I wanted to get a blog out before we go on a french road trip tomorrow. Long car journeys did really well out of their rebrand to road trips. It’s the exact same thing but it feels like an adventure. It’s the start of half term and what better way to celebrate than to drive for hours and stay in someone’s glorified garden shed. We won 2 nights stay in a holiday park last summer by entering a photo competition with this photo:
Dan can actually tell people that a topless photo of himself won us a holiday. We could have a weekend in any of the mar villa holiday parks, we could stay in one half a hour away with waterchutes in the summer, or we could use one of the only one’s that’s open all year and stay in Paris.
And since we’re going that far north, (it’s about 8 hours) we could also go and see Dan’s extended family who live in the north west. And then we’ve added 3 more stops to break up the journey so we’re not actually ever doing a 8 hour drive. So we have 3 nights in the most budget Airbnbs we can find. Let’s see if this is a fun family road trip or just one long car journey between garden sheds.
Last weekend was a weird rollercoaster of emotions, on Friday night Dan was really excited to have found a job advertised that he thought he would be perfect for. It was translating french documents into English for the tourist board of a village near to us. There was also to procedure writing and some IT both of which he has done in previous jobs. The job was just a year contract, but maybe they would extend after I’m not sure. I was excited for him, this felt like a real opportunity, I had felt like we would probably be leaving France but this could be a chance to stay.
I feel fine about staying another year here it’s beautiful and sunny pretty much all the time, and we can see a mountain with snow on from our window. The idea of staying another 10 years does scare me a bit. And ideally for the kids education we need to make a decision and stick to it so they can be in one place. At the boy’s local school Percy is in the last year of primary school so he would be starting secondary school in September if we stayed. But if we went back to England he would only go back into year 6 the last year of primary school in the UK. So this would be a better time to leave because he could get used to England and then go to open days and apply for secondary schools. But another year here would change that, he would have to start secondary school here, and then I’d have to work out how to apply for schools in England when you can’t visit them and you don’t have a home address to apply from. And then it might be a big change for Percy to suddenly be schooled in scouse, he’d have to learn some new vocab like “lolly ice” instead of “ice lolly” I don’t know if he’s too old to pick up local accents now. Ok I’m half joking but he’d have to wear a uniform again which he would hate. And it would be hard for him to start a new school here knowing that it wouldn’t be for long.
Maybe Dan could do that job for a year and then maybe something else would come up in that time or maybe that job would be extended but I dont know what I can do here long term. English teaching is ok, I like elements of it. But I once got paid to put on a taskmaster surprise party for someone that involved everyone in kayaks collecting rubber ducks from a river. And I once got paid to make a life sized elephant from willow that was worn by 4 people (one in each leg.) Teaching English grammar as a dyslexic just isn’t quite as fulfilling. All this was going round in my head while I was at my roller dance class. I love roller dance, it’s so fun just a massive hall and music and a lot of freedom to do what you want. Sometimes its a big daydream time for me, and people think I’m not understanding the instructions because I’m english but its actually because I can just switch my brain off to french chatting a little to easily and I’m just in my own head. Skating makes me so happy because it’s really fun but also a bit sad when I feel like I could be really good friends with these people if I could communicate better.
Anyway that Saturday I was wizzing round thinking about our whole situation and just feeling really uncomfortable about staying for a year, feeling like we’d just be extending the time in limbo, not really making a decision. Then on Sunday I felt a bit more fine about it, I do love France, and I’ve heard the Uk is not lovely right now. Dan worked really hard all night on his application and sent it in.
First thing Monday morning he got a email back saying he didn’t get it because he didn’t have 1 year’s experience on a specific piece of soft where made for people who work in the tourist information industry. Dan was gutted, I didn’t know what to feel. I was sad for him though, he’s applying for everything now, supermarkets, Mac Donald’s and jobs in England. He doesn’t want to maybe back to Liverpool because he thinks it will be too weird and we’ve “completed it” like we’ve done all the fun things there are to do. And also crime, it is much safer and quieter in our little French village than where we used to live.
I get all those points but I just think I can get over it, and a little bit of crime is sometimes fun to watch out the window. When the police once asked if they could look inside our canoes in our yard for a man on the run, that was good fun. When my friend had to knock on the door of our drug dealer neighbours to ask if she could throw some carrots over the wall because she was meant to be feeding our rabbit but I had forgotten to leave her a key, that was retrospectively funny. When a guy was shoot dead right opposite the house and the ambulance didn’t come to save him because the area was not safe. That was horrific. (All these incidents happened in our first Liverpool house not the one will still own)
We’ve talk about living somewhere else in the UK, it has to be the north because all our best people are there, but Dan wants more countryside and mountains and he doesn’t want criminals hiding in his kayaks. I chatted to my old student housemate Josh this week who lives on the edge of the Lake District. I respect Josh a lot for doing his own thing, in his 20s he toured Europe on a tricycle and performed circus skills everywhere. In his 30s he made a horse box into the most incredible eco home, and set up an arts organisation. He’s more recently moved into a real house and is fostering 2 kids with his partner Alex. So he told me all about what is going on in his region for artists, and what there is to do for fun, and what the house prices are like etc. It was intriguing, and Dan found it really interesting too. But when I mentioned it to Percy he said “no, leaving France is already a compromise for me, if we leave why wouldn’t we go back to where we know everyone” and then he was pretty angry about it. If you move from Liverpool to the lakes it’s beautiful but if you move from the Pyrenees to the lakes it’s just the same thing but colder and wetter.
So who knows, we’re trying to have all the fun we can here while we can. Me and Dan snuck of for a sneaky ski while the kids were in school this week. We dropped them off at 8:40am, drove for an hour and 20. Got a 4 hour ski pass and we’re back in time for school pick up at 4:30. It feels a not naughty but we might never get to ski here again and going without the kids was great. Ski wise they are an ok level to come with us, but they cannot cope with their emotions if they fall over or get tired or feel something is unfair.
When I started this blog I said we were going on a road trip tomorrow, but now we’re on day 2 of the road trip, that’s how long it takes to finish a blog with kids. I’ll talk about the road trip next time. Au revoir.
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