Teacher's pet

For the first time in my life I've been the teacher's pet this week in my new French classes. I was often a bit naughty in school, not the cool smoking on the bus kind, the playing pranks on teachers and being cheeky kind. My top prank was when I wheeled this big sign that said "injections taking place no entry" from a place where it wasn't being used, to in front of some stairs. This was at a time when the school was experimenting with a one way system where one set of stairs was for going up and one set were for going down. So this messed up the whole system. No one saw us move it, which meant we could then stand around and watch the whole thing unravel. At first people were just confused, then people started disobeying the sign and then a teacher saw people disobeying the sign and took it upon herself to enforce the sign. But there was no way for people to get upstairs and so more and more angry people started clogging up the area, then more teachers got involved and started arguing. It was an interesting lesson in conformity which I late referenced in a psychology exam about conformity.

The closest I've got to being a teachers pet was A-level art. I was never that great at art at GCSE, I only got a B. I didn't spend much time on it because there were so many other subjects to focus on, and then at A level I really enjoyed it, and did it every day (and got an A). The geekiest thing I did was read a book about African batik where they use starch, and then I experimented with loads of different starch based things. I found one that worked and started dying fabric that way, and then I had to demonstrate my findings to the class. But for some reason you don't get bullied for being an art geek, so that's nice, because I did get bullied for plenty of other stuff. 

A-level art was the last time you could get good marks for painting nice pictures. When I studied it at uni they didn't care about nice pictures anymore, it was all about the concepts and I went back to being average again.

awkward teenage me with my GCSE art work.

Some of my art from second year of uni.

This week and last week I started two different French classes. The best thing is that they don't know about each other, so they might both think I'm making great progress, not realising I'm making the expected progress for someone doing 4 days a week of French. First I started a very local French evening class, which is like a club you sign up to. The teachers are volunteers and it only cost 20 Euros for the whole year, for two evenings a week. No one else in the class is an English speaker. It's two chatty Spanish old ladies, one Dominican lady, a Mongolian guy and me. The teachers speak zero English and so it's like a massive game of charades/pictionary. It's ok for me because I speak enough French to work stuff out, but there was a 10 minute game of charades just to try and explain the past and future tense to the Dominican. I'm still not sure she really understands anything.

My other class is the one I legally have to go to, to get my visa. A few weeks ago I had a medical and a french test at the OFII and after doing the test I was award 200 hours of free French lessons.

This is the office for immigration and integration logo, but look closely at it....

why is that guy with creepy Mr tickle hands trying to grope the blue lady's boob?!

It's always nice to do a test where if you fail you get free stuff, though last time I did one was my dyslexia test. Basically if you fail a spelling test, you get a free laptop. I'd narrowly missed out on dyslexic money a few years earlier because the test included the word "Psalms" and my Christian upbringing had scuppered my chances, with my knowledge of spelling Old Testament books. 

I started these free lesson on Thursday, it's mainly refugees from Afghanistan and a few others like a couple from Georgia and me. There are no other native English speakers again, but some of the Afghan guys speak a bit of English. The teacher is really nice and I managed to get a reputation for being one of the good ones. At the beginning of the first day she asked me name, I said, "Hannah" she said, "can I call you Anna?" The French really struggle with "H." She asked if it was a British name, which it isn't really it's from the Bible, so I think it's a Hebrew name. But I looked it up today in the French bible and Hannah (in the book of 1 Samuel) is called "Anne"- what's that about?! You can't just go changing names like that. Also John in the French bible is Jean and James in the Bible is Jacques. It makes me wonder how close "Hannah" is to what they said back in the day. Guess how they spell Psalms though? .....PSAUMES! I really hope that for someone reading this, this comes up in a pub quiz or as the final question on a tv gameshow and you will millions all because you've read my blog. French spellings of Bible books is a common topic on pub quiz's, right?

While it is a nice novelty to be the good one in the class, I do think it's slightly unfair on the people who have to learn a whole new alphabet. I do have the advantage of GCSE French and the privilege of having the money to do some online lessons before I arrived. We had to go round and say why we came here and what we like about France, and some of the them mentioned fleeing war and that they loved the freedom of France. I felt bad to say I just moved here for fun to enjoy a wider variety of cheese.

The teacher also speaks Spanish (and a little bit of English), she was saying how English is hard though and gave the example of the work "knife" and said how this was a stupid way to spell it. Which gave me the opportunity to explain everything that it stupid about French (in French). 

For example, time. I've learnt time before, but it's only this week I noticed when French people answer the question, "what time is it?" they don't say, "it's 10 O'clock." They say, "he is 10 O'clock." Time is a man. 

There are many stupid examples of the masculine feminine thing being ridiculous, I'm sure I've mentioned before that the French word for vagina is masculine. 

At one point we were learning about household jobs. She taught us the word for "washing" and "stain" and "clean" and "dirty." She has to teach all this though mime and explaining in French because we all speak different languages. When I worked out she was explaining the word "dirty" I said it out loud in English, because sometimes it helps the Afghans and then she said, "oh? like dirty dancing?" and then I had to explain what "dirty" in the dirty dancing sense means in French, which is always fun.

I think the boys French is coming along, they understand a lot now and are starting to say short sentences.

It was Percy's birthday yesterday, so I'm going to write about that in its own blog.

A Visitor and an X-ray

Hey, I haven't written for a while, I've been putting more time into recording and editing our new podcast. We're doing 10 episodes (we might do more later on but for now we're just doing 10). They're out every Monday for the next 10 weeks, but the recording period was from February until October, because we wanted to make sure we had enough interesting things to say. If you follow my blog you will know lots about our move, but there are lots more funny stuff that I've included in the pod that I've held back from sharing on here. We talk about my french fails, times when I've said stupid stuff to the kids teachers because I can't remember the right word. A disastrous time when a french family knocked on my door and Dan was in the shower and I made a proper fool of myself. Every week we do a feature called "French for maniacs", where we teach you a completely mad French phrase and dare you to say it to a real French person. If you do know anyone moving countries please share it with them too because as well as the silliness we have tried to include some actual useful tips about the logistics of moving countries. It is here

Last week has been a super fun week for me, mainly because the lovely Esther came to visit just for a couple of days. Esther is actually the first visitor we've had that isn't a parent of me or Dan. (We were meant to see another family in August but that plan was ruined by chicken pox.) Esther is someone I've known since my early 20s and I respect a lot. She is an actor and director and works and lives all over the place including sometimes in a van with her adorable dog Robin. After a crazy and difficult lockdown time when she fled from London like everyone I know did, she is on a kind of pilgrimage to find out about herself and life and God. Doing a lot of walking and thinking and stuff. You should really follow her instead of read this secondhand nonsense from me.

We were in a nearby park when we saw this: Esther's plane arriving 15 mins early, we raced off and managed to beat her to arrivals.

We picked her up and went straight to the sea. It's still warm enough to swim, but it was a bit windy and it wasn't burning hot, but it is burning hot today (about 30). On the way back home we picked Percy up from his first ever French birthday party. It's so sweet to see how his classmates really love him. I'm very proud of how he's doing in school. He had to read the poem below out loud in front of his class last week and he did really well.

This is how he has to write now. The French are very particular about handwriting and so, alongside learning that letters make slightly different sounds in French, he also has to learn this curvy writing that I can hardly read.

On Monday and Tuesday the boys were in school and Dan was working which meant that me and Esther got to go on some little adventures by ourselves. On Monday we set off to a gorge, stopping on the way to check out the view from the big hill you can see from our house. Driving on a tiny very steep road is not my favourite thing but it was worth it for the views. 

The difficult drive continued as we made our way to the the gorge. I've only been there once on a very hot August Saturday when it was rammed. This time I followed the sat nav, and it took me not the way I really wanted to go. I ended up on little windy path in a vineyard with a parked tractor blocking the way. There was a small gap but neither me nor Esther thought I could squeeze through without hitting a big rock. Then a guy appeared and waved me through. If I had better language skills I might have tried to argue that it was a bad idea, but I thought it was better to just try and I made it! 

I then discovered that the road lead to nowhere because the car park I was trying to get to had been blocked off with a giant rock, and you can't just park in a vineyard. I mean I was going to, but Esther said I shouldn't and then I saw "we'll tow away your car" signs. So I had to try and 3 point turn and squeeze past the tractor again and find a different way then. (Luckily the tractor had actually moved.) Eventually we got to the gorge a different way, but the entrance was all fenced off as if it just shuts in September. But as I said as a child, you can't pray the bit in the Lord's prayer that says "forgive us our trespasses" if you haven't been trespassing.

It was totally worth it to have this whole absolutely gorgeous gorge all to ourselves. There's like a long interesting rock corridor that you can swim down and then 2 places where you can swim and jump into a pool and the water is the most beautiful colour ever, and still warm enough to be ok at this time of year. After a lovely swim we climbed up the hill to try and find some caves, unsuccessfully, but we got some ace views.

The best colour in the world

The view from our climb

The next day we went on a long walk to a very cool waterfall. We had some deep chats about life, reminiscing about our 20's and the fine line we walked between having a genuine Christian faith and accidentally being in bit of a cult and how we make sense of all that now. (I've got no plans to unpack all that in this blog anytime, but happy to have real life chats with anyone who wants to.) At the end of the walk we reached this beautiful waterfall and some surprising things happened. But what happened at the waterfall stays at the waterfall (Its really Esther's story so I'll let her share it on her blog.)

I'm writing this now on the coach back from Montpellier, where I went for a meeting with the immigration and integration board. Before going I read a blog from someone who has been to this meeting (which also includes a medical examination and a french test) and she said it was incredibly stressful and disorganised, no one spoke English and she cried afterwards. But I've actually had a pretty good day, and yeah there were moments where I thought if they had translated the word "breastfeeding" then it would have meant a middle aged guy with man boobs wouldn't have had to mime breastfeeding to me. But then where would I get all my blog and podcast content from? HE CUPPED HIS MAN BOOB AND SUCKED HIS THUMB - honestly it was hilarious! And I will be doing a full in depth analysis of the many humorous moments of the whole day on the podcast, but not till episode 10.

Would you let me have a long stay visa based on this picture of my boobs? Well the French think it's good enough. Whoop whoop!

This week we're having a couple that I met online over for tea, just because they're from Warrington. Imagine doing that in the UK. Imagine going to Ikea for example (I really can't think of another reason you would go to Warrington) and imagine you got chatting to someone in the queue and then you just invited them over for tea. That's weird right?

C'est tout. Bisous.

French Septembers

 September was sometimes a bit of a sad time of year, as a person who loves the summer I always felt in September like I didn't get enough sun to go into autumn yet. But this year is different because my love for the sun has taken me to a place with much more of it. So now it's like some kind of sun inflation has taken place, where the sun has no value now. I could stay inside and play board games on a sunny saturday without feeling like I'm wasting the day. It's 34 degrees today, I think the temperature will stay in the low 30s or high 20s this month. Going down to very variable in October before it's finally cold by November. but by then it's only 4 months until it's sunny beach weather again.

The kids started back on 1st September, they were more than ready to go back by then, Percy said "7 weeks off is fine but 8 weeks off is too long." It was a very long summer especially given the fact I saw hardly any other people in that time I had 3 play dates in 8 weeks. I normally have 3 a week! 

In the UK the boys would be going back into year 1 and year 3, but the french school system is different. In England Percy is one of the oldest kids in his year with a birthday in October and Eric is on the younger side with a birthday in May. But here everyone born in the same calendar year is in a class together. So in England Percy's class would all be 7 in September and turn 8 that year, but here most of his class are already 8 and they will be turning 9 from January. So he's sort of skipped a year and if we stay in France he would start secondary school a year early, I feel like I've lost a year of his life!  Eric on the other hand is still kind of in nursery here. He doesn't legally have to be in school until next September. Even though the building he goes to is part of the school Percy is in, and they share a playground and play with each other at break time. Also this is all free, not like nursery in the U.K which is really expensive.

Percy had a good first day, it was very cute taking him back after lunch and seeing him play tag with his classmates pointing at himself and saying "moi" to show he was on. Eric was extremely tired after his first day and had a tantrum about the positioning of his ketchup at tea, they take away naps now he's in the "La grande section de maternelle" (big class of nursery) last year he had his own tiny bed in school!

At the moment they still come back home for lunch but they will be staying in for lunch soon. The first morning at drop off it was really nice, it's so relaxed compared to their old school (it's about a quarter of the size) They were playing music in the playground including john Lenon's Imagine, it's like they were trying to make parents cry. I also think the teachers seem happier. I'm a big fan of the no uniform thing for kids and teachers . The reason schools always give for uniform is "it prevents bullying" this is massively undermined by the 2 or 3 times a year you have to pay a pound to wear your own clothes. My mum also clearly wanted me to get bullied in primary school because even though 95% of people had the school sweatshirt with the school logo, you were allowed to just wear a red jumper. Or a red cardigan your mum knitted. I remember a dinner lady commenting on how lovely it was and just thinking "you are the last person in the world I want to impress"

 Dan went to chat to the headteacher about how we sign up for lunches, and asked how she was, and she said something like "I'm great, I'm in my element" I just don't think a British head teacher would be that happy on the first day back. but when you get to wear shorts, have a 1 hour 45 for lunch, Wednesday's off and an 8 week summer holiday I bet teaching is not that bad. I don't think the teachers have to do lunch duties either, I think they go home for lunch too. There's a different organisation that's in charge of lunch times, after school clubs, Wednesday club and holiday clubs. So now that we have just signed the kids up for lunch club we can apparently just email on the day and say can my kid attend after school club today, or we need them to go in for one random Wednesday.

At the end of the day Percy's teacher gave us a big list of things he needed that we should have seen in July:

That's a lot of stuff right? if you don't speak french here are some of the things we had to buy:

 I actually think this is a good thing because I worked in school and school never have glue sticks in the summer term. I've asked to borrow some before and I had to use the office staff's secret stash of 3 good ones for a group of 20. But if every kid has to bring two sticks in in September that does get rid of that issue, and probably kids will look after them a bit better. French kids get given about 300 euros in August to buy all this with. Unfortunately we didn't know about this until a few days too late so didn't receive anything.

One of the things on the list was a calculator, Dan was packing Percy's stuff this evening and wrote "boobs" on it you know 58008 upside down, that classic. It made me wonder what do the french write on their calculators upside down? Any suggestions? Tell me!

In Britain in September freshers fairs will soon be taking place for students, in France the whole nation has a fresher's fair in September. What I mean by this is every Marie (town hall place) has a list of clubs they do, our local one doesn't have much I'm interested in, they have a walking club, a knitting/sewing one, petanque (a french ball game) and a few others. but you aren't limited you your local one. One in a bigger village near us has loads more great ones to choose from including horse ridding and rhythmic gymnastics! They almost all have an open day some time in September where you can see a demonstration of the club and meet people and sign up, just like you would join a society at freshers fair. Then you have to pay for a year's membership in September. It's going to be an expensive month because we're going to all try and join clubs so that we can get to know people and integrate, Dan is going to do a Marshall art, Percy has in the last few months got super into basket ball and wants to do that. Eric wants to do rugby and I'm going to do french lessons and thinking of joining a gospel choir as well.

I would say Dan is pretty integrated into french society now though, he went for a haircut last week and the hairdresser started complaining about foreigners to him. That's when you know you've truly integrated. I wonder if I will ever reach that level of french. I was at selling art and an art festival at the weekend and a woman said "C'est Jolie" about by work. I replied "Merci" and she just said "English"

my lino prints
(let me know if you want one £10-£15 and easy to post without the frame)

Acrylic Paintings

It was a fun festival to be part of, in a really lovely random town called Amelie-les-bains. I didn't want the kids to be bored so I go them to do portraits of people and they totally stole the show. They might have been the only people there that made any money. They made 8 euros between then but they felt like they were millionaires. Erics already spent half his takings on chocolate yoghurts.

Thanks for reading. 

p.s I've started an instagram for my all art stuff since I moved here, plus a you can see more of the boy's portraits.  @artisthannahjones

The pros and cons of a summer here.

It's the long long 8 week summer holidays. Every time we've been on nice beach holiday over the past decade me and Dan have always asked ourselves, "what would it be like if we lived here?" So now we actually do live in a top holiday destination how does it compare? Here are the pros and cons of a summer in Perpignan.

Pros - it's hot,

What's really annoying about England is that you can never plan anything. I tried to plan a get together with some friends in June when I was back in England, staying at my parents river house there was one day everyone could make, but it was cold and grey and rainy. On a sunny day it would have been a lot of fun, and there was a lot of outside space for people to hang out in, but it was nowhere near as good without nice weather.

What's great about being here is you can make plans to go to the beach or park or anywhere in the summer and know that there's a 98% chance it won't rain, and if it does rain it will probably be a brief refreshing break from the sun. I don't take a coat anywhere because if it rains I want to get rained on.

We went to a pool party planned two weeks in advance with no backup option!

Cons - it's hot

It's too hot! I hate to be someone who complains, I never complained it was too hot in England, but it really is crazy hot. It's normally 32 to 35 degrees, but it can be up to 40 and that's just stupid. Today when we got in the car after it had been sat in the sun, the car said it was 43 degrees! We've seen about 5 forest fires since we've been here. After once living somewhere that was so cold in winter that nothing really needed the fridge, it became my dream to live somewhere where butter is spreadable at room temperature, but here it's actually liquid. We have one air con unit downstairs that we use a lot and we bought a portable one for upstairs. We put it on in the kids room a while before bedtime and then move it to our room and put it on a hour before we go to bed. It's a bit annoying having to work out when to put it on and it takes up a lot of space, but it does help. 

forest fire seen from our bedroom window

In England when we used to sit and eat outside I always said I felt like we were on holiday, and we told people we moved here for more of an outdoor lifestyle. In reality though I often take the boys out first thing, leaving the house at about 9, and we stay out for a few hours and then stay inside the rest of the day. We rarely open the shutters on the windows upstairs because it lets too much heat in, so the upstairs of our house is just a dark hot box. When I'm doing work on the garden and I listen to a podcast on my phone outdoors I can only listen for about 5 minutes before the phone overheats and I have to put it in the fridge. 

We could have chosen to live anywhere in France and at the moment I can't help thinking "I bet the north is a lovely temperature." But May was nice, so I hope September and October will be lovely and I'll get used to the heat.

Cons - not many friends

I'm getting a little bit bored of the 3 people I live with. Much as I love them I need more people than just them, we established that a long time ago in lockdown. I am slowly getting to know a few people here, last week I had two play dates, one with a French speaking mum of two boys who I met online, she lives not too far from me and she is keen for her kids to learn English. We've met twice, once she came to mine when the kids were in school, and last week we met in a park with the kids, who refused to really speak to each other. It was good for us adults to practise our French even though it was awkward and embarrassing at times. I also had a play date on the beach with a South African mum of a baby that I met at the English speaking church and that was a lot less stressful. This mum is hoping her baby will be Trilingual (English/French /Afrikaans) by age 3. I'm so jealous of babies that are learning multiple languages. I really wasted my baby years. I'm also really jealous of all my comedian friends in Edinburgh right now. I so wish I could be there for a few days. A year ago I was doing Jonesfest in my garden. Such a fun weekend. If I could just spend ten minutes time traveling I'd go back to this moment and hug all of you:

Pros - It's beautiful everywhere

A massive benefit of being here is it's just beautiful everywhere you look. Even the car park of my local big supermarket is amazing, because you can just see a big mountain from there. Even a run down house has a rustic French charm that a run down house in Liverpool wouldn't have. 

There are so many nice views and I've been out painting them with the boys which has been a lot of fun. In fact today we went to this lake and even though I wasn't going to do any art, Eric really wanted to, so he sat and drew this:

More Art

Lake vinca is such a big win. 1 euro each on the train, the kids play happily in the sand and go in the lake for a swim, I can sit on the sand and read a book and they can entertain themselves, or I can go for a proper swim. As long as I can see them they're fine in the shallow bits. It's the parenting dream. 

Lake Vinca

Apart from today when Percy lost his shoe and we never found it. He had to get the train home wearing a shoe I made for him out of some card from a plaster box as a base, a sanitary towel stuck on (to add comfort), a mask and a hair bobble wrapped round it all attaching it to his foot, and a sock over all of that. And yes a man on the train did notice and I had to think of the French for 'my son lost his shoe in the lake.'

Cons - parks

Liverpool is great for parks. Theres so many and theres a few really big ones that have playgrounds and sell ice cream. Sefton Park has festivals in in the summer and Calderstones has a fairground and fake beach. Theres not really an equivalent of those parks here. There a playground in our next door village with a basketball/ football space and a little bit of skate park, but there's not a lot of grass or trees. And then we went to a park this week that had a high rope course for kids in and 2 proper restaurants and a bit with inflatables (you have to pay for all this stuff). it was a nice park, but still nothing like Sefton Park.

Pros - beaches

There's loads and they're all great. Perfect temperature, clean sea. Every day of the summer is a possible beach day. There's also no tides (because it's the med) so you don't have to do that annoying thing where you have to move where you're sitting. Or that even more annoying thing where you arrive at a beach only to discover it's high tide and there is no beach.

Collioure 

Argeles

Pros - road trips

There's some great places within two hours of Liverpool, like the Lake District and North Wales, and we've been to a lot of them over the years. But I am very excited about all the places you can get to from here. We're two and a bit hours from Barcelona, and Andorra. Also were near Carcassone and Narbonne. When it snows we'll be just over an hour from skiing places. There's also smaller little towns, and loads of mountains and a whole load of new places for days out like safari parks, water parks, kids farms, castles etc. So far we've been to a safari park and Andorra for one night which was very interesting. The main city was full of duty free shops, because it's a tax haven. Diesel was 20c cheaper too. The mountains there were also amazing, we saw so many epic views. I also saw someone on ski's with wheels practising skiing up hill like a crazy person. 

Andorra

Pros - childcare

There's a bit of a different childcare culture over here compared to England and it makes a lot of sense. In England in the summer holidays if both parents work then you're fighting other parents for a week off in August. And then you get the grandparents to help out one week and you might send them to a camp for a week and it's all a bit stressful. I was lucky that I had a term time job, but loads of women (and maybe some men, but I don't know of any) just get a rubbish job they don't really want, because it fits round the school holidays and 3:15 pick ups. In France you can just pay for childcare at your kids school, or nearby, all summer if you want (it's about 15 euros a day) and it's totally normal and not something they feel guilty about and they do a full day like 8am to 6pm. The woman I met up with said she sends her kids in even when she does have time off work. No woman in the UK would admit to that without feeling bad. 

Pros - Food

The cheese and different kinds of bread are amazing, but probably my biggest food love I've enjoyed since arriving has been the ice cream. It's the range of flavours as well as the quality of ice cream that makes it great. Currently in my freezer I have apple sorbet, pear sorbet, and mango, pineapple and coconut ice cream. What ice cream do you currently have in your freezer? I genuinely want to know. The other great thing I've discovered is frozen paella. It takes 10 minutes to cook in a pan and it's got prawns, mussels, calamari, veg and rice all delicious. And it works out less than 1.50 euros per adult portion.

Pros - Cost of living

Things that are cheeper include:

Gas - we buy a big gas canister for cooking it costs about 30 euros and lasts at least two months.

Electric - I don't think it's especially cheap compared to the UK a few years ago, but it's cheap compared to how crazy things are in the UK know. 

Wine 

Train tickets

Council tax, if you're renting it's paid by the landlord. 

School trips - so far our kids have been loads of places and we haven't paid anything.

Child benefit- were about to switch to the french system and I'm not sure yet but it looks like it's more generous. We were told if we had a third kid it would be really generous.

Cons - cost of living

Dan earns the same as when we were in England, our rent is more that what we paid on a mortgage in England but we make a profit on our old house that we rent out, so that's all kind of equalish. A big change though is that I am not bringing in money now.

And here are some things that are more expensive:

Most stuff you would buy from a supermarket. Especially sliced breads, which you have to get from the foreign food aisle. I like to get baguettes sometimes but I can't be getting fresh bread every day. Meat is also really expensive, and I can't find any meat alternative stuff like Quorn. 

I've heard if you go just across the border to Spain, about 30 mins away, you can buy a load of stuff like cosmetics and cleaning products and fuel a lot cheaper, so we will try that out one day.

They don't really have charity shops either. I did just join a clothes shop for kids though. You pay 30 euros for a years membership and you get all the clothes half price and free delivery if you wanted to buy online. It's nice stuff too all very bright and fun. 

So overall it's hard to say really whether I've had a better summer here. Sometimes it's been amazing, sometimes it's been a bit boring and too hot to be honest. It's been very different and I wanted a change This with friends would be amazing.

I feel like that's a weird slightly sad ending so I will cheer you up with this place I walked past yesterday:

Bastille Day

This week my parents have been visiting. We stayed in a holiday park for a lot of time and enjoyed a pool and being walking distant from the sea, but we came back to our house on one evening to join in with the Bastille day celebrations in our village. Bastille day is bonfire night for the French, but they have it in the summer which has pros and cons:

Pros - the weather is nice and people can sit outside in shorts and t-shirts.

Cons - you have to wait until at least 10pm to do fireworks which is a bit late for the kids.

More cons: what else is there to do in November?

Maybe the Americans have got it right with fireworks on 4th July and then fake Christmas on a random Thursday in November.

I bet neither Guy Fawkes or the French revolutionists gave the time of year enough thought when they were planning their shenanigans. Just like my parents 9 months before they had my sister Jo, the day before New Years Eve.

But enough about my parents sex life, back to the French Revolution. All I know about it is learned from the musical Les Mis and a brief look at Wikipedia right now, but it seemed some people got angry with the monarchy and stormed a prison in a place called Bastille in 1789, and that got rid of king Louis 16th, who was likely to be a bit of a meff.

And because of this me and Dan the boys and my visiting parents all got free food and wine. Compare this to the jubilee which was two days off. No free food and isn't every year. If you compare and contrast I'd say the only logical solution is let's get rid of the Queen. Shall we do it in September? It gets dark around 8 or 9 then and that's good for fireworks. There's not many other festivals in September, it can be a depressing month, especially if you're a teacher, but the weather might still be ok for a street party. Imagine if my blog got taken down for this, or imagine if the Queen died in suspicious circumstances in September, I'd be in big trouble.

We arrived at the Get Rid of the Kingaversry around 7:30, already past our kid's bedtime (they're starting to cotton on that French kids go to bed a lot later). It was just behind the school, the band were practising, and Percy got straight onto dancing in his own unique style. It's like break dancing mixed with skipping.  A load of chairs were set out and people were slowly arriving. It's so nice to do a village thing, I grew up in a village and we did village things, but never anything where literally the whole village would turn up. We had the village hall harvest festival and the scarecrow making competition and the primary school beetle drive. That's where you roll a dice and slowly draw a beetle with different strangers while drinking wine from a paper cup. This night in France also involved drinking wine from a paper cup but it felt a lot cooler. Me and my Dad (the extraverts of the group) went off to get wine and chat to random people, while the only one who can actually speak French was much more reserved. Me and Dad found out that the guy pouring the wine was actually the Mayor, who has previously shaken my hand when we went to the Marie (town hall) to fill in our forms. He seems like a super nice normal guy, and he didn't feel the need to wear any blingy necklaces to prove he was the mayor, like the needy British mayors do. Shall we get rid of them too when we off the Queen in September?

We had no idea what the food would be, or when it would arrive, we had just filled in an invite form that came through our letterbox with the amount of people. We could see in the hall baguettes and peaches and Dan said, "they can't cook everyone hot food can they?" because there was maybe 200 people there. Then, slowly, people began going up to collect their food, table by table like at a wedding. We were given a big cardboard tray for all the food and then served with a kind of noodle paella, with a massive prawn on top. Plus a chunk of baguette and bit of Camembert. There was no veggie option, there was just this but bigger.

The band played quite a random selection of mainly English songs, such as Avril Lavigne's "Complicated". Maybe the revolutionists sang some of these lyrics to the king when they were angry at him...

"Your watching your back

 like you can't relax,

you try to be cool 

you look like a fool to me"

The boys danced around with some kids from school, we were trying to hold out for the fireworks but at 10:30 they still hadn't done them (we saw them a bit later as we were driving back to the holiday park).

Since then we've had a bit more time with my parents and we went to this cool place in the wild swimming France book. It was a bit of a pain to get there. I'm practising driving, so trying to drive everywhere, but this was a lot of windy mountain roads and then when we arrived it had a no swimming sign, but everyone there had turned up for swimming. It was a gorge with rocks to jump off and rock climbers climbing with a rope too, probably the best place I ever swam at. I hate to swim in a blue rectangle, it's the least imaginative of all the colours and shapes you could swim in. I've always thought art galleries and swimming pools should combine because both can be a little dull, but swimming in natures art gallery is the best.

I've heard a lot about the UK heat wave, I hope you're all surviving. We have one air con unit downstairs, so I often sleep on the sofa, but my parents were there so we resorted to putting our duvet covers in the freezer, making ice cold hot water bottles, a cold shower before bed and Dan also just slept on the tiled floor with only a pillow for comfort. In England when it get to September I always feel not ready for autumn because I haven't had enough sun to get me through the winter, but I think here I'll be happy to welcome in the colder months.

Reunited

After Helen's wedding I had nothing else planned, just waiting for a email to tell me I could see my kids again. If you voted Brexit you are the reason for this, I hope you've learnt never to trust what you read on buses again. I think a better system for moving abroad, worldwide, would be an app where you put in something like, "I want to move to America for 6 months" and it matches you with an American who wants to move here for 6 months and you swap all you rights and your house and car and everything. Maybe even it should be like wife swap and you have to live with another partner with their kids and their rules. At least 50% of those couples will get back together and appreciate their original partner more, they're good enough odds, right?

So Monday and Tuesday were trying to sell my car days. I semi cleaned it and Dan put it on auto trader. I got a lot of interest but no one was really committing to actually coming to get get it. Eventually I spoke to someone who was keen on coming, they bargained me down loads, but I just needed it gone so I agreed to it. As he was on his way up from Birmingham another guy phoned who was local and offered me full price for it. It sucks to be a decent person sometimes. My friend Esther came to visit which was lovely and we went on the paddle boards for a bit. There was a brief moment when a swan did a dive bomb and I though it was going to attack her but it was fine, and we both managed not to fall in.

On Tuesday night I got the message that my visa had finally left London, and so I was waiting to see when it arrived in Manchester. The next day I got the email I'd been waiting over three weeks for. I COULD COLLECT IT! Unfortunately I had just sold my car my dad was away with my parents car and the travel advice was not to travel. That wasn't going to stop me. I borrowed a bike, cycled to a station, got the train (they were still running fine) and then got the tram to the passport place in Salford quays. Collecting my passport with the visa in it was very simple and quick, I was so happy to finally have it in my hands. The whole trip door to door took about 5 hours but it was worth it. When I got back to my parents I looked at flight options back and chose to get one on the Sunday, from Birmingham direct to Perpignan. Partly because my parents were driving down to the midlands anyway on the Saturday, but mainly so I could see my childhood best mate Bex for the day before flying back.

Thursday could have been a chilled out day enjoying the sun, but unfortunately I had received an email from our estate agents saying they wanted to charge me £355 for a deep clean on my old house. This is an empty house, no furniture, with a new kitchen so no oven to clean or whatever. If I had accepted the car guys offer, then the difference would have almost paid for it but I didn't, so I had a big day of cleaning ahead to avoid that bill.  Mum came to help and to be my taxi, and my friend Steve also came to help. It was hard work and I kept remembering little things we should clean or fix. Like the room that was my studio had a bit of a rubbish skirting board that stuck out and meant you couldn't close the door, our solution was never closing the door properly, but that's the kind of stuff you should fix when renting out a house. We stayed until 9pm cleaning with just a quick break to go to McDonald's for tea. It looked great in the end. 

You can see a virtual tour here: https://www.lewisfoylettings.co.uk/properties/woolton-liverpool-merseyside/12-lee-vale-road-woolton-L253RW-148

On Saturday I went to see my childhood friend Bex and family in Birmingham. It worked out well that my parents were driving to the midlands anyway and they could drop me at Bex's and then Bex could take me to Birmingham airport the next morning. Bex was one of the people I really wanted to see before moving but didn't manage to, so it was really great to see her and her husband and 3 adorable kids. 

When I was born we were next door neighbours. I have just a few memories from those days because I was only six when we moved, but nearly all my memories contain Bex. She used to tell me if you eat Rice Krispies up-side-down you'll be able to fly. Which I tried a lot while hanging by my legs from her climbing frame. Then one day we decided to run away. We packed a suitcase and gave the excuse that we were "pretending to run away." Then I fell over and we went back for a plaster and then couldn't really be bothered to run away again.

They moved out to a village and then 6 months later we moved to the same village, because Bex's Dad had found us a house on the same street. Then our games continued, we made dens in the woods and climbed trees and did challenges like "what is the smallest circle you can ride your bike in while closing your eyes." We had sleepovers and midnight feasts and played a lot of monopoly.

Then in secondary school we weren't that close. She was 18 months older than me but 2 school years ahead and was trying to be cool, and I was deliberately trying not to be cool because the cool people made me mad. She was into make up while I was still into buying stuff from joke shops. Then when she was in sixth form we became closer again. That was the phase we were into setting fire to things. I went to visit her in uni halls when I was 16 and I thought going to uni was the coolest thing ever.

Last time I saw them was between the lockdowns in 2020. You know that bit when we thought it was all fine, before it became actually worse than before. We had a little holiday together in my parents house (while they were away) and recreated a childhood photo.

I had so much fun doing this. Dan took the photo while poor Doug looked after our 5 boys.

 It was lovely to see Bex and Doug and hang out with the kids and then in the evening we stayed up drinking and playing a board game. They are big board game fans, and I'm a medium sized board game fan. I love playing board games but I don't have the patience to learn new ones much. But it's nice to be introduced to new ones when other people know how to play it. I didn't super love this one enough to buy it, sorry, but two games I've bought in the last two years that I do love are Splendor which Bex introduced me to last time I saw her, and Quacks of Quedlington, introduced to me by my bother-in-law Elisha who is the biggest board game fan I know.

I was a bit nervous to get the flight as I am a bad catcher of planes! But it was all fine and easy and hardly any queueing. I imagined arriving in Perpignan airport walking out into arrivals and the boys greeting me and hugging me and it would be this beautiful moment. What actually happened was not quite so lovely. I got to the passport check bit and I was under the impression that I needed to arrive without getting a stamp in my passport. That's what happened when Dan and the boys arrived with their french ID card, they don't even have to show their passport because an ID card is a bit like a passport and they don't get a stamp so they don't get a date they have to leave by. So I thought that's what happened with my visa. So I passed the guy my passport opened on the visa page just in case he missed it and he scanned it and then he stamped it. Then in my head I was thinking he might have just undone this whole 4 weeks I've spent away from my kids, so I asked him and he just replied "you are not an EU citizen" 😭 I voted remain! 

So I went to get my bag and Dan and the boys were behind an automatic door that kept opening so they saw me looking for my bag, I took a while to find it, and we went out and hugged but I was still worried about the stamp. I was thinking that Dan might need to go back in and punch that guy. I asked Dan and he said it's ok. The visa still works I don't have to leave. Phew! Then I could relax and just enjoying being back, no one has to punch anyone. Although I'm sure if you do punch the passport guy he would apologise immediately, and tip-x out the stamp. 

Back home Dan had cleaned the house and got flowers and balloons, the boys were very excited to show me a special thing they made for me:

Errr thanks kids. Then we went and jumped in the new massive paddling pool after a bit of playing as a four. I sent Dan away for some much needed alone time as he's had the kids constantly while trying to work. In this time we invented the paddling pool olympics. With brilliant games such as cup shoot, and nose ball, which is sort of like football but swap the ball for a ballon and swap your foot for your nose. We also tried to do synchronised paddling and relay races.

They were back at school yesterday but they only have 7 days of school until the long summer holidays. Percy has a particularly fun week this week. Today he's going sailing in the morning and then to the aquarium in the afternoon. They both have every Wednesday off. Then Percy has forest school on Friday which I'm going to be a helper parent on. They had school photos yesterday which were taken by a drone! It's fair to say that they are loving french life. 

Helen's Wedding Poem

At the weekend I went to the wedding of my good friend Helen, and yesterday I spent a lot of the day writing this poem:

Fire Poi

Helen is a lovely mate,

she taught me how to spin a plate,

and it was for me a total joy,

to learn to spin some fire poi,

the memory that might be best of all,

was of a polish festival,

where I enjoyed the chance to play,

with basket weaving and with clay,

the polish arts festival "Slot"

I even managed to get the chance,

to partake in medieval dance,

in return for this fun time,

I invited Helen to Palestine,

Helen was a total champ,

with Arab kids at summer camp,

next she moved to snowy Norway,

and she invited me to stay,

we weren't posh enough for skiing,

The example basket and our basket (on her head)

a two quid sledge is much more freeing,

on new years eve we stayed awake,

to build a fire on a frozen lake,

and we all lived to tell the tail,

although there's been some transport fails,

I don't want to lay the blame, 

but we really suck at catching planes.

Back in Liverpool for a bit,

She fell for a guy she thought was fit,

an artist and a literal clown,

she followed him to his home town.

Palestine

The week I passed my driving test,

I travelled down to the south west,

that's when Helen made me try,

something odd I don't know why,

for some reason I had to drive,

while trying to keep a fish alive,

the fish was in a big fish tank,

on her lap - she's such a crank,

there was an awful lot of splash,

but thankfully we didn't crash.

Back to that clown guy from before,

the frozen lake Norway

I'm sure you're egger to know more,

It didn't work out in the end,

but they remain the best of friends.

Don't worry I will soon be sending,

hints that there's a happy ending,

Graham arrived into her life,

and in the future she's his wife!

But before that had come to pass,

first dance

Graham showed that he had class,

by playing a song that truly shocks,

and singing along to the pub duke box,

"you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals,

so let's do it like they do on the discovery channel."

Spoiler alert it ended well,

their wedding dance was Tom Odell

everyone cried with tears of glee 

to see their dance "grow old with me"

a good first dance choice- well done,

Hen Ham Bug

 I'm relived it's not the mammal one,

and now they are a team of three,

with Graham's daughter Emily,

I want to give you all a hug

you are great "hen ham bug"

"Hen Ham bug" is the collective name they have for the three of them, and it was lovely to see Emily being such a big part in the wedding. There was a bit where the three of them all said vows to each other.

I traveled down to the wedding in a van with my good friend Josh and his partner Alex, me and Josh were student housemates and Helen and Josh together are pretty much responsible for me being a community artist. Josh does a load of impressive big scale arts projects that I'd love to tell you about but this blog isn't about him.

For this wedding Josh provided a small marquee, circus equipment and a giant piñata shaped like a cake. (Yes you may have guessed by now that he is the artist/clown from the poem.) The cake was filled with sweets and confetti. There was a no confetti rule in the venue but Josh was unaware of this, and Helen was unaware of the piñata being filled with confetti. This made for a manic search for a hoover afterwards.

The venue was a beautiful old barn that was really long, that was like a nice blank canvas they could do what they liked in. We arrived on the Thursday night and I stayed at Helen and Grahams house which was full of wedding stuff. They had hand made all these paper flowers from old books painted in copper and blue, and hung them with fake ivy and hessian around hula hoops. They had also painted a load of signs and they had made candelabras from copper pipping. 

One the Friday we set to work decorating the venue, I got to do monkey duty, climbing a ladder to hang the flower hoops from the old barn beams. It was a super hot day that day, a bit of a heat wave about 28 degrees, although nothing compared to Dan and the boys in France who bought a 3 meter by 2 meter paddling pool this weekend! Being up the ladder was tiring work but also the most fun job. Helen's family arrived and everyone worked hard to get the place looking great, we put the marquee up on the side of the barn and got some of the food stuff sorted.

On the day of the wedding the weather was unfortunately cold and wet, I think the hot weather on the day before made people dress more optimistically than they should. Helen and Graham had spent the night in a hotel and I was in their house with another girl called Hannah who I haven't seen for over a decade. She drove us over to the venue (which was a long way) we were having such an interesting intense chat about life that we missed the motorway junction and had to go a very long way round.

Me, Hannah, Cat, Helen, Will, Josh about 2006

Rach, Me, Helen, Hannah, Alex, Josh, Cat 2022

The structure of the day was different to most weddings. At most weddings couples pick a totally random time for a meal that they would never normally eat at like 4pm, and then the ceremony will be at 12 and no one will have eaten before then, so everyone will be hungry. But this wedding was the opposite, there was a constant stream of food! The day started with a buffet lunch which made it a lot more relaxed and no one noticed that me and Hannah weren't completely on time. They had two big long rows of tables and you could sit anywhere. Then we all moved our chairs to the front stage bit for the ceremony. They had already done the legal bit in a church before, so they could say what they wanted for this bit and they didn't have to go off and sign a register. Legal documents really have a way of bringing down the tone of a party. Right this minute I'm on hold to my car insurance to cancel it because I sold my car yesterday and to get them to send the no claim bonus through for our french insurer, if I was also hosting a party it would be a terrible one. but maybe we should always host parties every time we do a boring document just to make it less boring.

There was no formal time to sit down with speeches, we had canopies, then Pizza, then late night nachos and ice cream. Instead of a toast with Champaign, we had shots! There was a blackboard with a tally chart for what shot you wanted. A lot of people did not how to do a tally THE FITH LINE CROSSES THE OTHER 4 LINES if you can't remember that then you're too young or too drunk for more drinking. 

For music during the day it was sort of like a karaoke but in a good way. It was mainly their daughter Emily and a few of her friends singing and playing guitars but it was kind of unstructured and open to other people having a go.  Emily is really good at music even though she's apparently only been playing the guitar for 6 months. Later in the evening there was the first Dance and then the second and third and forth dance and then more dances. The DJ had cool lights and everyone got into it. I left at 10:30 because I'm a loser, but I still had to stay up till 1am because me and Hannah only had one key between us.

It was a beautiful day with some of my favourite people that I don't get to see a lot anymore, Thanks for having me Helen and Graham.