Hello people who still bother to read blogs even though better things have been invented. Thank you for bothering, I think I will still carry on writing it, because occasionally I like to look back at them and remember stuff I forgot at the time. Looking back at photos only gives you a snapshot of one second in time when you were probably doing something nice, but sometimes you want to remember funny things people have said or how a whole situation played out. And it’s nice sometimes to read about stressful times when you know that in the end it all worked out fine. When I look back at photos from 2020 I think the kids were so cute, and we were having the best time. But if I was to read my blogs I think it would give a more truthful picture.
Since last time I wrote I have got colder, I moved here because one of my top hobbies is being warm. I like to be sunbathing or be in a bath or snuggled up in bed with a hot water bottle. And although the temperature might average about 10 degrees more than the UK our house has no heating and it is freezing! Our pervious house also had no heating but it got a lot of sunlight which warmed it up in the day and then we had the wood burner for evenings. This house has very little natural light and it’s normally colder inside than it is outside. I borrowed two plug in heaters from a friend and I sit right next to them every evening and then every night we all have hot water bottles. I’m considering getting an electric blanket but I worry I would never get out of bed. The positives are the sky is still mostly blue and it virtually never rains, but I’m looking forward to enjoying some british central heating soon.
We definitely want to move house in 2026, even though we moved house kind of twice in 2025. We are actually going to view our next door neighbour’s house tomorrow! It’s much bigger than this house and it has a nice garden and it has reversible air con (hot and cold) in every room! I don't know if we can afford it, we’re in the process of getting a man to tell us how rich/poor we are, (he’s a mortgage advisor not a psychic by the way) It would definitely be a stretch but we’ll see if we like it and whether it’s possible and worth stretching for. The move would be easy, but do I really want to live in this tiny village forever just to save about 60 euros on van hire? The kids would be over the moon to stay here with their friends but imagine being here as teenagers. It’s just like Burton Green the village I spent my teenage years trying to escape from. On the other hand, it’s not too far from town and it’s cheaper than living in the places that have more going on, meaning we could have a bigger house with space for friends to stay.
We finally decided to get a new car last month, well our old car decided for us that it was time for her to retire. She had so many things wrong with it that if she was a dog they would put her down. Every time I drove I feared this might be the last journey she or I ever drove. We spent a long time trying to work out what car to get. We debated whether we should get another 7 seater which does feel a bit mad given there’s only 4 of us, but it is nice when people visit, and its great that we can get at least 2 bikes in the car with the kids as well. Yes we could get a bike rack but if I had to screw on a bike rack every time I wanted to take kids to the pump track I would never go. So we got a 2018 citroen C4 Picasso in blue. It’s an automatic which I’ve never driven before, I thought they were just for losers who are too stupid to drive, but they’re actually amazing! Why are we changing gears all the time if we’ve got the technology not to?! It’s exactly the same thought I had when I started taking the pill continuously. Why are women bothering to have periods when we’ve got the technology to stop that? If you’re driving a manual car whilst on your period, you are not living you best life hun. You might as well be still going to the reference section of the library when you want to know something, or learning an instrument because you like to hear music. Or reading this blog when you could be watching TikTok.
The last few weeks I have been trying to do creative things on Thursdays, my workday on Wednesday is very full because all the french kids are off school and want to learn english. Or their parents want them to learn english. Yesterday was the maddest day of trying to do Christmassy stuff in my english classes. I taught two groups of kids what a Christmas pudding was and then we made a rice crispy cake version of this, because I didn’t think making a real one would be a good idea. A Christmas pudding can kill you in so many ways: you could die from choking on a coin, being burnt while it was on fire, obesity or alcohol intake. (Like if you were already drunk and that last bit from eating a Christmas pudding tipped you over the edge and then you fell down some stairs or off a cliff)
The rice crispy version was stressful enough. I hire a room with no kitchen facilities and I can’t park near it, so the lightest thing I could carry to melt chocolate was my raclette machine. I did consider my batik pot but like the ancient proverb says “you should never mix chocolate and wax.” Anyway giddy kids that I can’t communicate well with, having knifes and hot raclette pans was enough stress without me setting fire to anything. So yeah after full day of lessons, its nice to have a more relaxed day of creative stuff, I’ve been doing a comisssioned canvas for a woman writing a book and then I used the painting to be the book cover. I’ve also been doing Christmas windows, this year is the first time I’ve done them professionally.
I went round a few cafes back in October and one got in touch. I had agreed to do them on the inside mainly because it would be warmer for me, but because he was half a hour late on the first day I started on the outside and then it took me 9 hours or working in the cold windy street to finish them. I did one in someone’s home to which was a lot more fun.
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| (This is not the whole thing I spent 9 hours doing btw) |
Last weekend we went to visit our friends in Montpellier, they are our board game friends who we met when we hadn’t been here long. Aurore is french and Marie is German but their shared language is English, they sadly for us have moved, but it was a nice chance to visit Montpellier for the Christmas markets and hang out with them.
We stayed in a hotel walking distance from them and had a buffet breakfast where the boys took full advantage of combining all their options Percy had ham and Nutella on a waffle and was very happy about it.
We got back just in time to catch the eng of the school Christmas fair at sunset:
This coming weekend we are seeing some brand new friends for board games, and I feel like we are cheating on our old board game friends. I met Sam in the french class I go to which is run by Ukrainians on his 4th day in the city, and we bonded over not being from the Ukraine. Then him and his Finnish/ French wife Emma and my family all went on a little trip out towards the mountains, which was a lot of fun. They are really interesting people who have been living a very cool digital nomad life in Asia for the last few years. I’ve met a few new english speaking people recently, and I really am putting time into getting better at french, so I can have French friends, but it is so good to connect with english speakers.
Thanks for reading.
