I haven't blogged for nearly a month, because when interesting life stuff is happening I have no time to write about it. When I last wrote we were still in this weird game of "house chicken" where we had seen a beautiful house that we wanted to buy and we really couldn't wait to leave our ugly house but I was scared to commit to a not particularly desirable village in France and just France in general. Especially while Dan doesn't have a job. And the sellers accepted our offer but kept pushing back the signing date.
So we arrived in England at the end of July and we had been told we will sign for the house (which we could do digitally) before 3rd August. After a few days of seeing family we were out at a pub with my parents when Dan got a phone call from the estate agent who said sorry but they don't want to sell, they had some new news that the guy is much more ill than he first thought, and therefore doesn't want to sell.
It was pretty disappointing and really ruined that pub meal. being in a pub with your parents and your children is one of the worst places for emotions, along with on stage or when you've just done your make up. I prefer to cry in the car or when everyone is asleep, or just with Dan. So that was a weird time, but by the next day I felt o.k. It's not really a net negative its just different stresses, I feel less trapped overall but also like there's no way to escape our less than ideal house any time soon.
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| sister time |
The next day we went to see Joy and Philp an their boys, and they were the perfect people to see because they have gone through many parallel life experiences. Originally they were meant to come to my parents house for a fun day out on the boat, but their son broke his leg on the first week of the holidays so they were stuck indoors. But we had such a good time hanging out having big laughs and a few serious moments sharing stories of how we both have lived mad lives between countries missing people and living in weird situations. They were about to move into a new house that they were renting in Liverpool. and this was the first time in I think 11 years that they had lived just as a family of 4, I don't think they ever even lived as a 2, because when they were in New York they shared with people and when they were in L.A they lived with Philip's mum.
I had seen Joy in Paris in April and at that point in time they didn't know if they would be going back to America or staying in England but since they Joy has found a full time job in Liverpool and so for now they are staying, after years of living abroad.
After seeing my family a little bit we went to stay with Dan's side near Southport. His parents have quite recently moved to a house near Southport with a massive garden. All his siblings came to visit and the cousins played a lot of the game sardines. I may have got involved, and I may have got in a compost bin.
While we were there Dan checked his spam emails and found he'd been offered an interview two weeks earlier! He wrote back apologising but they never replied. So gutting. He was very annoyed with himself, he is busy applying for more things right now. We didn't do anything special that you would do as a tourist all holiday. We went for a great meal out at the Morrisons cafe though! it's 15 quid for 2 adult hot meals and kids eat free in august so all 4 of use ate for 15 pounds. For the kids meals you could choose a main a veg and a carb based side so Percy choose pizza beans and a Yorkshire pudding which he was very happy about.
We also stocked up on our regular English items, English kids books, decaf tea, hobnobs, a chocolate orange and paracetamol, and in a charity shop I got a brand new looking Levi's red cord skirt for 7 pounds. (I don't have a pound symbol on this stupid laptop)
It was really nice hanging out with all the nieces and nephews. We have 7 between our two families from age 0-11. We got to see a good amount of friends too, it is really nice to see people you've known 20 years and to hear how everyone's lives are changing, and to see people's kids, too. I got to meet Katie and Mike's new baby Emma. She was so cute! and her big brother was equally adorable. I saw my friend Cat too, her eldest is only 13 months older than Percy but he is a giant! Way taller than me. Her youngest who is just turning 6 is only slightly smaller than my 9 year old.
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| In height order but not age order, Cat Joy and my boys |
Dan only stayed about half the time I stayed, because I chose to stay longer to see more of everyone, and he has a little side job to be getting on with plus he needed some time to apply for jobs. After he left, I took the train down to Birmingham to see my first ever friend Bex and her family. It was much more fun taking the train than driving, and I enjoyed the adrenalin rush of successfully doing a 4 minute train change with 2 kids. They're at a fun age to be onboard with the challenge. I can't imagine trying to do it with a 2 year old those guys have no sense of urgency.
Bex has 3 boys a similar age to mine, plus a bonus younger one. They are all such fun kids and in general they all get on well. We taught them the wide game "dragons" in the woods and I realised I can only run as fast as an average 8 year old. Her husband Doug is a trainee police officer and on his first day on the job he had to go to a house with a dead body that had been there 4 days in a heat wave. It sounded horrific but I do think it's cool to have a job that you come back with good stories from. I know I couldn't come home and sleep after catching a criminal while on a night shift, but Dan really wanted to be in the police once and from my selfish point of view I would like to hear his work stories. Not that many interesting things happen in the marketing department of a swimming pool company.
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| what's more fun than a trampoline a hose and a slide? |
For the last week of my time in England my parents were looking after my 5 year old nephew Zac. He is very cute and very confident. We went to West kirby beach which was the first time I've been to a UK beach since living in France. I thought it be interesting to see if I could cope with UK beaches, since I've been a little spoilt with the med. and the answer is no not really, it felt like IA had read a description of a beach but got a few fundamentals wrong. Firstly the water was brown, and cold, and secondly I walked out for ages in the sea in high tides thinking I might swim but the water only came to my knees.
We don't have tides in the med so in order to make the most of being in the UK I suggested we made a sandcastle with a moat where the water comes in around the moat. The kids started making one, and this is where overly confident Zac was hilarious. He started going up to other families and giving them unsolicited advice on their sandcastles and if they were sitting too near to where he thought the water would come in to. He also went up to a kid and said "I'm going to need to use that spade" not "hello please could I borrow your spade for a minute because we don't have any?" just I need your spade. Unfortunately the tide never came in far enough to get to be the moat for the castle so I think my kids will be put off UK beaches forever.
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| The sea came in to here and went straight out again. |
Did you watch the eclipse? we watched it through our glasses that my Dad had kept from 1999. It said don't use them on the back but obviously we did and we didn't even go blind.
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| 1999 |
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| 1999 |
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| 2026 |
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| Zac's drawing of the eclipse |
Thanks for reading this far, the finale of this blog is a story about poo, I asked if I could share this but keep the poo-er anonymous but I was given permission to use the name. So my friend Roz came over (it wasn't her) I know Roz from my student days she was in 3rd year Fine art when I was in 1st year and we lived together the year before I got married and she got me into teaching art in schools. She also paints and sells her work online, but she's not a massive show off that makes loads of videos about it like me. but check her out: here's her website
For the past decade shes been living on the remote Scottish island of Colonsay so I haven't seen her all in that time. Last summer she moved to north Wales with her husband and two boys now aged 5 and 2.
I don't think she'd be offended if I said her kids were full on. They had had a long car journey to get to my parents house and were understandably needing to let off some steam when they arrived. I got out a small bouncy castle and a paddling pool and giant Jenga, and a hammock but even with all these fun things for the kids, it was still a challenge to still down and catch up with Roz over a cuppa.
So we went out in the canal boat, my parents were both out at this point, but I was fine to take the boat out without them. After a pretty short journey I let Roz steer but gave her no real instructions and we started turning round, so then I thought lets just go back. To come in you need a minimum of 2 adults. One to steer and go in reverse at the right point, and one to jump off with the rope and pull the boat in. But unfortunately at the vital jump moment Roz's youngest kid Tom was not happy to let her go. Miraculously my Dad arrived back from his meeting at that exact moment and I was able to throw him the rope.
I was tying up the rest of the ropes and arrived back in the garden to see Tom on the potty. I noticed he had poo all down his leg. Then me and Roz were frantically searching the house looking for the poo. At this point a delivery driver arrived with a parcel and Percy opened the door to him while standing right in front of the poo. I'm surprised he didn't report us for neglect. The poo was on the stairs. Which was actually a big relief as it's one of the few places in the whole house that wasn't carpeted. While we tried to get the poo and Tom cleaned up Eric strategically asked for screen time and got it. Then my boys started arguing about what switch game they would play and I had to remind them "YOU'RE ONLY GETTING SCREEN TIME BECAUSE THERE'S POO EVERYWHERE"
In the airport on the way back I saw this book and sent a photo of it to Roz:
Next blog arriving back in France, having visitors, my Dad's crazy sponsored challenge and my exhibition (which is this Saturday, you should come!)
