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

hunting houses and skiing

Last time I wrote I said I'd write about the church skiing weekend. It was snowy. very very snowy apparently there was over two meters of snow on our local mountain.

The front garden of the house we stayed at.

We signed up to go not really know what it was, and I was added to a whatapp group with so many French messages going back and forth that I ignored them all. I was under the impression it was one nights stay over and two days of skiing, but it was actually two nights accommodation and one day of skiing. The major road was closed due to falling rocks so we had to go the very long way round which is two and a half hours drive (twice as long) so we didn't arrive until late. Once you get to the part where you're driving on snow you have to put snow chains on your car wheels for grip. There was about 30 of us in this big house, we had a shared room with two bunk beds in. 

In the morning we all set off early to ski, after digging our car out of yet more snow.  We went to a ski place called Pyrenees 2000. We'd never been to that one before as a family, we always went to another one called les Angles which I loved so much that I had no desire to try a different one. But it was actually amazing and maybe even better than les Angles in terms of choice of green runs you can do (the easier ski slopes) It was quite confusing at first, Eric had been there that week on his school ski trip and we couldn't find out how to get to the bit he recognised. In the end we worked out that you had to get two different ski lifts to get up to this big hill where there were about eight options of how to get down and a few of them took you down to the part he'd been to before.

 It was so fun skiing together, we're all the same level which is really nice because no one is being held back by anyone else. we tried some blue runs (a bit harder than green) for the first time and there was a very cool run where you could take optional side paths between the trees. There was also a obstacle course one with things you had to try and hit and some jumps to go over. That night we had raclette with everyone. yum. 

The next day most people were going to the hot baths, an outdoor pool that is the temperature of a bath. but we wanted to go skiing again because we had hired the kids ski stuff for the full weekend and we just thought we should make the most of being there, so we went by ourselves. Those might be the only days we go this winter, to go as a four is expensive, but what's nice is we can just do what we can afford each year and that might be just two days. However if we were in England you can't really do it like that. Percy went for another day with his school where he got to try biathlon, (skiing and shooting) snow shoeing (walking in snow with tennis rackets on your feet) cross country skiing and sledging. all that was for a very reasonable price of 35 euros.

Other than snow fun, we've been house hunting, we've started the process of remortgaging our house in Liverpool and that money that we will take out will be the deposit for buying a house here. So far we've seen seven houses. Our main criteria is loads of space, so the boys can have a room each, I can have a space for art/ teaching planning. Dan needs a work space, a room for guests would be amazing, also we got the boys a big football table for Christmas and that needs a space. So were looking at a minimum of four bedrooms. The other tricky thing is area, if we move even 10 minutes away the boys would have to change school. Unless you got special permission to stay which is not guaranteed. but we might move to an area with more going on, that is closer to Dan's work.

This is what we've seen so far: (our budget is around 260,000 euros/ 230 000 pounds)

1) next door, 6 beds! very nice garden with an above ground pool and a outdoor kitchen. sounds perfect right? but the garden is like a court yard so is very shady most of the day. Its 3 floors, so the downstairs is one room, then 3 bedrooms and another beds. There's not really enough room for a good size dinning area and a good sized lounge area. The only access to the garden (except through the house) is by a garage which she doesn't want to sell with it. So it's pretty weird for someone else to have access to your garden and not you.

spot the rabbit

 outdoor kitchen. and next to that behind the rabbit hutch is the garage that they don't want to sell.

2) A 4 bed house with a little garage in the village right by school. It's a bit tatty, I would want to completely renovate it. It was fine but not exciting, it was the cheapest one of the 7.

3) When we pulled up at this house, I thought "this is not going to be it." It was in a random village that was closer to town on the map but because it wasn't on the fast main road, time wise it would only be 2 minutes nearer town by car although significantly quicker by bike. The kids would both have to move school if we moved there. When we entered the house annoyingly it was incredible! big modern kitchen, lovely dinning space, joined with a cosy sitting room. All tastefully decorated in neutral tones, then upstairs there were 5 bedrooms! including one with an ensuite and one that was giant and actually used to be 2 rooms. There was a secret cupboard that went back really far and would make a perfect play house for a 2 year old. I don't currently own a 2 year old but if I made this tiny play house all the two year olds would want to be may friend.  (I mean like my nieces and nephew, I'm not going to just take kids of the street.) it also had a massive loft space which she said you could make into a roof terrace. The outside space wasn't massive, there was some space and it had an avocado tree! I would host so many Mexican dinner parties with guacamole if I had that house.

If it was just me I would like to offer on the avocado house but I feel bad to move the kids from one random village to another. The seller has since accepted an offer on this house but we told her if it falls through let us know, because were still interested.

outside with the avocado tree, the primary school playground is just over the wall so it would be the easiest school run ever.

inside - through the wooden door is a lovely big modern kitchen

4) This house was in an area near town (saint esteve) that I have decided would be good, it had 4 beds and a pool. Somehow it ticked all the boxes but nether me or Dan were excited about it. it was a bit tatty and the garden was quite overlooked. and first world problems but the pool did take up a lot of the garden so in the winter that is wasted space, but I don't know why, we both just didn't feel it.

 

5) In order to see this house the gatekeeper/ estate agent came round for a meeting to ask us everything we wanted from a house and then he said he find us houses. House number 5 was less than 5 minutes away from where we currently live in the next door village of Millas where Percy goes to school, so he wouldn't have to move schools and I would ask for permission for Eric to remain at his current school.

from the outside it was beautiful, very classic French with green shutters, it was a semi, with a really big garden. Inside the upstairs was entirely wallpapered in 70's wall paper. a weird bathroom with a bath directly behind a shower, but that stuff we can change, 4 beds one has a little balcony, very nice light and views. however it was only single glazed, I don't know if that's an issue we would need to fix. And the main issue was the kitchen was very small and I'm not sure if it would be possible to extend or attach two the other room because there was a toilet between the 2 rooms that I would want to join. Overall it had a lot of potential but might be a big project to make it how we wanted it. It was on the cheaper end of the scale though.

 

Do they know you can just put a shower in over a bath? who puts a bath directly behind a shower?

6) Then we had to see more houses that the gatekeeper of houses made us see. One that was a new build in a random village where Percy could stay in the same school but not Eric. 4 beds and a pool, Dan quite liked it. I didn't, the entrance looked like a doctors rather than a house.

7) And finally he took us to see a house that didn't match our criteria at all. Top end of the budget, and a 2 bed! He said you could convert the loft. I personally think he was just trying to show to those clients that he could get viewings. Thanks for wasting everyone's time. It wasn't even a nice house, it had a shower with a glass ceiling so if you were in the loft you could perve on someone in the shower. 

Let me know what you would pick so far. Were hopefully soon going to see one with a garden so big I could start my own farm/ put on a festival. 

Hanuary

Last blog I wrote about my big birthday party and then arriving back in this random village in France that I accidentally moved to because people tell you to follow your dreams and take every opportunity. But they don’t follow it up with specific advice about what to do if you subsequently find yourself in a very cold and broken house, trying to teach English grammar as a dyslexic. 

Last time I said how we worked out that our reversible air con was on snowflake setting and if we changed it to sunshine setting it would heat the room. So we do have one room that we can heat. But we are doing all our living in this one room, I’ve hardly slept in my own bedroom this month. And I’m like a chain smoker but with hot water bottles, I have my early evening one, then I sometimes make a fresh one for bedtime and then one night we were both sleeping down here on the sofa bed, but around 2am I decided to go to our room to be further away from Dan’s snoring but I had to re-make a new hot water bottle because I knew the current one was only lukewarm and I did not want to go to bed with a Luke. I want something piping hot in bed with me.

Apart from the cold, January has had some lovely moments. On my real birthday I had to work in the morning at a school and in the evening I was also teaching, but in the afternoon I had two friends over for chocolate orange cake and art. 

 

We were doing gelli printing and I got to use my new fancy crayons! The last time I got new fancy crayons I think I was 11, I got a massive set of 50 in a big tin from WHSmiths from my granny and grandad and I still have most of them. But I wanted to upgrade to what my friend described as the “Rolls Royce of crayons”.

During this little craft time I had a kind of brief phone interview with a teacher from a sixth from college. It was in French and I put it on speaker phone and my two friends who are both not French but very good speakers of French were whispering things and writing things down that I should say which was very cute. (I didn’t get the job though.)

 I also, just days before that, had an interview for an online job which was probably the worst interview I’ve ever had. The first half was in French and I can only talk like a 5 year old in french. The second half was in English and I thought, “great this will be easy now.” But then he asked me “what is the difference between the present perfect tense and the simple past tense?” I wanted to just say “ok I haven’t got the job bye” He tried to help me by saying it’s the difference between saying “I ate” and “I have eaten”. This is not the correct answer, but I would say there’s no difference. They both mean you’re not hungry right now. Anyway he said I can still do online teaching if I want but only to a basic level. My actual teaching where I get to make it fun is going fairly well at the moment so I’m not sure if I will do that job.

Two days after my birthday I was able to take a day off and Dan did too and we went skiing for 4 hours while the kids were in school. The timing just works to drop them off, drive up the mountain, get the discounted 4 hour pass and be back in time for pick up. We had a great time, the last time we skied before that was last winter, when Dan didn’t have a job and it looked very likely we’d be going back to the UK. I remember thinking then, “we might never come back here”. So it was really lovely to be back in the snowy mountains again. 

That night we also went out with another couple Sam and Emma. Sam was celebrating his 30th so we made it a joint 70th.

Last weekend Dan was away in Morocco doing a half marathon with two friends, because men can’t just phone each other up and talk about their feelings, they have to go to another continent and put themselves through some kind of endurance before they can say how they’re feeling about life. 

Meanwhile I didn’t do a great job of surviving without him. It was a bad weekend for feminism. On the Sunday instead of going to the French church that we sometimes go to, I thought we’ll go to the English one because it will be easier for me. I was wrong. The English church had just moved locations to a random village quite far away that I’d never been to before. I was running a bit late anyway, but as we were leaving I couldn’t lock to the door, it’s always been a pain that door, but with recent heavy rain it swelled up and after trying for a while I gave up and messaged my landlord to say could he have a go at locking it if he was around. 

Then I was following the Satnav to this random village very near Spain going down the auto route and I was confused as to whether I was at the right junction to turn off at or not. Then way too late I realised I was about to go through the barriers for continuing to Spain. No one was directly behind me so I did a really long reverse back to the turn off while people stared at me. We eventually found the new location for the church which is a mad old round house thing, some of which would make an excellent roller disco venue. Unfortunately the bit I had to park in was very muddy due to all the rain and my car got stuck! My wheels were spinning round and round and an 82 year old man had to drive it out for me. 

We got back to find my landlord had been round to sand down the door to make it easier to lock but he sanded too much off so there’s now a big chunk missing from the bottom of the door. And then this week the glass broke and Dan patched it up with cardboard, but so much cold is getting in.

Next time I will write about going on the church ski trip this weekend, I’m sure you can’t wait!

 

The Big Party

Loads to write about, the super highs of seeing almost everyone you love followed by being back in a frozen house in a random village, but first Christmas…

It was pretty typical of all the Christmases we’ve had since we moved. Saw my family, slept on the canal boat, saw Dan’s family, new year with friends, got a new niece or nephew. There needs to be a gender free word for that, like the word “siblings,” not because I don’t know the gender. This year we got a nephew from Dan’s sister Lydia, last year it was a nephew from my sister Sarah, the year before that we got a niece from Dan’s sister Rebekah and the year before that we got a niece from my sister Jo. Christmas time is when we meet new baby “niecephews,” I wonder what we’ll get next year.

New baby Lowell was very lovely, but it was also great to get to know the previous years babies, the Christmas 2024 baby (Murphy) is really into the alphabet, all day long he sings it and he’s not even 2 yet. Christmas 2023 baby (Ada) was only just born in Christmas 2023. I saw her a little in the summer and when I saw her this Christmas I said, “hello you probably don’t remember me” and she said back, “this is auntie Han!” Which took us all by surprise, not only that she remembered my name but the way she added the “This is…” as if we were at a grown up networking event and she were introducing me. My mother-in-law looks after her and speaks French to her, one day a week so she can understand and speak a little French and we were encouraging my boys to talk to her in french, so she can be one of those smug bilingual adults that never cried over verb tables. Jealous. What can I say about Christmas baby 2022 (Miri)? Adorable curls and a feisty attitude? She’s a lot of fun, I think if we were peers we’d be good mates.

The last day in England was a big party for my 40th, which is not until the 13th, but seeing as my last birthday was having 3 people round and 2 of those people have now moved away, I thought it would be sad not to see my English friends. One of my favourite birthdays was my last one in England when I went to a roller disco. At that point I had not skated since I was a kid and was wobbly to start. I had zero expectations. I’d never been to that venue before, I just told people to book a ticket if they wanted to come which meant it was zero stress and zero cost and it ended up being the most fun ever, in this very cool nightclub like place in Liverpool with a food truck, so people could get food if they wanted. It was so fun and everyone loved it and wanted to go back other times.

Then when I moved to France and saw there was a roller skating club in the next village I joined and got a lot better at skating. So when I was thinking about the party I wanted the exact same thing as before but to hire the place so it was all my friends. Unfortunately it was already hired on that day and I couldn’t be very flexible with other days. Then I found this place in Wigan. The positives were the space was massive, but negatives were it did have very homemade youth club vibes and it was only available from 4:30-6:30. It seemed not socially acceptable to not invite kids at that time. I do like kids, and I wanted to see my friends kids but I was worried about it becoming like our leaving party which didn’t work at all, the kids went a bit crazy and fought over the helium ballons. 

In the end it worked out great. Some families came just for the skating and we had cake and I got some Dominoes delivered there. And then other people who didn’t have kids, or ditched their kids, came skating and then stayed out for drinks. I was lucky enough to have my kids there for the skating and then my parents took them back so I could stay out drinking and then sleep over in Wigan. I had the best night. I wish the skating could have gone on longer but it was hard to know what to do. I wanted to chat to people (there were two people there who I haven’t seen since 2018) but then sometimes when I was chatting to people I was thinking, “you’re coming out later so I should be more strategic and only talk to the people who are not coming out, unless we’re skating at the same time as chatting.” I don’t like to think like that, but when the party is only 2 hours and we had to get in eating it was hard not to. 

My friend Stevie smuggled in some mulled wine (my favourite drink) in a flask. It was a lovely reminder of the not so lovely time in 2020 when we were all going a bit mad home schooling. We used to meet in the woods and let the kids run round while we drank mulled wine in a flask on a portable picnic bench, just so we could talk to someone outside our bubble.

I made a speech that I put on Facebook and now realise might be a bit offensive to everyone I know in France, talking about how those friends are irreplaceable. I started a lot of sentences with “no one in France has ever...” and then listed a load of mad things I’ve done with friends, like smoke parsley or laminate ham. There were many more examples I would have like to have said like, “no one in France has ever held a fish tank full of fish in the passenger seat of a car, as I drove, when I’d only just passed my test.” I should have done some serious ones too like, “no one in France has ever come round and held a crying baby for an hour while I slept.” It’s pretty hard for people in France to do that, as we didn’t bring any babies there. But for balance I will say no one in England has ever asked me to film them going on a sort of date with their own painting as art. That was one of the most joyous days I’ve had here with my friend Flick, who is now in Paris.

Flick taken her painting for a swim after having shared an ice cream with it and danced with it rolled up.

I was very impressed with my whole family skating. Eric is really good, he goes to my skating club too and did 105 laps during the party! Percy has virtually never done it but did really well. My Dad used to skate in the 70’s and he’s been skating with me before, he even came to my roller dance class with me in France once. But I have never seen my mum skate! She said she wasn’t going to and then a friend persuaded her to and she did it! Very proud of her. It was lovely to see her going round with my Dad. Next I want to get them both skiing. 

The drinks after were nice because I got to chat to loads of different people, my school run Woolton friends, my sisters, and then a lot of people from my student days and early 20’s. The days when we all lived in walking distance from one another and had loads of free time to hang out. It was like going back in time, because now we live all over the country and world. One friend, Joy, who I haven’t seen since 2018, lives in LA but was in London, and she drove up with young kids, dropped them with family in Liverpool and then came to Wigan for the party! That is impressive commitment. The after party was unfortunately a bit loud with live music followed by darts, so we did have to shout a bit to be heard. As people were leaving I heard people saying “see you at Hannah’s 50th!” Other people really need to arrange big get-togethers too! Don’t just wait for another 10 years. But yes obviously I will do something big for it.

For the after after party my friend Helen, who had driven from Wiltshire, rented an airbnb and we all stayed over. It was nice to sit in a quieter place and just enjoy a little gang reunion after all these years. We even phoned Will, who was part of the gang back in the day and our best man. He happened to be on a train in New York and we had a nice catch up. That night my heart was full. But then I slept the worst I’ve ever slept! Less than one hour I think. My head was just buzzing with everything that had happened. I remember that as being a downside of doing my comedy night every month, after I had done it whether it went well or not, I always overplayed everything in my head. And one of the things that went round in my head was that I had forgotten to do my best skating move, it’s a sort of spin.

In the morning we had to be up early to go back to my parents house to pack and then get to the airport. We flew Liverpool to Barcelona and then drove up. It wasn’t fun getting back to my freezing cold house, you can literally see your own breath. And when you open the fridge it’s not any colder.  I had loads of boring things that needed doing and we had no food in. The kids were back at school the next day, but Percy ended up taking the Monday off because he was just too tired. It’s hard to go back to reality but I keep reminding myself that everyone has, those people aren’t still skating round having fun in Wigan without me, and I will see them again, just maybe not all at once for a long time. It is exhausting trying to stay long distance friends with that many people but you are all too good to give up on. Thanks for making my birthday great.

View from my bedroom window this week

P.S. I spoke to the landlord about heating options, we have no central heating and just use an electric heater. He said the air con is reversible, I said we’ve tryed it and it didn’t work. Then he told me I had it on snowflake setting, and then he switched it to sunshine setting and actually it heats the downstairs really well! I can’t believe I didn’t know this sooner!

Turning 40

 I’m about to be 40, an age I could never imagine being when I was 20. 

I was 34 in this photo but I had just completed
40 days of live crafts for kids in lockdown 

I feel like I suited certain ages better than others. I suited the ages you can climb trees at.

At 10 climbing trees was cool.

At 14 climbing trees was childish.

At 21 climbing trees made you a cool fun student.

At 30 climbing trees made you an irresponsible mother of the baby you left in the pram at the bottom of the tree.

At 39 climbing trees makes you a fun mum to a 8 and 11 year old.

I’m still going to continue climbing trees as long as I can, I think it will get not cool again pretty soon and then maybe it will be cool again when I’m 80.

So this is how my thirties have gone.  If you’ve read my blog a lot over the past decade you know all this a so feel free to skip:

 At 30 (2016.)

I was married with one baby living in a little house in a bit of a murder district. I had a fun job as a community artist and I was doing comedy as hobby. I had just done my first one hour show which was about my school days. My only goals were to move to a better house in a less stabby area and have another baby.

31 (2017)

I achieved all those goals by age 31. Although it wasn’t easy, 3 days before we were about to move into our new house, the seller decided that she didn’t want to sell and so we ended up lodging with another family for 9 months before buying a different house that we moved into just before I gave birth to Eric.

32 (2018)

I had survived the hardest bits of the newborn and toddler phase, and I started thinking about having a creative outlet for things I was experiencing in motherhood. At first I started drawing cartoons of situations I was experiencing. But drawing them was very time consuming, and I did not have much free time. After I finished breastfeeding I was suddenly free to go out in the evenings. So then I started doing comedy again, I was working on a new show about parenting, and so I enjoyed writing little bits of it and testing them out at different comedy nights.

My second hour long comedy show

This year I also found out I had cancer, and (spoiler alert) I survived. I performed my parenting show that I was really proud of and the week after I had to have an operation and then recover in bed for a month. During the recovery I spent a lot of time in bed on my laptop applying to do comedy gigs in my mission to actually try to become a comedian.

33 (2019)

2019 was one of my favourite years, it was not the most restful year, but it was a year that I did a lot of comedy and my kids were peak cute. I set myself the aim to get a paid comedy gig within the year and achieved it in a few months. I also started my own comedy night which was sometimes incredible and I was really proud of it, but was sometimes not a great night and I felt a lot of pressure that my friends were coming and paying to see comedy and it wasn’t always as good as I wanted it to be.

We also took a holiday in 2019 our first holiday as a family of 4. We flew to Nice and hired a camper van and drove to Barcelona. It was the first time I’d ever seen that bit of the south of France and it was very beautiful. We talked about how we could live in France but it seemed impossible because even though Dan is half French and spoke French well, we didn’t think he couldn’t compete for jobs with people who are fully French.

Exploring Nice

34 (2020)

We all know what happened in 2020, I was a bit gutted that I had some great comedy gigs lined up including a paid 20 minute spot at the Comedy Store, but I was also relived to have a break from everything. Once you’ve started trying to be good at comedy any time you take off you worry that people are going to advance quicker and take your place. Unfortunately I couldn’t do my work in schools and I had to homeschool so it wasn’t exactly a break, but I enjoyed doing live craft videos that kids could join in with from home. It was cool to build a community and it was a lot less pressure to do these videos where no one was paying for me to be funny, and I was just trying to do something nice. 

The highlight of that year was holding the first Jonesfest, a festival in my garden in a brief relaxed time between lockdowns. By the end of the year I was working 5 hour evening shifts for the Royal Mail in a big warehouse full of other people who had lost their jobs and were also Christmas temps with me.

35 (2021)

The year began in lockdown homeschooling and not being able to work. But I ended it having loads of work because all the schools wanted to do fun projects. We started talking about moving to France and Dan asked his boss if he could move to France (seeing as he was working remotely) but they said no because of tax and stuff. But it got us thinking that getting a remote job that was based in Europe would be the way to move to France. Then he got made redundant, and he started thinking this is his opportunity to either join the police, which was something he was always interested in, or to look for a remote job based in Europe. By the end of the year he had a new remote job based in Europe and we were getting all our paperwork ready to leave.

The 2nd Jonesfest (2021)

36 (2022)

I had one of my favourite birthdays ever to celebrate being 36. It was a roller disco, I was maybe at my happiest. I had amazing friends, work was going great, both kids were in school, Dan had a great job, we had a nice house that we had been slowly doing up, I was doing comedy a bit but not so intensely. Sometimes I think I should have just stopped there and enjoyed my life, but I had the optimism of a person  that everything had worked out well for. 

The few months leading up to the move were incredibly stressful, as I tried to get rid of everything we owned while getting the paperwork for France done, and getting our kitchen redone for our tenants. It was really sad to tell people we were leaving and to stop some of my work projects that were going well. We made a major visa error which meant that after one month in France I had to come back for a whole month on my own to wait for the visa. But other than that things did go pretty smoothly, we found a great house, the kids settled in well to school and we enjoyed exploring our beautiful region. 

Looking back now I wish I just enjoyed myself because difficult times were ahead. And I was enjoying myself, but I did keep comparing myself to the year before, when I had a fun job and friends and the ability to speak to people. I started painting my surroundings partly because I had no friends to hang out with.

Celebrating bastille day in our village

37 (2023)

At the beginning of 2023 I thought this is going to be a great year. 2022 was a bit much with moving countries but this is the year we’ll explore and get settled, and learn french. But actually it was one of the most stressful years of my life with Dan losing his job and me not having a job and not having very good job prospects. We were also caught between systems because we hadn’t been in France long enough to claim benefits so we just burnt through all our savings and were sad.

38 (2024) 

Was not much better. Towards the beginning of it Dan did find a new remote job with occasional travel to Toulouse and for a few months we thought ok everything is going to be fine. We bought skis and booked a summer holiday road trip because we were sure we were staying. I had started a bit of English teaching and life was good again. Until we found out that not everyone passes their work trial period and after three months of work Dan was unemployed again. This was made worse by our landlord wanting their house back and our inability to rent a new house due to our lack of jobs. We ended the year last Christmas having no idea where we would be living by the summer but returning to England seemed pretty likely. But one positive was I did a successful kickstarter campaign and bought a printing press. We also did try and make the most of what we thought might be the last summer in France with a big road trip.

Vallon pont-d’arc on our France road trip

39 (2025)

2025 started in our nice house preparing to leave it. We had no idea how things would turn out so we found an air bnb just for the short term. As time went on I started to prepare for moving back to England as it seemed the most likely scenario. We had a few days in Corsica because we thought this would be our last chance to go. Then we got into the situation where Dan had an interview and if he got the job we would be staying and of he didn’t we would leave. He got the job which was a huge relief financially, but we still didn’t have anywhere to stay in the summer as our house was going to be an air bnb for holiday makers. So we made a plan for me to come back to England with the kids and for Dan to stay and work and live in random places. It was a weird summer but I had a lot of fun. We attempted to move back to nicer rental accommodation but failed, so we’re back in the airbnb but are starting to look at options to buy. In this last year  I’ve realised if we’re staying here I need more French and more friends and to do and sell art more. I can’t do comedy here and that makes me really sad, but this year I had a big solo exhibition and I intend to do more of it next year.

A piece for my exhibition

That takes us to now.

Who knows what my 40’s will hold. I’m scared of having teenagers, the menopause and my parents dying, but I’m hoping we find a nice house and more community and go on some more adventures.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

New car, new house, new friends?

 Hello people who still bother to read blogs even though better things have been invented. Thank you for bothering, I think I will still carry on writing it, because occasionally I like to look back at them and remember stuff I forgot at the time. Looking back at photos only gives you a snapshot of one second in time when you were probably doing something nice, but sometimes you want to remember funny things people have said or how a whole situation played out. And it’s nice sometimes to read about stressful times when you know that in the end it all worked out fine. When I look back at photos from 2020 I think the kids were so cute, and we were having the best time. But if I was to read my blogs I think it would give a more truthful picture.

Since last time I wrote I have got colder, I moved here because one of my top hobbies is being warm. I like to be sunbathing or be in a bath or snuggled up in bed with a hot water bottle. And although the temperature might average about 10 degrees more than the UK our house has no heating and it is freezing! Our pervious house also had no heating but it got a lot of sunlight which warmed it up in the day and then we had the wood burner for evenings. This house has very little natural light and it’s normally colder inside than it is outside. I borrowed two plug in heaters from a friend and I sit right next to them every evening and then every night we all have hot water bottles. I’m considering getting an electric blanket but I worry I would never get out of bed. The positives are the sky is still mostly blue and it virtually never rains, but I’m looking forward to enjoying some british central heating soon.

We definitely want to move house in 2026, even though we moved house kind of twice in 2025. We are actually going to view our next door neighbour’s house tomorrow! It’s much bigger than this house and it has a nice garden and it has reversible air con (hot and cold) in every room! I don't know if we can afford it, we’re in the process of getting a man to tell us how rich/poor we are, (he’s a mortgage advisor not a psychic by the way) It would definitely be a stretch but we’ll see if we like it and whether it’s possible and worth stretching for. The move would be easy, but do I really want to live in this tiny village forever just to save about 60 euros on van hire? The kids would be over the moon to stay here with their friends but imagine being here as teenagers. It’s just like Burton Green the village I spent my teenage years trying to escape from. On the other hand, it’s not too far from town and it’s cheaper than living in the places that have more going on, meaning we could have a bigger house with space for friends to stay.

We finally decided to get a new car last month, well our old car decided for us that it was time for her to retire. She had so many things wrong with it that if she was a dog they would put her down. Every time I drove I feared this might be the last journey she or I ever drove. We spent a long time trying to work out what car to get. We debated whether we should get another 7 seater which does feel a bit mad given there’s only 4 of us, but it is nice when people visit, and its great that we can get at least 2 bikes in the car with the kids as well. Yes we could get a bike rack but if I had to screw on a bike rack every time I wanted to take kids to the pump track I would never go. So we got a 2018 citroen C4 Picasso in blue. It’s an automatic which I’ve never driven before, I thought they were just for losers who are too stupid to drive, but they’re actually amazing! Why are we changing gears all the time if we’ve got the technology not to?! It’s exactly the same thought I had when I started taking the pill continuously. Why are women bothering to have periods when we’ve got the technology to stop that? If you’re driving a manual car whilst on your period, you are not living you best life hun. You might as well be still going to the reference section of the library when you want to know something, or learning an instrument because you like to hear music. Or reading this blog when you could be watching TikTok.

The last few weeks I have been trying to do creative things on Thursdays, my workday on Wednesday is very full because all the french kids are off school and want to learn english. Or their parents want them to learn english. Yesterday was the maddest day of trying to do Christmassy stuff in my english classes. I taught two groups of kids what a Christmas pudding was and then we made a rice crispy cake version of this, because I didn’t think making a real one would be a good idea. A Christmas pudding can kill you in so many ways: you could die from choking on a coin, being burnt while it was on fire, obesity or alcohol intake. (Like if you were already drunk and that last bit from eating a Christmas pudding tipped you over the edge and then you fell down some stairs or off a cliff)

The rice crispy version was stressful enough. I hire a room with no kitchen facilities and I can’t park near it, so the lightest thing I could carry to melt chocolate was my raclette machine. I did consider my batik  pot but like the ancient proverb says “you should never mix chocolate and wax.” Anyway giddy kids that I can’t communicate well with, having knifes and hot raclette pans was enough stress without me setting fire to anything. So yeah after full day of lessons, its nice to have a more relaxed day of creative stuff, I’ve been doing a comisssioned canvas for a woman writing a book and then I used the painting to be the book cover. I’ve also been doing Christmas windows, this year is the first time I’ve done them professionally.

I went round a few cafes back in October and one got in touch. I had agreed to do them on the inside mainly because it would be warmer for me, but because he was half a hour late on the first day I started on the outside and then it took me 9 hours or working in the cold windy street to finish them. I did one in someone’s home to which was a lot more fun.

(This is not the whole thing I spent 9 hours doing btw)

Last weekend we went to visit our friends in Montpellier, they are our board game friends who we met when we hadn’t been here long. Aurore is french and Marie is German but their shared language is English, they sadly for us have moved, but it was a nice chance to visit Montpellier for the Christmas markets and hang out with them.

We stayed in a hotel walking distance from them and had a buffet breakfast where the boys took full advantage of combining all their options Percy had ham and Nutella on a waffle and was very happy about it. 

We got back just in time to catch the eng of the school Christmas fair at sunset:

This coming weekend we are seeing some brand new friends for board games, and I feel like we are cheating on our old board game friends. I met Sam in the french class I go to which is run by Ukrainians on his 4th day in the city, and we bonded over not being from the Ukraine. Then him and his Finnish/ French wife Emma and my family all went on a little trip out towards the mountains, which was a lot of fun. They are really interesting people who have been living a very cool digital nomad life in Asia for the last few years. I’ve met a few new english speaking people recently, and I really am putting time into getting better at french, so I can have French friends, but it is so good to connect with english speakers. 

Thanks for reading. 

Ruining 4 people’s birthdays

Last month Percy turned 11. In France they have a 2 week half term in October, which is too long!

But this year Dan’s parents came over to visit and for 5 nights we stayed in a holiday park 40 minutes away by the sea. It’s a bargain to go at this time, or at Easter time, but it is chilly to swim in an outdoor pool. Luckily were hardened Brits and we did it anyway. 

On Percy’s actual birthday we began the day with watching the sunrise. The kids are up at 7ish anyway and we were 10 minutes walk from the sea, so it made total sense to get down there while it was still dark and watch the day dawn.

In the afternoon Percy had his birthday party at the Wave Café. It’s an indoor surfing place that we once went to for Dan’s birthday. The time we went for Dan I had booked it as a surprise. At the same time a party of 10 year old had also booked it, but they didn’t take the website’s advice to book it out for the maximum amount of people which is 8, even if you only have a party of 7. And the consequence was you have a random man called Dan in your birthday party. That’s 2 peoples birthday’s partially ruined. Dan’s -who everyone thought was the teacher, and the kid’s.

But Percy’s party was different. We booked the party package, which includes a chocolate cake, your own table set up with sweets, a free t-shirt for the birthday kid and the guarantee of no weird men being in your group. Except for the fact that Percy didn’t invite a lot of friends, so that same weird guy from the first story ended up in a party of 10 year olds again, along with his arguably more weird wife!

The wave machine was really fun. You stand at the top with a body board and launch yourself down a hill that water is being sprayed up, and if you’re lucky you can lie on your tummy for a while balanced between the forces of the water being sprayed up and gravity trying to pull you down. I think? I’m not a physicist. But I do know that if you’re not lucky you fall off or spin round and shoot back to the top which is also pretty fun.

There was a lot of trial and error and a lot of falling off. And at one point my boob came fully out! Just what you want in a party of 11 year olds. That’s the 3rd of 4 birthdays I’ve ruined in this blog. I actually think only Dan saw, so hopefully I got away with it.

The birthday continued with a trip to the second hand electronics shop where Percy spent his birthday money on a Pokémon Switch game, a little mcflurry at Burger King, or whatever they call their mcflurries. And Dan made Percy’s favorite meal, bbq chicken on macaroni cheese back at the campsite.

We did some nice other things during the week, two of which involved lying about Percy’s age, once for cheaper entry to the aquarium and once so he can get the kids menu. I’m really not ready for him to be having to pay full price for stuff yet, but it seems 10 is the cut off for a lot of things. 

The aquarium was cool, fish are fun aren’t they? Especially this guy on the right:

If a kid drew this fish you would not believe it actually looked like this.

One day it was a bit cold and windy so I thought I would take the boys to a park with a good pump track, as Percy got a new bike for his birthday. When I got there the park was locked, we later found out that this was due to strong winds. But I was determined to get in, we’d driven here with the bikes in the car and there was nothing better to do. Also I see rules as more of a challenge, and on closer inspection there were some kids on the pump track, no parents though. We asked the kids how they’d got in and they pointed to a ditch that went under the fence. That bit was fairly easy, but what I didn’t realise is that we would then have to climb over another fence which was really hard to do. 

First we lifted the bikes over to the other kids. Then you could get your foot in the railing, if you turned it on its side so all your weight was on the edge of your foot. My boys managed without too much difficulty with the help from the other kids, but I found it really hard, because my feet were bigger. You couldn’t sit on the top of the fence, because it was spiky, but I had to while I unstuck my feet from the railings so I could jump down freely. I had bruises after from sitting on the spikes.

Once we were in the boys cycled round a bit, but it was quite windy, and maybe not that safe, that’s why someone had decided to lock the park. I began to think about how I was kind of responsible for all the children now as the only adult in there. And if one of them was to break their arm or whatever it would be me who would have to phone an ambulance, if I could remember what number you have to phone. They have different numbers for the different emergency services. I know the police is 17 because I learned that at bingo. You know like we say, “88 two fat ladies” they say, “88 two peanuts” and they say, “17 the police.” I was wondering how you say in French, “I broke into a locked park,” and how someone with a broken arm might try and climb back over the spiky fence. 

But as with many real life stories, it was actually all fine, we got out a different and slightly easier way in the end. Boring.

The 4th birthday I ruined was this week. Since September I’ve started a new group where I teach English to kids. It was in a school that I was already working in, I asked back in the summer and they said as long as I got insurance, I could use a school classroom for free on a Wednesday when the kids aren’t normally in. So then I filled in all the forms and advertised my group, found 5 kids and started it. It was going well, they loved it, the parents seemed happy and five is enough money wise to be worthwhile. Just after the last lesson before half term, the head teacher came and told me that I could no longer do the lessons there. She is a lovely woman and it wasn’t down to her, apparently the owners of the school building are not happy about me using the room as I’m a business. I feel like the French really hate businesses. I would be happy to pay a bit to use the room, but that wasn’t the issue, the issue was I was trying to earn money. And I am therefore EVIL.

So then I had to try and find another room, because I didn’t want to shut it down when I had a good group. With the help of Dan’s mum (who is French) we phoned the Mairie (which is like the town hall). We asked about room hire and after a lot of back and forth I was told to go there in person with a cheque to pay for the term. Nothing is ever done online or by bank transfer in France. They showed me the room and it looked alright so I messaged the parents just to check they were all still up for it and then I paid.

Now I’m getting to the bit where I ruined a kids birthday… so a few days before the first lesson the mum of two of the 5 kids that go said their kids were in a school trip so wouldn’t be coming, and then it turned out another kid was also going. So we’ve now only got 2 kids left. And one of their Mums messaged to say that their kid was free, but it was her birthday so they wouldn’t mind if we cancelled. The problem for me is I would be making minus 25 euros if I cancelled and at least with 2 kids coming I might be making slightly over 0€ after tax and fuel costs. Is that worth ruining a child’s birthday for? I think so. 

I did try to make it as fun as possible for the birthday girl, but how fun can a two hour english lesson with one other kid on a very tight budget be? I took a birthday banner and I made her a her a hexiflexigon origami birthday card, and we learnt birthday vocab and then played games like guess who and happy families, so she was practising some English. And I hope happy families distracted her from how much happier she would have been with her family. 

I thought the awkwardness was over for the week after that, but at the weekend I took my kids to the natural hot springs. It’s right near the lovely thermal pools that are like a hot swimming pool that we’ve been to before except it’s just a big gravelly hot puddle. Free, but I’ve only been there once and I did not know how many naked Spanish hippys there would be there! Even one is enough, but there were a lot. Me and Eric had a lovely time despite the nudity.

Percy did not like seeing naked people and didn’t go in at all. Dan was also not really a fan and only dipped his feet in. I promised them that next time we go, we’ll go to the real baths where you can swim and people are forced to wear swimwear.

Thanks for reading. X