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.
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