Best Days of Your Life

Hey, I thought I'd write a blog about my recent comedy show... if you came thank you so much, you were the best most loveliest audience in the world. You laughed a lot, which either means I was funny or you're just super lovely friends that would pay to fake laugh for a hour just because you care about me. Both options are positive so I don't really mind.

 I tried to video the performance but although the record button was pressed unfortunately the camera which we set up on a tripod had already turned itself off by then so nothing got recorded :( sorry Lydia in Australia. I'll have to do a world tour and come to you. Anyway this blog is kind instead of a video.

So a while ago (maybe 6 months ago) I signed up for a slot at the Liverpool Comedy Festival's "funny looking fringe". That name constantly brought back painful flashbacks of when I used to have my very own funny looking fringe (why mum why??!!). Once I got over that I could start preparing material for the hour long show. I'd only ever done about 12 minutes of comedy at any one time before, so this was quite a challenge for me. I decided that the theme of my show would be my school days... because I thought that would be fairly relatable to everyone. Although some more than others, it works best if you were a similar age to me and British. This is the flyer I made.

The blurb is:
School days are the best days of your life, if you die at 16 and can’t remember before 4.

Blending the everyday with the surreal, comedian Hannah Jones remembers surviving school in the 90s as a dyslexic ginger.

“Whimsical” and “lovely” comedy, this is group therapy for those who were never cool enough to sit on the back seat of the bus. 

But guess what, someone who regularly sat on the back of the bus came... Danni McGuinness the show was not written for the likes of you!

I had a bit of a set made from things that remind me of school

and also some fake motivational posters because my secondary school was big on that once. Mine said:

Together 

Everyone

Achieves 

Mediocrity

There is no "I" in team, unless you're dyslexic.

There's no such word as "cantywantydodar"

You can achieve anything if you have rich parents.

Believe in yourself, 'cause everyone else thinks your an idiot.

Dan introduced the show in character as a strict head master. With "settle down it's you're own time you're wasting etc."

The show was around 50% new material. I got in some of my old classic stuff like eskimo muslims (about how hard it is for them in summer time Ramadan), the get your own back story (the one where I attempted to murder my teacher), my opposite songs (Think of a song title and then make every word the opposite word e.g Bye bye miss ameriacan pie = hello Mr Iraqi salad).

I also did a lot of new stuff... A whole new bit about sex ed and how in my school only set 1s were deemed sensible enough to put condoms on cucumbers, which is natural selection in reverse. I had a new bit about P.E. the horrors of the bleep test and sports day, how I'd set my sights on being an Olympic egg and spooner only to discover that wasn't a thing.

I had a new joke about king henry v111. 

Did you know he invented tinder?... Well not exactly. He invented the concept of swipe left and the head is gone. (It works better with some actions)

One of my favourite new bits was about when I had to keep a dream diary for psychology A-level. In this section I acted out 3 genuine dreams I had with some help from Dan and some homemade costumes. So there was the dream that I was a pond and a horse was drinking me. Then the dream that putting sweetcorn in your armpits was a new way of taking drugs....this was kind of funny coz we obviously hadn't practised with the actual sweetcorn before the really performance so it got a bit messy with sweetcorn water going everywhere. The third dream was the most surreal and most time intensive costume wise:

I dreamt that my husband was the Suez canal, but I was still me, obvs. So we had the kind of conversation you would have in that position:

You're a canal

Not just any old canal, I'm the Suez canal.

You're the Suez canal but I'm still me?

Yeah is that ok?

I kind of liked you how you were before?

You did say you'd love me whatever.

But this is not really what I imagined when I said that. Am I going to have to move house? Because I'm guessing you'll have to stay where you are because you're a major trade route and everything.

Yep?

And can we still have children?

Want to give it a go?

I'm sure all my married blog readers have had similar conversations with their spouses about these kind of marital issues. It's tough but you've made a promise so you've just got to work at it.

I did a bit about romance, I read out my first valentines card from 1996 (age 10)...

Then I read out this bit from my diary of feb 2000. I'm just including this for my school friends non of whom could see it because they're not in Liverpool, but they got a mention. 

"14th February

Today is valentines day and I actually got a valentines present! (I haven't had one since year 5) Abbie knew who it's from but she won't tell me but she says it's real which is surprising because most of our class have fake ones from me and Gillian....

February 15th 

I've found out who sent me the ballon because he told Abbie, Abbie told Lauren, Lauren told Helen and they kept it a secret for ages and wouldn't tell me which is out of order because it's nothing to do with them. Anyway I finally bribed them to tell me but I wish they hadn't because when you don't know you can have some hope but when you know it's Adam it's really boring."

I hope Adam doesn't end up seeing this but if he does...sorry, I wish you all the best, thanks for the balloon.

It was great being part of the festival, I went to see a lot of other shows I particularly liked Shaved Dog and Geins Family Gift Shop. Gav did a great job of organising the whole thing. He's like the mother hen of the Liverpool alternative comedy scene or slightly more offensively "the fat controller of comedy". I didn't say that, that was cheeky Rob Bond.

P.s thanks to my brother in law Josh for some of these photos (he took the good ones)

House News!

In case you didn't know we have been sort of homeless since May when Move Residential and some rubbish solicitors and an annoyed seller all contributed to us becoming homeless (read about it here) since then we have been living at the Langston homeless shelter (read about it here).

Over the summer, especially on our holiday to France, we had a lot of time to think about houses and adventures and what we want from life. It was such a lovely holiday. We stayed for a bit with Dan's French grandparents who live in northern France near Rennes.

Mamie and Papy (the grandparents) are some of the most content people we know. They sit out in their garden which is like a little wood and read all afternoon. Dan said how much he would love to have that French life style....I pointed out that this is a bit unrealistic, they are retired and it's the summer. Imagine us living in France in the winter, Dan working every day, me not being able to speak French and being away from friends.

I could learn French and we could move there but it is quite a massive commitment. We'd have to be there long term we couldn't just go there for 2 years and then sack it off that would be pointless. Apparently it takes 4 years to learn a language properly.  So then we had this idea about buying some sort of caravan or motorhome. I mean a VW retro split-screen campervan would obviously be a lot cooler but probably a lot less practical. We spoke to an old cycling couple who had a motorhome and they were saying if you can afford one while your kids are young they are a brilliant investment.

We started thinking about all the possibilities, like if Dan could earn money through the invisible in the air internet instead of the in a pc in a grey office internet, then we could go wherever we liked. Then my sister Sarah started showing me youtube clips of a family in America with 9 children who have a massive RV and travelled round America for 18 months home schooling them. I mean that looked crazy, but lets say in 3 or 4 years time when we might have two kids out of the baby stage. I could travel round Europe for a bit.

So then we booked ourself onto the camping and caravaning show at the NEC because we're secretly 60. Then we started looking at cheaper houses with big drives so that we could afford to get a caravan and have somewhere to put it. And guess what we found one! This week we had an offer accepted on a house in Gateacre/ Belle Vale.

It's got 4 beds, (and by that I mean it's got 4 bedrooms and no beds at all) a dining room, a lounge, a kitchen and utility room and a big garden. It's very near Gateacre, a lovely old villagey part of Liverpool, and it's also near Belle Vale a not so lovely scally area of Liverpool. But the fact it's officialy in Belle Vale is why it was affordable for us. It needs a bit of work but nothing major like if you were blind it would be fine i.e. no holes in roofs but a lot of bumpy wall paper and grubby looking carpets. If you want to be nosy here's the link: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-55798933.html

So either we could do it up and make it look nice, or we could live with it looking a bit shabby without the chic and buy a caravan type thing.

Hopefully it will all work out this time and we'll all live happily ever after and I won't have to send anymore sculptures depicting my anger to estate agents.

P.S Here's a few of my fave holiday snaps:

22 Months

Hey invisible friends, it's been a while, how are you? Right, good, now let me talk about me. It sounds rude but thats kind of what blogging is right? Just a big one way MSN conversation except the other person can only respond after you've said everything you wanted to say.

Today I was going to talk about my chatterbox son because he's just got to the stage where he can say things that are funny. It's sort of like living with a foreigner, but cuter. Percy is 22 months and his English is a bit better than my french (I got a C at GCSE). He's just started doing little sentences up to about 5 words. He's only recently started using joining words like "in and "the". His most impressive and obscure sentence that he says quite often is "Mummy and Daddy share the car". We said that to him once as he questioned why I was driving, and it's just become this weird thing he said. Today he even said "Harriet Mummy and Daddy share the car" and "Harriet Daddy holiday in the car". (This wasn't true though, Harriet's Daddy just went to work in the car, although sometimes when you have children work can feel like a holiday, so maybe that was a profound statement.)

If you don't know, Harriet is one of many little girls in Percy's life but one he sees a lot of at the moment as me and Abi (Harriet's mum), are doing a baby swap. So, I had a day off and I will have both little ones later in the week. They have a lot of fun together.

Anyway here are some things Percy has said:

"All done sleep time" at 5:55am
When I was chopping his nails: "mummy chop the Percy"
While eating lunch "where's the pineapple!" there was no context to this he hasn't even see pineapple for about a year.
Describing his first experience of death: "woodlouse, oh no, Harriet stamping. another one" = I found a woodlouse, Harriet accidentally stood on it, I cried, we went to find another one.
On a house viewing he said "wow" in every room. Maybe he should be an estate agent.

We're enjoying living with the Langsons, we've had some good banter with them. Today I gave a rubber horse's head to their four year old and told her to wear it when answering the door.

Last weekend was a weekend of seeing old friends. We went to a wedding of one of my oldest friends Charlotte.

Me and Charlotte back in the day

Charlotte and Sam

I saw my friend Rachel and her brand new adorable baby Violet Emily and probably my bestest friend of all Bex and her band new adorable baby Andrew Jace.

We are going to France tomorrow. We will spend a few days with Dan's family and then we will go and do some camping with Rachel and my family. It's not normal camping though, it's posh camping in a caravan with wifi and a dishwasher and everything.

P.S. The most ridiculous thing I have ever said about France was this: "After brexit will France go back to using the Franc?
To be fair, I knew it was ridiculous as soon as I had said it.

The Langstons Homeless Shelter

Last time I blogged me and Percy had been traveling all over the country as homeless nomads. Since then we have been reunited with Dan and have settled in to our new temporary home with the Langston family. We have moved exactly 1 mile from the worst bit of L15 to the poshest bit. This was the view out of my bedroom window before:

 and these are two views outside of our bedroom window and the second room we have been given (a lounge/playroom/office room)

(That's a footballer who plays for England mum's house by the way)

The Langstons are a crazy family that we are enjoying getting to know. 4 years ago the they could have bought a nice normal 4 bed in a nice area and lived a nice normal life but they thought "screw that. Lets buy a house made from 12 one bed flats that has no hot water or heating and requires thousands of pounds to make it liveable and lets make it epic." Quite a big achievement when you have a one year old and are pregnant with another.

So 4 years on it's very liveable. It has a gorgeous kitchen, massive dinning room that looks like a UN meeting room with a massive old 18 seater dinning table, lovely lounge, a playroom, a load of bedrooms and bathrooms in various states of finished and currently the piles of mud and junk in the outside bit is becoming a beautiful garden soon to have a zip wire! On the yet to be completed list is the basement and ANOTHER whole floor that is currently unsafe to even walk in. It's been a bit overwhelming for Percy to go from a tiny 2 up 2 down with 2 parents to this house which is currently made up of the 5 Langstons us 3 and another lodger called Karen. We live on floor 4 or 3.5 ish so he has had a lot of stairs practice!

They are currently getting their garden done which means there is a digger outside which is super exciting for Percy.

It's been fun getting to know the kids who are 5, 4 and 3. They love Percy (sometimes a little too boisterously) and Percy loves them too, especially the middle one Abigail, he says her name a lot. I introduced the kids to the concept of dares...can you believe the parents haven't taught that yet? This resulted in the eldest begging her mum to let her wear knickers on her head to school. Next I'll be teaching the kids spin the bottle, knock- a-door-run, and prank calls.

We decided to pull out of the house we were buying (I wouldn't have minded staying in but Dan didn't feel right about it). So we will be here at the Langstons until we find a new house, which maybe a while as we are a bit confused about what we want right now. We have sent our terrible estate agents a complaining letter along with this:

They haven't responded, surprise surprise.

On a more positive note my homelessness has led to a bit of new material for my comedy.

see it here

Becoming 2nd Homeless

Chapter 1, How not to buy a house:

Pay slightly more than you could have paid for a house 5 years ago.

Get pregnant and decide you need a bigger house.

Try to sell your current house off and on at various prices for the best part of two years.

Give up and decide to rent out your house and borrow money from the bank of mum and dad, which can eventually be paid back once the house does sell.

Have an offer accepted on a house (Jan 2016)

Don't specifically ask if the property is leasehold (it is, which means £350 extra a year in ground rent and maintenance charges)

Listen to a mortgage advisor who said "the new stamp duty laws coming in in April for people who own two houses won't apply to you"

Don't be particularly quick about things.

Find out a few days before the law comes in that the law will apply to you. E.g. you owe an extra £5000

Realise you can basically never buy another house.

Get bailed out by the bank of mum and dad again.

Listen to the estate agent who says "you can exchange on 27th May" and don't specifically tell her to inform our solicitors of that date.

Arrange for tenants to move into your current house on 31st May.

Spend ages making a lamp for the new house out of spray painted coconuts.

Buy a Dobbies loyalty card as we'll be living just round the corner from it.

Chapter 2, - Becoming homeless

About 10 days ago we were in the situation of not definitely but hopefully moving house on the 28th May and being led to believe that, if the paperwork was not complete in time, it would be complete some time in the next week. As the tenants were moving into ours this meant we may have had to briefly be housed by our families for few days, which wasn't ideal as we'd have to move all of our stuff into storage for a few days, but no major problem.

Then 3 days before the day we were meant to be getting the keys, we were told "the woman doesn't want to move out yet, she would be ok to move out in another month" and apparently the paperwork will take "a few more weeks"

So initially this was a bit of a shock and we were both thinking, ok, let's drop out because we can't let this woman mess us around like this and who knows when it will actually happen.

We've always talked a lot about moving abroad I actually can't believe we haven't done it yet. We went on our big two month trip cycling through Europe and the middle east in 2013 - this was an adventure to help us decide where we wanted to be, and although we had a lot of fun and went to some brilliant places we missed our community of friends in Liverpool. So we decided let's stay here for a while and "settle down" whatever that means. Since then we've been tempted by sunnier places a few times, but we told ourselves when we get a bigger house, or when the weather gets warmer, we'll feel better about staying. So this whole house situation has opened up all of these questions again.

Is buying a house a bit too normal? We have considered buying a pub, a shop, a house boat and a canal boat. I've got a friend who lives in a converted horse box and he is living the dream.

There wasn't a lot of time for the "what do we want from life?" questions because there was the more pressing question of "where are we going to live next week?"

Moving was hard work. Percy coped quite well with lots of different people coming in and out of the house and boxes everywhere but then when it came to catching the rabbit to take her away to Rachel's house he burst into tears. In the end we had to go to Rachel's to see the rabbit settle in for Percy to be happy.

On my last night in the house we were reminiscing about our first night in the house nearly 5 years ago when we came back from honeymoon and it was the 2011 riots and we could see it all from our window. Aww good times.

The night we left our house.

Don't worry little sunflower one day we'll get you a garden.

Chapter 3 - the adventures start here.

So I'm currently doing a UK tour. First we visited Granny and Grandad in Coventry. For some reason they do anything Percy asks them to do, like in the picture below, where Percy asked them to do headstands. Later on he made them swim like dogs in the swimming pool.

Then we went to stay with Aunty Sarah in her student house in Southampton. Dan is living in Southport with his parents because he needs to be near work. In a few days time we will be moving in with the crazy Langston family who have three kids, plus other lodgers, and live in a house which I think used to be 12 one-bed flats. I'm quite looking forward to that, I think it will be fun.

So what shall we do with our lives? Here are some options:

1) Stop being so dramatic and just move into the house whenever it's ready
2) Buy or rent another house in Liverpool. Percy has helped us design a new house, it even has a mezzanine level and a helicopter pad.

3) Find a job in the Isle of Wight and then buy a houseboat
4) Move to France or Spain
5) Move somewhere really far like Australia or New Zealand or the Cook Islands for a year. (Dan actually emailed someone about a possible 2 year job in the Cook Islands fairly recently.)
6) Buy a zoo in Wales with our friends the Hawkridges... We need more people to get in on this plan though so if you're that rare breed of person that's rich but fun then why not join us?

http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-52246214.html

P.s. I could have made this blog more funny but I'm saving my jokes for some stand up comedy I'm doing on 8th June, at 8pm, at the Lantern Theatre, £4.

A crazy man called Joe

This weekend we drove over 500 miles with a toddler to attend the wedding of Joe and Katie Fredrick. There’s a lot of people we wouldn’t make that much effort for but Joe Fred (as he is known) is a very special friend to us. (We don’t know Katie as well but from what we know of her she is absolutely brilliant fun and a wonderful match for Joe.)

We first met Joe Fred back in 2011 when he came to Liverpool for Uni. 2011 was the year we got married and during that year we were running a group called studio which was for people who went to our church and were interested in the arts. We mainly went to a load of different arts events together, a lot of them were questionable, one of them once involved a performance piece where a woman was wearing absolutely nothing but a pair of red heels and a rubber horse’s head. It was through going to these random things that we got into the Liverpool alternative comedy scene, which we’re still involved with.

Joe is one of the funniest people ever to be around, he is full of crazy ideas and is not afraid to be a non-conformist. Maybe that’s why we get on well. He also loves a deep discussion and cannot be bothered with small talk. Joe and I share a love of bargains and living frugally. In my student days I once lived on £5 a week for food for a month. Joe went through a stage of trying to live without money by trying to do everything for swaps, he managed to get a gym to give him free membership by making them a promotional video, I think he did the same with a pizza place. He would go to far away weddings without booking himself overnight accommodation and then blagging his way in to sleep in other couples en-suite bathrooms.

I love it when people just drop in at our house unannounced and he did that a lot. Sometimes it was when he was just walking past. Once he was locked out and ending up sleeping on our sofa bed and once he phoned us to say “could I use your microwave? I’ve been trying to defrost my mince in a tumble dryer but it’s not really working.”

Joe wearing a suit jacket, a hoody and shorts, carrying a saw and methylated sprits.

One of the best parties I ever went to was Joe Fred's no electricity party. He filled his and his next door neighbour's alley with candles and we had a stage made of bricks where our friend Alex played the cello and Joe performed with his acoustic rap band. I also did a breeze block sculpting workshop. I’d share a picture but only film photography was allowed.

2 years ago Joe got together with the lovely Katie, she was mad enough to consider living in a yurt in Kent with him. In the end they moved down there and are in the process of buying a house. (I know how normal of them, I’m sure they’ll make it wacky though.)

Joe is from a farming family so his wedding was farm themed. The wedding car was a tractor and the reception was in a barn. 

Not one of those posh converted barns that people pay a lot of money for. Their actual barn, with their actual dogs running around, made beautiful by Joe’s brother.  My favourite bit was when we were at the reception and they said "please welcome the bride and groom" and everyone looked at the entrance between the hay bales but then above the hay bales they appeared in the scooper bit of a digger.

We kept trying to teach Percy to say "Katie and Joe" but as he already knows another couple called "Katie and Mike" he kept saying that.

We had to do a lot of breaking up the journey for Percy. Before the wedding we stopped off at my parents house and at a random park in Leatherhead. After the wedding we got to see my Auntie Hilary and her family. Then we stopped at my favourite childhood park in Warwick and then at my parents house again, and I am writing this on the way back to Liverpool. Percy fell asleep in his normal way - chatting himself to sleep. Tonight he said "watch telly watch telly watch telly watch ...toes. where toes where toes.....granny. Ice cream." *a bit of crying* sleep.

Night night everyone.

Big news

I'm going to be doing a 1 hour 1 woman show in the Liverpool comedy festival! It's on September, 27th, you should come!

It came about quite easily really... we went to the Edinburgh festival in 2014, it was like my last chance to live a studenty life style of staying up late and sleeping on floors and stuff, 2 months before I became a mum. People have asked me "do you want to do an Edinburgh show" and I would, but it would be pretty impossible to just go and live in Edinburgh for a month with a small child and it would be a bit rubbish for Dan if he had to quit his job to come and then had to babysit every night. That's not really going to happen. So my friend Alastair who has done several years of Edinburgh shows said "why don't you do the Liverpool comedy festival?" which is a single one hour show and the main benefit is: it's in Liverpool.

So I chatted about it to a couple of my performingy friends (Esther, Danni, Rob and Lee) and Danni said "just book it in and it will make you do it." Nothing's more motivating than being given a date where you'll be publicly humiliated if you don't come up with some funny stuff. So I emailed this guy. I had to give a title and a blurb, he said it was oversubscribed so I wasn't sure if I would get in, but I did!

No idea what will be in the show really but here's the title and blurb:

Hannah Jones: Best Days of Your Life

School days are the best days of your life, if you die at 16 and can’t remember before 4.

Blending the everyday with the surreal, comedian Hannah Jones remembers surviving school in the 90s as a dyslexic ginger.

“Whimsical” and “lovely” comedy, this is group therapy for those who were never cool enough to sit on the back seat of the bus.