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!