1) what’s Dan’s new job again?
Marketing for a swimming pool company, writing google ads and stuff.
2) How is it going?
In general its going well, the work is fine, his team is very nice, but it has been a big adjustment going into an office 5 days a week and wearing office clothes, and sharing a car with me means he sometimes cycles which can take up to a hour because it’s far!
3) Can you get me a discount on a swimming pool?
No, but we could buy a pool for ourselves at cost price. (If we had a garden to put it in)
4) Are you moving house again? I thought you just moved.
Yes. We had to leave our house we were in for 3 years, because it was the end of the 3 year contract but we couldn’t rent properly because Dan didn’t have a job (and my work is self-employed) so in order to stay in the village we moved into an airbnb. But that is only until the 6th July because over the summer the landlord wants to charge holiday prices. So that’s why Dan will be living at different peoples house’s in France all summer and then I will be doing my fun UK tour. Which so far includes such exotic places as Liverpool, Birmingham, Staffordshire, Preston and Blackpool. Maybe I should get tour t-shirts made.
Infrequently asked questions.
1) can you think of a great way Dan’s new company can make more money?
Yes water slides. They already make all their pools from fibreglass, surely it makes a lot of sense to include fibreglass little water chutes as an option. Why do so many people have swimming pools in their garden here without slides? That’s the real question.
2) If you are in a couple what percentage of hair (head only) do you individually have?
I think me and Dan would currently be about 99% / 1% max 98/2. But I was quite a bald baby and he had hair so in summer 1986 we might have been 99%/ 1% the other way round. Yes it’s not relevant to anything else I’ve written but it is a question we discussed recently.
But back to real life. Although I am really glad Dan has a job now and I’m looking forward to the summer, planning for September is going to be very complicated.
We don’t have a house and we can’t rent a house in the normal way until the end of Dan’s trial period which is mid August. Also if he doesn’t pass the trial period like last time we are screwed. We can’t move back to England and get our house back for another year so it will be another year of doing random jobs and job hunting living in limbo and being poor, Bla bla bla boring. We have to just assume he is going to pass this time, I don’t have the head space to consider the alternative.
Wherever you live that’s where you have to go school in France. In general I think that’s a good principle but right now it’s making things difficult for us. We were wondering about moving village, although our village, in particular the school is nice, there is nothing there! We didn’t ever really choose it we just went there because we found a house there. So this is our chance to actually choose, before Percy starts secondary school. But you can’t just say please let Percy join a school in this town because we will try and move there one day.
Here’s the map of some of the areas in the 66 region and the dots show where you have to go to secondary school if you live in that area:
So if you live the middle of nowhere mountain village of Fontpedrouse you must go to school 32 minutes away in Prades not 25 minutes away in Font-Romeu. Are you wondering what the little blob of white is surrounded by the green a red area? That’s a little blob of Spain that got lost from big mummy Spain (I think most people would call that mainland Spain).
Me and Dan took a little recce to some different areas that are a bit nearer to his work and with a bit more going on. First we visited Saint-Esteve which is 5 minutes from Perpignan city centre. On paper it seems perfect. Halfway between where we currently live and Dan’s work, nearer to town which also means nearer the beach, loads of shops and cafes there too, but when we were wandering round I just didn’t love it. It wasn’t very pretty and I just didn’t feel it. Then we looked round Rivesaltes which was way more pretty than I imagined and very close to Dan’s work, but apart from one person I don’t know anyone who lives there and it felt just a bit far out from all the places and people I know. Dan asked me what kind of thing I was looking for and I said a place with some shops like a boulangerie and a supermarket, but that is also pretty and has a nice sense of community. I said like Thuir (you pronounce it twee-er) but Thuir is just as far if not further away from Dan’s job. Dan said that isn’t everything, we need to have a nice community and I need to feel settled there and you never know how long he will stay at the job he’s just got. So we have decided either to stay roughly where we are or move to Thuir.
But the really complicated thing is schools. If we want Percy to start a secondary school in Thuir we have to have a rental contract in Thuir. Which we can’t get till after the 3 month trial ends. So Percy might not know on his last day of school, if he is going to go to secondary school with his friends or not. We would consider buying a house here but that is also really complicated. I don’t want to sell our house in England but I’d be up for remortgaging it and taking that money out as a deposit on the house here. We definitely can’t buy a house by September so we will have to rent but normal French renting rules say that if you rent for a year your house would be furnished, which is annoying if you already own furniture. At the moment half of our stuff is in storage because we’re in a furnished airbnb but we will have to move it to a bigger storage place in the summer when we’re all living out of suitcases. I know this is first world problems but owning things is a real pain sometimes.
Next blog coming very soon will be the story of today, French Mother’s Day that ended up with a trip to A & E and 4 stitches. With gruesome photos.
But just before that we were having a lovely day….
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