Interviews and Moving House

Last time I moved house I packed up an entire 4 bed house with a loft full of stuff, got rid of everything including furniture, painted it all white, got a new kitchen put in and moved countries with a 4 and 7 year old. So when I was thinking about this up coming move, just 5 minutes down the road, it felt like it would be a piece of cake. It was not a piece of cake, it was the opposite of that. It was a piece of broccoli, raw hard impossible to chew broccoli. 

We had done some prep for the move. This is just a house for the next 3 months and its an airbnb so it's furnished (but we'll bring a few things) and has things like plates and towels, which meant we had to pack up a lot of our stuff into storage. So we had made quite a few boxes of things we don't need for 3 months and we had slowly been selling stuff. I'm most proud that we managed to sell our fake grass. 

I tried hard to sell a fridge that made an annoying noise too, I tried to target people who had space for a spare fridge in their garage, bad landlords and the deaf. But sadly I couldn't even give it away and we had to take it to the tip. 

So the weeks plan was like an interview moving house sandwich:

Monday - Dan had a interview for a job that could keep us here, 

Tuesday - Start moving a few things into the new house, our desks and chest-of-draws-es (what is the plural of chest-of-draws?)

Wednesday - host my English club in my house 9-11am then move everything.

Thursday - Clean the old house.

Friday - Old house inspection at 11am

Saturday - Interview for Dan at Decathlon for a summer job.

I realise I haven't yet publicly said, after a lot of applying and waiting Dan has two interviews this week. One of them would mean we would try and stay, the other probably wouldn't but would still be great for now. It turns out interviews are like buses, there's always a drunk guy at the back of them. And that other thing people say about buses. (Apologies if you're a French person reading this and I'm not making any sense by messing up English expressions.)

So yeah the plan was fine, and we were only moving down the road no biggy. But every day we seemed to get more and more behind. On Sunday night I asked Dan if he had any suitable interview shoes and he hadn't, he now owns a pair of shoes for all future weddings, funerals and interviews. So Monday morning was filled with the shoe shop and the food shop, the afternoon Dan went to the interview which went well, they said so, and they said they would be in touch next week about the next stage. My friend Flick is currently here on holiday from where she lives in Paris and she told me she was going to the hot springs on Tuesday. I love the hot springs, and luckily my Tuesday work had been cancelled for that morning so I thought I'd go along. Dan was happy for me to go and him to stay and work on the move, I'll work hard in the afternoon I thought. 

The hot springs we went to was not the one I was thinking it was, which is like a swimming pool, this was a natural springs which was incredible but also really far away and a long hike from where you can park to the actual springs. They were on holiday so very chilled about timings and at no point did I say I should get back now. I was chilled, Dan can get things done I'll help when I was done. I even put up a smug little Facebook status about the hot springs. 5AM Friday me wants to punch 5PM Tuesday me in the face. I did not have time to go to the hot springs!

I began Wednesday with my English club. We did an Easter egg hunt, and sang head shoulders knees and toes, you can't be stressed about moving while singing head shoulders knees and toes. We then got down to business, taking furniture apart and moving stuff for the new house into the car and stuff for storage into the oldest van in the world, kindly lent to us by of of my English students. The trip to storage took so long, the journey was long on the slow roads in the rickety van, the paperwork took ages, the storage was on the second floor so everything had to go up in a lift. 

By the time we were back it was nearly time to collect the kids and we felt so far behind, and they were only going to slow us down further. There's nothing like playing 3 games of connect 4 with your kid while wondering how late you will be up working in the house. We worked until nearly midnight and the house was still nowhere near empty.

Thursday morning we were so behind I couldn't even look at all the stuff in the downstairs because it was stressing me out. Dan was in charge of getting our possessions out of the house while I focused on cleaning the upstairs which was at least free from all our rubbish. 

In the afternoon our lovely friend Marie came to help and I realised I'd never in my life cleaned an oven. Do I speak for all millennials when I say we don't clean ovens? We just move house or get new kitchens put in. I don't notice that ovens are dirty, I thought they were meant to be brown. Marie is only in her 20s but she'd cleaned ovens before, she even had the special magic oven cleaning products. What a legend.

We met our new neighbour she is the neighbour on BOTH SIDES! Like she owns both houses and apparently she is very angry that she missed out on the chance to buy this house. Its like a real life game of Monopoly where you own Regent Street and Bond Street and then someone else buys Oxford Street. The first thing she said to me was (obvs this conversation was all in French), "you can't park here in front of my garage." I said, "I know, I'm not." Then I said, "I'm moving in here" and what I meant by that was I'm not just a passer by, hello I'm your new neighbour. But she replied, "not my problem."

View from our balcony

Mad floors throughout the house 

On Thursday night after a long day cleaning we went for tea with Flick which was a lot of fun and a nice break from the cleaning, but then we had to get back to the cleaning, so much cleaning. I stayed till 10:30pm and Dan stayed until midnight but it still wasn't done! The inspection was at 11am so we thought we would both do a little more after dropping the kids at school but then I was awake at 4am and thought what is the point of just lying here awake, I'll go and clean more. And I actually had quite a nice time cleaning with music on and finished it just as the sun was rising at 7AM and got back for the boys waking up. The inspection went ok, the estate agent was happy, she said it wasn't perfect because the walls were not pristine white but it was up to the owner whether she would give the deposit back or not we'll hear on Monday. The rest of the day I was teaching and Dan was trying to take more of our stuff to storage that we didn't have time to take before. It was only at the end of the day he said I've got an interview tomorrow which was totally not in my brain at all I was exhausted! 

Next week I'm running a holiday club in a school and the head teacher phoned me to finalise some details. I wanted to ask if I could do an Easter egg hunt but I asked "puis-je casser les oeufs?" instead of "puis-je cacher les oeufs?" I asked if I could break eggs not hide eggs. I could blame that on being tired but to be honest I'm just bad at French.

Today was the first day all week with moments that I thought, I could just sit and chill for a bit. And I made up a new challenge, trying to get a photo of us in our house with a the maximum timer an iPhone, which is 10 seconds. I almost made it. Dan managed but knocked the camera so it’s a bit wonky. If anyone visits you should try the 10 second photo challenge too.

Nearly made it

Dan made it but knocked the camera

Living in limbo

 What a weird life we are living these days, I keep putting off the blog thinking any day now there’ll be some news or some decision that I can share that people will want to know, but there’s nothing like that yet, were moving into an air bnb in less than 2 weeks and staying for 3 months and that is the end of our plans. To further complicate things we had an unfurnished house and now are moving into a finished house so a lot of our stuff will be going into storage.  We do keep talking about mad plans though, the euro millions was up to 200 million or something, and it is fun to think about what you would do with it. I said buy a lighthouse and make 2 helter skelters round it for getting down one would be a water shoot and one just a regular bog standard dry slide round a lighthouse. Dan was talking about living in the country side and at one point said “I fancy a goat” and then I repeated it back like it was an awful confession, that would ultimately lead to divorce. I don’t know if the two slightly different meanings of “fancy” come across well in writing.

I really didn’t expect to move this many times in my 30’s I moved 6 times between a the ages of 20 and 25 but then we bought a house, and I knew it wasn’t our forever home but when I had a baby at 28 I thought maybe I’ll move one more time into more of a family home in slightly less of a drugs den. (If you’re lucky enough to buy a house as a 25 year old artist it will most likely be a northern drugs den) but so far in my 30’s I’m on my 4th house and I’ll be up to 6 by the end of the year. In between the big stuff, life keeps going with the funny or weird or lovely everyday moments in between packing up boxes applying for jobs and stressing out about not knowing what’s going on. 

My most exciting news is that I’m going to be doing a solo art exhibition in June. I’ve made a lot of art since moving here and I’m trying to get a few more prices done before the exhibition. I went to the art shop the other week to buy a “normal sized canvas” and then I just saw this massive one, kind of the size of a door and I thought “why not this, will be fun” and to be fair it has been a lot of fun. I’m painting the beautiful Collioure which is actually quite hard because it’s already very beautiful in itself so its really hard to do it justice. I follow this guy on social media who selling a book called “nice paintings of shit places” and it really is a great niche. Maybe I should call my exhibition nice paintings of nice places. Or Dan suggested that he starts painting shit paintings of nice places. Could that work?

This and many other pieces of my art are going to be in an exhibition.
 6-27 June, Saint-Nazaire Médiathèque.  

Me and Dan tried to have a bit of a date while we were in Collioure, I can’t even remember the last time we went out for a meal and we can’t really go out in the evenings without getting a baby sitter so it does make sense to go out when the kids are in school. Unfortunately we made the same mistake that we made in 2013. Steak tartare is raw mince with a raw egg on top, Dan ordered it once at a lovely french restaurant on our big trip to the Middle East, and we thought we had learnt our lesson, but due to the fact the menu was hand written and french handwriting is mad, we made the mistake again. Which resulted in Dan asking if they could cook my totally uncooked mince. Which they half did, the middle was still cold and pink. But then we did a good deed for the day when Dan overheard another couple ordering the Steak tartare, he went over and told then “this is uncooked mince” and they were very grateful and changed their order. They need a sign in english saying don’t order this if you’re english.

 We got an ice cream after Dan chose a flavour labelled “cookies dough” and we spent a long time discussing why is cookies (plural) is not correct? It’s not until you start teaching english and you might have to explain to someone why cookie dough is right and cookies dough is wrong that you realise how stupid english is.

Life in France has been surprisingly rainy recently, something like 250% more rain than normal for the month. But it’s good for the earth our very dried up reservoir is nearly full again. And a hour towards the mountains there is a load of snow. The ski resorts are very happy. And we had a great day sledging and building a giant snow blob.

They have a spring time carnaval in France where kids wear fancy dress or sometimes ski gear. One day I turned up at the school I work at and saw all the kids were in ski gear. I assumed it was a ski trip and they had forgotten to cancel my english lessons, so I asked the head teacher but she said it’s just the carnaval. So kids were sweating away in my class because they were wearing ski cloths as fancy dress gear. Our roller skating club had a carnaval too, and I was doing face paints. My favourite part of that day is when my slightly drunk fellow face painter came up to Dan and said “oh you’re english! Can you help me?” And then played him a video of her robot hoover saying in english “I need a new battery” - she had no idea what it was saying!

Ready fo the roller skating carnaval

Thanks for reading.

A big tour of France

We just got back from our big tour of France. France is a bit bigger than it needs to be, there’s a lot of boring nothingness in the middle that no one would really miss if they got rid of it and added it to somewhere that could do with spreading out a bit like Tokyo. We’ve got a scratch map of France and we’ve really done most of the best bits now:

This is only places we’ve stayed overnight. Stripes means not all 4 of us have been there, it was before one or both the boys were born.

I mentioned last time that we won a weekend in Paris and that we turned it into a longer trip to see Dan’s family and my French exchange partner from the year 2000! And we just visited some new bits of France. By a weird timing coincidence, or maybe just the fact that people go on trips when they have a 2 week February half term, Dan’s cousin and family came to stay with us just before we left. They were on their own road trip in the opposite direction. They came from the west, from one of the pointless empty departments of France called Ger,s and were heading to Marseille, so we were a handy stop off. 

Dan’s cousin Patricia is the same age as us and also has 2 boys a similar age to our boys. Last time we saw them was a big party they had for their 10th wedding anniversary when we hadn’t been in France long and apart from Dan none of us could really speak French. This time the boys were all chatting away in French and Patricia commented on how their accent was 100% french. Obviously mine is still only about 7% French but I could follow conversation well and say some stuff badly. They slept over and we had a lovely meal together, they’re a nice family and we have a good amount in common. And it was great to hang out.

They left on Monday morning for Marseille, and we left to Bordeaux. It about 4 and a half hours drive. I drove for around an hour of that and there were no major incidents. I followed the sat nav fine and didn’t bash into anything. It’s important to note that for later. 

For this trip we were staying in a selection of the worst rooms Airbnb has to offer, so I was actually presently surprised by how nice a garden shed on the outskirts of Bordeaux was. We got there late afternoon and then headed out on the tram to explore the city. We didn’t have time to see a lot but from what I saw it seemed nice. They had a shop selling Pokémon cards so the boys were happy. For tea we had our pie left overs from the night before in the glorified garden shed. That’s the great thing about having a car in Europe, if you had flown for a city break from London I bet you wouldn’t take your pie leftovers. 

The next Day we went further north to La Rochelle. It’s only about 2 hours so we had more time to explore and enjoy it. Or we would have had chance to enjoy it if it wasn’t for our whining children who do not enjoy wandering round places with no purpose, or eating mussels despite the fact one of them ordered moule frites. They cheered up a bit when we went to a beach on the Île-de-Re. It’s an island you can get to by bridge. It’s 4 euros on and free to get off, but if I worked for their council as a fundraiser I’d make it free to get on and 100 euros to leave. We saw people with kite buggies which was really fun. Then we went to sleep in a holiday park mobile home.

The next part of the trip was all going to plan. It was maybe 3 hours 30 to Dan’s Auntie’s house in Vitré.  This auntie is the mum of cousin Patricia. We also saw Dan’s Grandma, she loved seeing her great grandchildren talking fluently in French. Her own daughter (Dan’s mum) left France as an 18 year old and became very English, so it feels like a nice kind of completing of a cycle that her great grandchildren are currently very French. 

On the way Dan had been driving for a while so I took over for a bit, but just after a little picnic stop in Nantes I hit a curb and completely flattened a tyre. Annoyingly we had a spare full-sized tyre in our front yard at home that Dan considered bringing but decided against it. Dan put on what the French call a galette (pancake) the thin spare tyre that you’re not meant to have already driven hundreds of miles on. We could drive on it but only to get to a garage where they could get us a new tyre. Except they wanted to get us 2 new front tyres and do some kind of an alignment thing for safety. This came to more than the entire cost of fuel we used for this 2300 km trip. And added 2 hours to our journey time. The guy did say they have big curbs in Nantes, so not my fault!

Vitré

Dan’s auntie has a cool house with a loft room that’s like a sixth form common room of dreams. The boys loved playing pool and table football, and we enjoyed incredible French cooking and 4 course meals that take hours. We caught up with another of Dan’s cousins and explored a bit of Vitré.

Percy with his great auntie and his great grandma

Next we were off to Paris, to see my French bestie Flick who made us an Eiffel Tower themed lunch! We had this incredible pink meringue topped with fruit and cream and sprinkles followed by an Eiffel Tower making competition.

It was a lot of fun catching up. We then drove right through the centre of Paris including what must be the worlds most stressful roundabout the Arc de Triomphe which has 12 exits. I mean it wasn’t stressful for me, I was just filming it for TikTok videos, but Dan did a great job and didn’t even hit any curbs.

Saturday was our only full day in Paris and we were going to climb the 670 steps up to the second floor of the Eiffel Tower. But just to make sure we were really tired by the end of the day, we missed our bus from the campsite to the train station and had to walk 30 minutes to begin the day. 

If you asked Percy he would say he kept us all going on the boring walk by telling us exciting facts about the Eiffel Tower that he’s been learning at school. If you asked me I would say that we tolerated listening to facts because they were distracting him from complaining about the walk. We then were on various forms of public transport for a really long time before we began the climb. This is my 3rd time up and I doubt I’d go again, 3 is enough for a life time. The new thing they had this time was a netted bridge that goes diagonally between the corners very high up so you can look down and feel a bit wobbly. 

After that we met up with Flick again and went to see some modern art,. I loved the massive colourful piece by Raoul Duffy that you could sit in the middle of. We all talked about which panel we would take home if we could. We mucked around a bit, and got some snooty looks from the security guard. 

I love art, but I hate looking at stuff without touching it, in silence, in pretentious buildings. I’ve always thought art galleries and swimming pools should combine. There’s nothing to look at if you’re swimming lengths in a boring pool, and then galleries there’s stuff to look at but nothing to do with your body. In the afternoon we went to look round the lego shop and then went out for pizza. We were so tired, but unfortunately our bus to the campsite was cancelled so we had to walk again. At the end of the day Dan’s watch said he had done 20,000 steps!

On Sunday we packed up our stuff and had a little wander round a local park before going to visit my friend Morgane. She was my French exchange partner from the year 2000, when I was 14. Other people called it the French exchange, for me it was more like a mime workshop. First we were pen pals. I actually swapped for her, my friend was given the info sheet about her and she looked more interesting than the one I had. I said to my friend, “your one looks fun” and she said, “you can have her” it’s weird how that little swap lead to me eating a delicious raclette in the outskirts of paris 25 years later.

Me and Morgane in the brace gerbil days.
That bit of head in the corner is now taller than me.

I had met her one other time since then, in 2013. Me and Dan were on our big trip and I was still awful at French, but he could translate for me now, so through Dan we were able to have loads of conversations that we couldn’t have back in the early 2000s. It was a fun meet up then and since moving here I’ve thought I would love to see Morgane again and be fluent at French and for my kids to meet her kids. Unfortunately I’m not fluent at French yet, but I am pretty good at understanding it and I can speak it badly. Next time, maybe in another 13 or so years, we can meet again and maybe I will be fluent. It seems unlikely, given that I recently asked a sales assistant for a box of oasis instead of a bottle.

Me and Morgane 2025

We travelled back to Perpignan via a village near Clermont-Ferrand. I wonder if anyone has been to that city to actually see it, or if everyone there is just half way between Paris and an interesting southern city. I imagine that everyone who has ever moved there just had one nights stay over there and met someone they liked there, I can’t see any other reason you would go. A bit like Coventry where I’m from. My Dad moved there for a job, my Mum moved there for uni, they never intended to get stuck there for most of their lives.

We finally arrived home on Monday, I drove for 90 minutes of the journey and nothing bad happened. The 66 region welcomed us back with a beautiful sunset.

The Job Hunt Roller Coaster

 I wanted to get a blog out before we go on a french road trip tomorrow. Long car journeys did really well out of their rebrand to road trips. It’s the exact same thing but it feels like an adventure. It’s the start of half term and what better way to celebrate than to drive for hours and stay in someone’s glorified garden shed. We won 2 nights stay in a holiday park last summer by entering a photo competition with this photo:

 Dan can actually tell people that a topless photo of himself won us a holiday. We could have a weekend in any of the mar villa holiday parks, we could stay in one half a hour away with waterchutes in the summer, or we could use one of the only one’s that’s open all year and stay in Paris.

And since we’re going that far north, (it’s about 8 hours) we could also go and see Dan’s extended family who live in the north west. And then we’ve added 3 more stops to break up the journey so we’re not actually ever doing a 8 hour drive. So we have 3 nights in the most budget Airbnbs we can find. Let’s see if this is a fun family road trip or just one long car journey between garden sheds.

Last weekend was a weird rollercoaster of emotions, on Friday night Dan was really excited to have found a job advertised that he thought he would be perfect for. It was translating french documents into English for the tourist board of a village near to us. There was also to procedure writing and some IT both of which he has done in previous jobs. The job was just a year contract, but maybe they would extend after I’m not sure. I was excited for him, this felt like a real opportunity, I had felt like we would probably be leaving France but this could be a chance to stay. 

I feel fine about staying another year here it’s beautiful and sunny pretty much all the time, and we can see a mountain with snow on from our window.  The idea of staying another 10 years does scare me a bit. And ideally for the kids education we need to make a decision and stick to it so they can be in one place. At the boy’s local school Percy is in the last year of primary school so he would be starting secondary school in September if we stayed. But if we went back to England he would only go back into year 6 the last year of primary school in the UK. So this would be a better time to leave because he could get used to England and then go to open days and apply for secondary schools. But another year here would change that, he would have to start secondary school here, and then I’d have to work out how to apply for schools in England when you can’t visit them and you don’t have a home address to apply from. And then it might be a big change for Percy to suddenly be schooled in scouse, he’d have to learn some new vocab like “lolly ice” instead of “ice lolly” I don’t know if he’s too old to pick up local accents now. Ok I’m half joking but he’d have to wear a uniform again which he would hate. And it would be hard for him to start a new school here knowing that it wouldn’t be for long.

Maybe Dan could do that job for a year and then maybe something else would come up in that time or maybe that job would be extended but I dont know what I can do here long term. English teaching is ok, I like elements of it. But I once got paid to put on a taskmaster surprise party for someone that involved everyone in kayaks collecting rubber ducks from a river. And I once got paid to make a life sized elephant from willow that was worn by 4 people (one in each leg.) Teaching English grammar as a dyslexic just isn’t quite as fulfilling. All this was going round in my head while I was at my roller dance class. I love roller dance, it’s so fun just a massive hall and music and a lot of freedom to do what you want. Sometimes its a big daydream time for me, and people think I’m not understanding the instructions because I’m english but its actually because I can just switch my brain off to french chatting a little to easily and I’m just in my own head. Skating makes me so happy because it’s really fun but also a bit sad when I feel like I could be really good friends with these people if I could communicate better.

Anyway that Saturday I was wizzing round thinking about our whole situation and just feeling really uncomfortable about staying for a year, feeling like we’d just be extending the time in limbo, not really making a decision. Then on Sunday I felt a bit more fine about it, I do love France, and I’ve heard the Uk is not lovely right now. Dan worked really hard all night on his application and sent it in.

First thing Monday morning he got a email back saying he didn’t get it because he didn’t have 1 year’s experience on a specific piece of soft where made for people who work in the tourist information industry. Dan was gutted, I didn’t know what to feel. I was sad for him though, he’s applying for everything now, supermarkets, Mac Donald’s and jobs in England. He doesn’t want to maybe back to Liverpool because he thinks it will be too weird and we’ve “completed it” like we’ve done all the fun things there are to do. And also crime, it is much safer and quieter in our little French village than where we used to live. 

I get all those points but I just think I can get over it, and a little bit of crime is sometimes fun to watch out the window. When the police once asked if they could look inside our canoes in our yard for a man on the run, that was good fun. When my friend had to knock on the door of our drug dealer neighbours to ask if she could throw some carrots over the wall because she was meant to be feeding our rabbit but I had forgotten to leave her a key, that was retrospectively funny. When a guy was shoot dead right opposite the house and the ambulance didn’t come to save him because the area was not safe. That was horrific. (All these incidents happened in our first Liverpool house not the one will still own)

We’ve talk about living somewhere else in the UK, it has to be the north because all our best people are there, but Dan wants more countryside and mountains and he doesn’t want criminals hiding in his kayaks. I chatted to my old student housemate Josh this week who lives on the edge of the Lake District. I respect Josh a lot for doing his own thing, in his 20s he toured Europe on a tricycle and performed circus skills everywhere. In his 30s he made a horse box into the most incredible eco home, and set up an arts organisation. He’s more recently moved into a real house and is fostering 2 kids with his partner Alex. So he told me all about what is going on in his region for artists, and what there is to do for fun, and what the house prices are like etc. It was intriguing, and Dan found it really interesting too. But when I mentioned it to Percy he said “no, leaving France is already a compromise for me, if we leave why wouldn’t we go back to where we know everyone” and then he was pretty angry about it. If you move from Liverpool to the lakes it’s beautiful but if you move from the Pyrenees to the lakes it’s just the same thing but colder and wetter.

So who knows, we’re trying to have all the fun we can here while we can. Me and Dan snuck of for a sneaky ski while the kids were in school this week. We dropped them off at 8:40am, drove for an hour and 20. Got a 4 hour ski pass and we’re back in time for school pick up at 4:30. It feels a not naughty but we might never get to ski here again and going without the kids was great. Ski wise they are an ok level to come with us, but they cannot cope with their emotions if they fall over or get tired or feel something is unfair.

When I started this blog I said we were going on a road trip tomorrow, but now we’re on day 2 of the road trip, that’s how long it takes to finish a blog with kids. I’ll talk about the road trip next time. Au revoir.

I love Wizzing

Last weekend we tried to escape all our problems by running away to a mountain.

It’s a difficult balance not earning much money and yet also living in an incredibly beautiful place that you might not live in much longer. In general I’ve always been quite careful with money even as a little kid, and when I was a student I was incredibly tight, mainly because once I left home I never wanted to have to go back, and as long as you have some money you can live where you like.

There’s not many times I regret spending money, except for buying my first house for too much and selling it for way less. But there’s loads of times that I do regret not spending a bit more, and a lot of them happened on our big 2013 bike trip. I’m super glad we did it and we had to save up for a long time and budget a lot, but there were a lot of things we didn’t see and days we didn’t do much, because of money. I think it was 62 days long but for example, we were 5 days in Istanbul just wandering around not doing a lot, we should have done 2 days and gone inside places and paid for stuff. 

And then our first year in France Dan had a good job and we could have done a lot of stuff, but I was still being cautious because we had spent a lot of our savings on the move and compared to the previous year where he had that job and I was working I didn’t feel rich. So now its a weird balance of “lets make the most of our time here because this might be the last few months” and “we should be careful because if we have to move back all of that is expensive.” So last weekend we went skiing and we tried to forget all the other stuff that was going on, like not having a house to go to after April and not having proper jobs and not agreeing on what country we want to live in.

I made a playlist of music from the 00s that I had sort of forgotten about, stuff like the Artic Monkeys and Mumford and Sons and and the Kaiser Chiefs. We listened to it in the car driving up to the mountains on the Friday night and I enjoyed it a lot. But one song became the anthem of the weekend, it was The Wombats’ “lets dance to joy division” mainly the line, “everything is going wrong but we’re so happy”. It also starts with the line “I’m back in Liverpool” which is nice (for me who on balance probably wants to return.) 

We had a rule that no one was allowed to speak about going back to England or just anything negative about the future or they would get snowballed (which happened to Dan). We tried not to think about it either. It’s fully consumed all our conversations lately, especially the house moving stuff because that was the most pressing concern. This is just finding somewhere to live from April to July so the boys can finish the school year and Percy can finish primary school here. The options at the time were:

1) live in my friend’s empty house, but it’s not free all of that time. And its 20 minutes drive from the kids school and I can’t continue teaching local kids there because its too far for them.

2) pay over 2000 Euros a month for an Airbnb in the village, that not even amazing it’s just an ok house.

3) move in with my parents and either us or them go off on a canal boat so we’re not in each other space too much. But then either we would be sending our kids to a random school for 3 months or homeschooling them.

It was a bit of a head wreck and that’s only our most immediate problem that needed sorting. But luckily it is hard to worry about this stuff when travelling down a mountain at speed, and we had a lot of fun just enjoying the views, and trying to remember from last year what to do. I really love skiing. I used to think, “what’s the big deal it’s just standing up sledging for posh people,” and maybe I still do think that but it’s so fun. I don't really care to be good at it, I’d like to not be a danger to myself and others like I was the first time. But I just want to whizz around all the time.

 It’s sort of the same with my roller skating classes, just let me whizz around, don’t teach me how to do it on one leg backwards. And when I learnt trampolining as a teenager, just let me bounce lady! It’s basically a bouncy castle and I’ve no interest in doing a pike.

I do love that there’s no gatekeepers when you ski. Unlike driving a car, if you have the money to buy the ski pass you’re allowed to do what you like. It’s not like that at the Manchester snow dome with their fake little mountain and their extortionate beginners course where no fun is allowed. Dan is very different to me in this regard, he loves being told what to do and not having fun. He would love a ski instructor to give him some tips and techniques, he watched some youtube videos and keeps saying skiing jargon to me. When I think it’s just whoever can have the most fun is the winner. The boys did well in general, although Eric had a grumpy first morning, but after some food he was a lot better. I love that they’ve had the chance to do something neither of us did as children.

It was a good head break away from the stress, we weren’t sure if the stress would immediately come back the minute we were home, but Dan said he did feel more positive going into this week. 

I did an online comedy course this week, I’ve never done a course before. Lots of people do a course before they start, I guess just like I threw myself down a mountain with no experience, I did a 5 minute comedy set back in 2012 and then I did more and more and now, after years of virtually never doing it, I thought, “this might be fun or interesting and might help me decide if I want to get back into it again if we do return.” I definitely do want to write a show about the move to France and all the mad stuff that’s gone on here, and all the stupid stuff I’ve said wrong. Here’s this weeks french mistake: I’ve been saying arobase the word for the at sign (@) when I mean ardoise the word for a little white board. “Oh that’s not so bad Hannah, you surely don’t need to say little white board much.” Yes I do actually, I say it every single English lesson because all the kids have personal whiteboards.

I’m going to end this blog with some happy news, as a reward for you reading this far. We found a house we can live in from April to July that’s in our village! It’s an airbnb but it’s not the one that’s over 2k a month. We met the landlord and managed to persuade him that we are trustworthy and we won’t trash his house. It was actually quite miraculous, he shared his whole life story with us, he knows a few people we know and he is a Christian and was baptised in our church. Last night he brought us a massive box of food that was like stuff that would have gone to waste, that they give to charities. Dan isn’t even here to eat it. He’s doing a half marathon, in Africa (just kidding he’s in Marrakesh it’s not really Africa) that’s like when people from Liverpool say they’re going to another country and they go to Rhyl. Technically true but don’t be a loser. 

Tongue Five

This is my first proper blog about 2025, seeing as the last one that I wrote on 3rd Jan was all about December. I’m a bit behind on everything, normally at the end of the year I do a kids quote of the year, but I think this one will be my last. I haven’t had such great ones this year and they’re pretty much all from Eric. There must be an age when kids peak in funniness, I think about 3-6, because I remember the years where Percy had loads more than Eric and then Eric was equal and then he took over.

My favourites from previous years include:

How do you milk a ghost? - Percy 

What would happen if lightning struck a cheese triangle? - Eric

Daddy your face looks like a world war. - Percy

Poo and wee are married. - Percy

Can ice creams put out fire? -Percy

What is your nose stuck on with? - Eric

We have two babies one made out of plastic and one made out of real. - Percy

2024 quotes.

1) "look at my new crab gloves" -they're called mittens Eric.

2) “That was more fun than I wanted it to be” - Eric I wish I’d written down what that was about.

3) “Did dogs get named after doggy paddle or the other way round?” -Eric

Hey what’s that unnamed animal swimming doggy paddle? Shall we just call that a dog?

4)  Percy: we just high fived each other on the tongue, 

Eric: ha ha yeah tongue five

5) “I had a dream where a dog was wearing roller skates and sunglasses but the roller skates were cats.” -Eric

One day I want to draw some of these as cartoons and get them printed on a mug. Maybe made into a calendar or something.

It was my birthday last Monday and I celebrated with a trip to Spain for the day while the boys were in school. It’s a bit over an hour to Girona and that’s a fun city. I wanted to pick a birthday gift for myself from Dan, he finds it hard to choose stuff I’ll like and I like choosing for myself. I think everyone would be happier if instead of doing a family secret Santa, we all bought something for ourselves and then just showed the others. 

Pigs on the road to Spain

For my birthday I bought a space T-shirt. It’s black with white specks and a tiny astronaut and I got some new make-up. I am 39 and I am still wearing pretty much the same kind of make up I did at 18. For the first ever time I got concealer and blusher, I need as much help as I can get covering up my 39 year old face now.

My parents got me a new Eastpak backpack. It comes with a 30 year guarantee, which means I won’t need a new one until I’m 69. I told my mum if she’s still alive at 94 can she please put a new backpack on my birthday list for then. It will be interesting to see if the bag outlives my mum, it could even outlive me. And if the zip breaks on my bag after 29 years can I get a whole new bag? Has anyone actually ever tested this guarantee?

On the evening of my birthday I had 3 girls round for a meal and a few games. We played a cool one called 10 to 1 where you are given a card between 1 and 10 and you have to answer a question like 

“You are giving a lecture on an important subject, what is the title?” If you have card 1 it has to be a very boring title like, the study of ancient pollen (that’s a joke for 1 friend) or how to solve climate change if you had a high number. And then someone has to guess the correct order based on the answers.

My friend told me she played with her family at Christmas and deliberately gave her mum a 10 card when the question was to “do a record breaking high jump” and her mum couldn’t jump at all and apparently it was hilarious.

It was a really fun day and we just had a great weekend skiing but in the middle was 4 days of stress and bad news about our housing situation, which I will write more about in another blog.

Thanks for reading.