Hanuary

Last blog I wrote about my big birthday party and then arriving back in this random village in France that I accidentally moved to because people tell you to follow your dreams and take every opportunity. But they don’t follow it up with specific advice about what to do if you subsequently find yourself in a very cold and broken house, trying to teach English grammar as a dyslexic. 

Last time I said how we worked out that our reversible air con was on snowflake setting and if we changed it to sunshine setting it would heat the room. So we do have one room that we can heat. But we are doing all our living in this one room, I’ve hardly slept in my own bedroom this month. And I’m like a chain smoker but with hot water bottles, I have my early evening one, then I sometimes make a fresh one for bedtime and then one night we were both sleeping down here on the sofa bed, but around 2am I decided to go to our room to be further away from Dan’s snoring but I had to re-make a new hot water bottle because I knew the current one was only lukewarm and I did not want to go to bed with a Luke. I want something piping hot in bed with me.

Apart from the cold, January has had some lovely moments. On my real birthday I had to work in the morning at a school and in the evening I was also teaching, but in the afternoon I had two friends over for chocolate orange cake and art. 

 

We were doing gelli printing and I got to use my new fancy crayons! The last time I got new fancy crayons I think I was 11, I got a massive set of 50 in a big tin from WHSmiths from my granny and grandad and I still have most of them. But I wanted to upgrade to what my friend described as the “Rolls Royce of crayons”.

During this little craft time I had a kind of brief phone interview with a teacher from a sixth from college. It was in French and I put it on speaker phone and my two friends who are both not French but very good speakers of French were whispering things and writing things down that I should say which was very cute. (I didn’t get the job though.)

 I also, just days before that, had an interview for an online job which was probably the worst interview I’ve ever had. The first half was in French and I can only talk like a 5 year old in french. The second half was in English and I thought, “great this will be easy now.” But then he asked me “what is the difference between the present perfect tense and the simple past tense?” I wanted to just say “ok I haven’t got the job bye” He tried to help me by saying it’s the difference between saying “I ate” and “I have eaten”. This is not the correct answer, but I would say there’s no difference. They both mean you’re not hungry right now. Anyway he said I can still do online teaching if I want but only to a basic level. My actual teaching where I get to make it fun is going fairly well at the moment so I’m not sure if I will do that job.

Two days after my birthday I was able to take a day off and Dan did too and we went skiing for 4 hours while the kids were in school. The timing just works to drop them off, drive up the mountain, get the discounted 4 hour pass and be back in time for pick up. We had a great time, the last time we skied before that was last winter, when Dan didn’t have a job and it looked very likely we’d be going back to the UK. I remember thinking then, “we might never come back here”. So it was really lovely to be back in the snowy mountains again. 

That night we also went out with another couple Sam and Emma. Sam was celebrating his 30th so we made it a joint 70th.

Last weekend Dan was away in Morocco doing a half marathon with two friends, because men can’t just phone each other up and talk about their feelings, they have to go to another continent and put themselves through some kind of endurance before they can say how they’re feeling about life. 

Meanwhile I didn’t do a great job of surviving without him. It was a bad weekend for feminism. On the Sunday instead of going to the French church that we sometimes go to, I thought we’ll go to the English one because it will be easier for me. I was wrong. The English church had just moved locations to a random village quite far away that I’d never been to before. I was running a bit late anyway, but as we were leaving I couldn’t lock to the door, it’s always been a pain that door, but with recent heavy rain it swelled up and after trying for a while I gave up and messaged my landlord to say could he have a go at locking it if he was around. 

Then I was following the Satnav to this random village very near Spain going down the auto route and I was confused as to whether I was at the right junction to turn off at or not. Then way too late I realised I was about to go through the barriers for continuing to Spain. No one was directly behind me so I did a really long reverse back to the turn off while people stared at me. We eventually found the new location for the church which is a mad old round house thing, some of which would make an excellent roller disco venue. Unfortunately the bit I had to park in was very muddy due to all the rain and my car got stuck! My wheels were spinning round and round and an 82 year old man had to drive it out for me. 

We got back to find my landlord had been round to sand down the door to make it easier to lock but he sanded too much off so there’s now a big chunk missing from the bottom of the door. And then this week the glass broke and Dan patched it up with cardboard, but so much cold is getting in.

Next time I will write about going on the church ski trip this weekend, I’m sure you can’t wait!

 

The Big Party

Loads to write about, the super highs of seeing almost everyone you love followed by being back in a frozen house in a random village, but first Christmas…

It was pretty typical of all the Christmases we’ve had since we moved. Saw my family, slept on the canal boat, saw Dan’s family, new year with friends, got a new niece or nephew. There needs to be a gender free word for that, like the word “siblings,” not because I don’t know the gender. This year we got a nephew from Dan’s sister Lydia, last year it was a nephew from my sister Sarah, the year before that we got a niece from Dan’s sister Rebekah and the year before that we got a niece from my sister Jo. Christmas time is when we meet new baby “niecephews,” I wonder what we’ll get next year.

New baby Lowell was very lovely, but it was also great to get to know the previous years babies, the Christmas 2024 baby (Murphy) is really into the alphabet, all day long he sings it and he’s not even 2 yet. Christmas 2023 baby (Ada) was only just born in Christmas 2023. I saw her a little in the summer and when I saw her this Christmas I said, “hello you probably don’t remember me” and she said back, “this is auntie Han!” Which took us all by surprise, not only that she remembered my name but the way she added the “This is…” as if we were at a grown up networking event and she were introducing me. My mother-in-law looks after her and speaks French to her, one day a week so she can understand and speak a little French and we were encouraging my boys to talk to her in french, so she can be one of those smug bilingual adults that never cried over verb tables. Jealous. What can I say about Christmas baby 2022 (Miri)? Adorable curls and a feisty attitude? She’s a lot of fun, I think if we were peers we’d be good mates.

The last day in England was a big party for my 40th, which is not until the 13th, but seeing as my last birthday was having 3 people round and 2 of those people have now moved away, I thought it would be sad not to see my English friends. One of my favourite birthdays was my last one in England when I went to a roller disco. At that point I had not skated since I was a kid and was wobbly to start. I had zero expectations. I’d never been to that venue before, I just told people to book a ticket if they wanted to come which meant it was zero stress and zero cost and it ended up being the most fun ever, in this very cool nightclub like place in Liverpool with a food truck, so people could get food if they wanted. It was so fun and everyone loved it and wanted to go back other times.

Then when I moved to France and saw there was a roller skating club in the next village I joined and got a lot better at skating. So when I was thinking about the party I wanted the exact same thing as before but to hire the place so it was all my friends. Unfortunately it was already hired on that day and I couldn’t be very flexible with other days. Then I found this place in Wigan. The positives were the space was massive, but negatives were it did have very homemade youth club vibes and it was only available from 4:30-6:30. It seemed not socially acceptable to not invite kids at that time. I do like kids, and I wanted to see my friends kids but I was worried about it becoming like our leaving party which didn’t work at all, the kids went a bit crazy and fought over the helium ballons. 

In the end it worked out great. Some families came just for the skating and we had cake and I got some Dominoes delivered there. And then other people who didn’t have kids, or ditched their kids, came skating and then stayed out for drinks. I was lucky enough to have my kids there for the skating and then my parents took them back so I could stay out drinking and then sleep over in Wigan. I had the best night. I wish the skating could have gone on longer but it was hard to know what to do. I wanted to chat to people (there were two people there who I haven’t seen since 2018) but then sometimes when I was chatting to people I was thinking, “you’re coming out later so I should be more strategic and only talk to the people who are not coming out, unless we’re skating at the same time as chatting.” I don’t like to think like that, but when the party is only 2 hours and we had to get in eating it was hard not to. 

My friend Stevie smuggled in some mulled wine (my favourite drink) in a flask. It was a lovely reminder of the not so lovely time in 2020 when we were all going a bit mad home schooling. We used to meet in the woods and let the kids run round while we drank mulled wine in a flask on a portable picnic bench, just so we could talk to someone outside our bubble.

I made a speech that I put on Facebook and now realise might be a bit offensive to everyone I know in France, talking about how those friends are irreplaceable. I started a lot of sentences with “no one in France has ever...” and then listed a load of mad things I’ve done with friends, like smoke parsley or laminate ham. There were many more examples I would have like to have said like, “no one in France has ever held a fish tank full of fish in the passenger seat of a car, as I drove, when I’d only just passed my test.” I should have done some serious ones too like, “no one in France has ever come round and held a crying baby for an hour while I slept.” It’s pretty hard for people in France to do that, as we didn’t bring any babies there. But for balance I will say no one in England has ever asked me to film them going on a sort of date with their own painting as art. That was one of the most joyous days I’ve had here with my friend Flick, who is now in Paris.

Flick taken her painting for a swim after having shared an ice cream with it and danced with it rolled up.

I was very impressed with my whole family skating. Eric is really good, he goes to my skating club too and did 105 laps during the party! Percy has virtually never done it but did really well. My Dad used to skate in the 70’s and he’s been skating with me before, he even came to my roller dance class with me in France once. But I have never seen my mum skate! She said she wasn’t going to and then a friend persuaded her to and she did it! Very proud of her. It was lovely to see her going round with my Dad. Next I want to get them both skiing. 

The drinks after were nice because I got to chat to loads of different people, my school run Woolton friends, my sisters, and then a lot of people from my student days and early 20’s. The days when we all lived in walking distance from one another and had loads of free time to hang out. It was like going back in time, because now we live all over the country and world. One friend, Joy, who I haven’t seen since 2018, lives in LA but was in London, and she drove up with young kids, dropped them with family in Liverpool and then came to Wigan for the party! That is impressive commitment. The after party was unfortunately a bit loud with live music followed by darts, so we did have to shout a bit to be heard. As people were leaving I heard people saying “see you at Hannah’s 50th!” Other people really need to arrange big get-togethers too! Don’t just wait for another 10 years. But yes obviously I will do something big for it.

For the after after party my friend Helen, who had driven from Wiltshire, rented an airbnb and we all stayed over. It was nice to sit in a quieter place and just enjoy a little gang reunion after all these years. We even phoned Will, who was part of the gang back in the day and our best man. He happened to be on a train in New York and we had a nice catch up. That night my heart was full. But then I slept the worst I’ve ever slept! Less than one hour I think. My head was just buzzing with everything that had happened. I remember that as being a downside of doing my comedy night every month, after I had done it whether it went well or not, I always overplayed everything in my head. And one of the things that went round in my head was that I had forgotten to do my best skating move, it’s a sort of spin.

In the morning we had to be up early to go back to my parents house to pack and then get to the airport. We flew Liverpool to Barcelona and then drove up. It wasn’t fun getting back to my freezing cold house, you can literally see your own breath. And when you open the fridge it’s not any colder.  I had loads of boring things that needed doing and we had no food in. The kids were back at school the next day, but Percy ended up taking the Monday off because he was just too tired. It’s hard to go back to reality but I keep reminding myself that everyone has, those people aren’t still skating round having fun in Wigan without me, and I will see them again, just maybe not all at once for a long time. It is exhausting trying to stay long distance friends with that many people but you are all too good to give up on. Thanks for making my birthday great.

View from my bedroom window this week

P.S. I spoke to the landlord about heating options, we have no central heating and just use an electric heater. He said the air con is reversible, I said we’ve tryed it and it didn’t work. Then he told me I had it on snowflake setting, and then he switched it to sunshine setting and actually it heats the downstairs really well! I can’t believe I didn’t know this sooner!