I’m nearing the final week of my 6 week tour, and my people count is up to 96 people that I have intentionally seen. (This does include the children of friends, some of which I had little interaction with.)
Dan just arrived in the UK and we will now be spending the final week in Preston to see his family. Unfortunately I’ve already seen them all, so they won’t count as extra people and I’m unlikely to make it to 100 people which would have been cool. One of his sisters is pregnant so maybe I can count her as 2 people? If she gave birth a few weeks early and it’s surprise quads I could reach my goal. But a surprise quad premature birth is probably not what you want at a family BBQ to be honest.
Since I last blogged I’ve been to a fake Centre Parcs near Blackpool called Ribby Hall, with my extended family. They had a little zoo and a crazy golf and a swimming pool and boating lake on site. The highlight of the zoo was the anteater, such a mad creature that poked its long nose through the bars while we and another family just laughed at it.
The weekend after that we went to my cousin Lauren’s wedding. The boys didn’t come, I dropped them off at Dan’s parents. Weddings are kind of boring for kids and kids have been known to ruin weddings. Hopefully it was nice for my parents in law to have some time with the boys. The wedding was very beautiful, very fancy compared to my own wedding which accidentally resembled a school fete. But very emotional and personal as well. I didn’t really know much about my cousin’s partner and how they got together, but it was a lovely story. They were friends at uni and then housemates for years before they got together. Just a beautiful day in a lovely venue with very nice food, and some fun dancing at the end. It was nice to catch up with family.
It was easy to see the Marshall descendants because we all had the same curly hair. It’s like they didn’t even need to ask, “bride or groom?” the hair gave it away.
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| Curly hair boomers |
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| Curly hair millennials |
It was really nice catching up with other family there too, particularly two other cousins who were there, and are just both really interesting people. One of them, Marie, I’m trying to persuade to get into stand up. Whenever she tells stories they’re really good, and some stuff in her life is not going well right now, which is the perfect time to get into stand up. No one wants to hear stories when your life is all going great.
I got to see my old housemate from my uni days Josh, with his fairly newly adopted boys who were a similar age to mine and got on well. It was super nice to see him as a Dad. I’ve always seen him around kids (working with, them not just lurking in playgrounds) so it was lovely and very natural to see him smashing being a Dad. He had been at a festival in the south and drove up in a big van full of crazy props and circus stuff, to where he lives near the Lake District, and stopped off on the way to visit me for a BBQ at my parents house.
After that I did a trip to the North East. I saw my sister in Leeds and my friend Lydia who got the train down from Gateshead to York with her two kids, aged 5 and 3. We went to the railway museum where you could see some big old trains from the olden days and there was one you could go inside, the Japanese bullet train.
Eric was unfortunately feeling unwell, even though he was fine when we left that morning. He had a temperature, said he was very sleepy and wanted to go home, which would have been a massive shame given that my friend had made the effort to come all the way to York for this day. Obviously we didn’t have calpol on us but Lydia did have paracetamol. Which we crushed up and put in a ham sandwich. After a lot of bribery Eric ate a bit of the disgusting ham sandwich and he did improve a bit. We didn’t see a lot of York, but we did find a canal boat that was selling ice creams, which is fun but not as fun as if an ice cream was selling canal boats.
It was nice to hang out with my sister Jo in Leeds, but I can’t say it was relaxing. They have a two year old and a four year old and are in the middle of house renovations. The boys really loved their collection of board games though and wanted to play some very complex ones, which was not easy in a house of tiny people and renovations. One highlight was getting to make pancakes dressed as a shark. I didn’t have a dressing gown and the shark was the perfect over pyjama outfit.
I’ve been enjoying seeing people in their own homes and seeing how different people parent and asking couples what they do for fun, and what they do on weekends in their family. The boys have also noticed that not everyone does things the same as us. Especially that lots of kids are allowed to get up earlier than them.
On the way back from Leeds we went to Dan’s sister’s baby shower. It was really nice and different to other baby showers I’ve been to. She had it in a community hall and she had a big table where you could make something out of clay and another table of flowers where you could make a bouquet of flowers to take with you, and some very delicious cakes. I tried to make a clay pot that was a cylinder but the hole in the middle was star shaped. It accidentally ended up being the perfect size and shape for an ash tray.
My next little road trip was to Staffordshire to see Abi and Jon and their girls who are the same age as my boys. We hung out a lot when they were little and we both were in Liverpool, and for a while we had a childcare arrangement. Both the older kids were in school and so I looked after their youngest with Eric a day a week, and then they had Eric a day a week so we could both have some child free time in the week. I highly recommend getting a deal like that if you’re in the toddler stage. It’s not twice the work to have an extra kid for a few hours, it actually kind of makes you put a bit more effort into doing some nice activities with them and your kid gets to bond with another kid and then you get time off, to do things like sit in a silent house.
Unfortunately my boys can now hardly remember their girls. Eric does have a great memory for what toys other families have though and asked me are they the family with the lego train, which they were. When we first arrived Abi said the neighbours were having a party next door and we were invited. So this was the second stranger’s birthday party we would be crashing since arriving in England (see my previous blog for the story of the first one). This was a BBQ with a bucking bronco and the family were so lovey and welcoming, getting us burgers and trying to speak to us in French, because initially they thought we were French. Bad French in a Birmingham accent is my absolute favourite kind of French, because it really makes me feel better about my own level of French.
Since moving to the midlands Abi and Jon have got a big fluffy dog called Dolly who we took for a mad long late night walk through the forest that was really fun. If it was just me and the kids they would have got bored and moaned straight away, but with kids their own age they loved it.
I noticed all the families I’ve visited with kids the same age as ours are calling their parents “Mum” and “Dad” now not “Mummy” and “Daddy” and they just said it happened naturally. But I think it’s not happening naturally with my kids because they don’t see other English kids, so I’m intentionally trying to phase out Mummy and Daddy now. If you get to an adult and you still say Mummy and Daddy then you’re posh. I don’t know why this is true but it is. Why don’t we all call everyone by their actual names that is a lot more logical. It makes absolutely no sense when you’re in a park and someone shouts, “Mum” and everyone looks round.
I was really pleased to get a visit from Helen and Esther while I was at my parents. They are both good friends that had visited me in France and they’re both paddle board kind of people. Helen sometimes even does yoga on a paddle board and they both swim in ridiculously cold water for fun. When I started planning this trip I was happy that I would be able to see 5 of my 6 bridesmaids. Helen was the one I wasn’t going to get to see because she lives all the way down south and it is far, but it was really lovely of her to make the trek up north. Next time it’s definitely my turn to go south.
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| Helen and Esther |
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| Me and Helen |
I picked Dan up from Liverpool airport on Saturday afternoon, squeezing in seeing one more Liverpool family (the Ravens) that morning. They have 3 boys who are giant compared to my midget sons. Their youngest is 5 and was only a tiny bit smaller than Eric, who is 8, and their oldest, who is 11, was loads taller than me.
I’d been apart from Dan for 5 weeks, the longest I’d been apart since we’ve been married. To be honest I didn’t really miss him on week one, I was seeing all the other people that I miss all the time. But I did really miss him by the end. No one gets me like he does, and things just feel a bit weird like I’m not quite a full person.
We’re now in Preston. You never really expect to be holidaying in Preston, but it’s sort of the unexpected side effect of loving a Mediterranean holiday destination so much that you move there. Prepare to take your holidays in weird places forever.
Today we ate a full english and went to charity shops, that’s really the top things you can do while holidaying in Preston. Tomorrow we’ll take a day trip to the lake district because that’s the other good thing you can do in Preston: Go somewhere else.
Next week we’ll be doing more of living in random other people’s houses, but in France.
