes and then wanted to read out the results starting with the person in last place. He didn’t seem to get that just announcing the winner and giving them sweets was a better idea. All French children in school have been given a special Olympic 2 Euro coin and they agreed it would be nice to keep it. But Eric has no will power. Every time he seen anything for sale he wants to trade in the coin.

It was cool that Dan’s sister Lydia came over for a few days around Eric’s birthday, I’m not saying we compare all our guests, but she’s probably the best guest we’ve had. Being just one single adult gives you an advantage. We had a lot of good quality time and deep chats that we rarely got even in England. On one day me and her went on a waterfall pastry trek which was lovely.

Lydia at Eric’s party

The waterfall pastry hike

May in France is full of weird bank holidays. The 1st of may is always a bank holiday even if it’s a Sunday. Then there’s a bank holiday Wednesday and Thursday where the kids always get the Friday off school too and so every French person tries to get that Friday off. Now that Dan is in a French company he was able to get that day off and we went out our first big France road trip. We’ve been to Barcelona and Andorra and Marseille before, but they are all within 3 hours. This time we went all the way to the Atlantic coast.

We shared the driving, but not evenly. After Dan had been driving for 2 hours I took over and missed a turning, because my satnav was connected to the headphone Percy was using. This plus traffic jams resulted in a massive detour that meant the 45 minutes I gave to the team effort of driving actually didn’t improve our ETA at all. Guess how much it costs in tolls to get to that side of France and back? Over 80 Euros!

We had a nice time though. We went to San Sebastián where I discovered the perfect place for a giant game of guess who. 

Imagine people in these windows they are also facing another building the same so you could have two boards, then you’d say “does he have a beard” “no” and all the bearded men have to go behind their shutters.

San Sebastián 

And after San Sebastián we went to Biaritz which was a cool surfy place that we weren’t really cool enough for. Tides and waves were a nice novelty for us. There aren’t tides on the med, you can just sit on one bit of the beach all day. I always love the bit of James Acaster comedy when he say the moon is responsible for tides and periods. That’s an odd combo right? I feel like since the invention of the pill there’s really no need for anyone to have periods anymore but we need to invent a pill for tides. I just think we’re better without them, they cause trouble, just like periods. Watch James Acaster make some funnier observations about it here.

Biarritz 

Biarritz, was a cool place with some beautiful views but it was pretty busy. If I had a ton of money I would have enjoyed buying stuff from all the cool surfy shops, there were some beautiful things, but I don’t think I could ever justify spending 90€ on a bikini. We took two days to travel back sleeping in a little airbnb an hour east of Biarritz and then travelling to Toulouse for a night. On the way to Toulouse we stopped at a botanical gardens in Tarbes. It was a beautiful park with peacocks. The boys, especially Percy, were fascinated watching them and I enjoyed doing a comedy voiceover for what they were saying. It’s hard not to when a peacock is twerking and a peahen is totally uninterested but a pigeon is definitely up for it. Here’s a cartoon version of the kind of things I was embarrassing Dan by saying:

Dan particularly didn’t like it when I do my best builders impression, saying “show us you arse” to peacock, and Eric asked “why is mummy saying show us your arms?”

We continued our journey to Toulouse only to find we couldn’t get in to our accommodation. After a lot of messing around and speaking to the owner who was up a mountain it turns out the previous people who were meant to leave at 10am hadn’t left and the cleaner who was also meant to arrive in the morning was late. And we also found out the flat was next to a very noisy night club that makes noise until 4am. So I can’t say we had the best time in Toulouse. The best bit was the fancy art shop where I found some beautiful  pastels which I was trying to think of a way justify when I remembered it was French Mother’s Day, woohoo. That was last weekend and I got to use them at the beach.

So over all overall a fun trip, and I’m excited to explore more of France and some nearby countries over the next few years. In July we’re going to the borders of Switzerland, but I also really want to go to the Italian lakes, Corsica and Portugal.

After the trip I’ve just been working teaching English and making my colouring book of the 66 region. I finished the last page today so I’m just working on the front cover and the map, and one day soon it will be a real thing.

Last weekend me and Percy popped into a little fete in a nearby village and he got a free donkey ride round the village, which he absolutely loved! He’d never been on a donkey or a horse before and he said it was like a gentle fairground ride. This weekend i’m going to a hippy painting day on the beach at sunrise, it’s a workshop lead by my good friend Flick.