Thanks for all your responses to my last blog, there were a lot of comments, several people phoned us to see how we are doing, and a lot of people offered advice.
We knew April was going to be a crazy month but not this kind of crazy, we had already planned two trips to spain (one to see family and one for Dan's birthday) and in between those trips I went to Paris. The trips have been a nice distraction from crazy life stuff. One way that me and Dan have both changed since moving to France and everything has gone wrong, is that we can't just wait around to enjoy ourselves. We didn't do enough enjoying ourselves in our first year here when everything was going well, and we had enough money. So this stuff was already booked in and we weren't going to change it.
Dan's parents and his youngest sister and her daughter were staying in northern spain, so we joined them for the weekend. It was really nice to see them and just get away from normal life and our weird house. We were staying in Empuriabrava which is a cool place only just over an hour from us where they have a network of canals like in Venice. If I was a billionaire, I'd buy up all the houses and give them to my friends and make everyone get pedalos and do games on them every Saturday. I'd make that the condition, you get a free house, but you must join in with my pedalo wide game events every week.
Anyway seeing as I'm not a billionaire I just had to make do with wondering around the streets and looking at the cool stuff. It was very nice to see my little niece Ada. She's adorable, I really miss all the little people that I don't get to see a lot of.
This weekend I went to Paris on my own. My friend Joy who is normally in America was in town. I've known Joy for 20 years now, she was part of the original Liverpool crew that I met Dan in. About 2 weeks before me and Dan got together me and Joy decided to have "a day of hippy fun" in the park. She already had green hair then, but I wore a green clown wig to match, then we went to Tesco to buy parsley and rizla papers and attempted to smoke it, while also playing some little musical instruments I had like a thumb piano. I never do that kind of stuff anymore!
The boys in our gang had decided to meet up and play board games, they wanted to play a serious man board game and the girls were not invited. This is what promoted our girls day out I think. But the whether was nice and the boys gave up on their boring game and came to find us and water bomb us. They really failed at jumping out on us because they couldn't find us and had to phone us several times to work out where we were. After the water bomb attack we got our revenge by making this poster which we taped to nearby bus stops. Dan saw one on his street and ripped it down and a woman said "so you're one of them are you?"
All this to say, times had changed and we were now both married mums who hadn't illegally used the Merseyside police logo on a comedy sign for ages. Joy had married an American and had lived in LA and New York for several years. Her husband Philip is a performer specialising in tap dancing, and he had landed the lead role in a big musical that was going to be touring England and Paris for a year. So the family had taken this opportunity to base themselves in Liverpool for their kid's school/nursery and travel round a bit so they could spend more time together as a four.
After researching the cheapest ways to get to Paris I went up on the night train and came back on the night bus. The train was pretty fun, there were 2 triple bunk beds in each room. It was a squeeze! There wasn't enough space to sit up fully in the bed. I got chatting to this guy who was British but had lived in Spain since the 80s. We were chatting while both sitting on my bottom bunk with out head poking out into the middle gap between the two triple bunk beds, and then a French guy stood between us in the gap and pulled his trousers down. This guy got on the train wearing a shirt, a cravat and suit trousers and then after he had pulled his trousers down he just went to bed in his shirt, cravat and boxers. he also farted a lot all through the night.
I don't know if it's normal to wear pyjamas but I did, and then at around 6am I got up and changed and did my teeth etc and we got off the train in central Paris just before 7. I wondered around a bit, because 7 is too early to arrive anywhere, and then worked out the metro system to get to Joy's hotel. I couldn't find the normal entrance and so I managed to enter through the fireman's entrance. A guy buzzed me into the lift and then I magically arrived in the buffet breakfast area without going past the check in desk, and saw Joy and her kids eating breakfast.
I've never met her boys before but they were very adorable, they are 6 and 3, and I do miss those ages but not enough to put myself through 0, 1 and 2 again. The 6 year old was into drawing and reading, which is lovely until you're trying to get him off the metro while he's still got his head in a book. The 3 year old is a drumming prodigy, Joy carries chop sticks when they're out in case he ever wants to drum on anything. He's got his own instagram account if you want to check it out @thekidinthepocket. We went to Montmartre on the first day and me and the 6 year old did some sketching.
On the Saturday Joy's husband got us free tickets to the matinee performance of his show Top Hat. It was a musical set in the Jazz hands era. The storyline was a little odd. There's a miss-understanding of the identity of two people who fancy each other, and for most of the show the woman thinks the man she likes is married, and then SURPRISE! he's not married and they snog guilt free. Except in real life he is actually married to my friend. All the tap dancing and the singing was incredible, and it was very cool to see Philp in the starring role. The kids had seen it a few times and napped for most of the show.
I also got to see my friend Flick while I was in Paris, she's my mad artist friend who paints with a mop, that I know from Perpignan. She might not love that introduction as she does also paint with paintbrushes, but I've made "paints with a mop" her whole personality. She's moving back to the south in the summer and we are planning all kind of fun things. Starting with organising some sunrise games of rounders at the beach. I saw her at their house, and then on the Sunday me and Joy and the kids went to Flick's English speaking church with her 9 year old and then to the park by the Louve. On the way we stopped to get a sandwich but unfortunately we were in the equivalent of Mayfair and the sandwich shop was like an art gallery. A lady said to us "shall I explain to you the concept of the store?" and the concept was "its 3 times the price of a meal deal for one sandwich and us commoners were not allowed to touch the sandwiches" she had to get them out of a golden glass case for us.
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| The dessert options in the incredibly posh shop |
In the park we were joined by Flick's husband Todd and her good friend Jade. It was a cool mix of people with quite a lot in common, we had all moved countries Flick and Jade had lived in several different countries, and we all (except Jade) had kids that had been in more than one education system. And all except me had lived in America, so we had some really interesting chats.
I got the night bus back because I could find a cheap night train or flight. So I was just googling where exactly I needed to go, when I found the review page for the bus station. It has 28 reviews 2 said it was bad and 26 said it was terrible. The most recent review said they were there 20 minutes early but still didn't catch the bus because the information didn't show up on the screen. So I was naturally a little nervous. Its was a 12 hour bus to Perpignan via Toulouse and Carcassone and then it continued to Barcelona. When I got on the bus the guy next to me asked me if I'd seen any headphones, and I helped him look. He then said they must have been stolen, he had left them on the seat for a minute. He asked around everyone but everyone said they didn't know. It was horrible to know we were on a bus with a thief. No wonder this bus station had 26 terrible reviews. We set off and the guy said "I don't want to be racist but..." and then speculated about who had stolen his headphones. The bus had no toilet so we had to keep stopping at the first stop we all got off and guess what HE FOUND THE HEADPHONES. They were wedged down the side of my seat. He was happy but he also felt really bad about what he said to me about the suspects.
I got less than 1 hour of sleep it was horrible. Dan picked me up on his way to work and then went to work and I drove the kids back for a day with a lot of screen time which they were thrilled about.
Next week it's Dan's 40th birthday so were going to try and make it really fun an special as he's having such a bad time at the mo. Lot's of surprises in store that I will write about next time.
Bye bye!
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