5 weird summers

I've been meaning to blog for ages. I was going to blog about our weird life again but then everything went on fire, literally and emotionally and the fire jumped the queue of blogs in my head. But its now time for this blog to finally get written.

I realised recently that every summer since we moved to France over 4 years ago has been weird. 

2022

We moved in April 2022, and Dan took almost all his annual leave for moving house. By the long summer holidays we'd not been in France long enough to go back to England for a holiday, and I'd been in England for all of June due to a visa admin error. Both sets of parents came to visit, but mainly I remember it just being long and hot and we didn't have enough friends, and Dan was working, so it was a bit lonely.  It was exciting being in a new place but I had no one to share it with. 

We were meant to have a visit from our good friends Zac and Jude and their kids, but at the absolute worst time they got chicken pox and couldn't come, that was pretty gutting and really sad for them.

I got really into outdoor painting with the kids, we'd just sit out on side roads and paint trees and mountains.

We had some good times. We bought a massive paddling pool and invented many games to play in it, such as 'nose ball' (it's like football with a balloon and your nose.)

I really struggled with re-learning to drive with a new big car on roads I didn't know on the wrong side of the road, so we went on the train to lake Vinca a lot. It wasn't a bad summer just a weird one. But I thought, "the first one is bound to be weird, it will be less weird next year."

2023

This summer came just after Dan had lost his best ever job, I remember going back to England and trying to see as many people as possible. The job thing was playing on my mind. We hadn't been in the country long enough to get any kind of help, so we were just living off savings, but that summer was before I really realised how bad the French job market was in our area of France. I still felt okay about stuff. November that year was peek panic about your life time. The thought of moving back to England then seemed mad, we had committed to a house for 3 years and I had mentally committed for 3 years, the kids had only just become fluent in French. We were all in on trying to make things work. We had quite a few visitors and we had made a few friends and I was a lot more confident with French and driving.

Back in England wearing coats in August

2024

The end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 was a tough old time with Dan still not finding work. He had done a few projects and a brief period when he worked for local magazine P.O life who ended up screwing him over. But then in spring of 2024 he found a new good job working mainly remotely for a company in Toulouse, and we thought, "we're sorted now." I had some work too teaching English. We were happy to stay, but then after 3 months of work Dan was told his trial period was over and he just wasn't exactly the right fit for the job. They said, "it would be better if you lived in Toulouse." He said, "I'll move to Toulouse." They said, "nah, don't worry about it." So that was the beginning of weird summer number 3. 

That summer we realised staying in France might not last much longer. We knew our rental contract was coming to an end in spring 2025 so we thought, "lets just try and make the most of being in France." We did a trip to Biarritz and San Sebastien for a long weekend in May, but in the summer we did a big road trip to Lake Geneva and back. 

 

 

It was out first time camping, and we went to some absolutely beautiful places, but our car was dying the whole time and because we were not in one place for long we had to go to a garage and get car parts sent to another garage that we would be in a few days. We couldn't drive fast, a 5 hour journey took over 8 hours and it was very stressful.

2025

After another year of not having enough work and surviving through the French benefit system (which we had finally been there long enough to benefit from) our 3 year contract came to an end in April, and my tolerance for France also came to an end. We said we'd do 3 years, it didn't work out, it's a shame but lets go back to the land of tea and banter and clouds, it's not all bad. But we might as well stay until July so that Percy can finish his last year at French primary school. So we found an airbnb to live in just from April to July. We put most of our stuff in storage and started to prepare to move. But then Dan got a job! 

He was on the toilet when he got the phone call that would change the course of our lives, after 3 interviews he was offered a job in marketing. I was happy that he finally had something, and in the short term it was great. We couldn't stay in our airbnb over the summer, because the landlord wanted to make money from holiday people, so me and the boys went to England all summer and Dan stayed in random peoples houses for work. He didn't have the best time, but I had a great summer, seeing 97 people in England. It was possibly my best summer since moving to France, which does really say something about our lives in France.

Why would you live near the Med when you can live near the mud?

2026

After a summer away in England, we moved back to our weird Airbnb more permanently, and I was feeling more positive about France. I started French lessons again, I made some new friends, and we were talking about buying a house. Now that Dan had a proper French contract and a secure job we could get a French mortgage, and although that scared me a bit, it was also exciting. We weren't loving our Airbnb, we hadn't had any visitors, even just local people round to hang out like we used to.

And then after a year of work for Dan, they got a new boss to come in and shake things up. She upset everyone who worked there, changed everyone's roles and got rid of Dan. We were just about to offer on a house and then suddenly the new house or any of the houses was not an option and going back to Liverpool was a real possibility again, but being half way through a remortgage of our UK house that cost a lot of money, made things really complicated. Especially as the terms of the mortgage state that as it's a buy to let we can't live in it if we were to continue with the process of the remortgage. 

The original plan for this summer was to go to Italy. My sister Sarah is going to the Italian lakes and I thought a road trip there would be fun. We planned it all out with a few nights in Nice and a night in Genoa, driving on the way and then getting a ferry from Genoa to Barcelona on the way back to reduce the driving. We had booked a few bits of it, including the ferry, when Dan lost his job and we decided it was all a bit stressful and expensive. 

I had also booked a short trip to England, just me and the kids. Originally Dan didn't have enough time off work to do Italy and England, so I got a flight based on the cheapest ones where he could take us to the airport. We were flying from Perpignan to Leeds and then back from Manchester to Girona late at night so he could get us after work. Then when we cancelled the Italy holiday it made sense for Dan to come to England with us, but those flights weren't cheap any more, and the times made no sense. If we drive to the airport in Perpignan and leave our car there, then how do we get back from Girona late at night when there's not public transport? After looking at many mad options such as Dan dropping us off in Perpignan for our flight and then driving down to Girona to get a different flight to Leeds so our car would be in the right place, we asked our friend Sam for a lift from the airport.

Then as summer was approaching I felt more and more uneasy about only spending a short time in England when the kids are off for 2 months and I'm in a boiling hot house with no outdoor space. We only have air con downstairs so we're all fighting over who gets to sleep on the sofa bed.

I thought I'll just have a little look at other flight options, and then I found some for 25 euros. So we 3 are now staying in England for over 3 weeks, but Dan will stay for the original stupid flight, because he can't be away too long if he wants to get the job seeker benefits, and if we're in the process of buying a house (which is not certain) and to do a bit of work for Guy. 

Shout out to entrepreneur Guy Wilmot for continuing to pay both of us at different times to work on various projects he has going on, without him we really wouldn't have financially survived.

It's our anniversary today, we've been married 15 years. I don't think any of the years have been easy, before these last years that I just explained, we had Covid, and then before that a bit of cancer, then it was the baby stage. Summer 2017 was harder than any other summer, a new born baby and a toddler all day every day for weeks is hardcore. Then before that we were living in someone else's weird house which was mixed, there were some nice times and weird times, and before that our tiny house which was also mixed. We had a few good parties and fun memories there, but it was a pretty crimey. Starting with our first night there after we arrived back from our honeymoon in the 2011 riots and ending with a murder on the doorstep several years later. I grew up in a village where we once got a newsletter saying "everyone please be vigilant, someone's had their wellies stolen from there shed" and that was too little crime. It's really the dream to live somewhere with moderate levels of crime.  

People often say marriage is hard, and I'm not saying it's easy, but in my experience life has been hard and messy and I can't imagine doing those hard things without Dan. Last week I was feeling very unsure about everything, especially about buying a house, because we really would be committing to being here long term. And I had a day where I was more up for the huge hassle of returning to the homeland than ever before and I asked him, "what happens if I really can't do France any more?" And he didn't try and persuade me that it would all be okay, he just hugged me and said, "we'll go back." Even though he doesn't want to, even though it would be a logistical nightmare, I know he would do it, if I needed to.

Thanks for reading this far!

 

Next blog... our camping trip, and do we or don't we sign for a house, which is meant to happen tomorrow. 

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!