Last month Percy turned 11. In France they have a 2 week half term in October, which is too long!
But this year Dan’s parents came over to visit and for 5 nights we stayed in a holiday park 40 minutes away by the sea. It’s a bargain to go at this time, or at Easter time, but it is chilly to swim in an outdoor pool. Luckily were hardened Brits and we did it anyway.
On Percy’s actual birthday we began the day with watching the sunrise. The kids are up at 7ish anyway and we were 10 minutes walk from the sea, so it made total sense to get down there while it was still dark and watch the day dawn.
In the afternoon Percy had his birthday party at the Wave Café. It’s an indoor surfing place that we once went to for Dan’s birthday. The time we went for Dan I had booked it as a surprise. At the same time a party of 10 year old had also booked it, but they didn’t take the website’s advice to book it out for the maximum amount of people which is 8, even if you only have a party of 7. And the consequence was you have a random man called Dan in your birthday party. That’s 2 peoples birthday’s partially ruined. Dan’s -who everyone thought was the teacher, and the kid’s.
But Percy’s party was different. We booked the party package, which includes a chocolate cake, your own table set up with sweets, a free t-shirt for the birthday kid and the guarantee of no weird men being in your group. Except for the fact that Percy didn’t invite a lot of friends, so that same weird guy from the first story ended up in a party of 10 year olds again, along with his arguably more weird wife!
The wave machine was really fun. You stand at the top with a body board and launch yourself down a hill that water is being sprayed up, and if you’re lucky you can lie on your tummy for a while balanced between the forces of the water being sprayed up and gravity trying to pull you down. I think? I’m not a physicist. But I do know that if you’re not lucky you fall off or spin round and shoot back to the top which is also pretty fun.
There was a lot of trial and error and a lot of falling off. And at one point my boob came fully out! Just what you want in a party of 11 year olds. That’s the 3rd of 4 birthdays I’ve ruined in this blog. I actually think only Dan saw, so hopefully I got away with it.
The birthday continued with a trip to the second hand electronics shop where Percy spent his birthday money on a Pokémon Switch game, a little mcflurry at Burger King, or whatever they call their mcflurries. And Dan made Percy’s favorite meal, bbq chicken on macaroni cheese back at the campsite.
We did some nice other things during the week, two of which involved lying about Percy’s age, once for cheaper entry to the aquarium and once so he can get the kids menu. I’m really not ready for him to be having to pay full price for stuff yet, but it seems 10 is the cut off for a lot of things.
The aquarium was cool, fish are fun aren’t they? Especially this guy on the right:
If a kid drew this fish you would not believe it actually looked like this.
One day it was a bit cold and windy so I thought I would take the boys to a park with a good pump track, as Percy got a new bike for his birthday. When I got there the park was locked, we later found out that this was due to strong winds. But I was determined to get in, we’d driven here with the bikes in the car and there was nothing better to do. Also I see rules as more of a challenge, and on closer inspection there were some kids on the pump track, no parents though. We asked the kids how they’d got in and they pointed to a ditch that went under the fence. That bit was fairly easy, but what I didn’t realise is that we would then have to climb over another fence which was really hard to do.
First we lifted the bikes over to the other kids. Then you could get your foot in the railing, if you turned it on its side so all your weight was on the edge of your foot. My boys managed without too much difficulty with the help from the other kids, but I found it really hard, because my feet were bigger. You couldn’t sit on the top of the fence, because it was spiky, but I had to while I unstuck my feet from the railings so I could jump down freely. I had bruises after from sitting on the spikes.
Once we were in the boys cycled round a bit, but it was quite windy, and maybe not that safe, that’s why someone had decided to lock the park. I began to think about how I was kind of responsible for all the children now as the only adult in there. And if one of them was to break their arm or whatever it would be me who would have to phone an ambulance, if I could remember what number you have to phone. They have different numbers for the different emergency services. I know the police is 17 because I learned that at bingo. You know like we say, “88 two fat ladies” they say, “88 two peanuts” and they say, “17 the police.” I was wondering how you say in French, “I broke into a locked park,” and how someone with a broken arm might try and climb back over the spiky fence.
But as with many real life stories, it was actually all fine, we got out a different and slightly easier way in the end. Boring.
The 4th birthday I ruined was this week. Since September I’ve started a new group where I teach English to kids. It was in a school that I was already working in, I asked back in the summer and they said as long as I got insurance, I could use a school classroom for free on a Wednesday when the kids aren’t normally in. So then I filled in all the forms and advertised my group, found 5 kids and started it. It was going well, they loved it, the parents seemed happy and five is enough money wise to be worthwhile. Just after the last lesson before half term, the head teacher came and told me that I could no longer do the lessons there. She is a lovely woman and it wasn’t down to her, apparently the owners of the school building are not happy about me using the room as I’m a business. I feel like the French really hate businesses. I would be happy to pay a bit to use the room, but that wasn’t the issue, the issue was I was trying to earn money. And I am therefore EVIL.
So then I had to try and find another room, because I didn’t want to shut it down when I had a good group. With the help of Dan’s mum (who is French) we phoned the Mairie (which is like the town hall). We asked about room hire and after a lot of back and forth I was told to go there in person with a cheque to pay for the term. Nothing is ever done online or by bank transfer in France. They showed me the room and it looked alright so I messaged the parents just to check they were all still up for it and then I paid.
Now I’m getting to the bit where I ruined a kids birthday… so a few days before the first lesson the mum of two of the 5 kids that go said their kids were in a school trip so wouldn’t be coming, and then it turned out another kid was also going. So we’ve now only got 2 kids left. And one of their Mums messaged to say that their kid was free, but it was her birthday so they wouldn’t mind if we cancelled. The problem for me is I would be making minus 25 euros if I cancelled and at least with 2 kids coming I might be making slightly over 0€ after tax and fuel costs. Is that worth ruining a child’s birthday for? I think so.
I did try to make it as fun as possible for the birthday girl, but how fun can a two hour english lesson with one other kid on a very tight budget be? I took a birthday banner and I made her a her a hexiflexigon origami birthday card, and we learnt birthday vocab and then played games like guess who and happy families, so she was practising some English. And I hope happy families distracted her from how much happier she would have been with her family.
I thought the awkwardness was over for the week after that, but at the weekend I took my kids to the natural hot springs. It’s right near the lovely thermal pools that are like a hot swimming pool that we’ve been to before except it’s just a big gravelly hot puddle. Free, but I’ve only been there once and I did not know how many naked Spanish hippys there would be there! Even one is enough, but there were a lot. Me and Eric had a lovely time despite the nudity.
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Percy did not like seeing naked people and didn’t go in at all. Dan was also not really a fan and only dipped his feet in. I promised them that next time we go, we’ll go to the real baths where you can swim and people are forced to wear swimwear.
Thanks for reading. X
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