I’m currently on tour, I’ve even made myself a tour t-shirt. It’s like I’ve given being homeless a rebrand but before I talk about that I need to talk about the last week of school which for us was the first few days of July.
It’s Percy’s last year of primary school, and it was a weird feeling getting to this point for many reasons. In the UK he would have another year at primary school which is a weird mind trick that’s kind of making me not accept that he’s leaving. Like this is just some kind of alternate reality, that doesn’t count. In the real world he’s still in primary school. There’s no prom like they have in Uk schools and no leavers assembly, they went on a school trip on a sailing boat all day, and then they had a graduation, where their teacher who is lovely and has been their teacher for two years, did a personal speech to every child. And a lot of the kids were really emotional. I was emotional too, we had promised Percy he could finish school here and we wouldn’t move and at times when we had no house and no job it seemed like it might be a real challenge to stick to that.
I was also really sad when he left his school in England, it was a shame to think he wouldn’t be with those friends all the way through school, and he was doing so well in school there, we weren’t sure if we were going to mess everything up by moving him. But the teachers in France were saying how they just feel so lucky to have him which is super nice to hear, especially when you sometimes see UK headlines saying how immigrants our ruining our schools. I know if half the class don’t speak english as a first language, in a deprived area it’s not the same as one foreign kid joining a village school, but it’s still nice to hear that it’s been a positive for the teachers.
But he’s done so well with the language, he’s completely caught up with the reading and writing levels of the other kids. He’s super good at maths too, he told me he has a “black belt” in maths. And I laughed in his face, but then he explained how they did this kind of test and the highest anyone else got was purple belt which is two levels below black. I hope he never brings up his black belt in maths in a fight though.
On the last day all the kids in school form a kind of tunnel and the school leavers walk out through it and all high 5 the other kids. It’s so cute. As an end of term treat we went straight to the inflatables on the lake for a hour of mucking about jumping in water, going down slides and attempting to run over wobbly floating stepping stones.
The next day was a boring day of packing. I had spent the week moving all our stuff into storage in the loft of our air bnb for our return in late August. Dan took us to Carcassone airport for our flight to Manchester. On the way we drove past a pretty serious wild fire and Dan had to drive back a different way which took almost twice as long.
The flight was annoying , it was delayed and then when we finally got on we had to wait for the plane to get fuel and then in Manchester we had to wait absolutely ages for our bags. We were next to another family in baggage who’s kids were losing it, it was around 9:30 or 10 at night UK time, even later french time, and we managed to engage this kid in a game of travel connect 4 to kill the time which was nice. Not as nice as if our bags were there and we could leave but it is nice to make the wait less boring if it’s possible.
The first week I was with my parents but I kept doing trips to see other friends, in that first week I went to Sheffield to see Ruth and Birmingham to see Bex, Ruth and Bex are my only 2 childhood friends that I’m still in touch with properly and it’s lovely to see them both with their own kids now between the 3 of us we have 7 boys and no girls. Here’s some funny quote from their kids:
Me: what kind of things do you like to play with?
Ruth’s 3 year old: I like to play with wheat.
Bex’s 10 year old: we listen to a podcast when we go to sleep, but if we’re naughty we just have to listen to the sound of rain.
That kid Zech got on particular well with my boys he was very encouraging, he taught them how to make stuff on Minecraft and then said to Percy “that’s so good for your first time bro”
Me and Bex grew up as next door neighbours and sometimes I wish our boys could grow up next door neighbours too.
The weather was great in that first week and I got to go out on my parents river a lot. As a birthday present from my mum to my Dad, Dad had half an hour on a jet ski, and he thought it would be a bit boring on his own so lucky me got to also go on a jet ski and the boys rode on the back. It was a lot of fun and even 20 miles an hour feels really fast.
I’ve been doing a lot of shopping as well, shops are just not that good in my bit of France so I much prefer to buy clothes here, and I still get the majority of my underwear from M&S. I’m also making the most of english food that is hard to get in France. So far I’ve been enjoying Mini Chedders, cherry Bakewells, sausage rolls, scotch eggs, and pick and mix - a healthy diet.
This week I’ve been staying in a very lovely house of a friend who is away on holiday but lives in Liverpool. And yesterday I invited everybody I know to a picnic (if you didn’t get an invite sorry it wasn’t intentional) But I’ll write about that next time.
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| The tour t-shirt that I spent ages making but I’m a bit embarrassed to wear. |
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