Hello and welcome to another, “what shall we do with our lives now?” blog. There’s been a few over the years. There was the time I was seriously thinking about having a 3rd child, the time when I made the decision to try properly at comedy, that time when we were homeless and thought moving abroad would solve all our problems and then the time we actually moved abroad, because it was the only acceptable way of getting out of Eric’s class WhatsApp group.
It’s been a big month of emotions since I last blogged. I had a couple of weeks of thinking, “I really do want to go back to England, I just can’t see myself living here for the next 10 years. More money and a house that was ours (and more French lessons) would help me feel better about being here, but I don’t know if I will ever be at the stage where I can actually make friends properly with most people in this country.” And I don’t understand the systems, there’s not many jobs I can do, I’m just not a full adult person here.
But the thought of going back is odd too, and Dan and Percy 100% don’t want to go back. And it is incredibly beautiful here, and the weather is so good. It’s cold right now, but there have been many days this month where we’ve had warm 20 degree sun for a few hours in the middle of the day.
If we don’t have enough work, we have to go back, there’s no debate really. It’s if we have some ok work or remote work that it’s actually more complicated. At the moment nothing is off the table, is that a phrase? Everything is on the table. The table is piled high with weird life ideas. Here’s some of them, in order from quite sensible to ill advised:
1) Go back to our house in Liverpool. Dan is going for a meeting tomorrow with a guy that should be able to give him work, some of which is here but he has much more work in the UK.
2) Stay here. There’s still time for Dan to find a job, rent a new house (we have to leave this one in April) and it all to work out here.
3) Find a job in another area of France. We’ve talked about Paris or Toulouse, I might enjoy being in a bigger city so maybe it’s a good compromise. For example I know there’s some English speaking comedy nights in Paris, that could be fun.
4) Move back to Britain but not Liverpool. Dan wants mountains and countryside so maybe North Wales, or the Lake District or the Peak district.
5) Move to another country. We talked about Malta because it’s Mediterranean but English speaking, and Canada, we could live in the English bit and then just visit the French bit sometimes to keep up our languages. We also did a, “where shall we live?” test. I got Portugal, Greece, Italy or Costa Rica. It’s a fun test, they ask you about climate and political views and stuff. Do the test here.
6) Use all our savings to buy a camper van, travel round the world and homeschool for a year before Percy starts Year 7 in 2026. This was actually my back up plan if we didn’t go to France. I was just going to save money and then take a family gap year when Percy was in year 6.
7) Toss a coin, Pyrenees-Orien-tails or Liverpool pier-heads.
8) Liverpool but Dan gets breakfast in bed every day.
9) Perpignan but Hannah gets a pet donkey. Someone was once giving away a donkey FOR FREE in our region and mean old Dan didn’t let me take it.
10) Me and Eric move back to England, Dan and Percy stay in France.
I also suggested than when we’ve come up with a plan we make a cake and do an, “agenda reveal” (credit to my sister Sarah for that name). So we’d have friends round and maybe some people could join by video link and we would live cut a cake to reveal the flag of the chosen country. And then everyone would be either happy or sad but they have to congratulate us just like in a gender reveal.
If you have any other suggestions let us know!
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| November beach picnic |
Some things to promote:
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| Example page Céret |
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| Example page Liverpool Hope street. |
Thanks to everyone who gave to my Kickstarter after my last blog. I’ve more than reached the target, but if you want some original Hannah Jones art posted to your door, have a look at the options. (There’s only 9 days left.)
I’ve started a Redbubble shop with some of my designs on it, see some things you can buy here.
I bought myself a new phone cover with my water fun design.
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