A new tiny person.

A brand new person arrived in the world on 5th May. I mean she was in the world before that, but she was packaged better, in the body of my sister Jo. I was hoping Jo would be crowning just as the king was being crowned (that would be fun) but she was 12 hours off. Her first baby was not straight forward and she lost a lot of blood. It was covid times and her husband wasn't allowed in the hospital and she ended up discharging herself because her care was so awful. This time it all went smoothly, she went in in the evening, had her at 10pm and went home at midnight. When I told my French friend, who has also just had a baby, this she couldn't believe it. My friend also had a simple birth, she went in on a Tuesday and chose to come out on the Friday, and then her visiting midwife told her off for not staying in longer.

Miriam Elspeth and Hannah Margaret

My sister lives in Bradford so I was very excited when I found out that this year Ryanair have started flying a new route, Perpignan to Leeds/Bradford. I once wrote a blog about how much I hated Ryanair, but I have now decided, due to this new route, to forgive them. I even made them an 'I forgive you' video on tiktok. I got very cheap flights, 40 euros return. I just flew with hand luggage so it was super easy. I missed out on holding my nephew who was born in covid times so it was super nice to hold my newborn niece. I can't believe babies exist, and everyone was a baby. I know I've done it twice but it's still amazing that a person grows inside another person and that they can squeeze out. She was very adorable and just wanted to be cuddling a person all day, and that was a lovely job mainly because the baby cuddler didn't have to do the other jobs. There were three adults so we did all do our fair share of baby cuddling and other jobs.

I think most people know this, but just in case you don't here's a public service announcement: If your friend has a baby and you visit them and just hold the baby when it's happy, you are not really helping. Your friend might be happy for the company, but she would be even more happy if you, got her shopping, did the washing up, held the baby while the parent sleeps, entertained an older child, cooked a meal, hang out her washing. I was only there 3 days but I tried to do some of these things. The most tiring job was entertaining big brother Zac who is 2. He is a very adorable little boy but he's also a savage (all 2 year olds are). He wakes up at 5:30am and he wants entertaining all day. Newborns and 2 year olds have opposite needs really, I don't know why it's so popular to have both at once. It's like owning a cute little house trained bunny and a wolf. In the long run it's a nice gap though, my kids have the same gap and most of the time they're best buddies.

I've really forgotten how difficult that stage is. I do remember it being difficult, Eric was born in May 2017 and I didn't get any nursery for Percy until September, and we were paying for that, so we did the minimum possible which was 1.5 days. They were cute, but it's so relentless trying to entertain a two year old when you haven't slept. You don't get any head space and you are constantly being touched. Baby groups were life savers though, I went to one my church ran and it meant Percy could go off and play with new toys and I could keep an eye on him while sitting down feeding Eric. It's kind of impossible to enjoy that bit when it's so relentless. Then you look back at photos of them and think "aww they were so cute, I miss that" but that's because you're not remembering the times when they thought 4:30am was an ok time to wake up and play, or they pooed in the bath.

But look how cute they were!

I think my sister and her husband are doing a great job though, Jo is super patient which really is an achievement given the circumstances. When I flew back I felt very grateful that my own kids were out of the baby bit, and although they have their moments they're pretty easy really. They had a great time when while I was away. We didn't realise that both school days I was away were actually holidays. In France there is no May half term but there are five random bank holidays, plus Wednesdays are off school anyway.  Dan couldn't really take the time off so very kindly my friend Flick took them out to the aquarium one day and a gallery the other day and then on the weekend Dan took them to see the Mario Movie, which they absolutely loved and didn't mind at all that it was in French.

In other news I passed my A2 french course! Last time I had to wait two months between finishing the A1 and starting the A2 but this time I started the B1 the next day which was great, although it's a bit annoying that it's on Wednesdays (as well as Fridays) because we have to pay for the kids to go to the school club.  This is the last course I can get for free, after that I will do some paid online evening classes and try and look for work. If I pass the B1 and jump through some other hoops, like have an interview, I can eventually get citizenship, which means we will all finally be EU members and we could move anywhere. Except why would we leave France when we've just spent so much time learning French.

I'm enjoying my lessons and I love meeting a random selection of refugees and immigrants. Last week I learnt how to play Rock, Paper, Scissors Ukrainian style. They chant a long rhyme before doing it which made it tricky because I went after they said 3 words, assuming they were counting, but what they were actually saying was "paper beats rock, rock beats scissors...etc" but guess what? they have a 4th thing! "The Well" as in what you get water from. The well beats the rock and scissors because they sink but paper beats well because it floats.

On Saturday I"m doing 8 minutes of stand up comedy in French!! If I never mention it again, it went badly, so don't ask me about it.

Bilingual and Cheeky

It was very cool to celebrate Eric's 6th birthday this week. I love a themed party and Mario was a very fun theme. I've come a long way in my Mario knowledge, since the days when I was asked to do a Mario mural for a neighbour, when I didn't have much of a clue about the characters. At that time I'd just found out I was going to be moving to France and I remember listening to learning French audio books while painting the mural, but now my knowledge of French and Mario has really improved. I've even played Mario Kart with Percy's French classmate, so I know all the Mario related French words.

Eric hasn't really ever had a big party. His 3rd birthday was in the height of lockdown, his 4th was still pretty locked down, for his 5th we had just moved here and knew no one, so it was about time we did something good. Percy had a big party for his 7th where we got a hall and a bouncy castle, so we looked into hiring a small bouncy castle for our garden here, but it was crazy expensive like more than double what we paid for Percy's party, for a much smaller castle. Some things are weirdly expensive here for no reason.  Another thing we used to do in Liverpool, but now can't afford to do, is get our car cleaned on the inside. We don't own a hoover because we don't own carpets so I wanted to get our car cleaned. I used to pay £12 a few times a year for the guys outside Dobbies (the garden centre) to give our car a mini valet. They made it great inside and outside, while I could go inside with the boys and get a free hot drink, because we got 2 a month with our Dobbies membership (which was maybe £12 a year). Anyway there was a similar looking business outside a big shopping centre, they wanted 60 euros just the clean the inside! 

Another thing you can't seem to buy here, but you could loads of places in England, is an inflated balloon. You can buy the foil balloons everywhere, but then you have to buy your own helium canister. We just wanted one balloon in the shape of a 6. Other random things that are hard to get here include: hummus, hash browns, black beans, halloumi, crisps in a bag that is just for one person, and a decent hot chocolate. 

We actually went to Spain at the weekend to see what is cheaper there and a lot of things were. We mainly went to buy me a new bike. I've had my lovely folding bike for 10 years now and I love it, but it's not a joy to ride anymore and I wanted the exact same thing but new. They don't sell it anywhere in France but they do sell it in the first major town in Spain - Figueres. I got the last one in the shop and I love it. 

She's called Rosa, (the girl's name we never used).

We also stocked up on cheaper meat, hummus and nice cheaper juices at a supermarket and this market...

But back to the party... After a lot of thought we didn't go for the crazy bouncy castle, we instead bought a second hand chocolate fountain for 8 euros, and made some home made Mario themed games. We made a Mario track in the shape of a figure of 8. Eric wanted "a figure of 6" because it was his 6th birthday and it was hard to explain why that would be difficult. He just invited 6 friends which was the right number to fill the house without it being too much. I did face painting and Dan was in charge of giving glow in the dark Mario temporary tattoos.  My decision to make the party bags from scratch using paper and glue only hours before the party was a bad one, but it turned out ok in the end.

We did two games: Pass the parcel and pin the moustache on Mario. The French kids had not heard of either of these. Before pass the parcel I tried to get the kids to sit in a circle on the sofa and chairs. This is where cheeky Eric thought he'd take a chance to make a joke out of my imperfect French. I wanted to say "sit on the sofa" but I actually said "sit in the sofa." He then thought it was hilarious to lift up a bit of the sofa bed where we store the duvet and try and get in there, saying in French, in front of all his mates, "what mum? you said sit IN the sofa Ha Ha Ha. " It was actually pretty funny.

He's so excited to be six, I always feel a bit sad every time he gets older in a way that I don't do with Percy. He's just a great age at the moment, very easy and agreeable, very affectionate and was so excited about the birthday party. I loved making all the decorations and doing the cake and stuff, I love a theme. I have no clue what I will do when they're teenagers and don't want decorations and a theme.

All Eric's toes used to fit on my finger.

After the success of Pin the Moustache on Mario, I was asked to make a Pin the ear on Charles thing for a coronation celebration we went to at my English friends house. I virtually never paint faces because they're hard! This actually turned out better than some times where I've tried to do a serious painting. Maybe I could go into business doing bespoke pin the x on y posters. 

Having a party soon? Want a random game? What's the most unusual one you can think of?

The best trifle I have ever tasted

The creepiest body for King Charles.

Ps My sister Jo has also had a baby... I'm going to visit her next week so she can have a blog dedicated to her after that.

Franceaversary

22nd April marked one year since we moved, potentially forever, to a city we'd only been to for one day in 2019. That trip was part of a two week camper van trip from Nice to Barcelona. At that point I had just had an operation 6 months earlier so we wanted to have some nice family time, and we wanted to make the most of the fact that Eric wasn't quite two years old and so was still free on flights. We'd never seen that bit of France before, and apart from the van being too small and Dan having to sleep in an "L" shape around Eric it was a pretty good trip. 

This photo was taken on our 1 random day in Perpignan in 2019.
I'm pointing at the mountain that we can now see from our window.

We were not really thinking about leaving back then, it's always been in the back of our minds, but we were pretty settled in Liverpool, my parents hadn't long moved up north, and remote working was less of an option. But we did really like all the places along that coast. It was pretty strange but exciting swapping a nice but entirely predicable life for a year where everything changed and really anything could have happened. And really I think in general things have turned out well. 

Some major things are harder: we have less money because we used our savings on the move and I am not currently working, we have less space in our house, although we've gained a second toilet and although our garden is smaller, we use it more because it hardly rains. We have fewer friends. They're some pretty major downsides. But I am the kind of person who likes change and there's been a lot of good change. 

We have made some new friends, not many, but we've met some cool people here. Among our old friends we're part of maybe 5-10% of people who would take the step to move country. No judgement on people who wouldn't choose to move, in some ways I wish I had no desire to move, it would be simpler, but among the community of other foreigners here, we are the very dull play it safe ones. I've met a few people that have moved multiple times within France or internationally, moving their kids schools each time. I know someone who first moved to Barcelona with a family then it didn't work out, so they moved to France and lived with their in laws, their husband couldn't find work here so got a job in London and the rest of the family will move back in the summer. I thought moving here was stressful but in comparison our lives are pretty easy. 

I've been getting to know some more Ukrainians. There's one on my course that told me the story of how she came here. Her city was very close to the Russian border and was the first placed to be bombed. She had an hour to pack her car and she focused on packing all the things her cats needed to survive. The day they left was her 19th birthday. She first travelled to a different city in Ukraine, but the roads were jam packed and a journey that should have taken 5 hours took 24 hours. They also struggled to get fuel as everyone else was buying it too. They were very cold in the car, it was February and they had to turn the car off when they weren't moving to preserve fuel. They then left to Romania and were sleeping in their car or on church floors. Eventually they came to France. Then for 3 months she moved back to a safer part of Ukraine to work and see her boyfriend. She remembers being on a bridge in a city and the very next day that bridge was bombed. 

In a weird set of coincidences I met another Ukrainian who lives in my village. When we arrived a year ago a Ukrainian family also arrived and were living with a French host family. The head teacher managed to find funding to put on some extra French lessons for Percy, the Ukrainian girl and a Portuguese girl. Then I started my A1 French classes in October and met some Ukrainians (who I didn't particularly talk to) but then, last week, I went to the boys end of term music concert and this woman (who I really recognised but I didn't know where from) started talking to me. At first it was awkward because I really didn't know who she was, but eventually I realised she was the Ukrainian from my old French class (I'm now in a different class in a different place). So she'd been in my village the whole time and our kids have been taught together and we had been in the same class but, have never met. We've exchanged numbers now and hopefully we'll hang out a bit, but we can only communicate in bad French currently. We sat down together to chat after the concert, and her daughter and Dan acted as our translators, translating our bad French to good French and then sometimes her daughter translated back to Ukrainian. 

On our Franceaversary weekend we travelled down to Barcelona to meet my parents, who flew there. On a plane, unfortunately they can't actually fly if, they could I probably would have mentioned it back when I started this blog in 2009. 

Anyway, I love Barcelona it's probably my favourite city but I am from Coventry, so the bar is low. I've discovered I really would like to live in a major city. I discovered this too late in life though and Dan is not a big fan of big places, plus having outside space and fields to walk in is nice too. But it was great being in Barcelona for a few days. We did some fun touristy things and I got to do my first comedy set for a year! 

It was a very lovely comedy night with a perfect audience in a very aesthetically pleasing basement. 

I talked to all the other acts who were all very friendly and from all over the place. I met a Mexican who did a gap year in Leeds, and I told him that's the wrong way round. I met a British comedian based in London who knew a load of my comedy friends from the north and it was just really cool to be in that environment and make those connections again. I just am a bit sad that I can't do it very often. 

I was a bit hesitant in the first half of my set, trying to remember it as it was 100% new material, but I relaxed into the second half and I think I have at least one good new bit. In England I could then do this set again, 10 times in different places improving it and tweaking it, but it would be pretty impossible to do that here. At the end of May I'll be performing IN FRENCH! I've no idea how that will go. It's very hard to learn it and I won't be able to do any ad hoc bits unless I need to say "J'ai douze ans" or "ou est la bibliotec" that kind of stuff. It could be a disaster, but then it might be great material for an English show that I might do one day about all the disastrous things I did when I lived in France.

My next blog will be about Eric's birthday and then I might possibly write a serious blog, I'm not sure I'm still thinking about it.

The Scariest Way to Learn French.

 Everyone likes to learn in different ways, my mum is the opposite of me and likes to learn by instructions. Not many people know that she is very good at art, she's sort of a closet artist. She does watercolour and she buys books about art techniques and she went to lessons once. She likes to follow step by step guides to doing stuff. She's the kind of person who reads all the instructions and counts all the bits before making furniture from Ikea. Once when she bought me my first oil paints as a teenager she also bought me a book of how to do it. I didn't see the point. If I wrote a book on oil paint it would say this: 

Chapter 1. You can't wash your brushes with water. 

Chapter 2. It takes about 2 months for you paintings to dry so make sure you have somewhere to store them in that time.

Chapter 3. Now have fun!

My way of learning is trial and error. And occasionally I say I can do something that I've never done before and then that sort of pressures you to do it. In 2010 I worked for a year for this company that sent me into schools to do workshops. Then in the summer holidays I got married and got a mortgage, and expected to be starting work again in September. But no work came in, after a few weeks of waiting patiently for work, I phoned up to enquire and was told they were focusing more selling solar panels to school than selling me. Cheers for the heads-up. So then I had to either find schools that wanted me to do workshops or find a new job. So I emailed a few schools and only one got back to me after a lot of back and forth they asked if I could do mosaics. I said "yes" because I had a friend who knew how to do them and I had youtube. 

My friend once told me how she was grouting a mosaic in a school and cut herself badly on the glass and when she came back to the class after sorting that out all the grout was dried on her mosaic meaning she had to spend days drilling it off.  I was terrified of ruining it when it came to that part too but luckily it went well and eventually mosaics became my most popular art project.

And last week I said yes to a new thing I don't know how to do. I emailed a local comedy club and said would you like a short comedy set in French? and they said yes! So I'm going to be learning french really quickly! 

I've had to write all new material for it I don't think my old stuff will work to just translate it, So I've started writing new material about coming to France and learning french, and then I'll have to learn it really well and hope that I won't get heckled otherwise I'd have to give a really primary school level reply like "your mum is a cow" but I don't even know if your mum jokes are a thing here. 

The other completely different thing I'm going to try is face painting or as the french call it "kid's make-up." This should be a lot more in my comfort zone because I already paint canvases and walls so this would just be like a small less flat canvas. but I thought it would help me firstly to get to know people because I can volunteer to do it for the school fair or for church stuff and it's just a nice way of being part of something with minimal language skills required. and also I could maybe do it for money and money is a handy voucher that you can swap for most things you need. (you might already know that.) I've never really done face painting before but if I had to write a book on it it would go like this:

Chapter 1 if it goes well great well done.

Chapter 2 if it goes badly just make sure no one has a mirror.

I ordered the paints from amazon. and they have been arriving one by one, first I just had orange so on that day I could only paint your face if you wanted to be a carrot or Donald Trump or an Oompa Loompa. which are the 3 least commonly requested faces.

The road by mine that I go running on

I hardly ever ran in England. I only feel like it with these views.

Other than choosing two new career ideas (French comic and face painter) I've finally started more french lessons this week. I had to wait two months since I passed the A1 (basic french course) but now I'm onto A2 with a new random selection of immigrants.  This time we have a Russian and a Ukrainian which was a little awkward. Especially when we had to write anonymous list of three things we liked and didn't like and the the teacher read them out. She read out "I hate the Russian president" and everyone guessed it was the Ukrainian but actually it was the Russian. I hope this class will provide great comedy material for my upcoming gig. I feel like a load of foreigners trying to learn to integrate might make a good sitcom.

Lunches there are very unpredictable, I feel like in a uk staff room I could make an accurate pie chart of peoples pack lunches. In fact I will:

You've always got that weirdo eating cottage cheese spread on Rivetta as if putting the worst kind of cheese on the worst kind of carb makes you thin. 

Anyway international lunch rooms are so much more varied, theres a lot of delicious rice based stuff. The girl from Tahiti eats battered chicken. I don't know if all girls from Tahiti eat battered chicken for lunch but she must represent at least 1% of the population of Tahiti right? and then a Moroccan ate beetroot and raw onion. yuk! maybe that the Moroccan version of weird diet food I don't know. I need more data to make a new pie chart. They also all share all their food. So far I just made one guy from Afghanistan drink some British tea and they were all shocked it had milk in it. He was trying to be polite but I think he hated it.

Whats the weirdest thing you've ever taken for a packed lunch? Let me know and I'll make a pie chat. 

Unexpected

I didn't really know what to expect when we decided to move to France, but I was up for it. I wanted to make my life unpredictable again. I feel like in my early 20's my life was fairly unpredictable. Kind of unstable. Between the ages of 20 and 25 I lived in 5 different houses, I had two long term relationships (not at the same time), I was a student, then unemployed, then I volunteered, then I had two jobs and then went self-employed. I spent 2 months in the Middle East, I went through at least 4 bikes and then learned to drive, got engaged, got married and bought a house.

It was quite a lot of change and then you kind of want a bit of stability. It would be nice to not move house every year, imagine living somewhere long enough to bother to find a window cleaner. That would be nice. And we had those things for a bit and then we had kids and job changes and two more house moves. And then we had a whole 5 years of a lovely house. It was big enough and no body was murdered directly outside it. We had a nice little local community with our church and the kids school. I had my comedy mates too and work started going really well. I easily could have lived that life forever and I would have been happy. But, there was just a little niggling feeling that this was the time to swap everything we knew for something different, just to see what it was like. It's like that old saying, "the grass is always greener..." in England because there's too much rain. It was my dream to live somewhere grass struggles to live, and butter is perfectly spreadable at room temperature. 

I had no idea what to expect and in the stressful time when we were clearing the house I wondered if I really wanted to go at all, but I didn't give myself any time to think about that. I thought it was best to get on with the job and worry about if I'd made the biggest mistake of my life later on. I knew it would be sometimes amazing and sometimes I'd find it hard, but my predictions about when I'd find it hard and easy have been totally the opposite way round.

We arrived at the end of April just as the weather was getting hot, so I thought, "we'll have a great summer enjoying the beach and being in the honeymoon period and then as it gets to October/November it's going to get hard. The weather won't be so good, there'll be less to do and we'll be really missing people by then." But in actual fact the summer was really hard. Way too hot and we didn't know anyone. But November was great, it was still warm for a few hours a day and we were thankful that it wasn't as hot as the summer and the best bit was, we started actually getting to know some fun people. 

My birthday last month was a strange but lovely time. It's odd inviting people over that you've only known a few months. I was a bit nervous that it would be awkward because I didn't know anyone well and they  didn't know each other at all.  I was joking with my friend that we go way back, we're practically childhood friends, because I met her in May. She is my artist friend that I met at the English church. She has 2 teenage girls and a 6 year old. She does very cool messy abstract art and is exhibiting in "The other art fair" in London next week (you should go if you live near London). Then we had our board game friends who we met on an English speakers in Perpignan Facebook group. They are two girls (a couple), one is French and one is German, but their common language is English. They both speak very good English but they have asked us to correct anything they say wrong, so when they kept using the word "somewhen" e.g. "I would like to play this game somewhen" we had to inform them that that is not actually a word. They are super fun, very generous and they are great with the boys too. They now come over every Wednesday for board games and Haribo. I also invited the one person from my French course that spoke English, he's Nigerian. I really liked everyone on my course and we had good banter even though hardly anyone spoke the same languages as each other. 

The course was pretty dull so there was a need for some laughs. Once I made everyone laugh when I didn't know the French word for fireplace, so I acted out a whole elaborate scene where I was chopping down some trees and then cutting them up and setting fire to them. Sometimes I come out with the odd Arabic phrase which amuses the Sudanese guy. Sometimes I've made French jokes that most people get, but sometimes I just wanted to make a sarcastic comment in English and then the Nigerian was the only guy I could say this stuff too. It's hard work being a repressed comedian. 

Birthday party

Anyway the party was a beautiful mix of nationalities and ages in every decade from under 10's to 40's. It was actually nice having the kids around for it too, they had a great time and stayed up till ten. When we put Percy to bed at night he said, "My hot water bottle wasn't hot but I cuddled it anyway and the happiness I was feeling was keeping me warm." I think he's a people person like me. I felt the same. I don't love that at 37 I'm into my late 30's now, but I'm very grateful for all my family and friends and that I get to live in this beautiful place.

We had a few other cool weekends recently. There was one saturday where we had no real plans for the day but it looked so nice out. It was really sunny but also there was a lot of snow on our mountain. We'd made one failed attempt to find snow before when we arrived in April and could see snow on our mountain, but couldn't get to it. But now there was a lot more snow and we had better knowledge of where to go to get to it. We drove for an hour to near where Percy had gone skiing with school. First we found a good slope but too near a road, then we found a safer flatter bit, but then we saw the perfect sledging hill. Amazing views, pretty steep deep snow, and no one else around. 

And last weekend we went to Marseille to visit Dan's Auntie, who lives right in the centre and gave us a tour of the city, as well as taking us to this massive outdoor and indoor adventure playground.

It's still hard sometimes. I see some of my comedy peers doing so well and I am genuinely so happy for them and they deserve it, but I always wonder what would have happened to me if I'd continued, would I be at that level now? And I really do miss work now, I loved my art job, it was the best job in the world. I worked really hard to make it be a real full time job and then both times after having kids, I had to start again pretty much from nothing, so it was pretty sad to give that up and you don't get the kind of good bye that you would get if you were working for over 10 years in a real job. My last day was painting a mural in Prescot by myself and I took a photo of it, sent it to the boss of that job and then packed up and went.

If I start thinking too much about the future it becomes a bit of a head wreck. The idea of living in France for the rest of my life is weird, and the idea of going back to my old life is weird. I think I just have to be ok with not knowing what is going to happen next and hoping that things will fall into place for a job, or something I can do that I feel passionate about, after I've learnt a bit more French.

a painting I'm in the middle of

What shall I do with my life now? (Part B)

I just read my last blog (what shall I do with my life now part a) and it was a lot about Christmas and not a lot about "what I should do with my life" so apologies if I deceived you into reading that. I think the conclusion was that I want a calmer 2023 with no major life changes, but I'm not sure what to do job wise.

Until now I've not been focused on getting a job, and I'm still not really looking right now, but this year I need to get a job. I'm not really that employable even in the UK, and although I have had loads of different jobs, I've never had a full time pays monthly job. 

I hate being asked for a CV. Words without humour is my least favourite way of expressing myself. I much prefer proving myself by showing someone a load of photos of stuff I made. I wish employers were more creative in the way they asked for this info e.g "Lovely to meet you, could you please tell me about your working history through the medium of dance"

Here's my honest CV:

Qualifications

Some GCSEs, mainly Bs.

A weird selection of A-Levels: Art (A), Psychology (B), Business (C) and AS Chemistry (E). Really I wanted to do drama but it didn't fit with art and psychology, so I got round this by doing my business presentations with sock puppets at every available opportunity. I did accents and everything.

Foundation art course - Merit.

Fine Art BA - just scraped a 2:1, I had a great time though.

Post Graduate Diploma in "Children and Young People in Society". This is what it's called if you do two thirds of a Masters degree and then quit because you can't be bothered to write a dissertation. I tried to write a dissertation about the links between dyslexia and creativity. I had to do an original piece of research, but then I was told that you can't measure creativity, and I am dyslexic, and we are actually the natural enemies of academic writing. I don't need to prove the link to those nerds anyway, I know it. Half my art course were dyslexic.  All the cool kids are. 

Working History

I've done all the bad teenage and student jobs you can think of, except a paper round. Then after uni I got a job working with naughty kids part time and a job sitting in a gallery part time. I was pretty good at both of them. It's hard to be bad at sitting on a chair all day. I was resourceful with the long amounts of time I had doing nothing though. I read a bit, I started writing letters to old friends, I invented some secret games that I tried to play with other information assistants and I started this blog. I think I'd cope pretty well in prison.

Then I went self-employed, which was pretty similar to being unemployed at first, but then did become a genuine thing. A school once asked me if I could do mosaics so I said "yes" because it seemed like the answer they wanted to hear. I watched a youtube video on making mosaics, and then I just blagged it. And it went well! I started doing them all over the place. It was my most popular project, until I made a spelling mistake on a massive one worth £2000. And then a couple turned out to be not very waterproof and fell apart. But the majority of people were genuinely happy and the majority of kids did not cut themselves when they were cutting the glass tiles.

After the mistake was fixed.

I did comedy, too and I was mainly good at it. I mean not every time, there was the time when an audience member told me I was shit and the promoter who had given me a trial spot, followed that up with an email confirming it was true. But there were some good ones too, I even won a competition once. I bet I'm the only comedian to dress as the virgin Mary for a Christmas special, complete with a pregnant bump containing a doll and an edible placenta.

Strengths

Including people, making community.

Coming up with fun games and challenges.

Making things out of cardboard boxes.

Jokes and banter.

Knowing what Liverpool postcodes relate to what areas.

Mixing the exact right paint colour, without even mixing as I go. 

Understanding conceptual similarities - I'm in the more than 99.9 percentile for this, it was measured on my dyslexia test. It means I'm good at making links, but how can I monetise this useless skill?

Being different: want to meet someone who likes to hold a three day festival in their garden? Or tried to teach strangers to dance the YMCA using the Arabic letters? Or went through the McDonald's drive through in a supermarket trolly? Or dislocated their elbow falling off a unicycle? Or cycled to Kuwait. HI.

Weaknesses.

Spelling.

Admin.

Technology.

Parking.

Long division.

anything before 9am.

The End

If you think of the job thats perfect for my skillset, please let me know!

I did love doing art workshops, it was pretty much my dream job. It's fun to make big bits of art and it's lovely when kids are enthusiastic about it, which they generally are. It took so long to get to the point where I had loads of work and schools were contacting me and I could actually be a bit picky about what I wanted to do. It was pretty gutting to then just leave and tell everyone, "sorry I can't do that project." I also was so lucky to get to be a comedian for a bit. I never made big money but when it went well, regardless of money, it was amazing. I think I get much higher highs and lower lows doing comedy compared to art. I feel like art has been a constant throughout my life, a thing I usually really like doing, but it can't ever quite give me that same buzz that doing well in comedy can do. 

So what should I do now? After 100 hours of lessons I've just passed my A1 French which is quite basic, but I can now move onto A2 which means learning how to speak in the past and future tenses. So I still need time for that, and I still have to look after the kids when they're not in school on Wednesdays. I need to do something for money, and I'd like to do something creative, but they don't have to be the same thing. Like, I'm quite happy to get a low skilled, low paid job like cleaning or babysitting, and make time for painting or comedy writing. I could put together another hour long show to do somewhere in a years time for example.

I'm actually going to be doing some writing for a French expat magazine soon, 1500 words about our moving experience. I've never written for anything but this blog before. I also started a TikTok last week, it's probably the sign of a midlife crisis. I've made 3 videos about being in France. The first was deemed too long and silent by strangers and my own children. It was one minute and 8 seconds long and it did contain a big chunk of silence, while showing lots of different views of my commute; the beautiful mountains, the train arriving and my cycle through town. I think a minute's silence is sometimes nice but then I am an old person now. My video on 5 differences between English and French schools has gone down well though. The bit where Eric dressed as a king for a nativity play, throws off his crown in disgust at the fact religion is not allowed in schools was my favourite. He looked so angry, either because he's a brilliant actor or because that was the fourth take and he really was mad. Tell me what other videos I should make about France, I'm planning at least one in a supermarket, and one about things I didn't know before I moved here. On TikTok I am @foreigninfrance.

But back to jobs. The other option is becoming an auto entrepreneur, which is being self-employed. I was self-employed in England and I like that way of working and I understand the system, but I don't think I would like it here. They are very restrictive about what you can do. In England my business was "community artist" which is basically anything I want it to be, mainly school art workshops but when I did comedy or anything else random I just put it all in there as community art. But the French system is more strict. You can only be one thing e.g. you can't just be a general builder/handyman, you have to be a registered plumber or plasterer or whatever. I think this is a stupid law and encourages people to do little jobs on the side for cash. There's a few things I've thought of doing here, the most obvious one is to try and do the art thing I did in Britain, but I don't know enough French yet and I don't know how the school system works and I really don't want to fill in a French tax return. Another self-employed idea I had was managing peoples holiday houses, like cleaning, changing the sheets, being around to give people keys, but the busiest time would be the summer holidays when the kids are off school.

I also have considered teaching English. At first it was annoying when I told people I was moving to France and they said "I know, you can teach English!" as if being born English is the only skill you need to teach English. Since I've been learning French though, I've had more of an appreciation for what makes a good teacher and a good lesson and I do find the language learning process interesting.  I'd love to teach kids in an informal after school fun club. Like with games and stuff. Eric's best buddy at school has asked to go to English lessons so he can speak to Eric and for Christmas he got a subscription to an English magazine. How cute is that?! That's the kind of kid I'd love to teach.

The view of the snowy Canigou out of our bedroom window.

P.s Dan did a half marathon up the mountains in deep snow yesterday, he's training for the Paris marathon in April.

What shall I do with my life now? (part a)

Welcome to 2023 everyone, I'm glad you all made it this far in life. It's been a tough few years so give yourself a pat on the back. We are just back from two weeks in dreary old England, with our dreary old families. Just kidding, it was great to see the family, especially Dan's brother Josh who secretly flew back from Korea so he could surprise his parents. He had to endure 21 hours in Dubai without a hotel just wandering round trying to sleep in cinemas, so that he could be with them for just four days after not having seen them for three years.

The 5 Jones siblings

When I got off the plane and walked into the airport I realised I must have a hole in my shoe because my foot was a bit wet. I've been wearing these shoes since I moved to France and had never noticed before, because it virtually never rains. In some ways being back felt very familiar, like we'd never left, but Christmas is not the same when you don't have your own house and your own car and the independence to do what you like. You don't get that break between seeing big groups of people. We didn't get to see everyone we wanted to see, and most of the time we were all sleeping in one room together.  We are super grateful to our parents for putting us up and lending us a car so we could visit other people, but we're gradually getting used to the fact that we did actually make a pretty big life change, and it effects the whole family and Christmas dynamics.

The obligatory Christmas dinner photo where you can't quite get everyone in.

Marshall Christmas

Cousins on Dan's side.

One highlight of being back was taking the kids back to their old school on the last day of term, so they could see their old classmates. When Percy walked into his class they all shouted "Percy" and ran to hug him. They both showed a little powerpoint of photos, and the kids got to ask a few questions. We had a playdate with my school run crew, which was lovely. We saw a panto and we saw the new Matilda film at the cinema. And we went to the dentist because I'm trying to get everything possible from the NHS while I can.

I tried to get a smear test too but they wouldn't let me. I meant to go on 10th Jan, (I have to go every year because of having cervical cancer once) but I'm back in France now, and they won't let me just go when I'm in England in August because being that late looks bad on their records. So now I'm going to have to figure out French smear tests. As if a smear tests isn't embarrassing enough as it is, do I really have to do it all in a language I'm an idiot in as well?!

After a few nice days of seeing lots of people before Christmas, I got ill and stayed ill for the rest of my time. Mainly with bad headaches. Thursday was the first day I felt normal again. I was gutted to have to cancel our new year plans with Zac and Jude. They are the family who were going to visit in the summer but their plans were ruined by chicken pox. We still met them in Delamere forest for a bit, but it wasn't the full house party shenanigans we had planned.

Arriving back in France (via Barcelona) felt good. It would have felt better if it wasn't 1am on a school night, but it did feel like coming home. The next morning was tough, I was still a bit ill and had to be at French lessons and the kids were in school. I really can't remember making the decision that a flight that got in so late was a good idea, but there must have been a reason. The following day was great though it was a Wednesday so no school and no French lessons. The kids played with their new Christmas lego and we all enjoyed being back in the sun. It's still cold in the morning and evening, but the quality of light is just beautiful. it's virtually never grey or rainy and for a good few hours around the middle of the day it's really warm. We sat outside to eat lunch almost needing suntan lotion. The feeling of the sun on my face is such a lovely restful thing. I don't know if maybe I had seasonal affective disorder but I definitely craved the summer months and Dan did too. Every winter we'd dream about moving somewhere, and we did! I can finally say we fixed that problem in our lives. Unfortunately while fixing that problem some more problems that we didn't have previously have arisen:

1) I have left my art job that I loved and can't easily earn money.

2) I was slowly making my way up in the comedy circuit and now I can't do any of that.

3) There's a big imbalance between me and Dan now where he has to do 90% of the admin for four people because he speaks French.

4) Our house is smaller than before and although it is a nice house I miss having a bath and more rooms.

5) I'm 1000 miles away from all my friends and family.

But hey, you can't feel down about those things when you have beautiful mountains to look at.

This is the view a few minutes from my house that I cycle past most days.

I don't I regret the France move, if we hadn't moved I would have always wondered what could have happened. But I really didn't think it through that much. At first I thought we could just go for a year and come back if we didn't like it. But even before we moved I realised that was a stupid idea. Now that we are 8 months into that year I realise how completely stupid it would be to move back in April. Firstly our old house would not be available until the summer. Then I know the kids school places have already been taken by other kids. We sold all our furniture and our car. We're not even all the way through what we have to do document wise. e.g we stopped getting UK child benefit ages ago but we're still waiting to be on the French system and hoping to get some back dated French child benefit soon. The kids wouldn't remember much French at all as adults if we went back now. We decided to be here for three years minimum, but we didn't ever consider what if one person wants to go back then and the others don't. I find it hard to imagine any scenario for 5 or 10 years time. The idea of still being here seems weird but the idea of moving back also feels pretty weird. I guess we could always be somewhere else that isn't Liverpool or Perpignan but that seems a bit pointless too.

I don't know what this year will hold, which is sort of exciting. After changing our whole lives in 2022 I hope for a calmer 2023. My resolutions are to not move house or move country or have a baby. I would however love to be at least a bit further on the journey of deciding what to do now. At the moment I am pretty busy doing French lessons for 3 full days a week and then I have the kids on Wednesdays, so I don't have much free time, but when my French is better I need to start looking for a job and a purpose in life. Let me know your suggestions, I need all the help I can get.

I've got more things to write about this but I will write them another day.