The Lettuce King

I'm going to quickly try and get a blog out, before more things happen. It's Percy's birthday tomorrow and then my parents are coming to visit, so I want to chat about some new job stuff before all that.

Dan is in his third week of his new job as lettuce king, he's working hard trying to get those farmers to use computers, and we got our first free lettuces this week. So far I've eaten a quarter of one leaf in a burger. I might need to up my intake a bit if I'm going to keep up with the amount he could be bringing home. Last night he brought two, and it kind of reminded me of cheer leader pompoms. In general I hate AI but I just didn't have a week to paint this as an oil painting, so I had to get chat GPT to do me a favour, and it didn't disappoint. but Dan doesn't want anyone to see it so you will have to imagine it.

In real life I have been making a real life oil painting. This was a really interesting one to do, I've realised that shadows aren't an optional extra they actually can completely transform a painting. I've got a list of about 6 more big painting ideas that I can't wait to start, but I've got so many other things on my to do list that I probably won't start. I'm trying to get all the art website stuff ready for Christmas gifting time. I've started making my prints available as high quality framed canvases as well as just poster prints. I want to make a 2027 calendar of paintings from the 66 region, and I'm going to change my whole website so everything is free shipping so you can easily see what price you'll pay. 

Some of the shipping prices are wild, and vary a lot depending on the country and I know nobody wants to be about to buy something and then see the shipping price is 17 euros. Shopify make it very hard for you to work out what you're paying for shipping and what your actual profit is. So twice I've accidentally made less than 50p profit through my own errors.

But even though it's frustrating and I've not made much money yet, it's really fun to be creating things people want to buy and two quite exciting things happened in the last month business wise: I got accepted as a content creator to be able to do affiliate marketing for a very cool brand called Prada (jokes) it's called Makedo. 

I first came across them in the summer when I was staying at my sister Jo's and I was trying to entertain the kids by making things out of boxes. She said, "oooh Ive got this kit" and it was a little box of cardboard cutting tools that are safe for kids and little plastic screws and hinges which I used to make Percy into a pizza shop. Then I forgot about it for a bit, but when I was making my cardboard photo booth I got thinking about all the cardboard things I've made over the years. I made a video about it and then I messaged them about a collab and they invited me to apply for their creator program. Soon you could buy this stuff using my link to get money off. Don't buy it now though. My kit's in the post, so give me a week to get a little video out.

The other cool thing that happened is that a video I made won first prize in a product review competition for printful- who are the print on demand company that make bags and laptop cases with my art on. I made a video about 3 sample products that I ordered (a towel with a pic of Collioure on, a laptop with a cactus painting on, and a bag with a painting of Ceret on) I won 50$ worth of printful stuff.

I'm going to do a real life art fair in my village at Christmas, so I'm going to be trying to make a load more smaller craft fair suitable stuff. One of Eric's school friend's mum told me about it, she sells activity books and stories that she writes and I managed to get the last available table.

Much as I would like to be doing all this fun creative stuff full time, I can't just do that unless I could live on only lettuces. I've been looking for jobs that aren't just term time because the French school holidays are sooo long! We had 8 weeks off in the summer then 7 weeks of school and now we're in a two week half term!

So I just started a new online English teaching job. Back in January I had my most awkward ever interview, I'm pretty sure I wrote about it, and I didn't really want more work then, I had enough and Dan was working. Then in August I sent them an embarrassing "yeah sorry I've not been in touch but I've got A LOT of availability now. ie I'm pretty much unemployed." message and they said they didn't need anyone, but then a few weeks ago they asked if I was free to teach one student on Friday lunchtimes. I said yes and now I'm in the system and I've got 4 students, which is the most I can do for now alongside my real life students.

I've only just started, and the admin of starting was a nightmare because it's a really confusing system. But I love actually teaching, you get to meet really interesting people who actually want to learn English from the comfort of your own home, and choose your hours.

As well as this new job I had a interview at my house for hosting teenagers who are learning English, hopefully that would be in a new house. So it's kids in the school holidays that come and stay for a week. You have to give them 15 hours of lessons and then just do nice things with them, like take them on trips. I was originally in contact with a company who said you have to do a minimum of 4 weeks in the summer and I spoke to the boys about it and they said that's too much which I kind of agree with. So then I found a smaller family run company who let you do as many or as few weeks as you like and they only let you host one kid at a time. They came to the house and were really nice, so I've agreed to go with them but when I told the other company they were so mad at me. I explained it was because my kids think 4 weeks is too much and she said "that's a real shame." Yes it really is a shame when you listen to your kids and allow them to have a say in their own lives.

Right next task: finish off Percy's climbing wall cake, I'm actually really proud of it so far. I hope he has the best day becoming 12.

 

Blood Sweat and Jobs

This is an exciting blog, it's got a beautiful story of friendship, a mad story of fridges and jeopardy and some major life news.

But lets go chronologically, starting last weekend. I went to visit one of my best friends, Helen in Marseille. She had a work conference in Nice and was annoyed to find out that France is big, and middle south where I am, to south east where Nice is, is 5 hours by car on rich people roads and over 7 hours on poor people roads. So we met in Marseille which is more in the middle of us both.

Originally this was going to be a girls trip and we were going to get an airbnb in the city, but seeing as what she wanted to do was hang out and go on a paddle board, we booked a mobile home in a holiday park outside the city. And seeing as we were doing that, we invited the boys along too (Dan, Percy and Eric). Mobile homes in camping parks are good value out of season and the weather is perfect in the end of September, and the pool isn't full of people. We booked a luxury 6 bed mobile home for 3 nights for around 180 quid.  

We arrived late on Friday because we couldn't leave until the end of school, I offered to try and get the kids out of school early but they didn't want to, the absolute geeks. Dan was very excited that they had a dishwasher, a luxury that we sadly don't have in our current house. So it was disappointing to find out after eating that we didn't have any dishwasher tablets so we still had to wash up!

On the Saturday we went to the beach and me and Helen hired some paddle board to go out on. It was quite hard standing up on the wavy sea but we got used to it eventually, and then on the Sunday we just hung out in the pool. There was a double water slide thing and the kids were obsessed with racing us on it. In the afternoon Dan and the kids left and I sent as much of my luggage as possible with him. It was tempting to leave with them, and just be driven home in 3 hours, but I chose to stay that evening to have a bit more girl time enjoying sangria and moules frites, and then go home on the Monday by public transport. 

So we had a nice dinner out on Sunday and then Helen got a plane back early and I walked 40 minutes to a train station (because the direct bus to Marseille didn't turn up). Then I waited an hour for the train, then I got a 45 minute train to Marseille, aimlessly wandered around Marseille for 3 hours with a backpack which was a bit too heavy despite really trying to reduce the stuff I had. I spent the last night with no bedding and no pyjamas and showered without a towel only a kitchen cloth and their hairdryer to dry myself with. Then I got a bus that was actually going all the way to Barcelona, which means it would have gone through Perpignan, but it wasn't stopping there, so I had to get off at Montpellier wait another hour and then get on another bus that was also going to Barcelona but stopped at Perpignan. 

I said to Dan, if I got on the first bus and then pretended to be asleep and then just "woke up" in Perpignan and cried and said "please let me off" I bet they would have. Anyway some friends are worth a 12 hour door to door trip for and Helen might be one of them. She's definitely driven from Wiltshire to Liverpool a few times at late notice just to come to a party or something.

I began that long travel day thinking I'd be starting my job in a school again early the next day, but then received an email that morning saying they don't want me until November, so I went to bed that night thinking it's a shame my work is delayed, but at least I can rest a bit on Tuesday. But as I was relaxing into my Tuesday morning I saw someone on Facebook (who I'd never met) was about to move from Perpignan to Bangkok and they wanted to get rid of all of their stuff, including a massive fridge and a king sized bed. There were a few comments saying, "I could come tonight, I'd love (insert specific small thing here)" and I knew this is not really what these people want. They want all their stuff gone, and they're giving it away for free and so I said, "we can come now with our big 7 seater and fit in as much as we can."

If we end up getting this massive house we will need a load more furniture and we also don't own a fridge for example, our fridge belongs to our landlord. So we drove straight into town and got stuck in a protest for ages, but eventually got down this little side street that you can only enter before 12 just in time. We met this really cool Icelandic couple who I wish we'd met earlier because they just seem fun. And then we tried to get a massive fridge down 4 flights of stairs. This is where the blood and sweat comes in, about 10 seconds after I took this photo...

 

I don't want to say Dan dropped this fridge onto this man's face, but let's say he didn't prevent it from falling into his face. It pierced his cheek, blood started pouring out and he didn't even say "ow" he just said "how bad is it? I'll carry on down this bit and then sort it out." Blood was all over his t-shirt and the fridge and then Dan's t-shirt.

 

 After they managed to get it down the first set of stairs his partner applied that medical face tape. Then they carried on going down the the other 3 flights of stairs. Later he went to hospital and had several stitches and will possibly be scarred for life. All for giving away a fridge! We also took a mirror that was the same size as the fridge and she had a great selection of Posca pens. When she told me she had Posca pens I did an embarrassing intake of breath, that's how much I love those pens. Sometimes we talk about if we won the lottery I would get the full cabinet of Posca pens that you sometimes see with a lock on in art shops.

We wanted to come back to get the rest of the stuff, including the king sized bed, but we had to wait until the next day because of the bollards that don't let you in after 12. The next day just Dan went and filled the car again with a king sized bed and mattress loads of pans, two clothes rail things, a green velvet poof etc. Our house was a tip and it still is a bit. We've forced Percy to have a bigger bed, and we're now sleeping on two mattresses because the only space for an extra mattress was on top of our mattress. This is actually the 3rd time since the end of August that we've taken stuff from people leaving to another country. So I'm hoping we won't have to leave back to England and give away a full house of furniture too. Very grateful to the lovely couple, Aldis and Thor, for giving us so much, and then thanking us for taking it all.

Now for the house and job news... We didn't get the house that we loved, if we had 5 grand more we could have got it, but we really had stretched the budget as much as we felt we could and it wasn't quite enough, which is a bit gutting because the house had so much potential but I know it would have been stressful if we'd had literally spent every penny on a house that needed work doing.

But yesterday Dan got a job! He will tell you it's "a part admin and part modernisation project for a agricultural cooperative" but when I said "so farmers have written stuff on scraps of paper and you have to type it up?" he said "yes exactly that." He says it's bringing farmers into the 21st century, I would say that typing is really only the later 20th century. 

I asked if we'd get any freebies, because the farms round here grow peaches and plums and oranges etc. but this farm grows 4 different kinds of Lettuce. Worst job ever. After a few month I imagine Dan's files will look like this:

March:

Today I planted 1000 lettuces.

April:

The lettuces are growing a bit.

May:

The lettuces are looking lovely.

June:

995 lettuces are growing 5 died. 

July:

I watered my lettuces a lot this month.

August:

This month I harvested the lettuces 

September:

I sold the lettuces, made a bit of money, bought some lettuce seeds for next year.

October:

This month I just chilled, I got a DVD box set to watch, because I've only just discovered computers so it makes sense that I only just transitioned from video to DVD.

In all seriousness though, much as I do like to take the mick out of every job he has ever done, he has done really well to find another job in the hardest region of France for jobs in his second language, and we are very proud of him.

P.S I did google lettuces after writing this and the take between 30 and 70 days to grow.