hunting houses and skiing

Last time I wrote I said I'd write about the church skiing weekend. It was snowy. very very snowy apparently there was over two meters of snow on our local mountain.

The front garden of the house we stayed at.

We signed up to go not really know what it was, and I was added to a whatapp group with so many French messages going back and forth that I ignored them all. I was under the impression it was one nights stay over and two days of skiing, but it was actually two nights accommodation and one day of skiing. The major road was closed due to falling rocks so we had to go the very long way round which is two and a half hours drive (twice as long) so we didn't arrive until late. Once you get to the part where you're driving on snow you have to put snow chains on your car wheels for grip. There was about 30 of us in this big house, we had a shared room with two bunk beds in. 

In the morning we all set off early to ski, after digging our car out of yet more snow.  We went to a ski place called Pyrenees 2000. We'd never been to that one before as a family, we always went to another one called les Angles which I loved so much that I had no desire to try a different one. But it was actually amazing and maybe even better than les Angles in terms of choice of green runs you can do (the easier ski slopes) It was quite confusing at first, Eric had been there that week on his school ski trip and we couldn't find out how to get to the bit he recognised. In the end we worked out that you had to get two different ski lifts to get up to this big hill where there were about eight options of how to get down and a few of them took you down to the part he'd been to before.

 It was so fun skiing together, we're all the same level which is really nice because no one is being held back by anyone else. we tried some blue runs (a bit harder than green) for the first time and there was a very cool run where you could take optional side paths between the trees. There was also a obstacle course one with things you had to try and hit and some jumps to go over. That night we had raclette with everyone. yum. 

The next day most people were going to the hot baths, an outdoor pool that is the temperature of a bath. but we wanted to go skiing again because we had hired the kids ski stuff for the full weekend and we just thought we should make the most of being there, so we went by ourselves. Those might be the only days we go this winter, to go as a four is expensive, but what's nice is we can just do what we can afford each year and that might be just two days. However if we were in England you can't really do it like that. Percy went for another day with his school where he got to try biathlon, (skiing and shooting) snow shoeing (walking in snow with tennis rackets on your feet) cross country skiing and sledging. all that was for a very reasonable price of 35 euros.

Other than snow fun, we've been house hunting, we've started the process of remortgaging our house in Liverpool and that money that we will take out will be the deposit for buying a house here. So far we've seen seven houses. Our main criteria is loads of space, so the boys can have a room each, I can have a space for art/ teaching planning. Dan needs a work space, a room for guests would be amazing, also we got the boys a big football table for Christmas and that needs a space. So were looking at a minimum of four bedrooms. The other tricky thing is area, if we move even 10 minutes away the boys would have to change school. Unless you got special permission to stay which is not guaranteed. but we might move to an area with more going on, that is closer to Dan's work.

This is what we've seen so far: (our budget is around 260,000 euros/ 230 000 pounds)

1) next door, 6 beds! very nice garden with an above ground pool and a outdoor kitchen. sounds perfect right? but the garden is like a court yard so is very shady most of the day. Its 3 floors, so the downstairs is one room, then 3 bedrooms and another beds. There's not really enough room for a good size dinning area and a good sized lounge area. The only access to the garden (except through the house) is by a garage which she doesn't want to sell with it. So it's pretty weird for someone else to have access to your garden and not you.

spot the rabbit

 outdoor kitchen. and next to that behind the rabbit hutch is the garage that they don't want to sell.

2) A 4 bed house with a little garage in the village right by school. It's a bit tatty, I would want to completely renovate it. It was fine but not exciting, it was the cheapest one of the 7.

3) When we pulled up at this house, I thought "this is not going to be it." It was in a random village that was closer to town on the map but because it wasn't on the fast main road, time wise it would only be 2 minutes nearer town by car although significantly quicker by bike. The kids would both have to move school if we moved there. When we entered the house annoyingly it was incredible! big modern kitchen, lovely dinning space, joined with a cosy sitting room. All tastefully decorated in neutral tones, then upstairs there were 5 bedrooms! including one with an ensuite and one that was giant and actually used to be 2 rooms. There was a secret cupboard that went back really far and would make a perfect play house for a 2 year old. I don't currently own a 2 year old but if I made this tiny play house all the two year olds would want to be may friend.  (I mean like my nieces and nephew, I'm not going to just take kids of the street.) it also had a massive loft space which she said you could make into a roof terrace. The outside space wasn't massive, there was some space and it had an avocado tree! I would host so many Mexican dinner parties with guacamole if I had that house.

If it was just me I would like to offer on the avocado house but I feel bad to move the kids from one random village to another. The seller has since accepted an offer on this house but we told her if it falls through let us know, because were still interested.

outside with the avocado tree, the primary school playground is just over the wall so it would be the easiest school run ever.

inside - through the wooden door is a lovely big modern kitchen

4) This house was in an area near town (saint esteve) that I have decided would be good, it had 4 beds and a pool. Somehow it ticked all the boxes but nether me or Dan were excited about it. it was a bit tatty and the garden was quite overlooked. and first world problems but the pool did take up a lot of the garden so in the winter that is wasted space, but I don't know why, we both just didn't feel it.

 

5) In order to see this house the gatekeeper/ estate agent came round for a meeting to ask us everything we wanted from a house and then he said he find us houses. House number 5 was less than 5 minutes away from where we currently live in the next door village of Millas where Percy goes to school, so he wouldn't have to move schools and I would ask for permission for Eric to remain at his current school.

from the outside it was beautiful, very classic French with green shutters, it was a semi, with a really big garden. Inside the upstairs was entirely wallpapered in 70's wall paper. a weird bathroom with a bath directly behind a shower, but that stuff we can change, 4 beds one has a little balcony, very nice light and views. however it was only single glazed, I don't know if that's an issue we would need to fix. And the main issue was the kitchen was very small and I'm not sure if it would be possible to extend or attach two the other room because there was a toilet between the 2 rooms that I would want to join. Overall it had a lot of potential but might be a big project to make it how we wanted it. It was on the cheaper end of the scale though.

 

Do they know you can just put a shower in over a bath? who puts a bath directly behind a shower?

6) Then we had to see more houses that the gatekeeper of houses made us see. One that was a new build in a random village where Percy could stay in the same school but not Eric. 4 beds and a pool, Dan quite liked it. I didn't, the entrance looked like a doctors rather than a house.

7) And finally he took us to see a house that didn't match our criteria at all. Top end of the budget, and a 2 bed! He said you could convert the loft. I personally think he was just trying to show to those clients that he could get viewings. Thanks for wasting everyone's time. It wasn't even a nice house, it had a shower with a glass ceiling so if you were in the loft you could perve on someone in the shower. 

Let me know what you would pick so far. Were hopefully soon going to see one with a garden so big I could start my own farm/ put on a festival. 

Hanuary

Last blog I wrote about my big birthday party and then arriving back in this random village in France that I accidentally moved to because people tell you to follow your dreams and take every opportunity. But they don’t follow it up with specific advice about what to do if you subsequently find yourself in a very cold and broken house, trying to teach English grammar as a dyslexic. 

Last time I said how we worked out that our reversible air con was on snowflake setting and if we changed it to sunshine setting it would heat the room. So we do have one room that we can heat. But we are doing all our living in this one room, I’ve hardly slept in my own bedroom this month. And I’m like a chain smoker but with hot water bottles, I have my early evening one, then I sometimes make a fresh one for bedtime and then one night we were both sleeping down here on the sofa bed, but around 2am I decided to go to our room to be further away from Dan’s snoring but I had to re-make a new hot water bottle because I knew the current one was only lukewarm and I did not want to go to bed with a Luke. I want something piping hot in bed with me.

Apart from the cold, January has had some lovely moments. On my real birthday I had to work in the morning at a school and in the evening I was also teaching, but in the afternoon I had two friends over for chocolate orange cake and art. 

 

We were doing gelli printing and I got to use my new fancy crayons! The last time I got new fancy crayons I think I was 11, I got a massive set of 50 in a big tin from WHSmiths from my granny and grandad and I still have most of them. But I wanted to upgrade to what my friend described as the “Rolls Royce of crayons”.

During this little craft time I had a kind of brief phone interview with a teacher from a sixth from college. It was in French and I put it on speaker phone and my two friends who are both not French but very good speakers of French were whispering things and writing things down that I should say which was very cute. (I didn’t get the job though.)

 I also, just days before that, had an interview for an online job which was probably the worst interview I’ve ever had. The first half was in French and I can only talk like a 5 year old in french. The second half was in English and I thought, “great this will be easy now.” But then he asked me “what is the difference between the present perfect tense and the simple past tense?” I wanted to just say “ok I haven’t got the job bye” He tried to help me by saying it’s the difference between saying “I ate” and “I have eaten”. This is not the correct answer, but I would say there’s no difference. They both mean you’re not hungry right now. Anyway he said I can still do online teaching if I want but only to a basic level. My actual teaching where I get to make it fun is going fairly well at the moment so I’m not sure if I will do that job.

Two days after my birthday I was able to take a day off and Dan did too and we went skiing for 4 hours while the kids were in school. The timing just works to drop them off, drive up the mountain, get the discounted 4 hour pass and be back in time for pick up. We had a great time, the last time we skied before that was last winter, when Dan didn’t have a job and it looked very likely we’d be going back to the UK. I remember thinking then, “we might never come back here”. So it was really lovely to be back in the snowy mountains again. 

That night we also went out with another couple Sam and Emma. Sam was celebrating his 30th so we made it a joint 70th.

Last weekend Dan was away in Morocco doing a half marathon with two friends, because men can’t just phone each other up and talk about their feelings, they have to go to another continent and put themselves through some kind of endurance before they can say how they’re feeling about life. 

Meanwhile I didn’t do a great job of surviving without him. It was a bad weekend for feminism. On the Sunday instead of going to the French church that we sometimes go to, I thought we’ll go to the English one because it will be easier for me. I was wrong. The English church had just moved locations to a random village quite far away that I’d never been to before. I was running a bit late anyway, but as we were leaving I couldn’t lock to the door, it’s always been a pain that door, but with recent heavy rain it swelled up and after trying for a while I gave up and messaged my landlord to say could he have a go at locking it if he was around. 

Then I was following the Satnav to this random village very near Spain going down the auto route and I was confused as to whether I was at the right junction to turn off at or not. Then way too late I realised I was about to go through the barriers for continuing to Spain. No one was directly behind me so I did a really long reverse back to the turn off while people stared at me. We eventually found the new location for the church which is a mad old round house thing, some of which would make an excellent roller disco venue. Unfortunately the bit I had to park in was very muddy due to all the rain and my car got stuck! My wheels were spinning round and round and an 82 year old man had to drive it out for me. 

We got back to find my landlord had been round to sand down the door to make it easier to lock but he sanded too much off so there’s now a big chunk missing from the bottom of the door. And then this week the glass broke and Dan patched it up with cardboard, but so much cold is getting in.

Next time I will write about going on the church ski trip this weekend, I’m sure you can’t wait!

 

The Big Party

Loads to write about, the super highs of seeing almost everyone you love followed by being back in a frozen house in a random village, but first Christmas…

It was pretty typical of all the Christmases we’ve had since we moved. Saw my family, slept on the canal boat, saw Dan’s family, new year with friends, got a new niece or nephew. There needs to be a gender free word for that, like the word “siblings,” not because I don’t know the gender. This year we got a nephew from Dan’s sister Lydia, last year it was a nephew from my sister Sarah, the year before that we got a niece from Dan’s sister Rebekah and the year before that we got a niece from my sister Jo. Christmas time is when we meet new baby “niecephews,” I wonder what we’ll get next year.

New baby Lowell was very lovely, but it was also great to get to know the previous years babies, the Christmas 2024 baby (Murphy) is really into the alphabet, all day long he sings it and he’s not even 2 yet. Christmas 2023 baby (Ada) was only just born in Christmas 2023. I saw her a little in the summer and when I saw her this Christmas I said, “hello you probably don’t remember me” and she said back, “this is auntie Han!” Which took us all by surprise, not only that she remembered my name but the way she added the “This is…” as if we were at a grown up networking event and she were introducing me. My mother-in-law looks after her and speaks French to her, one day a week so she can understand and speak a little French and we were encouraging my boys to talk to her in french, so she can be one of those smug bilingual adults that never cried over verb tables. Jealous. What can I say about Christmas baby 2022 (Miri)? Adorable curls and a feisty attitude? She’s a lot of fun, I think if we were peers we’d be good mates.

The last day in England was a big party for my 40th, which is not until the 13th, but seeing as my last birthday was having 3 people round and 2 of those people have now moved away, I thought it would be sad not to see my English friends. One of my favourite birthdays was my last one in England when I went to a roller disco. At that point I had not skated since I was a kid and was wobbly to start. I had zero expectations. I’d never been to that venue before, I just told people to book a ticket if they wanted to come which meant it was zero stress and zero cost and it ended up being the most fun ever, in this very cool nightclub like place in Liverpool with a food truck, so people could get food if they wanted. It was so fun and everyone loved it and wanted to go back other times.

Then when I moved to France and saw there was a roller skating club in the next village I joined and got a lot better at skating. So when I was thinking about the party I wanted the exact same thing as before but to hire the place so it was all my friends. Unfortunately it was already hired on that day and I couldn’t be very flexible with other days. Then I found this place in Wigan. The positives were the space was massive, but negatives were it did have very homemade youth club vibes and it was only available from 4:30-6:30. It seemed not socially acceptable to not invite kids at that time. I do like kids, and I wanted to see my friends kids but I was worried about it becoming like our leaving party which didn’t work at all, the kids went a bit crazy and fought over the helium ballons. 

In the end it worked out great. Some families came just for the skating and we had cake and I got some Dominoes delivered there. And then other people who didn’t have kids, or ditched their kids, came skating and then stayed out for drinks. I was lucky enough to have my kids there for the skating and then my parents took them back so I could stay out drinking and then sleep over in Wigan. I had the best night. I wish the skating could have gone on longer but it was hard to know what to do. I wanted to chat to people (there were two people there who I haven’t seen since 2018) but then sometimes when I was chatting to people I was thinking, “you’re coming out later so I should be more strategic and only talk to the people who are not coming out, unless we’re skating at the same time as chatting.” I don’t like to think like that, but when the party is only 2 hours and we had to get in eating it was hard not to. 

My friend Stevie smuggled in some mulled wine (my favourite drink) in a flask. It was a lovely reminder of the not so lovely time in 2020 when we were all going a bit mad home schooling. We used to meet in the woods and let the kids run round while we drank mulled wine in a flask on a portable picnic bench, just so we could talk to someone outside our bubble.

I made a speech that I put on Facebook and now realise might be a bit offensive to everyone I know in France, talking about how those friends are irreplaceable. I started a lot of sentences with “no one in France has ever...” and then listed a load of mad things I’ve done with friends, like smoke parsley or laminate ham. There were many more examples I would have like to have said like, “no one in France has ever held a fish tank full of fish in the passenger seat of a car, as I drove, when I’d only just passed my test.” I should have done some serious ones too like, “no one in France has ever come round and held a crying baby for an hour while I slept.” It’s pretty hard for people in France to do that, as we didn’t bring any babies there. But for balance I will say no one in England has ever asked me to film them going on a sort of date with their own painting as art. That was one of the most joyous days I’ve had here with my friend Flick, who is now in Paris.

Flick taken her painting for a swim after having shared an ice cream with it and danced with it rolled up.

I was very impressed with my whole family skating. Eric is really good, he goes to my skating club too and did 105 laps during the party! Percy has virtually never done it but did really well. My Dad used to skate in the 70’s and he’s been skating with me before, he even came to my roller dance class with me in France once. But I have never seen my mum skate! She said she wasn’t going to and then a friend persuaded her to and she did it! Very proud of her. It was lovely to see her going round with my Dad. Next I want to get them both skiing. 

The drinks after were nice because I got to chat to loads of different people, my school run Woolton friends, my sisters, and then a lot of people from my student days and early 20’s. The days when we all lived in walking distance from one another and had loads of free time to hang out. It was like going back in time, because now we live all over the country and world. One friend, Joy, who I haven’t seen since 2018, lives in LA but was in London, and she drove up with young kids, dropped them with family in Liverpool and then came to Wigan for the party! That is impressive commitment. The after party was unfortunately a bit loud with live music followed by darts, so we did have to shout a bit to be heard. As people were leaving I heard people saying “see you at Hannah’s 50th!” Other people really need to arrange big get-togethers too! Don’t just wait for another 10 years. But yes obviously I will do something big for it.

For the after after party my friend Helen, who had driven from Wiltshire, rented an airbnb and we all stayed over. It was nice to sit in a quieter place and just enjoy a little gang reunion after all these years. We even phoned Will, who was part of the gang back in the day and our best man. He happened to be on a train in New York and we had a nice catch up. That night my heart was full. But then I slept the worst I’ve ever slept! Less than one hour I think. My head was just buzzing with everything that had happened. I remember that as being a downside of doing my comedy night every month, after I had done it whether it went well or not, I always overplayed everything in my head. And one of the things that went round in my head was that I had forgotten to do my best skating move, it’s a sort of spin.

In the morning we had to be up early to go back to my parents house to pack and then get to the airport. We flew Liverpool to Barcelona and then drove up. It wasn’t fun getting back to my freezing cold house, you can literally see your own breath. And when you open the fridge it’s not any colder.  I had loads of boring things that needed doing and we had no food in. The kids were back at school the next day, but Percy ended up taking the Monday off because he was just too tired. It’s hard to go back to reality but I keep reminding myself that everyone has, those people aren’t still skating round having fun in Wigan without me, and I will see them again, just maybe not all at once for a long time. It is exhausting trying to stay long distance friends with that many people but you are all too good to give up on. Thanks for making my birthday great.

View from my bedroom window this week

P.S. I spoke to the landlord about heating options, we have no central heating and just use an electric heater. He said the air con is reversible, I said we’ve tryed it and it didn’t work. Then he told me I had it on snowflake setting, and then he switched it to sunshine setting and actually it heats the downstairs really well! I can’t believe I didn’t know this sooner!