I love cardboard boxes.

Thanks for your comments on the last blog, Dan was delighted that so many people have been reading about his balls, and the only update you need to know is that he is doing well and the countdown has begun.

But this blog is not about Dan's balls, it's about how much I love cardboard boxes. Every week I make a to-do list, things like, invoicing parents, adding things to my art website, and then places that need cleaning. About 2 or 3 weeks ago one of my tasks was to do my UK tax return, I'm still UK self-employed as well as French self-employed and we rent out our house so we have some UK income.

I really hate this kind of job, way more than cleaning, and I put it off a lot. So at the end of the week where I planned to do my tax return, I was going to an artist event. It's where artists make art outdoors in public and people can watch and potentially buy stuff, I've done it twice before and it's a fun day. I've just done an exhibition, so I had lots of little things I can sell, plus lots of work I can show and I now own a lot of easels I can display work on. So I really had nothing I needed to prepare, but I did have an idea for a fun project and a tax return to avoid, and a giant box. I started thinking about how I could make a photobooth out of my box...

...and many hours later it was finished. It has a slot to put 2 euros in and a timer. You look through the frame and then the finished photos that I draw come out the hole in the camera. I don't draw faces in general because I'm not good at them, sometimes I do include people in my work because I don't want places to look deserted, but people definitely aren't the main focus. So I did a practise one where I was drawing Dan and I gave myself 3 minutes. It was pretty bad so I decided I needed to give myself 5 minutes per drawing.

On the way to the random village that was having the festival, Amelie-les-bains, we went to see an art exhibition of a local artist I really like called Jon Everitt. His stuff is very imaginative, if you've ever played the game "dix it" the paintings are just like those cards.

 

 The kids really loved the work, there's a lot of fun details to look at and I bought two little prints, but my favourite piece (below) he didn't have a print of. 

 

It's the eclipse.  

Then we went off to set up the photobooth. There weren't many other artists there, just a wood sculptor a stone sculptor, a painter and me. There were some food vendors and stuff. I didn't think many people would come, but I was hoping we'd just get a few people so I could try it out. And then a group of little kids arrived, they were around 6 and they were interested in my mad box, so they went off to ask their parents for 2 euros to do it. Once one kid had done it everyone wanted a go, and not just kids adults too. There was then quite a queue of people waiting to try it. It was hard work, 5 minutes is not long, it not only involved some artist skills, but I also had to speak French and ask their name and spell it right when they spell out the letters, which don't always sound the same in French and I did have to start again on one because I spelt the name wrong. But everyone seemed happy with their drawings. The bit where it comes out of the slot that's painted like a camera was really fun.  

Two friends around my age came and wanted a portrait together. I said I could do it in 7 minutes, which was too ambitious. It was really hard and I was a little embarrassed by the results and I assured them that they were both beautiful, even if my drawing stated otherwise. These friends made a video that they posted instantly on Instagram that's had over 4000 views. And it's probably the worst drawing I did that day! The were lovely though and afterwards I made Instagram friends with one of them and saw in her bio that she is a founding member of the comedy club in the random village we were in. I watched a bit of her comedy and she was dressed as a giant cake. When I first started comedy I used to use costumes and props a lot. In my first ever set I dressed as a puddle. Maybe I've found my French twin. Anyway I've agreed to do a 5 minute set in French in January.

 

The following weekend I performed stand up in English for the first time in 2 years. It was at a winery owned by an English speaking couple who often put on English speaking events. They had a bunch of comedians come up from Barcelona. It took me so long to prepare for it, because my material is not fresh in my head like it used to be. I wrote some new material too about Duolingo and I've got this new bit about how stupid the English language actually is. Like, why do we use the same word for brushing the hair of your pet horse, and an adult deliberately befriending a vulnerable child in order to later exploit them? That kind of observation.

So I actually spent hours writing it, and trying to memorise it, and it went fine but not amazing. The audience were not the best, they were old and not massive laughers. A woman was trying to give out tapas during my set, which was not ideal but I stopped and made it into a thing which I think was the right choice. I once had to look at a post-it note in my pocket, which was not ideal but fine.

 

It was fun meeting the other comedians who were all up on a fun weekend kind of thing from their normal venue in Barcelona, and they said I could perform there if ever I was down. If I lived in Barcelona I would definitely get involved in that scene. But I don't, and my current life plan is to fill that little comedy hole in my life with art.

Job and house news:

Dan is the "preferred candidate" for a job doing admin for a collective of farmers, but they haven't actually officially given him the job and we saw a house we LOVE that's massive. It's got a front a back and a side garden, the side bit is separated from the front and back bit, and that's where the BBQ bit is. At the moment it's got a kitchen downstairs and upstairs but the upstairs one is the one I'd keep, because it leads onto a lovely balcony that I would try and eat on 80% of the time. It has a massive space that could be a lounge and diner, you could basically live your whole life upstairs and then the down stairs is all bonus fun stuff like creative spaces plus a space for friends to stay. It needs modernising but it's livable.

We probably won't get it though, lots of people are interested, we've put in our best offer which really is the best we can possibly do. If no one else can go higher then we'll get it, but there's lots more viewings and someone only needs to go 5 grand more for the estate agent to agree and cancel all future viewings.

So I'm not expecting that we'll get it, if we do it will be a miracle. We've offered our best and we will see.

 

The Vacectomy Special

I know this is the news you've all been waiting for. I'm very excited to announce that Dan has finally had a vasectomy. He's been thinking about getting this done since around 2019! Originally I thought it would be nice to have 3 kids, but like many people I know, after having one you reconsider everything. But after having Eric (our second) the birth went quite well and he was a pretty easy kid, I did think maybe we should go for 3. Full blog about the pros and cons of 3 here written in 2017.

In 2019 I was much more seriously thinking about going for number 3, and at the time it felt like such a difficult decision and I was on the fence and Dan was too but a bit closer to no than me. There was a general election and I was telling people, I'm not sure how seriously, "If Labour get in I'll have a 3rd baby, and if the Tories get it we'll move to France." I felt like under Labour we could afford a 3rd baby, but if the Tories got in we didn't really want to live in England any more, and Brexit was about to come in which meant people weren't free to move countries, but we still could because of Dan being French. Liverpool was a really weird place to be on that election, because everyone I was hanging out with at mum groups were sad about the results, but we had this feeling of, "we have to all work together and look after each other, because no one else is going to look out for us." And I actually started giving away my baby stuff from then, which is a good but not irreversible step to take on your way to a decision.

If we had conceived a baby at the time I was thinking about it would have been a lockdown baby and I take a lot of comfort in knowing that that would have been an absolute nightmare mixed in with a 5 year old and a 2 year old. We wouldn't have gone to France with a 3rd child, which is weird to think about now because France has not exactly gone well. Anyway sometime in the face mask wearing days we decided it was time fo the snip and Dan got on the waiting list, which was a year long due to Covid. 

Weeks after arriving in France in 2022 Dan got a phone call saying, "your vasectomy is next week," and I now wish he'd just flown back and had it, but at the time that seemed a bit mad. He told them, "I live in France now," and then it was just on the to do list for a long time but we didn't understand the French health care system. And the system is different depending on if you have a job or not and we kept switching between the poor person scheme and the person with a job and health insurance scheme. Eventually, after literally years, he got an appointment about it where they said "now you have to wait 3 months just to make sure you're really sure." WE'VE BEEN SURE FOR ABOUT 6 YEARS! It feels almost not worth doing now I'm 40, but hopefully I'll at least get a good blog out of it. I'll get to the juicy details now...

So I dropped him in the local hospital around lunch time and he had to wait around for ages with no pants on for this very busy surgeon to be free. And then it was pretty quick and I went to collect him, he seemed surprisingly well and could walk to the car ok. He got home and got the frozen peas straight down his shorts, and then we had a mad chat about if we should eat some of those peas for dinner seeing as he was deforesting them on his balls. Dan made the point that there were 2 layers between the peas and his balls, (the plastic pea bag and his underwear) and we both agreed that 2 layers is the minimum acceptable number of layers between peas and balls for peas to still be edible. We talked through a lot of different scenarios when we did our marriage prep course, but peas and balls was not one of them. 

 

So yes half the peas got eaten for dinner and the other half that we refer to as, "the penis peas," were being continually frozen and defrosted for several days and have now gone in the bin. 

I don't know how much you know about the vasectomy process, but they cut and then cauterise two tubes and then they put a "grounding patch" on his side that means "he wouldn't be barbecued" by the electrical rod. He could smell his own flesh burning. Anyway, after that you can still ejaculate but there's no sperm in the fluid. Sorry if that's more information than you wanted.

But the important bit is you're not straight away safe to get on with baby-free fun times. It's like that time I put cheese in my glue gun, it took a while to get fully back to glue again, and there were a few embarrassing moments in my art workshops where I could smell the cheese. Dan has been told he needs to ejaculate 30 times in the next 3 months. Then he has to go back for a test around Christmas time where they test the fluid to see if there's any tiny lonely half people still swimming around in there. 

So here's where I need your help. What is a fun way to count up to 30? Obviously you could just keep a discrete little note on your phone, if you were boring. But Dan suggested it would be cool to make a big thermometer like they do for fundraising, but in the shape of a penis, obvs. Or I suggested getting 6 out the way and then getting an advent calendar to reward yourself with a little chocolate every time. Although if someone didn't know that was your special advent calendar they might eat some to catch you up with the date and ruin the whole system. 

The fact that we're not having more kids means that I'm sadly out of the 15 year challenge of who can have the most ginger children by 2028. There's only 18 months left on that so really you need to get on it now if you want them to have a good amount of hair by 1st Jan 2028. If you are a participant (and I list them on this old blog here) please send me a photo of your kids, so I can do an update - it can be the back of their heads.  

While recovering from the snip, Dan missed the opportunity to win his own motorbike. When he first got his previous job he bought a second hand 125 motorbike to commute on so I could still have the car. After a year of riding it a bit too hard on roads it was a little too small for, it completely died. The piston in the cylinder had melted, I don't know what that means, but it doesn't sound good. He had to pay a garage to take it away. He didn't even get any scrap money for it. So imagine how surprised Dan was to receive an email inviting him to an open day where the top tombola prize was his own bike! He wanted to go because he thought it would be funny, and he wanted to to potentially win his bike back. But as we all know it's illegal to participate in a tombola while you've got frozen peas down your trousers.

There's no big life news unfortunately. Dan was meant to hear about a job he's already had an interview for last week, but he hasn't so it seems very unlikely that he would get that, but not impossible. He had another interview today which went okay, but not amazing for a job with the council in Perpignan, and then he'd got into the final 12 out of 60 for a remote job in marketing for a bike tour company, that he was excited for, but they decided not to interview him. Then this morning he was also phoned about a job that the job centre sorted out for him, which is sales and admin for an agricultural company.

Next time I'm going to talk about having the best time possible with a big cardboard box and doing some comedy for the first time in 2 years which I will be doing on Saturday night. 

Bye bye. 

 

Returning to France

 The lovely thing about living in France is when you return back after a holiday in the UK it’s like the opposite of the holiday blues. Most Brits go on holiday for a bit of extra sunshine, but it’s very freeing to not need to maximise my sunshine intake all the time. Sometimes it’s a sunny Saturday and we stay in a play board games which we all know is an actual crime in the UK. 

I stayed in England over 3 weeks and it was lovely, but it was long enough to get a bit bored and be happy to return. Me and the boys flew back from Manchester to Carcassonne but before leaving Carcassonne I met a random woman and bought 5 big easels off her for my exhibition. (It was pre arranged because she lived there, I didn’t just see her walking the street with 5 easels and force her to sell them)

Carcassonne is a lovely place and we had a nice little wonder around  before going back home. Dan had been on his own for 10 days and was very happy to see us all. And we were especially happy to be back because our friends the McMaster family were visiting. They found a last minute package deal to stay in a holiday camp 35 minutes away from us. So we did a lot of fun water based messing about with them at a water park and the lake inflatables. Jumping or falling in water is one of my top hobbies, especially with friends and family.

I also suggested we did sunrise painting and not everyone was as enthusiastic as me, but I think in the end we were all we glad we got up for it. Sunrise wasn’t until just after 7. But I got up at 5 am to get ready and arrive at the beach for 6 am to arrive when it was dark. If you’ve never watched a sunrise my top tips are all the best bits happen before the sunrise. The sun actually rising is like the finale of the show. You have to get there when it’s dark to truly appreciate the full change from night to day. First there’s the glowing bit which is like the support act. It’s not the best bit, but it tells you the show is about to start and gets you in the mood, and then all the best colours happen around 40 minutes before the scheduled sunrise. I was commentating on it and getting very excited the way some people would about sport. 

I love when you see the florescent colours, I've got a book all about colours and it says florescent colours were only invented in the 70's but the sunrise is proof that people didn't invent florescent, it was always there. I was on a massive high, hyping up everyone about the colours and painting them. My reaction when pink came out was like the reaction of the crowd when the artist P!nk first stepped on stage to perform a big show. Unfortunately by 9am I was so tired and had no energy for the rest of the day. It was worth it though, and I loved how different everyone's paintings were.

Zac and Dan share a romantic moment together on the platform you can swim to

 

all our paintings

It was a lot of work getting ready for my exhibition, most of it I had done before I went to England including two oil paintings that needed time to dry, a big acrylic painting of the chateau venue and making loads of little post cards of different areas of my region the 66. I had 10 days between getting back from England and the exhibition and the first of those days were spent with our friends splishing around on inflatable slides. But we had a week set aside where Dan would be on childcare to allow me to do my last bits of prep which included, a small painting, printing lino designs onto canvas bags, making some more paper lino prints, pricing all the work and typing up the labels.

Dan had seen a job he wanted to apply for, it was a well paid remote marketing job similar to his last one but with more responsibility, so he sent his application off one morning, and then got a call that same day quite late like 8pm asking him to come for an interview. Then it got very busy because I had to squeeze all my work into a smaller time so that he could have time to prepare for the interview. The kids did not have a very exciting week that week, although I'm sure they were happy when we kept suggesting they watched a film or played computer games.

We also went to see a film that was projected on a big screen outdoors in our village. The posters said it would start "at nighfall" and when we went at 8:30 they told us to come back later. It didn't start till around 9:20pm and ended at 11pm, which is really late for a kids film. It was a nice cute thing to do though, it was free, and a kid in Eric's school even gave our boys a little pot of popcorn each. I don't normally love kids films but this was so funny! and it would have been even funnier if I had a better knowledge of French. If you get a change to see Marsupilami you should. We laughed a lot!

Dan's interview went well, he will hear back next week after they have interviewed more people, he's also got an interview for a job in Perpignan on 15th Sept and there's another job he's just applying for that is a bit more junior that what he was doing before so hopefully if he doesn't get either of the first two he could get this.

My exhibition was lovely in the end, the set up was a little stressful. It's a long a windy road to get there and I had to go by myself so that I could fit all the paintings and easels in the car. I wasn't allowed to put nails in the old walls but there were some random hooks and stuff poking out that I could use plus I had all my easels. It was bit windy though and a few times paintings fell down and I was worried about them being damaged. When it was all set up I went back home so that I could bring the family back in the evening. 

The road to the Chateau where I had my exhibition.

 (when you see the pink hotel turn right.)

Thankfully by the evening the wind had died down and the weather was perfect, people came from all around up to a hour away which I really appreciate. I sold 4 paintings and some smaller things. A few families with kids came which I loved. I really like kids to have the chance to see accessible art. Most young kids like to draw but they are sometimes given the message that famous artists are all dead and it's not really possible to be an artist now. 

This whole thing came about because I made a video series called "attic to chateau" where I revealed a painting a day in my weird attic bedroom. I've seen other creators do things like this and sometimes their dreams come true, I'm unfortunately still living in a weird attic with no windows but somebody with a chateau got in touch and let me borrow it for an exhibition! Which is mad. If you want to see a 3 minute tour of the exhibition click here.

If you want to buy prints or bags of any painting click here

My friend Flick is back in the region after two years in Paris, she's an abstract artist and just a very fun person to be friends with. It was really nice having her at the exhibition, and introducing her to a few other friends I've made since she left. At the end of the evening she took my boys back to hers for a sleepover which meant that me and Dan could pack up everything back into the car. I was exhausted when I got home, and then I realised we left a painting there! Very annoying as the whole reason for the sleepover was to save us doing 3 trips there in a weekend.

This week I have been trying to get back into English teaching again, in September I have to rearrange a time for everyone to have their lessons. I am not doing my bigger group this year, and unfortunately some online teaching work I was going to do isn't available any more so I really need to find more work but I am secretly hoping the art stuff will take off so I can just do that instead.

Next blog...hear all about the Vacecomy Dan had yesterday and I guess we'll find out of he gets any of those jobs.