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.

Christmas and Sickness

I really wanted to get this blog out in December, but sickness and a bit of laziness stopped me. But welcome to the 16th year of this blog. Last month we’ve been trying to just get on with our normal lives and put to the back of our minds the questions of what country we’ll be in in a years time, what we want to do with our lives and what we’re doing on this planet anyway.

It was a busy time. I’m gradually getting more and more people to teach English to which is great, although some of it is quite location specific, like the group in my house, so that’s going to be a pain when we have to leave in April. I’m enjoying teaching teenagers as well as younger kids now. If all French teenagers can be judged by the 3 French teenagers I teach then, French teenagers are the most polite and self-motivated teenagers in the world, and I’m looking forward to my own kids becoming as delightful as these young people. I really do enjoy teaching English when it’s just finding fun ways to chat rather than teaching grammar rules that I don’t really know.

I’ve been busy flogging my French colouring books all over our region.  I actually have both my books out on Amazon now.

here’s the France one.

and here’s the Merseyside one.

I finished my Kickstarter project this month too, that was the only way I could think of getting a printing press. People generously donated towards this beauty:

And in return they got given some prints that I made with the press. It was hard work trying to get them all made in time to post when I was back in England. Some of them have several layers that each take more than a day to dry so if you mess up the 3rd layer you’re several days behind. I’ve still got a couple more to finish, including a bespoke one. But I’m still happy to make up more if anyone else would like one.

Some example work

We went to England for Christmas, Dan and the boys hadn’t been since last year. The day before we left we wanted to have a Christmas family fun day. We let the kids open their presents early, because I’m not lugging a pair of roller blades to England just for Eric to open on Christmas Day and bring back again. 

So we opened some presents on the 21st and drove up to the mountain for some snowy fun, on sledges.

The next day we were up at 5 to drive to Barcelona for our flight to Manchester. We booked the bargain parking. We used it last year for the first time and it did seem dodgy, you park in a underground supermarket car park and then give a teenager your car key and they drive you in a bashed up people carrier to the airport. And you do worry the whole time that you won’t get your car back, but then it’s about 50€ cheaper than the official airport parking and we did get our car back, yeah maybe it was used in a few crimes in between but that’s only fair. This time we needed to be at the airport at 8am so we turned up in the car park and it was shut. We pressed the barrier button to speak to someone and they said it opens at 9am. So we had a little panic which we had to hide from the kids. That is an annoying thing about kids aged 7 and 10, they’re too aware of what’s going on so when you’re stressed and panicking at the same time you have to pretend everything is fine. Anyway it was fine, we just had to pay almost double for legit parking but I actually think it was a blessing in disguise because if our flight was an hour later and we could use that car park, I bet when we returned at 10pm on New Year’s Eve our car would be stuck in there. I think we’ll use legit car parking from now on.

It was lovely to see all the family, we had 3 new babies within a year. Dan’s sister Rebekah had baby Ada a year ago, my sister Jo had baby Miriam who is now 19 months and my other sister Sarah had baby Murphy who is 10 months. I think Jo and Rebekah have strict baby photo rules so I’ll just share this one of me and little Murphy.

The UK is so grey! I don’t want to go on about it but it’s like you’re all using those crap energy saving lightbulbs that my mum insisted on using in the late 90s. Yeah you’ve saved on your electricity bill well done, but you actually can’t see so you’re really just paying for half a product. For days and days it was just fog. And then we did get a few nice days.

We stay in my parents boat when all the family are round, that way we don’t have to get up at 5am with the babies. Our boys are now old enough to be put to bed on the boat and they have a walkie-talkie to contact us if they need to while we’re in the house in the evening, and then we sleep on the boat too.

One of the day me and Dan got the train to Manchester to see the musical “come from away” which was great by the way. I miss being able to see stuff like that in English. We got our timings all wrong though and were served chips about 15 minutes before the musical was meant to start. Dan wolfed his down but I packaged mine up and sneaked them in, and a guy behind me said “I can smell chips” I’m sure he could see me eating them too.

Chips in a box in a bag in another bag in the Lowry Theatre.

The funniest but also most horrendous part of the whole Christmas time was supposed to be a fun little game of taskmaster that Jo organised. Task one you have 30 seconds to make her very serious baby laugh. Sarah was doing funny sneezes while holding her own baby who was laughing his head off, but Miri refused even a smile. And then task 3 “what’s the most surprising thing you can put in a mug?” I can’t say online, but let’s just say that a root around in my parents room revealed something very surprising, and so mentally scarring that I think I’ve almost suppressed that memory. If I see you in real life and you don’t really know my parents I’ll tell you.

There was a mad kind of sit-com moment one morning when we decided to all go for a walk in Delamere forest, but for the tiny people there’s a lot to pack and think about, everything has to be planned around nap times and breastfeeds. I remember a specific holiday when we had tiny kids and the others didn’t and they had no idea how annoying it was for them to just say, “we’re going to the beach now” and expect us all to be ready in 5 minutes. After that holiday I said, “I can’t wait for about 6 years time when we’ve got easy older kids and they have babies.” But bringing that up just before going out to the woods wasn’t appreciated, and I didn’t get a heartfelt apology from the parents of babies who did now fully understand how long it takes to leave the house. 

My sisters were running round collecting nappies and wellies and prams and stuff while I was trying to get a nice photo of all 5 cousins together. Dad then thought it would be lovely to get a group shot of everyone so messaged a neighbour to come round to get the photo. He forgot that on the way to the forest Sarah’s husband had to be dropped off at a train station so there was a time pressure. We don’t have a car in England so we were all discussing who would go with who and who needed a car seat. This is when Jo piped up with, “legally under 12s need a car seat in the Uk.” Which didn’t go down well with my 10 year old who stopped using a car seat a while ago. We were all still running around and my boys were negotiating how many chocolate coins they could take on the walk, Dad cancelled the neighbour coming round and I got in the car with Sarah and Luke and baby Murphy to go to the station. As Sarah started the engine we realised we were blocked in, so I went to find my brother-in-law to move his car, he was holding his toddler who then had a to be left screaming with uncle Dan, so we could get to the station on time. I love a bit of adrenaline before a family walk though.

Another bit of family drama happened the night before my sister Jo’s birthday. Us 3 sisters had planned to go and see the film Wicked while the husbands and grandparents looked after the kids. On the night before the kids were all in bed, my Dad said he wasn’t feeling great and went to bed and the others were in the middle of a game when we heard my Dad puking up. Then the room became something from a GCSE drama class if a teacher had just asked us to “dramaticly state how a vomiting grandfather will effect yourself and your plans.” 

“I can’t deal with my baby getting sick again!” 

“It’s my birthday tomorrow!” 

“We have a plane to catch!”

“I said we shouldn’t have booked the cinema in advance!”

Then we all discussed new bed arrangements, and my sisters discussed if it was worth waking their kids up to immediately leave the house. Sarah, who has dealt with her baby being constantly sick, decided to immediately leave, and that was unfortunately the last I saw of her. But she did save her baby from the sickness bug. This freed up a bed for my mum not to sleep next to the ill man. I hope somewhere in all this someone remembered to check on my Dad and ask if he needed anything.

We had no option to leave, and I felt like we were a little more protected on the boat, (spoiler alert I was wrong.) The next morning we all felt ok and had a special pancake brunch to celebrate Jo, and then me and Jo went to the cinema to see Wicked, my mum took Sarah’s place. It was a good film but I’m not a mega fan. It didn’t need to be as long as it was. Anyway we all survived the evening without getting sick and at least poor Jo managed a bit of a birthday celebration. If you’re thinking of having kids don’t conceive them in March it’s really not fair on anyone one.

Jo and family left that evening, but we were staying one more day and getting an evening flight on the 31st. It was the cheapest. But that morning me and Dan were both not well, luckily I was kind of ok while he was not ok and vice-versa. We had to do some very strategic packing that invoked wearing all our heaviest clothes and stuffing our pockets. Does anyone else remember the days when packing a hand luggage bag was just a case of thinking “what do I want on the plane with me for entertainment?” You didn’t have to get scales out or do maths or put small liquids in a plastic bag. We stretched the limit of what you can take on as hand luggage to the absolute limit, all so that our one big bag was under 20kg.

Just before heading off to the airport my face was hovering right over a toilet seat ready to vom. But I managed to keep it in all the way to Spain and back to France. Dan and the boys were at the back of the plane and I was on my own at the front in a window seat, the guy next to me was in the middle seat and could have moved to the empty aisle seat but didn’t, he kept trying to peer out the window and I offered to swap seats with him but he declined. If he gets sick it’s his own fault.

So I welcomed in the new year in Spain near Girona trying to not be sick while Dan drove. We saw a few fireworks but not many. I was happy in the morning when I woke up, that we’d all managed to make it back in one piece. And sunshine was streaming through the windows in a way that it doesn’t quite do in England. It’s going to be a weird year for us 2025. I hope that if we stay we can enjoy lots of outdoor adventures and that if we leave we can just have a lot of fun time and parties with the people that we miss.

Happy new year to you all. 

From me and the back of Eric.

Agenda Reveal

Hello and welcome to another, “what shall we do with our lives now?” blog. There’s been a few over the years. There was the time I was seriously thinking about having a 3rd child, the time when I made the decision to try properly at comedy, that time when we were homeless and thought moving abroad would solve all our problems and then the time we actually moved abroad, because it was the only acceptable way of getting out of Eric’s class WhatsApp group.

It’s been a big month of emotions since I last blogged. I had a couple of weeks of thinking, “I really do want to go back to England, I just can’t see myself living here for the next 10 years. More money and a house that was ours (and more French lessons) would help me feel better about being here, but I don’t know if I will ever be at the stage where I can actually make friends properly with most people in this country.” And I don’t understand the systems, there’s not many jobs I can do, I’m just not a full adult person here. 

But the thought of going back is odd too, and Dan and Percy 100% don’t want to go back. And it is incredibly beautiful here, and the weather is so good. It’s cold right now, but there have been many days this month where we’ve had warm 20 degree sun for a few hours in the middle of the day. 

If we don’t have enough work, we have to go back, there’s no debate really. It’s if we have some ok work or remote work that it’s actually more complicated. At the moment nothing is off the table, is that a phrase? Everything is on the table. The table is piled high with weird life ideas. Here’s some of them, in order from quite sensible to ill advised:

1) Go back to our house in Liverpool. Dan is going for a meeting tomorrow with a guy that should be able to give him work, some of which is here but he has much more work in the UK.

2) Stay here. There’s still time for Dan to find a job, rent a new house (we have to leave this one in April) and it all to work out here.

3) Find a job in another area of France. We’ve talked about Paris or Toulouse, I might enjoy being in a bigger city so maybe it’s a good compromise. For example I know there’s some English speaking comedy nights in Paris, that could be fun.

4) Move back to Britain but not Liverpool. Dan wants mountains and countryside so maybe North Wales, or the Lake District or the Peak district.

5) Move to another country. We talked about Malta because it’s Mediterranean but English speaking, and Canada, we could live in the English bit and then just visit the French bit sometimes to keep up our languages. We also did a, “where shall we live?” test. I got Portugal, Greece, Italy or Costa Rica. It’s a fun test, they ask you about climate and political views and stuff. Do the test here.

6) Use all our savings to buy a camper van, travel round the world and homeschool for a year before Percy starts Year 7 in 2026. This was actually my back up plan if we didn’t go to France. I was just going to save money and then take a family gap year when Percy was in year 6.

7) Toss a coin, Pyrenees-Orien-tails or Liverpool pier-heads.

8) Liverpool but Dan gets breakfast in bed every day.

9) Perpignan but Hannah gets a pet donkey. Someone was once giving away a donkey FOR FREE in our region and mean old Dan didn’t let me take it.

10) Me and Eric move back to England, Dan and Percy stay in France. 

I also suggested than when we’ve come up with a plan we make a cake and do an, “agenda reveal” (credit to my sister Sarah for that name). So we’d have friends round and maybe some people could join by video link and we would live cut a cake to reveal the flag of the chosen country. And then everyone would be either happy or sad but they have to congratulate us just like in a gender reveal. 

If you have any other suggestions let us know!

November beach picnic

Some things to promote:

My colouring book of the Pyrénées-Orientales is final done! I’ve been working on this project since last Christmas. You can buy it from Amazon here. The Merseyside one will be available soon.

Example page Céret

Example page Liverpool Hope street.

Thanks to everyone who gave to my Kickstarter after my last blog. I’ve more than reached the target, but if you want some original Hannah Jones art posted to your door, have a look at the options. (There’s only 9 days left.)

I’ve started a Redbubble shop with some of my designs on it, see some things you can buy here.

I bought myself a new phone cover with my water fun design.