Percy's 8th Birthday

Saturday was Percy's 8th birthday. Eight is the age you can best get away with eating a bit of their cake before they do....

He didn't even think to ask what happened to the middle bit.

Last year on his 7th birthday we knew we were moving to France at some point in the near future, so it was nice to give him a big party in a hall with a bouncy castle and lot of people. It was a huge amount of work to do party bags, space themed food and decorations, including a thing you put your face.

Anyway I delegated the cake to Dan as I was doing everything else. It was actually nine cakes, (the eight planets of the solar system plus the sun -obviously) but watching him make and ice them really was difficult. I get you can't delegate a job and then tell them they're doing it wrong, but aghhh it's hard to watch someone pour sprinkles onto a cake with no kind of icing for glue, and then just wrap it up in cling film to stop them falling off. What I'm saying is I'm glad the cake job was back in my control this year. 

Its not the most profession looking cake but at least the chocolate is sticking stuff together.

It would have been tricky organising a class thing this year, because we don't really know what there is to do for parties and what is normal and how to go about it. Also our house here is not as big as our old house, so it would be hard to host something. We gave Percy the option of doing a class thing and he chose not to. I was slightly disappointed because I want to try and make friends with the other parents and it's a good opportunity, but I was also relieved that it would be a much easier job. All we had to do was have a fun day.

We got him a basketball net, because since being in France he has really got into basketball and goes to basketball club on a Wednesday when he's off school. 

So he began to day by unwrapping that and a few other gifts. Then we moved onto a family game of Taskmaster. If you don't know it, it's one of my favourite shows, where comedians get to do random competitions against each other. I would love to be on that show, either as a comedian or just the person who makes the props or thinks up tasks. It's a petty unlikely dream, seeing as I'm not pursuing being a comedian any more and I live in France. This is not the first time I've made a Taskmaster game for someone, I did one last year for an adult on my parents river and it was so much fun (read about it here). We've just got into watching the new series as a family. It's a show for adults, but they do a bleeped version with no swearing and our kids are now at the age where they find this kind of show interesting. 

I placed the tasks up the stairs with a medal for the winner.

 The first task was this:

You have two minutes to go round the house looking for an item beginning with "P" and an item beginning with "S". You get a bonus point if your item is yellow. You get a bonus point if your item is the smallest of all the items.

We went one at a time round the house with a backpack on to put the items into and then we sat at the table for the big item reveal. I thought I was super clever with a pea for "P" it must be the smallest item too, right? But then Dan trumped me with sand. Small and beginning with "S" but we deemed it not yellow enough to get the bonus point. We did a few more tasks including a team task: rescue the paw patrol from an ice block while holding onto you partners hand. 

It was all going so well until we did a more subjective task (design the most unusual but fun water park) and then there were tears because Percy does not take it well when he doesn't win, and the game had to be abandoned.

After a big chat with me he did do a good job of getting over his disappointment, turning the day round and moving on to enjoy the afternoon. In the middle of the waterpark task there was a knock at the door and a school friend came over to deliver an envelope for Percy. We all assumed it was a birthday card but actually it turned out that she didn't know it was his birthday and it was a hand written note that she's written in English, inviting him over for a playdate on Monday. He came back pretty exhausted it was 6 and a half hours of speaking french (we did offer to pick him up earlier!) I didn't get much out of him about what they did, they played some games ate chicken nuggets and went to the park, him and three girls. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall, not in a nosy way, but I'm just intrigued as to how much French he's speaking and stuff.

After Taskmaster was abandoned we thought cake would be a good shout, and then we headed out for some more unhealthy food at Buffalo Grill. 

From there we headed to a soft play place we'd never been to before. There was a big hall filled with different kinds of bouncy castles and other inflatables, and then another room with a kind of adventure play with a zip line and stuff. But the best thing was that these two rooms were joined by a room with a bar in it. I've spent a lot of time in soft plays in my time as a parent, but I've never thought to combine alcohol with soft play before, but it is absolutely what soft plays are missing. I'd love a kids party with all my mum friends where the kids were playing and we all have a few wines. Apart from one responsible driver of course, who has to keep an eye on all the kids and parents. 

In the evening we got back and watched Percy choice of film, Harry Potter 2. Last year he received Harry Potter book 1 for his birthday, and is now already reading book 4. 

Happy Birthday Percy Jones.

Teacher's pet

For the first time in my life I've been the teacher's pet this week in my new French classes. I was often a bit naughty in school, not the cool smoking on the bus kind, the playing pranks on teachers and being cheeky kind. My top prank was when I wheeled this big sign that said "injections taking place no entry" from a place where it wasn't being used, to in front of some stairs. This was at a time when the school was experimenting with a one way system where one set of stairs was for going up and one set were for going down. So this messed up the whole system. No one saw us move it, which meant we could then stand around and watch the whole thing unravel. At first people were just confused, then people started disobeying the sign and then a teacher saw people disobeying the sign and took it upon herself to enforce the sign. But there was no way for people to get upstairs and so more and more angry people started clogging up the area, then more teachers got involved and started arguing. It was an interesting lesson in conformity which I late referenced in a psychology exam about conformity.

The closest I've got to being a teachers pet was A-level art. I was never that great at art at GCSE, I only got a B. I didn't spend much time on it because there were so many other subjects to focus on, and then at A level I really enjoyed it, and did it every day (and got an A). The geekiest thing I did was read a book about African batik where they use starch, and then I experimented with loads of different starch based things. I found one that worked and started dying fabric that way, and then I had to demonstrate my findings to the class. But for some reason you don't get bullied for being an art geek, so that's nice, because I did get bullied for plenty of other stuff. 

A-level art was the last time you could get good marks for painting nice pictures. When I studied it at uni they didn't care about nice pictures anymore, it was all about the concepts and I went back to being average again.

awkward teenage me with my GCSE art work.

Some of my art from second year of uni.

This week and last week I started two different French classes. The best thing is that they don't know about each other, so they might both think I'm making great progress, not realising I'm making the expected progress for someone doing 4 days a week of French. First I started a very local French evening class, which is like a club you sign up to. The teachers are volunteers and it only cost 20 Euros for the whole year, for two evenings a week. No one else in the class is an English speaker. It's two chatty Spanish old ladies, one Dominican lady, a Mongolian guy and me. The teachers speak zero English and so it's like a massive game of charades/pictionary. It's ok for me because I speak enough French to work stuff out, but there was a 10 minute game of charades just to try and explain the past and future tense to the Dominican. I'm still not sure she really understands anything.

My other class is the one I legally have to go to, to get my visa. A few weeks ago I had a medical and a french test at the OFII and after doing the test I was award 200 hours of free French lessons.

This is the office for immigration and integration logo, but look closely at it....

why is that guy with creepy Mr tickle hands trying to grope the blue lady's boob?!

It's always nice to do a test where if you fail you get free stuff, though last time I did one was my dyslexia test. Basically if you fail a spelling test, you get a free laptop. I'd narrowly missed out on dyslexic money a few years earlier because the test included the word "Psalms" and my Christian upbringing had scuppered my chances, with my knowledge of spelling Old Testament books. 

I started these free lesson on Thursday, it's mainly refugees from Afghanistan and a few others like a couple from Georgia and me. There are no other native English speakers again, but some of the Afghan guys speak a bit of English. The teacher is really nice and I managed to get a reputation for being one of the good ones. At the beginning of the first day she asked me name, I said, "Hannah" she said, "can I call you Anna?" The French really struggle with "H." She asked if it was a British name, which it isn't really it's from the Bible, so I think it's a Hebrew name. But I looked it up today in the French bible and Hannah (in the book of 1 Samuel) is called "Anne"- what's that about?! You can't just go changing names like that. Also John in the French bible is Jean and James in the Bible is Jacques. It makes me wonder how close "Hannah" is to what they said back in the day. Guess how they spell Psalms though? .....PSAUMES! I really hope that for someone reading this, this comes up in a pub quiz or as the final question on a tv gameshow and you will millions all because you've read my blog. French spellings of Bible books is a common topic on pub quiz's, right?

While it is a nice novelty to be the good one in the class, I do think it's slightly unfair on the people who have to learn a whole new alphabet. I do have the advantage of GCSE French and the privilege of having the money to do some online lessons before I arrived. We had to go round and say why we came here and what we like about France, and some of the them mentioned fleeing war and that they loved the freedom of France. I felt bad to say I just moved here for fun to enjoy a wider variety of cheese.

The teacher also speaks Spanish (and a little bit of English), she was saying how English is hard though and gave the example of the work "knife" and said how this was a stupid way to spell it. Which gave me the opportunity to explain everything that it stupid about French (in French). 

For example, time. I've learnt time before, but it's only this week I noticed when French people answer the question, "what time is it?" they don't say, "it's 10 O'clock." They say, "he is 10 O'clock." Time is a man. 

There are many stupid examples of the masculine feminine thing being ridiculous, I'm sure I've mentioned before that the French word for vagina is masculine. 

At one point we were learning about household jobs. She taught us the word for "washing" and "stain" and "clean" and "dirty." She has to teach all this though mime and explaining in French because we all speak different languages. When I worked out she was explaining the word "dirty" I said it out loud in English, because sometimes it helps the Afghans and then she said, "oh? like dirty dancing?" and then I had to explain what "dirty" in the dirty dancing sense means in French, which is always fun.

I think the boys French is coming along, they understand a lot now and are starting to say short sentences.

It was Percy's birthday yesterday, so I'm going to write about that in its own blog.

A Visitor and an X-ray

Hey, I haven't written for a while, I've been putting more time into recording and editing our new podcast. We're doing 10 episodes (we might do more later on but for now we're just doing 10). They're out every Monday for the next 10 weeks, but the recording period was from February until October, because we wanted to make sure we had enough interesting things to say. If you follow my blog you will know lots about our move, but there are lots more funny stuff that I've included in the pod that I've held back from sharing on here. We talk about my french fails, times when I've said stupid stuff to the kids teachers because I can't remember the right word. A disastrous time when a french family knocked on my door and Dan was in the shower and I made a proper fool of myself. Every week we do a feature called "French for maniacs", where we teach you a completely mad French phrase and dare you to say it to a real French person. If you do know anyone moving countries please share it with them too because as well as the silliness we have tried to include some actual useful tips about the logistics of moving countries. It is here

Last week has been a super fun week for me, mainly because the lovely Esther came to visit just for a couple of days. Esther is actually the first visitor we've had that isn't a parent of me or Dan. (We were meant to see another family in August but that plan was ruined by chicken pox.) Esther is someone I've known since my early 20s and I respect a lot. She is an actor and director and works and lives all over the place including sometimes in a van with her adorable dog Robin. After a crazy and difficult lockdown time when she fled from London like everyone I know did, she is on a kind of pilgrimage to find out about herself and life and God. Doing a lot of walking and thinking and stuff. You should really follow her instead of read this secondhand nonsense from me.

We were in a nearby park when we saw this: Esther's plane arriving 15 mins early, we raced off and managed to beat her to arrivals.

We picked her up and went straight to the sea. It's still warm enough to swim, but it was a bit windy and it wasn't burning hot, but it is burning hot today (about 30). On the way back home we picked Percy up from his first ever French birthday party. It's so sweet to see how his classmates really love him. I'm very proud of how he's doing in school. He had to read the poem below out loud in front of his class last week and he did really well.

This is how he has to write now. The French are very particular about handwriting and so, alongside learning that letters make slightly different sounds in French, he also has to learn this curvy writing that I can hardly read.

On Monday and Tuesday the boys were in school and Dan was working which meant that me and Esther got to go on some little adventures by ourselves. On Monday we set off to a gorge, stopping on the way to check out the view from the big hill you can see from our house. Driving on a tiny very steep road is not my favourite thing but it was worth it for the views. 

The difficult drive continued as we made our way to the the gorge. I've only been there once on a very hot August Saturday when it was rammed. This time I followed the sat nav, and it took me not the way I really wanted to go. I ended up on little windy path in a vineyard with a parked tractor blocking the way. There was a small gap but neither me nor Esther thought I could squeeze through without hitting a big rock. Then a guy appeared and waved me through. If I had better language skills I might have tried to argue that it was a bad idea, but I thought it was better to just try and I made it! 

I then discovered that the road lead to nowhere because the car park I was trying to get to had been blocked off with a giant rock, and you can't just park in a vineyard. I mean I was going to, but Esther said I shouldn't and then I saw "we'll tow away your car" signs. So I had to try and 3 point turn and squeeze past the tractor again and find a different way then. (Luckily the tractor had actually moved.) Eventually we got to the gorge a different way, but the entrance was all fenced off as if it just shuts in September. But as I said as a child, you can't pray the bit in the Lord's prayer that says "forgive us our trespasses" if you haven't been trespassing.

It was totally worth it to have this whole absolutely gorgeous gorge all to ourselves. There's like a long interesting rock corridor that you can swim down and then 2 places where you can swim and jump into a pool and the water is the most beautiful colour ever, and still warm enough to be ok at this time of year. After a lovely swim we climbed up the hill to try and find some caves, unsuccessfully, but we got some ace views.

The best colour in the world

The view from our climb

The next day we went on a long walk to a very cool waterfall. We had some deep chats about life, reminiscing about our 20's and the fine line we walked between having a genuine Christian faith and accidentally being in bit of a cult and how we make sense of all that now. (I've got no plans to unpack all that in this blog anytime, but happy to have real life chats with anyone who wants to.) At the end of the walk we reached this beautiful waterfall and some surprising things happened. But what happened at the waterfall stays at the waterfall (Its really Esther's story so I'll let her share it on her blog.)

I'm writing this now on the coach back from Montpellier, where I went for a meeting with the immigration and integration board. Before going I read a blog from someone who has been to this meeting (which also includes a medical examination and a french test) and she said it was incredibly stressful and disorganised, no one spoke English and she cried afterwards. But I've actually had a pretty good day, and yeah there were moments where I thought if they had translated the word "breastfeeding" then it would have meant a middle aged guy with man boobs wouldn't have had to mime breastfeeding to me. But then where would I get all my blog and podcast content from? HE CUPPED HIS MAN BOOB AND SUCKED HIS THUMB - honestly it was hilarious! And I will be doing a full in depth analysis of the many humorous moments of the whole day on the podcast, but not till episode 10.

Would you let me have a long stay visa based on this picture of my boobs? Well the French think it's good enough. Whoop whoop!

This week we're having a couple that I met online over for tea, just because they're from Warrington. Imagine doing that in the UK. Imagine going to Ikea for example (I really can't think of another reason you would go to Warrington) and imagine you got chatting to someone in the queue and then you just invited them over for tea. That's weird right?

C'est tout. Bisous.