Nothing Toulouse

Hey, I haven’t blogged for a while because every week I keep thinking Dan will get a job this week and then I’ll write about that. Well he still hasn’t, but it feels like it’s getting closer. 

He widened the search a lot so he applied for a few short term jobs which he was interviewed for but didn’t get, although one of them has come back to him with a possible other opportunity. He applied for a job with Amazon that sounded horrendous. It was to be one of their warehouse guys, but he’d have to wear steel toe cap shoes and walk 12km a day, working from 5am to 1pm for minimum wage. They were having a big recruitment day and 200 people were being interviewed at once. He also applied to work for a Muslim aid agency which advertised as “hybrid in Pairs” but had to turn them down when they said it was 3 days a week in Paris. But best of all he applied for a job with a sex shop! Hahaha sex. (It was just content writing not being in a physical shop.) Still funny though. He’s still waiting to hear back from them actually so it could still happen.

But anyway this week he had two interviews for a normal boring company based in Toulouse to do a job very similar to his last one. Unfortunately Toulouse is two and a half hours away and he might have to do 2 days a week or maybe even 3, but hopefully in time either they would trust him to not come in so much, he could find a more remote job elsewhere or option 3 we could move to Toulouse. There would be a lot of things to consider, I’d miss the sea, and we’ve started making some nice friends here now, but it’s a possibility down the line, he might not even get the job. He will go there on Wednesday to do a presentation for them.

We’re currently in the middle of a two week half term, which has been taken over quite a lot by interview stuff and me needing to look after the kids while Dan works on that, but we managed to get out for a nice family day last week to the mountains. We were hoping to sledge but there was no snow, so we went to this town called Llivia which is a tiny blob of Spain surrounded by France, mainly for the cheaper fuel. And also to the hot springs, which is a bath temperature pool with mountain views. I was surprised that it’s not actually deep enough to swim in so it’s more like a bath temperature bath actually. Which I loved because our house doesn’t have a bath. 

See a little video of our day Here

I wrote all that yesterday while waiting for my sister Sarah to announce her big news: She’s had a baby! A massive hairy but adorable baby. She had a difficult labour with him because he was 9lbs! But don’t worry I helped her through from 1000 miles away with my hilarious jokes. 

There was a lot of chat in our family WhatsApp on the 14th (Ash Wednesday/ Valentine’s Day) about the baby being called Ashley Valentino, if he was born that day, that’s such a cool rockstar name right? But he was born of the 16th. If you don’t already know the name would you like to play the name guessing game?

First name = a common Irish surname

Middle name one = a paw patrol character 

Middle name two = a disciple 

Last Name = Gillard.

Comment with your guesses, or scroll down to see the answer.

The hair!

His name is Murphy Marshall James Gillard.

Welcome to the outside little man.

Falling down a mountain (part 2)

After practising a little bit on the beginners slope I wanted to try the between the legs ski lift that takes you up over bridge onto a bigger hill, it was tricky getting into this ski lift, you have to go through a turnstile thing which I found tricky with by big clown feet (skis) on. I had also accidentally dressed as a clown. I got some ski trousers for 2 euros from a charity shop which I was super chuffed with as they were such a bargain. They looked normal with my blue coat but when I took off the coat (because it was actually hot) and I was just wearing purple trousers with elastic straps over a red and white stripy top I did look a bit clown like.

Anyway I got on to this ski lift, which looks like a zip line seat from a kids park except your not ment to put all your weight on it, you just put it in between your legs and let it pull you. I managed this fine and even managed to film a little bit of me going up for my TikTok (see here). I put my phone safely back away in my pocket and then, I don’t know how but I just ended up on the floor. I thought about grabbing on and being dragged up but decided this was not the thing to do, so I just crawled out of the way of the person behind me who shouted “oopsie!” I didn’t even know the French used “oopsie” but that’s nice. And then I skied down and got in the queue again hoping not too many people saw. The second time I made it to the top but coming down was a problem. I fell over twice and the second time I could see the rest of my family were all at the top of the beginners slope which was just across from where I was, so I gave up on going down and crawled sideways to suggest to them we took the cable car now.

With the beginners pass you get one free cable car return journey, so we hobbled over the road to get on it. It was a beautiful view on both sides, as we went up we could see the little town surrounded by mountains and on the other side, close to the mountain, we could see this toboggan track which looked a lot of fun. At the top we stepped out onto a flat bit which was busy with groups milling around and a few ski school groups, it was a bit of a party atmosphere with music playing loudly. 

I found the bit I had gone to once before with Percy when he did his school ski trip last year and I was a volunteer helper. It was this very gentle slope with another zip line style ski lift. After going for one day on this bit I thought I could ski. I don’t think I ever fell over because the slope was so gentle, and I always had to help other kids that had fallen over, that is what I was there for so I never got to really discover what I could and couldn’t do. So we had a bit more practise on this bit and then Dan took the cable car back with Eric while I skied all the way down the mountain with Percy. I massively misjudged how far this was and how long it would take. There were a few lovely bits but mostly it was too steep. I went too fast and then I fell over, and then I couldn’t get up. Percy was much better than me and had to wait patiently for me. One time I fell into such a big heap of snow that it went all up my back and down my clown trousers.

I was relieved that we finally made it down it one piece, actually in two pieces, we haven’t been one piece since 2014. We had taken a wrong turning at some point and didn’t come out exactly where we wanted too but luckily phones exists and we managed to meet up with Eric and Dan. After giving back our ski stuff we headed home. Stupidly I had planned to host a dinner party that same night as it was my birthday. But cleverly I had made Dan agree to cook for it. There was still a lot to do when we got back including all of us showering and changing into party appropriate clothes.

We had three families round, for the first hour or so we had my artist friend Flick, with her 6 and 16 year old daughters. They are English, and then we had a couple who Eric refers to as “our board game family.” They are two girls, one French and one German, but the language they mainly speak to each other is English. Every Wednesday we play board games together. So for a while we were all English speakers and we played our new game Herd Mentality together. It’s a game where you have to answer questions and you get points by having the same answer as the majority. For example “what is the heaviest fruit or vegetable?” Most people said pumpkin so they all got a point, but I said watermelon and someone else said pineapple so we get no points.

We ate this lovely Gordon Ramsey sausage rice dish that Dan made, and then another family arrived. I know the mum from my French class, she is Spanish/Senegalese but speaks good French, and has a French partner and two young kids. So then I tried not to speak too much English as everyone there at least knew some French. Our German friend Marie also spoke good Spanish so they could talk together, and the kids all talked together in French. 

It did get chaotic, but in a lovely way. At one point I let the kids draw on our big sliding door window with Posca pens. I thought it would be a nice non language based activity that would keep people amused for half a hour but within 5 minutes the windows were filled with doodles.

I had a massive rainbow cake. Good food colouring is really hard to get in France, so when I was back in England for Christmas I stocked up on the good gel food colouring, thinking it would last for years and I’d use it for all the kids birthdays. But then I was just too tempted to use it on my own cake and it’s now nearly all gone. I got sung to in English, French and Spanish. 

Good night, Bon nuit, Buenas noces.

Falling down a mountain (Part 1)

Hello welcome to my first blog of 2024. It’s my 15 year blog anniversary and my 38th birthaversary.

 I feel blogs are dying a little now, because there’s podcasts and TikToks and vlogs, and to be honest the page views have gone down a bit since the glory days of the 2015-2020. I’m going to carry on with it though, even if no one reads it, just because I enjoy reading it back sometimes and remembering things that I would have definitely forgotten otherwise.

According to page views you guys love a bit of tragedy though. You like it when things go well for us but you absolutely loved it when things were going badly for us a few months ago, you loved it when I was going out of my mind stuffing frying pans in public bins just before we moved countries, but you loved it the most when I had cancer in 2018.

Well sorry to disappoint but things are going ok right now. Not great, Dan is still out of work although he has a bit of temporary work for this month which we’re very grateful for. It was my birthday yesterday which I want to write about but I never got round to writing a Christmas blog so I’m going to do a quick Christmas summary:

I painted my pregnant sister’s stomach.

I had an argument with my mum about pie.

I held 2 new nieces one 7 months and one 2 weeks old.

We had a fun new year with our friends Zac and Jude.

Dan had a job interview but didn’t get it.

We went to London to see my extended family, and while we were there saw some penguins, a film about the moon and Rachel Goodsall. 

We got evacuated from a canal boat because the river was flooding. I realise this sentence doesn’t make much sense, but we were sleeping in my parent’s canal boat to give others room to sleep in the house. The river was rising fast and this was our last chance to walk off the boat onto the decking and back to the house before the water went over the decking level.

My sister Sarah had a baby shower where I made a quiz. You had to guess from multiple choice questions where my kids think babies come out of, or what they think is good parenting advice. I filmed them answering these questions, see the video here if you want a laugh:

Percy and Eric’s views on birth

Ok Christmas summary done. Let’s talk about Skiing.

When I was growing up I didn’t know many people who went skiing, I’d never been and that was normal for most people I knew. I’m not trying to make out I’m from the hood, we went sailing which is arguably more elite. But when I think of snow I think of sledging. Any time it snowed I’d put on my tights under my jogging bottoms, a pair of wellies, t-shirt, jumper, coat, 2 pairs of socks and woolly gloves that got wet in a second and then made you cold. And we’d head out to the electricity substation which was our nearest hill. We’d mess around for a few hours until we couldn’t stand the cold any longer and then come back for a hot bath. 

Did you know snow can be better than that? Did you know they actually make trousers that are  waterproof and warm and base layers that are intended for the purpose of wearing in the cold? They make boots that are both waterproof and warm! This was a revelation to me and Dan who grew up with the exact same experience of snow. But if you are growing up in the village I now live in it is completely normal to go skiing every year. I think almost everyone will have at least tried it. Percy got to go on a government funded 3 day trip with school last year and I got to be a parent volunteer helper for a day.

I’ve always been envious of people with summer birthdays, I’d love to have a nice barbecue birthday party, but I’ve always had to do indoor things. But living here is redeeming the January birthday for me. The boys loved yesterday so much that they both asked if they could go for their birthdays (May and October) sorry boys. Eric’s now asking if he can go instead of a Christmas present, that’s how much they love it.

We live about 80-90 minutes away from the ski resort we went to (Les Angles) so it’s near enough to do a day trip which makes it more affordable. We got the beginners pass, which was 28 euros each, and actually allowed us to go on some really big slopes and using a few different ski lifts. We had to buy some skiing clothes and the goggles but most of that we’ve picked up second hand, none of us had “ski coats” we just wore our normal everyday coats. But it was actually really warm in the sun so I didn’t wear a coat hardly at all. We hired ski boots, skis, helmets and me and Dan had poles, this cost around 15 euros per person for all of it. If we stay here long term I’d love to buy this stuff so that we didn’t have to pay to hire it but for now it makes sense to hire.

I was under the impression I could ski, because on my one day as a helper parent on a school trip I didn’t  fall over. I have now realised that on the school trip I didn’t really go downhill. I went on the gentlest hill you can imagine. And I was supposed to be helping the kids when they fell over, so I just assumed that I could ski and if it wasn’t for stoping to help the kids I’d be amazing.

So we got to the beginners slope which I think was still pretty steep and I thought, I’ll ski down holding Eric’s hand, he’s never done it before so he’ll need loads of help. He fell over, I fell over and I couldn’t get back up. I was completely useless at helping him because I didn’t know anything. Percy started just getting on with it and doing it with no help. Dan had to take over helping Eric and I had to try and teach myself how to do it. All I know was make a backwards “V” shape with the skis to slow down. But sometimes I got so fast and out of control I had to do an on purpose fall over to prevent just going at 60 mile a hour into a tree. But then I really struggled to get up from the ground when I was down and so sometimes just bum slid down for a bit.

I feel like this blog is long enough and I want to sleep and rest my achy old body, so I’m going to make it a two parter.

Next time…

Falling off a ski lift, going up to the top of the mountain in a cable car, taking 40 minutes to get down the mountain. Rushing back to host a dinner party, bilingual party dynamics and my rainbow cake.

Kid quotes of the year 2023

   It’s that exciting time of year again.

 The time where we reflect back on our hopes and dreams for the year? 

No it’s the time where I write down all the weird stuff my children have said. 

“Mummy how do you milk a ghost?” Was a classic from a previous year. Possibly the best question I’ve ever been asked. Often HMRC tweet “please tweet us with your general questions.” And sometimes like to pass on some of the general questions I’m having to answer “do tattoos last in heaven?” For example.

So anyways, let’s get on with it. 

Starting with Percy who turned 9 this year:

1) “I don’t know what it’s called….a woman willy?”

2) (When he was with me buying tights) “I guess M stands for Mario and L stands for Luigi” …it’s medium and Large you crazy boy.

3) “It’s a funny feeling in my willy but I like it!” (Percy describing being on the big swing)

4) “Well my mum’s got an art degree and she says it’s a crayon” ….day 1 of art school that.

5) Me: I really want to break a Guinness word record one day.

Percy: don’t worry mum if you don’t we’ll do most rubber ducks at a funeral.

6)  “Stop showing off Mummy you’re going to hurt yourself” ….but once you’ve mastered riding a bike all mum’s teach non handed bike riding right?

This year is the year they became properly bilingual so I’m probably missing some funny quotes out by not being fluent in french. I’ll work on getting some French ones in here next year but in the mean time here some quote from Eric who turned 6 this year.

1) “Hey see that black mark on the wall? That’s where I punched a fly to death”

2) (Dan had a rip in his shorts) “why don’t you poo yourself and let the poo fill the gaps?”

3) Eric: I think I’m going to go to Asia?

Me: oh really when?

Eric: when I’m 55. 

4) Me: what do you want to do today boys? 

Eric: get loads of money.

5) “Hey God, want a water fight? It’s time for one.” It’s safe to say Eric lost.

6) “If Jesus died in a waffle he could have just eaten his way out.” I guess that is a fact. Although the stone being rolled away does have more of a visual impact for Easter cards than just crumbs of a waffle.

7) “I’m playing the guitar with my willy”

8) Erics Joke: what do you call a statue made of sausages? …a pig.

And now for a few joint quotes:

1) Life plans:

Percy: I will marry a french woman because I want to live in France and if I married an English woman I would have to do the French paperwork for her.

Eric: I will marry an English man or woman and I will teach French in England.

2) unemployment advice:

Dan: I’ve lost my job so I will be looking for a new one.

Eric: Daddy what do you love to do?

Percy: It doesn’t matter what he loves to do Eric, he’s got to find a job so we don’t all perish!

3) Fun times

Eric: hit me with that pillow again!

Percy: where?

Eric: The tongue!

If you have enjoyed these you can see past ones by following these links:

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

And future ones as they happen by following @comedyhan on twitter.

3 Christmas Miracles

I thought I should write a quick follow up blog to the last one before the craziness of Christmas starts and I forget it all. Thanks for all the comments and messages after the last one, I really was overwhelmed by the response, some of it from people we hardly know. A lot of good things have happened since then and things are looking up. But before the good things happened things got worse…

First me and Dan both went to do some random work for some fellow brits we met recently, I went to do house painting and Dan went to do gardening. Dan returned for a second day, but on the way back he drove into a pot hole. He got a flat tyre but managed to change it on the side of the road and put the skinny space saver one on (apparently the French call it  galette, which is a savoury pancake) it was annoying. But these things happen, and Dan thought it would be easy enough to get it fixed. Except it wasn’t and it turned into a big complicated expensive thing, all the money we earned between us in those 3 random days of work went on fixing the car.

It wasn’t just a money issue though, the main stress was we are leaving for Barcelona tomorrow to get the plane to Liverpool. So it had to be fixed for that big journey, which we have already bought non-refundable car parking for. It wasn’t just a tyre that was flat the actual wheel was damaged. I don’t know a lot about cars but I imagined wheels are standard things you can just buy from anywhere. I’d say if a three year old can name the car part it’s not that specialist and should be available everywhere. But after a whole day of Dan driving round the city on the pancake tyre he still couldn’t find the kind of wheel we needed. We looked at ordering one, and it might have come in time for Barcelona but it might not have, and I didn’t want to deal with the uncertainty, so we were about to book the bus to Barcelona when we saw some guy selling the right kind of wheel second hand, so Dan managed to get over to him and buy two and fit them himself. That was the first Christmas Miracle.

The second Christmas miracle happened while he was fitting the wheel. He got an email saying he had an interview for a job with Bla bla car, (doing writing stuff not driving.) he’s now had that first interview and is through to the second round.

And the third Christmas miracle was money related. I mentioned last time Dan did this trial job for an english speaking magazine, he did 3 days a week for a month about 96 hours. He should have got minimum wage plus commission but his boss has decided that 500€ is enough. After social security contributions it comes to 4.06€ per hour, less than half of minimum wage. I was up for fighting it but Dan just wants to move on. However we have been very blessed with some unexpected money from several different places, and we’ve both been offered some extra short term work in January. So even if Dan doesn’t get the new job, January will be ok, and we have a bit more of a buffer to feel more relaxed about doing some Christmassy things, like taking our kids out to a big Christmassy market/fun fair thing today. So overall we’re feeling very grateful.

November

Back in July I wrote a blog called “losing a job and finding a job” about Dan losing the job he had when we moved here and me finding a little job teaching English. (They were in no way equivalent, Dan’s was well paid full time and mine was 4 hours a week.)

Then the last blog I wrote was about Dan starting a three month trial working for an english speaking magazine, unfortunately the trial ended after just a month because she didn’t feel like it was working. He’s not sold enough advertising, but he’s never worked in sales before and he’s not been given any training, so it’s hardly surprising. She’s now refusing to pay him the full amount which is only minimum wage anyway and is asking him for an hourly breakdown of everything he did in November. What psycho can remember what they were doing at 2pm on 3rd November? It turns out he’s actually joining a big group of people who have all had a bad experience of working there. Not a fun club to be in.

We began the month of November so full of hope, it was still sunny - I was out roller skating with Eric just wearing a t-shirt. (And bottoms of course I’m not a flasher.) Imagine roller skating in JUST a t-shirt! 

I started another new mini job at a school in Prades (towards the mountains) just on a Tuesday morning. The school has the best views, one morning all the kids were out in the playground facing the mountain doing yoga, what a cool way to start the day.

Anyway I now have that job teaching English in a School, I teach 3 old ladies (which I really enjoy) and I teach at two different Wednesday English/fun clubs. There’s no school on Wednesdays so kids are free to go to extra circular stuff like sports clubs or English. So my work is going ok, with all the planning and doing TEFL it felt full time but in terms of hours I’m being paid for it’s not really. But it felt like we had turned a corner, I had work, Dan had this new trial job everything was going to be ok.

Except it wasn’t. Without wanting to over share too much, it’s not going well at all, we’re living off our rapidly disappearing savings and something needs to change. We still have received no help from the government because we haven’t quite been poor or French long enough. The irony is they have such a good and generous system for people who lose their jobs. It’s kind of too good, good enough for people to get a contract job and then not do it well and be looked after by the state at a cost to businesses. But if you’ve not been here long enough or you’re self-employed there’s no safety net.

This week a load more things have gone wrong too, I got my first ever speeding fine for doing 86km/h in an 80km/h zone and I have to get a point on my licence and pay a fine. We did something wrong on a form and now we don’t get free health care, and the car got a flat tyre today. It’s been a mad week.

I remember feeling a bit like this at Christmas time 2016. A different situation, we had jobs but no house, we had been living with a family since May after buying a house had gone badly wrong. I was heavily pregnant and Percy was 2 years old. We had found a different house to buy but it was taking forever and there were many stressful complications. It felt like we would never move. When I was clearing away my Christmas decorations from our bedroom in January 2017 I wrote myself a little note to find the next year. If I thought I was ever going to share this I would have written more neatly. 

In 2018 as I got out the decorations and pulled out the note that I had totally forgotten about, I cried! Maybe I need to do it again this year. (Except for the fact I didn’t bring any Christmas decorations stuff here it’s all in my parents loft) I hope next Christmas we can look back on this time and feel blessed with what we have. Apart from money right now we are very lucky. We live in this incredible place, our kids are so happy here, we’re making friends and meeting people. I don’t feel like we need a lot more to be happy and when things do start looking up for us I really want to embrace life, do fun things and live in the moment. I’ve been reflecting on our time here when Dan still had his job, and even though there were loads of amazing times, where I felt very grateful, I also often thought about what times would be like if we were still in England. I went through phases of missing my job or my friends or being a comedian when I should have been just enjoying the fact I was in the south of France, not having to work because Dan’s job allowed me to spend over a year just learning French and making art. I do need to work now and that’s ok, even if we didn’t need the money it wasn’t ever the long term plan for me to not work. But when we can I want to embrace everything that’s great about our lives because there really is a lot to be thankful for.

New Jobs

After losing his job in August Dan finally started a new job today. It’s been a tough time to be honest, last time he lost his job was the best job losing time he’d ever had. He was made redundant but given 3 months notice, he got a couple of month redundancy pay but managed to find a new job that started as soon as he finished the old one, he negotiated to get paid the maximum amount and the job meant we could move to France.  

This time he was given only one month notice, and no redundancy pay, they weren’t clear about why they were getting rid of him and if he had a contract they couldn’t have got rid of him, but because he had to be self-employed in order to pay tax in France it was easy for them to get rid of him. And it’s been a really long time of looking for jobs. Looking for a job is a full time job. He’s not had much of a break, the kids have been off school a lot, and there’s been a lot of dull tasks that needed doing.

But he’s started a job today with P.O Life magazine, which is an English speaking magazine for the Pyrenees Orientales region not a magazine about the private life of red tellytubby. His main job is to sell advertising space to local companies that want to advertise to English speakers. But he also has to deliver the magazine all over the region. Which is what he’s doing today. He’s a glorified paper boy, and he loves it when I call him that. One of the coolest things about the job is that he gets an electric company car. At the moment he’s just working part-time, he gets minimum wage plus a commission for selling the advert space. Dan was a bit nervous because he hasn’t done selling before but he’s looking forward to the challenge and it’s a great opportunity to work in French as well as English and get to know all the local businesses. 

I’ve also got a bit of a new job. In September I started working in “The English House” which is a fun club for kids where they learn English through games and stories and crafts. It’s on a Wednesday because kids don’t go to school then. Then a few weeks ago I was given a new job in a school in a village towards the mountains. It’s just for Tuesday mornings but it could be the way into more schools work, because it’s with a company that sends teachers into several different schools. They give you all the lesson plans and workbooks and audio files and a billion flash cards and you go in and teach. It’s will be pretty intense because it’s just 5 half hour classes back to back, but all the lessons are not the same because they have to be adjusted for the age of the pupils, from age 2 to 11. 

Photos from my cycle commute to my Wednesday job.

I’m also still teaching this older lady who comes to the house every week, that’s pretty fun and chilled though. One week I taught her how to make pancakes. I’m still trying to catch up on the rules of English by doing a TEFL qualification, because I don’t know any pattens for anything I just know the answers, because it’s my first language.

I feel weird about being here at the moment, two blogs ago I was saying how settled I was and how I loved it but now I feel a bit odd. I think the fact we were just living off our savings for the past few months and we can’t really plan ahead hasn’t helped, but also it’s hard feeling like you will never have a genuine friendship with someone who isn’t an English speaker. Tomorrow is the last day of the two week October half term, that’s too long right? I’ve had the kids all day and they’re not particularly difficult, but it was raining for the first day in ages today so we stayed in all day and played board games and did crafts and they played computer games. And I was thinking, “what did I do before in the holidays?” And I realised I went to see a lot of people, I had play dates where the kids would go off and play together and the grown ups would all drink tea and gossip and I miss that. There’s not many people I do that with here, and I have to import my own tea.

I don’t want to make anyone feel bad for me, there are a lot worst things going on in the world than me missing tea and gossip, but I just wanted to be real. I don’t want to always chat on about how it’s 26 degrees and people are having a BBQ (that happened yesterday 1st Nov). Hopefully sledging fun will soon commence, but for now if you have tea and gossip opportunities don’t take them for granted. X 

Dan at the river yesterday