France is on fire

This weekend we went camping. It wasn't a weekend though, it was Sunday to Tuesday. What do you call that? Dan has wanted to see the Tour de France ever since we moved to France because he loves looking at men in lycra, but he's not middle class enough for ballet. We nearly saw it 2 years ago, we managed to see all of the promotional vehicles that throw out free hats and stuff and a load of cars in the shape of funny things like cheese triangles, but for some reason, and I don't remember why, we didn't see the actual bike racing. So this year the tour came to Les Angles, which is the mountain area an hour and 15 minutes from us, where we have skied in winter. I've never seen it in summer before and people say it's a cool place to go in the summer time too. So we decided to go camping there to experience summer in the mountains and to see the Tour de France go past.

We spent all morning packing and left just after lunch. We were aware of some fires on the way and Dan said we might have to take the small road that goes through all the villages rather that the big 110kph dual carriage way. Fine no probs, wild fires happen every year here, so we've become a bit blase about them, like they were just annoying roadworks. So we set off on the big road and after 10 minutes of driving were forced to join the smaller parallel road. We could see a lot of smoke but at this point it was kind of interesting rather than terrifying.

On the big road

Obviously I wish the fires weren't happening and climate change is scary, but it is quite interesting to drive past fire, and see the helicopters flying and the planes that scoop up water from the reservoir to drop on the fire.

We continued on the little road and then it was blocked off too. We weren't sure if there was any way through, but then we followed some other drivers onto an even smaller road which is more of a bike route, that you would normally only use as an access road. So we managed to make it past Ille-sur-tet to Bouleternere.

Then we came to a roundabout where we could see actual fire on the hills as well as smoke, and we saw about 10 fire engines coming out of a field that had been down to the river to fill up with water. We continued our journey thinking we were past the worst, but about 10 minutes later we saw more fire just near Vinca. 

Vinca is our favourite lake hang out spot, it's the nearest place we can go to swim for free. At this point the fire was on the opposite side of the road and river from the town and lake of Vinca, but the small village of Rodes was at risk and being evacuated. We continued on and after another 10 minutes of driving past fire, things were fine and normal.

little stop to admire the views

Our friends Sam and Emma were joining us for the camping trip but leaving a little bit later. We were giving them advice on the best way to go, they left around a hour after us, but by this point the way we drove had all been blocked off and they had to drive round the super long way which is an hour longer. 

We arrived at the campsite and set up the tent and went for a swim while waiting for our friends, and then when they arrived we helped them set up their tent and had a BBQ. It was a lovely time hanging out but the concerns about the fire were playing on our minds. We were glad to be safe and far from the fires, but the fires were progressing fast and it had managed to cross the river to the much more populated other side. We could see updates on our phones about different villages being evacuated. We also found out they had told everyone not to travel to see the Tour de France and they had cancelled the promotional bit at the beginning where they have the mad vehicles that throw things out. But since we were literally right on the road it was going past there was no danger to us walking up with our little folding chairs and watching the cyclists go past. 

 

Me and Dan were discussing what were the most important things to take from our house. We decided the laptop and passports would be administratively the most annoying things too loose, but we also talked about a big box of photos I have and all my paintings. I don't think if I had 20 minutes to pack a car to leave I would save all my paintings, mainly because it feels a bit arrogant. I think I'd save this one: 

and Dan said he would save my newest one I just finished last week:

both are available to buy as prints even if the original burns.

While villages were burning I was ironically really cold. The warmest outfit I took was a very thin pair of cotton trousers a t-shirt and a very thin cardigan.  It was around 36 degrees as we were leaving and I just couldn't imagine ever being cold again. But up in the mountains it does get cold at night. Emma kindly lent me a base layer and me and Dan zipped our sleeping bags together so we could snuggle ourselves warm. But it was a night of very little sleep, worrying that our house might be burning. At one point Dan offered to drive back and collect the important stuff, he'd have to go the long way making it a 5 hour round trip, which seemed crazy, but if our house did burn I would be glad he had done it. You can't wait until you need to evacuate to do that kind of thing though, you have to do it while you still can. In our area the villages are all in a row. Lets say we're village 1, village 4 was being evacuated and village 2 and 3 were asking the question, "do we need to leave?" So there was some sense to making the trip while it was still safe to do so.

In the morning we tried to have a nice normal day, just chilling in the campsite playing some games and swimming and in the afternoon we went to watch the race. Everyone being told not to travel there did mean we had a better view and we had a good position on a hill 25k from the end, so we could see them going up. Dan or Sam could write a better bit about this, but I will just say we waited a while the 2 cyclists in front came past then the big blob of cyclists and then a few more cyclists. 

 

Then we went to the campsite sort of common room space to watch the rest. I thought we could be on TV and I could watch the bit where we were on iplayer or something, but it turns out in the UK its only highlights on channel 5, and me waving was probably not a highlight. I would have had to caused a crash to make it onto a highlights program. 

I slept much better the second night, I think it was not quite as cold. The road back was still closed and I think will stay closed for a while, so we went back the long way round. On the way we saw Les Angles where we ski in the winter, and we stopped at Axat for a picnic and then saw an outdoor pool and thought, "why not?" Eric absolutely loves swimming at the moment, he could spend all day in a pool.

We returned to find things fairly normal, we can't see the smoke from our house. It's all fine apart from the existential dread of a climate crisis and the personal doubt about being weeks away from buying a house in a region that's burning.

Happy Wednesday.

House and Job news

It's been a month since I last wrote. I was waiting for some proper news to share, which I kept thinking was just about to happen and then it didn't. So last time I wrote about how Dan had just been made redundant and that meant we couldn't get a mortgage on the house we were about to offer on. Since then it looked very likely that he would get a new job with a solar panel company. He had a phone call that he said, "could not have gone better" then he went to an interview which also went very well. The job would be very similar to what he was already doing for the swimming pool company (web marketing), except he would be the only one doing it. He came up with several ideas for them and they seemed very impressed by him and were calling him an expert. They also loved that he is bilingual because they actually are focusing on getting English speaking customers. 

They asked him to write a proposal of everything that he would do for them, like a marketing strategy for the year, including what he would like to be paid. No one else was interviewed for this job or asked to do this. He spent a lot of time on it and sent it in, he asked for a bit more money that what he was on before but still less than he has been paid in a previous job. And he was ready to negotiate on the money, they said they might initially take him on a self employed basis, which was fine. 

We didn't hear back for a week, and then they said "no thanks." They said they were doing well as a company without a web marketer. It was pretty confusing, because it seemed like it was pretty much certain apart from the pay which he though was all negotiable. He would have been happy to do it part time or for less money, but they just said "no" and we're wondering if they're just taking all his ideas and doing them without him.

This was all happening at the same time as we put in a lowish offer on a house. We can no longer get a French mortgage but thanks to remortgaging our old house and borrowing a big chunk from family, we can get something on a smaller budget than we were looking at before. We both agreed that we'd rather go for a cheaper house so we don't have to do another winter in this weird house that was meant for just 3 months but has already been over a year.

So our dream village of Thuir seems out of the question, but Millas where Percy is at school is much more affordable and would mean the kids wouldn't have to change schools. And me and my new English friend Robyn have a plan to gentrify it. She might start a nice brunch cafe, and I did shake on going there every weekend if she did it in Millas. So there's a house I've loved for a long time that is very beautiful from the outside and has a lot of potential, but has a lot of issues on the inside. Like most of us in our early 20's. We saw a few more houses including one that we saw this week that had a little less potential but didn't need much work, it made a lot of logical sense. But I just really love the other one and they're very near to each other so if we got the less pretty one, I'd have to still walk past the beautiful one a lot. I really wish I hadn't made the analogy that the beautiful house that needs work was like someone in their early 20's, because now I feel like a superficial pervert. You should see it from behind though, it has such a gorgeous behind (back garden).

 

Anyway we went in low. It's been on the market ages, and hasn't had any offers or even any other viewings. It was on for 220k euros, we said 195K, then they said they'd take 210K we said ok 200K and at the time I didn't think I'd go up from that. But then I just kept thinking about it, and cycling past its beautiful behind. So we did the maths on if we could go up to 210K and we just about can but it doesn't leave much for any work and it needs a rewire, and ideally a new kitchen, a new bathroom and double glazing, and all the 70's wall paper removing. So we've offered 208K and just this evening we heard that they have accepted! But they want to wait another month until officially accepting and starting the process of selling it, because he has some health problems and is going to a lot of medical appointments. Dan thought I'd be very happy when I found out they accepted, but I just don't feel 100% sure it will happen. I think they could still say, "sorry I'm too ill to go through the hassle of selling a house right now." We'll see. (Once they sign they have to actually do it or pay us compensation. It's not like the UK where you can just drop out any time you like with no consequence.)

Job wise Dan has a side job he can do more on and there's something else part time that I'm not sure if I'm able to share yet, because it's not official. I annoyingly don't have work over the summer. but I am enjoying doing more art.

I did this series "attic to chateau" where I showed my art from my weird old attic bedroom surrounded by boxes. And someone who owns a chateau reached out and said, "would I like to have an exhibition in their chateau?" Of course I said yes! I've been working on some new works for that exhibition, which will hopefully be near the end of August. Here's some photos of when we went to visit the chateau on an art market day.

 

 

 

 

I've also just done a lino printing workshop, which I loved doing so much! I really miss doing art workshops, but doing it with 6 adults was so chilled compared to doing it with 30 kids! So I hope to do more of that. If anyone is looking for an arty gift please check out my website, my newest thing is embroidery hoops and I can do custom ones if you send me a photo you like. 

this one was made with the photo above.

We unfortunately cancelled our plans to do a big Italy road trip over the summer, but we have instead bought a tent and did our first recce two weeks ago. It was French mothers day and I requested a camping trip that I didn't have to pack for. My sisters said, "that's risky you might have nothing you need" and yeah if I hadn't intervened we wouldn't have had a mallet for the pegs or plates or a washing up bowl, or pillows. I think that's just about survivable though. Anyway we had a great time, the weather was perfect, there was a lovely pool, and we just hung out without screens and played card games, it was nice to be away from our no natural light or garden house. Apart from being woken up by noisy wild boar at night, that was mad.

We've got two more trips planned: a weekend to the place we go for skiing which I've never been to in the summer, and one to the Gorge du Verdon where we've been to before. I'm not someone who normally likes to go back to the same place but this place was so good, it's my top recommendation if you go to France. Don't tell anyone else though, it's currently a beautifully unspoilt by tourists spot.

 Night. x

Surprise!

 Since I last wrote Dan has entered his 40s and Eric also celebrated being 9. Dan is a very different person to me, and he didn't feel the need to invite everyone he has ever known to attach wheels to their feet in a warehouse in Wigan to celebrate becoming 40. He decided that as it was the school holidays we should all go away to Spain and we choose to go Valencia which is 6 hours south from us. Normally when we go to Spain we just cross the border to buy cheap milk and fuel and jelly and decaf teabags (did you know you can't buy jelly or decaf teabags in France?), occasionally we go to Girona or Barcelona but we've never been down further than Barcelona since living here.

But before his actual birthday I did want him to celebrate with more people, it's been a really difficult time for him and I wanted him to know that people do care about him. So I messaged one of his friends from work and asked her to invite the people he liked, and not the new boss that has recently made him redundant. I also invited a few other people. It was very easy to organise because I just told him we were going out for a meal and got a babysitter and then everyone just turned up there before us. I planned it in a food hall thing in Thuir, because when I started planning it we were about to offer on a house in Thuir, and I was just really into Thuir, and it's not far from us and I'm lazy. But since the beginning of the planning of this party and now a lot has changed. 

After finding out that Dan had lost his job and we therefore can't get a mortgage and offer on this house we liked, we started looking into what we could do with about half of the original budget. We had this idea about doing up a wreck of a house, because Dan will get paid some benefits for a while and he would have the time to do something. So we went to see a house in Thuir that needed work. In 20 years from now I can imagine my kids telling a therapist about this day. So we arrived at this house, and Eric says "it looks like a prison" it's in the old town, which are little tiny streets made before cars that you would never want to drive down. This house you can't see from the street, you can just see a wide alleyway that's gated off the house is behind the two next door neighbours so it's kind of worse than a terrace. You go through the ally and you end up in a court yard which is very overlooked by the balcony of one of the houses you can see from the street. 

The house had 3 floors but the whole first floor had no windows and no working electrics so it was just completely black. The other two floors were a wreck too, no one had lived there for a long time there was no electricity, everything was dark and dusty and broken. We straight away realised we could not live here, even if you could imagine it all done up the space was weird. The boys had only seen nice houses up until this point, so it was a bit of a shock. Percy started getting angry saying "why has someone left rubbish here? If someone is going to look round a house at least clean it up!" at the end the estate agent went to shake all of our hands but Percy refused. The poor woman was only doing her job, but Percy seemed to be blaming her for everything that had gone wrong. Poor lady!

So it was probably for the best that we left that boys at home with a babysitter on Dan's birthday, as they were probably fed up with any mention of Thuir. Along with Dan's work colleagues our board game friends who we used to see every week but have since moved to Montpellier kindly made the trip over to celebrate Dan. They also stayed over at ours after but Dan didn't know that was going to happen and was actually impressed that I was changing the duvet cover on the sofa bed, when he thought it was for no reason and I'm just a tidy person.

I did imagine the surprise when he walked in to be a bit more of a big moment when he realised that in amongst all the self doubt and turmoil that he was loved by so many people. But it was a bit anti-climatic he just said "oh there are my colleagues" hopefully he was happy about it. I think he had a good time, it was nice to meet some of his colleagues that I haven't met, although the table did dive quite quickly into a French speaking end an and English speaking end with Dan in the middle.  It was a nice relaxed semi outdoor food hall place where you just go up and order your own stuff, which I really like because then you don't have to do a awkward bill split at the end.

 

A little later in the night our friend Flick arrived who had driven 9 hours from Paris that day! (not specifically for the party but still I'm impressed she could do anything after driving that far) Her 9 year old daughter sat down at the English end of the table and got right in with the adult conversations asking funny questions and bringing a fun perspective to the discussions. Dan's colleague Charlotte had gone all out and made people sign a book for him filled with photos and memories. It was a lovely night.

The holiday was fun too, we first stopped in Montserrat Abby which is a monastery place you can get to by cable car. Once you get up there's a whole village to explore, with a cathedral and gallery/museum. Unfortunately we didn't explore them because we didn't want to pay extra for them. I just feel like you should have to pay to go in a religious building or a gallery, but if you have to I'm more on board with paying to go to a gallery. The cable car was fun though and the views from the top were great. 

 

 

We stayed one night in Tarragona/ Salou in a fairly budget hotel where we really got our money's worth by using the pool and using the buffet breakfast to the max. There was every kind of breakfast you can imagine and some others that you can't imagine, like a thing that looked liked white jelly and was possibly cheese. Who knows what that was. but there was a man that cooked pancakes and omelettes to order and there was a churro machine! The kids were delighted to eat churros for breakfast.

In Valencia we stayed in a air bnb apartment. We went to a massive science/ space museum and we went kayaking in the sea on the morning of Dan's actual birthday. The city was really nice and we found possibly the coolest play park we had ever been to. We went to this park which was based on the story guliver's world. there was just a giant man lying down that the kids could climb all over. an adult would maybe be the size of his nose. There were lots of bits you could slide down and climb up, it was great for big kids, ours are a bit old for parks now aged 11 and 9 but this was perfect. The drive back was a bit less fun because we did it all in one day and it took 6 hours. 

coolest map image ever

We had one day to get the house sorted before Eric's 9th birthday. He had 4 friends over for party food we made a pick a mix station so they could choose a bag of sweets and then we all went to the cinema to watch the new Mario film. I drove 6 kids in our big car and Dan followed behind on his motobike. Eric had a lovely day he is a massive mario fan so finding out he could see the film as his birthday treat was very exciting for him. Almost all his gifts were either Pokemon or Mario themed. 

It was his second birthday in this house and it was a little sad because pervious birthdays in the old house have been so much easier because we had outdoor space. I also feel a bit weird about it because people we don't know well don't know the whole story of how we ended up in this weird house, and a few times people have been a bit confused as to why we live in a worst house than before. But hopefully we will get to leave this house this year, there's been a few interesting developments which I will share when they have developed further.

Thanks if you've been watching my "attic to chateau" series, (videos where I show my art from my weird attic bedroom)  a few interesting things have come out of that too, and I will share that soon. 

Thanks for reading! 

A Trip to Paris

 Thanks for all your responses to my last blog, there were a lot of comments, several people phoned us to see how we are doing, and a lot of people offered advice.

We knew April was going to be a crazy month but not this kind of crazy, we had already planned two trips to spain (one to see family and one for Dan's birthday) and in between those trips I went to Paris. The trips have been a nice distraction from crazy life stuff. One way that me and Dan have both changed since moving to France and everything has gone wrong, is that we can't just wait around to enjoy ourselves. We didn't do enough enjoying ourselves in our first year here when everything was going well, and we had enough money. So this stuff was already booked in and we weren't going to change it.

Dan's parents and his youngest sister and her daughter were staying in northern spain, so we joined them for the weekend. It was really nice to see them and just get away from normal life and our weird house. We were staying in Empuriabrava which is a cool place only just over an hour from us where they have a network of canals like in Venice. If I was a billionaire, I'd buy up all the houses and give them to my friends and make everyone get pedalos and do games on them every Saturday.  I'd make that the condition, you get a free house, but you must join in with my pedalo wide game events every week.

Anyway seeing as I'm not a billionaire I just had to make do with wondering around the streets and looking at the cool stuff. It was very nice to see my little niece Ada. She's adorable, I really miss all the little people that I don't get to see a lot of.

This weekend I went to Paris on my own.  My friend Joy who is normally in America was in town. I've known Joy for 20 years now, she was part of the original Liverpool crew that I met Dan in. About 2 weeks before me and Dan got together me and Joy decided to have "a day of hippy fun" in the park. She already had green hair then, but I wore a green clown wig to match, then we went to Tesco to buy parsley and rizla papers and attempted to smoke it, while also playing some little musical instruments I had like a thumb piano. I never do that kind of stuff anymore! 

 

The boys in our gang had decided to meet up and play board games, they wanted to play a serious man board game and the girls were not invited. This is what promoted our girls day out I think. But the whether was nice and the boys gave up on their boring game and came to find us and water bomb us. They really failed at jumping out on us because they couldn't find us and had to phone us several times to work out where we were. After the water bomb attack we got our revenge by making this poster which we taped to nearby bus stops. Dan saw one on his street and ripped it down and a woman said "so you're one of them are you?" 

All this to say, times had changed and we were now both married mums who hadn't illegally used the Merseyside police logo on a comedy sign for ages. Joy had married an American and had lived in LA and New York for several years. Her husband Philip is a performer specialising in tap dancing, and he had landed the lead role in a big musical that was going to be touring England and Paris for a year. So the family had taken this opportunity to base themselves in Liverpool for their kid's school/nursery and travel round a bit so they could spend more time together as a four. 

After researching the cheapest ways to get to Paris I went up on the night train and came back on the night bus. The train was pretty fun, there were 2 triple bunk beds in each room. It was a squeeze! There wasn't enough space to sit up fully in the bed. I got chatting to this guy who was British but had lived in Spain since the 80s. We were chatting while both sitting on my bottom bunk with out head poking out into the middle gap between the two triple bunk beds, and then a French guy stood between us in the gap and pulled his trousers down. This guy got on the train wearing a shirt, a cravat and suit trousers and then after he had pulled his trousers down he just went to bed in his shirt, cravat and boxers. he also farted a lot all through the night. 

I don't know if it's normal to wear pyjamas but I did, and then at around 6am I got up and changed and did my teeth etc and we got off the train in central Paris just before 7. I wondered around a bit, because 7 is too early to arrive anywhere, and then worked out the metro system to get to Joy's hotel. I couldn't find the normal entrance and so I managed to enter through the fireman's entrance. A guy buzzed me into the lift and then I magically arrived in the buffet breakfast area without going past the check in desk, and saw Joy and her kids eating breakfast.

I've never met her boys before but they were very adorable, they are 6 and 3, and I do miss those ages but not enough to put myself through 0, 1 and 2 again. The 6 year old was into drawing and reading, which is lovely until you're trying to get him off the metro while he's still got his head in a book. The 3 year old is a drumming prodigy, Joy carries chop sticks when they're out in case he ever wants to drum on anything. He's got his own instagram account if you want to check it out @thekidinthepocket. We went to Montmartre on the first day and me and the 6 year old did some sketching.

On the Saturday Joy's husband got us free tickets to the matinee performance of his show Top Hat. It was a musical set in the Jazz hands era. The storyline was a little odd. There's a miss-understanding of the identity of two people who fancy each other, and for most of the show the woman thinks the man she likes is married, and then SURPRISE! he's not married and they snog guilt free. Except in real life he is actually married to my friend. All the tap dancing and the singing was incredible, and it was very cool to see Philp in the starring role. The kids had seen it a few times and napped for most of the show.

I also got to see my friend Flick while I was in Paris, she's my mad artist friend who paints with a mop, that I know from Perpignan. She might not love that introduction as she does also paint with paintbrushes, but I've made "paints with a mop" her whole personality. She's moving back to the south in the summer and we are planning all kind of fun things. Starting with organising some sunrise games of rounders at the beach. I saw her at their house, and then on the Sunday me and Joy and the kids went to Flick's English speaking church with her 9 year old and then to the park by the Louve. On the way we stopped to get a sandwich but unfortunately we were in the equivalent of Mayfair and the sandwich shop was like an art gallery. A lady said to us "shall I explain to you the concept of the store?" and the concept was "its 3 times the price of a meal deal for one sandwich and us commoners were not allowed to touch the sandwiches" she had to get them out of a golden glass case for us. 

The dessert options in the incredibly posh shop

In the park we were joined by Flick's husband Todd and her good friend Jade. It was a cool mix of people with quite a lot in common, we had all moved countries Flick and Jade had lived in several different countries, and we all (except Jade) had kids that had been in more than one education system. And all except me had lived in America, so we had some really interesting chats. 

I got the night bus back because I could find a cheap night train or flight. So I was just googling where exactly I needed to go, when I found the review page for the bus station. It has 28 reviews 2 said it was bad and 26 said it was terrible. The most recent review said they were there 20 minutes early but still didn't catch the bus because the information didn't show up on the screen. So I was naturally a little nervous. Its was a 12 hour bus to Perpignan via Toulouse and Carcassone and then it continued to Barcelona. When I got on the bus the guy next to me asked me if I'd seen any headphones, and I helped him look. He then said they must have been stolen, he had left them on the seat for a minute. He asked around everyone but everyone said they didn't know. It was horrible to know we were on a bus with a thief. No wonder this bus station had 26 terrible reviews. We set off and the guy said "I don't want to be racist but..." and then speculated about who had stolen his headphones. The bus had no toilet so we had to keep stopping at the first stop we all got off and guess what HE FOUND THE HEADPHONES. They were wedged down the side of my seat. He was happy but he also felt really bad about what he said to me about the suspects.

I got less than 1 hour of sleep it was horrible. Dan picked me up on his way to work and then went to work and I drove the kids back for a day with a lot of screen time which they were thrilled about.

Next week it's Dan's 40th birthday so were going to try and make it really fun an special as he's having such a bad time at the mo. Lot's of surprises in store that I will write about next time. 

 

Bye bye! 

A very bad friday

My last blog was about all the houses we’ve viewed, back then my biggest dilemma was choosing the best house we could in an area we would like. Now unfortunately it feels like everything in my life is a massive mess, again! So we went to view a house in Thuir, I really loved it instantly, it had 4 bedrooms and a garden, it was quite like our house in Liverpool. Dan was a bit less sure, but he really likes Thuir as a place and agreed that logically this was the best house we could get with our money in this area. After the viewing we wondered down the street to Thuir centre and it was a Saturday so the market was on and everyone was out in the street eating croissants and having a lovely time. We decided we wanted to put in an offer but we said we just needed a bank meeting before we put in the offer. (In France when you put in an offer, it's kind of serious you sign a thing, you get a 10 day cooling off period and then if you back out you have to pay 10% of the purchase price.) 

The bank meeting was set for Easter Saturday, but the day before Good Friday (which is a work day in France) Dan got some very bad news. He works in marketing and writes google ads for a swimming pool company but a new boss has just come in and decided to “shake things up” she thinks that it would be better to outsources his job to an google ads expert. Which means this is the 4th time Dan has last his job since we moved to France.

If you want a little recap, when we moved he had a really good remote job the best paying job he’s ever had, but a year after they took him on the company were not doing that well, and since he was forced to go from a proper contract role to a freelancer for tax reasons after moving to France, it was very easy for them to fire him. Then he briefly worked in sales for PO life magazine who didn’t really give him a chance to learn sales and then fired him after a month and only paid him half of what they owed him for that work. Then after a long time of looking he got a job based in Toulouse which he mainly did remotely but at the end of the 3 month trial they said, “you’re just not quite the best fit" and "it’s annoying you’re not in Toulouse.” He said he would move to Toulouse for the job and they said “nah don’t worry about it” and then exactly a year ago we gave up on France and just as I was trying to teach Percy how to use a QWERTY keyboard for our move back to England Dan got this job. (And Percy has now happily settled into secondary school and is very much an AZERTY keyboard user)

My initial reaction to the news was kind of weird, at first I didn’t really think it was that bad compared to the other times, because it was a proper french contract you get some ok benefit money, not like the first time when we got zero because we hadn’t been here long enough. The big problem is the mortgage. We are quite far through the process of remortgaging our UK house to get a deposit for a house here. We’ve paid around 3 grand to do this and if we cancel it we won’t be able to get that money back but if we let it go through, we won’t have enough money to buy a nice house here without a french mortgage, and we can’t legally move back to our house in the UK because it’s a buy to let mortgage. The only way to do it would be to pay it all off straight away and then face an early repayment charge.

My first reaction was to say that the boys can’t wait any longer to have their own rooms. They’ve shared a room since Eric was 6 months old, and most of that time has been fine but now it’s really not going well, there a lot of conflict, because Percy likes things tidy and Eric doesn’t care and is just living his best happy little life never putting anything away. So we are in the process of rearranging the whole house to give then separate spaces. We have just moved our bedroom into the loft space, so we have no natural light and are surrounded by boxes. I don’t mind too much though, I’m mainly closing my eyes when I’m in this room.

We didn’t tell the kids straight away, we thought we’d let them enjoy Easter. On the Saturday I thought I should probably cry and some point, that would do me good. I had a little cry but then a big cry and then the next two days I was on the edge of tears. I started thinking about Liverpool and how much I miss everyone. It wasn’t really my choice to stay here, Dan got a job and it made sense to stay and I told myself if we get a house with a guest room so people can visit and if I keep trying at learning French and make some new friends then it will be ok. Going back wasn’t really an option (or it was kind of a psycho option) so I had to be ok with being in France, because if I move back I’m ruining the lives of my kids and Dan and the four people who live in my old house in Liverpool. The logistics of going back would be insane, like all of the stress of coming here but with none of the momentum of excitement.

I would miss this view (sunrise from my village)

On Easter Monday we told the kids, Percy was upset  and was asking about if they would let him into secondary school in the UK because everyone has already got their places. Then Eric in his beautiful positive way said “better news would have been there’s a chateau for sale in Saint Feliu d’amont and it’s 4 euros” you’re right Eric that would be better news. Although to be honest I do want to live in Saint Feliu forever but it would be hard not to buy a chateau for 4 euros. Their responses remind me of their responses years ago when Dan first lost his job: Eric “what do you love to do daddy?” Percy: “it doesn’t matter what he loves to do, he has to get a new job so we don’t all perish”

So yeah it’s been a lot, Dan feels awful about everything and is still having to go into his weird workplace and keep working. We have a lot of options to discus but none of them seem good. One option we talked about is buying a wreck of a house with the remortgage money and then doing it up. It could work out and be a good option, but it feels pretty high risk. If I do come back after a bit more crying and possible therapy I think this whole story could all be a great Edinburgh stand up show.

And in pointless irrelevant news I’ve painted a new painting:

 and you can buy a print of it on my website or you can buy it on a bag. Bon weekend.

My new art website 

Goats on trampolines

Happy spring time, well done for making it through the worst bit of the year. Although I do get to live in a lovely weather place, my house has no heating and is still freezing and we've been making an average of 3 hot water bottles a day since November. We recently found a great new walk that reminds me of Cornwall though. There's still enough snow to ski, and it's only another month until the sea is warm enough to swim in if you're a Brit. If you're French you'll probably wait until June.

A new little walk we found

 

Last time I was writing we were about to go and see a house with almost a field that could host an epic Jonesfest. So we went to see that house and it was definitely interesting. It was very near Perpignan city centre, just 5 minutes drive north in quite a built up inner city area. But then you go down a little dead end street and take a little bumpy mud track for a while, which was not fun to drive on, and then you arrive at this house with a big bit of land. The land is agricultural land, so you can't build on it, or put a swimming pool or a permanent structure on it. But you could buy a goat and a yurt and a trampoline and a go-cart and have a lot of fun with that combination of things. I bet goats love trampolines. Or for a smaller budget you could host a monthly dinner and rounders day. Dan thought no one would want to come to my dinner and rounders day, but I immediately messaged my maddest friend in France, Flick, and of course she was up for it.

I don't know how much my phone is listening to me, but the week after I suggested dinner and rounders, I saw a tiktok from a woman in Liverpool saying she wanted to play rounders and thousands of people wanted to get involved. So maybe a rounders revolution is coming, just like its now trendy to sing the songs you sang in primary school assemblies at festivals. If you're not from the UK and you don't know what rounders is, its like cricket but you run in a square and the posts are always people's school jumpers. You play it in primary school but then it just stops existing as a sport after that, like the egg and spoon race. 

So the house attached to the field of fun was really nice, I could definitely live there. It was only around 10 minutes to Dan's work, and it seemed like a good compromise for Dan who wants to live in the countryside and me who prefers cities. I like the look of the countryside but (and this will offend half of my friends) I think on average people who live in cities are cooler. You get a better mix of nationalities, ages, and lifestyles in cities. Village people are a bit samey. Of course some of them are lovely, but if you've chosen to live in the same village all your life the chances are you are a bit dull.

The field house

 

There were some major downsides to this house and field though, it's not connected to mains gas or drains, it's got a septic tank that needs replacing in 5 years, and it had a massive gas tank in the garden. The garden was actually really ugly. It was separated by a giant bush from the other bit of land. So if you were upstairs (and all the living space was upstairs) you wouldn't really be able to see the kids well if they were playing on the bit of land, and the garden wasn't great for playing in, it was just full of gravel. I also really hated that you have to drive in on a bumpy track, and the kids would not like the location, because they would have to move schools. It has the potential to be epic, but given that it is the top end of our budget and I would want to spend money making it less ugly, and I think the bills would be a lot, it feels a bit too stressful. 

Last weekend we went to see another house in Llupia which is next to one of the places we would like to live -Thuir. The house had a great amount of space, it used to be a physiotherapists so it had the normal rooms, plus a massive space that after talking about lots of options we decided it would work best as our bedroom, with half of it being a normal bedroom and the other half being like a second lounge with a sofa and TV. We would also have space in that house for a guest room and a little gym in a outbuilding. There were good amenities you could walk to, but the downsides were: it's actually further from most things including Dan's work than where we currently are and there was a massive olive tree in the garden that took up most of the space and blocked a lot of light. It would be very hard to remove because there was no garden access except through the house and it was very big and thick.

the giant bedroom 

the giant tree

I still like a house we saw in our next door village of Millas. It had great light and a lovely garden, the kitchen was tiny but maybe it could be moved somewhere else. It's also Eric's preferred house and Percy wouldn't have to move school and hopefully Eric wouldn't either depending on if the mayors of both places agree he can stay. I don't know if you can just not update your address with the school and get away with it. 

This is Eric's current school. Commuting to his Liverpool school on busy roads in a bike trailer in the rain is a distant memory to him  

The house in Millas

Dan has always talked about owning a campsite and there's a dilapidated one near us which he has specifically mentioned buying a few times. So imagine his surprise when he saw a for sale sign. We know the site comes with a house and pool. The French are not good at websites, so there was just a number to call about buying the campsite, we had no idea what it was or what the price was. So he phoned up and they told him the price is "a million euros" which seemed a bit made up from the top of his head but Dan replied "OK thank you, I'll speak to my wife" I don't know why he was embarrassed to say that's out of our budget. If I did just have 1 million euros lying around I wouldn't spend it on that caravan graveyard which, I know for a fact, is home to some possibly not entirely legal immigrants.

Other than looking at houses, I have been building my website. I've almost fully accepted that I can't be a comedian any more and that comedy might just be a thing that I could do once, like the splits. But if I can't be an Olympic gymnast or famous comedian then it would be cool to be an artist. It's actually hard not to be an artist when you live somewhere this beautiful. So I'm selling small postable original artworks and prints of my larger paintings and I've got my art onto products like bags.

I was really happy to receive 3 orders when I launched, but less happy when I went to post a small piece of embroidery that weighed less than 100g to the UK and the post office wanted to charge me 18.99 and fill in a declaration form thanks to Brexit. Luckily I'm sneaky and managed to repackage it to look like a letter and go back to a different post office and send it for 11.65 without filling in a declaration. If I can get the packaging down by a few more grams then I can send it for less than 5 euros. A lot of the stuff on my website is print on demand though, so I don't have that problem. Please check it out: Artisthannahjones.com

my original painting next to my painting on a bag