4 stiches

 Sorry to leave you on a cliff hanger last night. Here’s the story of our Mother’s Day in A&E. 

It was Sunday and often we go to church but this morning we hadn’t and maybe this was God’s vengeance (jokes.) The day before we had actually tried out a new church, the church of our landlord. In the summer they meet outdoors and they always have food at the end. Percy commented that this more like how Jesus would have done church and since Jesus was always right, this was the correct kind of church. So if anyone is doing church another way you are definitely wrong. 

So Sunday morning was Mother’s Day in France, the boys gave me some cute cards they made and Dan went out to get pastries so I could have a cup of tea and a chaussure au pomme in bed. My Mother’s Day treat was ridding a horse, I’m not big into horses but I might have been if my parents had had infinite wealth. When I was around 12 I had two friends with horses, so I got to go on horse rides a bit and it was really fun. I don’t think I’ve done it as an adult, and I don’t have the time or money to do it regularly as a hobby but I really wanted to just have one horse ride as a treat. So Dan had booked it in for 4pm that day.

It was a beautiful day but the weather has not been very good in general in the spring here, I feel like England has done better than France this spring. Our house has no outside space, so I really wanted to get outside before the horse ride at 4. Normally when I suggest things like this the boys always say they want to stay in. Sometimes I try and argue that if they like being indoors so much we should move back to England where I can speak the language. What’s the point of being in France if we never get outside to explore all the great places there are here? But it was Mother’s Day so I didn’t have to do any persuading I just made them go because I get to choose.

We went to a place called Castelnou which is 15-20 mins away, but instead of going to the castle and the little village we went behind that to the hills that look over the castle. We were climbing up rocks to get to this viewpoint  and the boys were having a great time. 

Me and Dan were saying how we should do this more because the boys like it when they’re there. We took some photos at the view point and then went in another direction so we could get a view of the sea. Eric started running and then he tripped and screamed.

I looked at his knee and at first it wasn’t bleeding but it looked really weird because there was a chunk of flesh missing. As if he was made of plastercine and a pencil had scraped a chunk out of him. I actually looked on the ground for the missing bit of flesh but there wasn’t any. Then the blood came and Dan carried him back to the view point he was at before. 

We asked a woman for some tissues and then Dan ran down the hill to get the first aid kit we had in the car. Eric was very good, after the initial screaming he was pretty calm. When I looked at it again I felt a bit sick and dizzy I’ve never had that response before but I haven’t seen much stuff like that either. We cleaned and bandaged the knee and Dan carried him all the way down the hill. What a hero.

We had never been to french hospital before, but I have head good things about it. We had to go home to get Dan’s carte vital to prove he can get free health care. He actually has to pay and then claim back after but it’s not like America where I’m sure you would pay thousands of dollars which I think would make you risk not going in a situation like this. So we went and got the card and some food an Eric’s cuddly panda. And Dan took him while I stayed at home with Percy. Percy was a super lovely big brother it was his idea to get the panda, and he was really sweet with him. Eric was seen fairly quickly and got an anaesthetic injection in the knee so they could do the 4 stitches. He was there about 2 hours in total. And the cost which we should be able to claim back was 19 euros. How do you think that compares to the UK? Do you think the wait would be longer? After tea back at the house we went out again just to enjoy a bit more outside time while it was still nice and I swam in the lake.

The really sad thing is that we are going to Corsica on Thursday it was going to be a holiday full of swimming were staying in a little air bnb with a pool and we were planning trips to some beaches and wild swimming places that look amazing. But now he can’t get his leg wet! Gutted for him. I even bought a disposable underwater camera in anticipation of all the water based fun we were going to have. At the moment he can’t walk properly either, he won’t bend his knee so he kind of hobbled to school this morning. I hope he’ll have a bit more movement by the holiday on Thursday. 

Very thankful that we can use hospitals and we can stil go on our holiday and that it wasn’t more serious. But I hope he’ll have a great scar that he’s proud of. I started a facebook album a long time ago called “my worst injuries” and this will be the first photo of a new generation. So you know, that’s exciting. 

Hopefully I can ride a horse another day.

 Thanks for reading the whole saga!

The new job FAQs

Frequently asked questions:

1) what’s Dan’s new job again?

Marketing for a swimming pool company, writing google ads and stuff.

2) How is it going?

In general its going well, the work is fine, his team is very nice, but it has been a big adjustment going into an office 5 days a week and wearing office clothes, and sharing a car with me means he sometimes cycles which can take up to a hour because it’s far!

3) Can you get me a discount on a swimming pool?

No, but we could buy a pool for ourselves at cost price. (If we had a garden to put it in)

4) Are you moving house again? I thought you just moved.

Yes. We had to leave our house we were in for 3 years, because it was the end of the 3 year contract but we couldn’t rent properly because Dan didn’t have a job (and my work is self-employed) so in order to stay in the village we moved into an airbnb. But that is only until the 6th July because over the summer the landlord wants to charge holiday prices. So that’s why Dan will be living at different peoples house’s in France all summer and then I will be doing my fun UK tour. Which so far includes such exotic places as Liverpool, Birmingham, Staffordshire, Preston and Blackpool. Maybe I should get tour t-shirts made.

Infrequently asked questions.

1) can you think of a great way Dan’s new company can make more money?

Yes water slides. They already make all their pools from fibreglass, surely it makes a lot of sense to include fibreglass little water chutes as an option. Why do so many people have swimming pools in their garden here without slides? That’s the real question. 

2) If you are in a couple what percentage of hair (head only) do you individually have? 

I think me and Dan would currently be about 99% / 1% max 98/2. But I was quite a bald baby and he had hair so in summer 1986 we might have been 99%/ 1% the other way round. Yes it’s not relevant to anything else I’ve written but it is a question we discussed recently.

But back to real life. Although I am really glad Dan has a job now and I’m looking forward to the summer, planning for September is going to be very complicated.

We don’t have a house and we can’t rent a house in the normal way until the end of Dan’s trial period which is mid August. Also if he doesn’t pass the trial period like last time we are screwed. We can’t move back to England and get our house back for another year so it will be another year of doing random jobs and job hunting living in limbo and being poor, Bla bla bla boring. We have to just assume he is going to pass this time, I don’t have the head space to consider the alternative. 

Wherever you live that’s where you have to go school in France. In general I think that’s a good principle but right now it’s making things difficult for us. We were wondering about moving village, although our village, in particular the school is nice, there is nothing there! We didn’t ever really choose it we just went there because we found a house there. So this is our chance to actually choose, before Percy starts secondary school. But you can’t just say please let Percy join a school in this town because we will try and move there one day.

Here’s the map of  some of the areas in the 66 region and the dots show where you have to go to secondary school if you live in that area:

So if you live the middle of nowhere mountain village of Fontpedrouse you must go to school 32 minutes away in Prades not 25 minutes away in Font-Romeu. Are you wondering what the little blob of white is surrounded by the green a red area? That’s a little blob of Spain that got lost from big mummy Spain (I think most people would call that mainland Spain). 

Me and Dan took a little recce to some different areas that are a bit nearer to his work and with a bit more going on. First we visited Saint-Esteve which is 5 minutes from Perpignan city centre. On paper it seems perfect. Halfway between where we currently live and Dan’s work, nearer to town which also means nearer the beach, loads of shops and cafes there too, but when we were wandering round I just didn’t love it. It wasn’t very pretty and I just didn’t feel it. Then we looked round Rivesaltes which was way more pretty than I imagined and very close to Dan’s work, but apart from one person I don’t know anyone who lives there and it felt just a bit far out from all the places and people I know. Dan asked me what kind of thing I was looking for and I said a place with some shops like a boulangerie and a supermarket, but that is also pretty and has a nice sense of community. I said like Thuir (you pronounce it twee-er) but Thuir is just as far if not further away from Dan’s job. Dan said that isn’t everything, we need to have a nice community and I need to feel settled there and you never know how long he will stay at the job he’s just got. So we have decided either to stay roughly where we are or move to Thuir.

But the really complicated thing is schools. If we want Percy to start a secondary school in Thuir we have to have a rental contract in Thuir. Which we can’t get till after the 3 month trial ends. So Percy might not know on his last day of school, if he is going to go to secondary school with his friends or not. We would consider buying a house here but that is also really complicated. I don’t want to sell our house in England but I’d be up for remortgaging it and taking that money out as a deposit on the house here. We definitely  can’t buy a house by September so we will have to rent but normal French renting rules say that if you rent for a year your house would be furnished, which is annoying if you already own furniture. At the moment half of our stuff is in storage because we’re in a furnished airbnb but we will have to move it to a bigger storage place in the summer when we’re all living out of suitcases. I know this is first world problems but owning things is a real pain sometimes.

Next blog coming very soon will be the story of today, French Mother’s Day that ended up with a trip to A & E and 4 stitches. With gruesome photos. 

But just before that we were having a lovely day….

Birthdays and a new job

What a mad week we had last week! We knew going into the week it was going to be the week where we found out if we were going to be staying in France or leaving, based on if Dan got a job or not. We were told we would hear at the beginning of the week (Monday 28th April) it was also Dan’s birthday on the Wednesday and Eric’s birthday on the Saturday. I was a bit worried that Dan might get bad news on or just before his birthday. So they phoned on the Monday and instead of saying yes or no they invited him for a third interview on his birthday! His birthday was sort of weird, he had already found his birthday present. It’s very hard to hide things when you’re moving house and every box gets moved and looked in.

One day Dan said, “why has the landlord left brand new roller blades under the kids beds, they’re in my size too!” Happy Birthday! He’s going to join me and Eric in the skating crew, we just need to get Percy on board now. So the birthday morning was opening a few cards, and then I was getting ready for my kids group that comes round on Wednesdays to learn english, and Dan was getting ready for the interview. I then had an online lesson to teach and then I had a good few hours gap before I do an in person lesson in the evening. So in that gap we ate out next to the beach as a birthday post interview treat. Dan said the interview had gone well and it was down to just him and one other person and that they would tell him on either Friday or Monday. 

Thursday was one of the many random bank holidays in May. So we had more of a proper Dan celebration and went to the wake park. Me and the boys just watched and hung out in this cool little cafe area while Dan had a go. It’s pretty hard wakeboarding, we did it together once in Croatia and I fell off a lot.

This was the knee board that he tried before the stand up one that I didn’t manage to get a photo of.

We didn’t hear anything from the job on Friday so we just got on with preparing for Eric’s 8th birthday, he wanted a cake of a specific Pokémon. 

This is Snorlax in case you were wondering

On his actual birthday he went go karting with 3 friends. They had a lot of fun although they had to wait ages to do it, they were much more patient than me. There was another birthday group there that had birthday banners and themed ballons and little back and white flags (you know chequered flags) then they had a nice picnic table set up with a cake and sweets. I didn’t bring anything and I regretted it. But we did go home to a feast including a chocolate fountain that didn’t work, so we just handed out small bowls of melted chocolate to the kids instead. It turns out the fountain is the least important thing in a chocolate fountain.

On Sunday night I said to Dan, “if it’s a no I think we’ll have to go back to our old house in Liverpool.” I was happy to do that, I love that house, but Dan was not pleased about that idea and was wishing he had spent more time on looking for opportunities elsewhere in the UK. The problem is we would have to tell the people renting our Liverpool house off us pretty soon if we were going to return, and without a job this house was our only option for housing. I had weird dreams all night about the fact that our whole lives were being decided tomorrow. That night I dreamt that Dan got the job but his new boss was Harry Hill. As if Harry Hill had just decided that he’d had enough of show business and wanted to be a manager in a swimming pools company in the south of France.

It was hard trying to get on with normal life stuff like lesson planning while waiting for this phone call. I considered listening to a French podcast at one point, but then thought what’s the point if we’re going back. By lunch time I was annoyed they hadn’t rung, they must know right? They can’t still be deciding. Then by 5pm we thought we’re not going to hear today, and I was expecting another night of struggling to sleep followed by weird dreams. Then just before 7pm Dan went for a poo, and mid poo they phoned to offer him the job!

The job, which he starts on Monday, is digital marketing for a swimming pool company. Writing google ads and all that kind of stuff, in French, but English is a plus because it’s the international language and some documents and stuff are in English. I hope he will get to use my favourite French word a lot. “Piscinable.” It means could put a swimming pool in it. In English you would use it in the sentence, “Oh yeah this garden is totally swimming poolable”

A few people have asked me if I’m ok about staying, and I do appreciate being asked because I’m not really sure long term if I can stay here forever. I am sad about the things I will miss out on, like career opportunities, seeing all my nieces and nephews grow up, being not far from grandparents and doing comedy. But I know if I was in England I would struggle to ever swim in the sea again and I would miss the mountains and skiing and I would be sad watching my kids forget how to speak French. So I’m trying to see the positive side. In the short term it is all positive, we can relax about money and enjoy the warmer months and then over the summer, because our current house is an airbnb I will go back to the UK with the boys and see all my friends and family and Dan will stay and work. (But he’ll visit for a bit.)

Maybe check I’m ok in November, when it’s just normal boring life and it’s cold here. But for now I’m going to try and enjoy life. We’re going to Corsica at the end of the month, somewhere I’ve wanted to go for ages and from here it’s just a 3 hour drive onto a boat and then a sleep on the boat and wake up in Corsica. Shortly after that I’ve got my art exhibition which I’m excited about, and I’m working hard at the moment to get ready for it. I’m sure you’ve heard the phrase “live every day as if it was your last” for me that’s taking it a bit far. I imagine my last day will mainly be spent crying and trying to remember internet banking passwords, so I don’t want to live every day like that. But I think “live every year as if it was the last year in that place” makes sense. That’s why we booked Corsica, because we thought it would be the end of our time in France and we really wanted to go. 

Some of the work that will be in my exhibition:

Tomorrow me and Dan will be having a little recce round a couple of possible areas to move to, so we can try and make the decision on whether to move nearer to Dan’s new job or not. France has a strict school system where everyone goes to their nearest school, which in general is good but can be annoying. For example if we wanted to stay in our current village Percy would go to the secondary school in the next village that’s a bit bigger and 5 minutes away, but if we were to buy a house in that village (because there are hardly any houses for sale in our village) then Eric would have to move primary schools even though we would be more than happy to drive 5 minutes for him to stay with his friends. It’s possible he could get permission to stay but the Mayor would have to approve it and normally they say no. 

Happy VE Day. It was another random school holiday in France and we went to the lake with some English and Irish friends. These are the moments that make being here seem worthwhile.