Dan found a house!

Since my last blog things have been a bit crazy. Sometimes I'm so excited for this adventure and sometimes I'm so bored of the logistics and I'm not really sure if its a good idea anyway. 

Dan came back from his four day trip to find us a house on Tuesday/ early Wednesday morning (I picked him up from the airport at 1:45 am, yawn). I had to drag the poor kids out of bed, I let them go to school a bit late, but not quite late enough. School starts at 8:55am we arrived at about 9:05 which looks like we were just casually late whereas I wanted to give the impression we were intentionally late for a good reason. Oh well.

After doing a recce in October to Carcassonne, Narbonne and Montpellier we decided that we would go to none of them and Perpignan is the place we will live. We initially discounted it because you can't fly there from the North West, but we changed our minds because it's just such a beautiful place. Here's a photo I took there in 2019, when we did a camper van trip from Nice to Barcelona. Who wouldn't want to live in here:

From April you can fly from Birmingham to Perpignan, but not in the winter months, so Dan flew from Manchester to Barcelona and hired a car to drive up Spain and over the border, which takes about two hours. Perpignan is only 30 mins from the border. He had four days to find us a house and spent the last week trying to arrange viewing with estate agents.

There was one estate agent doing viewings on Saturday but it was in the morning and Dan didn't make it on time, so day 1 nothing really got done. Day 2 was Sunday when everything in France is closed. Dan went to a Church though, and had lunch with the leaders of the church, so Day 3 was the big day. Dan was planning to walk into all the estate agents he could. The first one had nothing to rent the second one "looked a bit weird" but just like the story of Goldilocks the third one miraculously had a house that was almost exactly when we were looking for: a 3 bed in budget in the outskirts of Perpignan with a bit of a garden. It wasn't even on the market yet and so the estate agent said he could see it and if we liked it we could get it. Dan sent me a few excited video messages, I couldn't believe it it was 10:30 am and he'd smashed it. Some of the positives are we can sign for just a year, a lot of places want you to sign for 2 or 3 years, it's walking distance to a school, its energy efficient and a new build.

It's 15 minutes from town, 20/25 minutes from the beach and 10 or 15 minutes from this very cool lake:

 and maybe 10 minutes from this cool area:

A few negatives are: it is unfurnished which is a faff, it doesn't have a bath and the garden is tiny, but overall great and we don't have to stay more than a year if we decide it's not for us. 

I thought we might be in Airbnbs for a while we we tried to find somewhere, but getting a real house has changed a few things. Our original plan was for Dan to take one car load of stuff while the 3 of us fly but now we have a real address we have decided to change our plans completely. We're going to get our stuff shipped so we can take some furniture and mattresses. We'll all fly and we won't buy a car until we're there. It was stressful trying to decide if shipping was the right option as it's pretty expensive (£2600) but the idea of trying to get rid of all our mattresses and then immediately buying a load more as soon as we arrive sounded too annoying. Currently the shipping people are desperate for us to confirm by paying our deposit but the estate agent hasn't 100% confirmed our paperwork and approved the moving in date we want yet, even though it looks very probable for 22nd April. 

The boys French ID cards are done but we haven't managed to pick them up yet. Hopefully they will arrive in Chester next Wednesday for collection (they can't be posted to your house you have to collect them from London or Chester and you can only collect from Chester on Wednesdays.) 

I've previously said that my visa "is easy, it takes a maximum of 20 days and you only have to go to Manchester." So with a date almost confirmed and just over 20 days to go Dan went to get me a visa appointment. That's when we discovered it's 5-20 days FROM THE DAY YOU CAN GET AN APPOINTMENT and the next available appointment was 29th April. As we were staring at the computer screen wondering how we had made such a massive error, 29th April disappeared and the next available appointment was 4th May. So frustrating because if we'd have thought about this a month ago it would all be fine. Now the plan is when I come back for a wedding in June I will have to stay up to 20 days while getting the visa sorted.

There was no real time to process that, because I had to go straight to my last ever day at work, teaching art in an after school club that I do every Friday. Then I went home for a quick tea before getting the train to Southport for my last ever comedy gig. Which actually was a lovely gig and considering the only practise I did was listening to my own set on you tube on my headphones on the train, it went pretty well and was a nice one to end on.

So much to do next week: builders will be knocking down a wall in our kitchen in preparation for putting in a new kitchen to make it nice for our tenants, and I have to make two easter bonnets! As if I have time for that!

I hope all this stress will be a distant memory when I'm swimming in the Med with the boys.

Please come to our leaving party!

The Consulate

Last weekend we took a trip to London. The boys had never been, but the main purpose of the visit was to continue in our journey to become French. We were trying to sort out the boys French ID cards, which is almost like a passport, and means we can stay there longer than 90 days. It was difficult to even get this appointment in the first place as the rules are one appointment for one person. Even if you have two children and you've travelled all the way from Liverpool. Even when the whole world has done two years of remote working, even when the planet is dying from people traveling so much, it's still one appointment per person and if you already have one appointment booked you can't book a second one. 

We decided if we had to, we'd just get Percy done, because Eric is under 5 and therefore free on a train, but we were still hoping for a miracle. Surely if you have all the paperwork ready and Eric does his very cute "pretty please" surely someone would take pity on us. So we arrived at the embassy opposite the natural history museum in South Kensington and queued up with a few others waiting to get in. When we got to the front the security guard had a quick chat with Dan in French to make sure he did have an appointment and some ID, and he said "one appointment, one child." He wasn't even going to let two kids through the door! Dan pushed back a little bit, and the security goard got bored and was just like "argue it with someone inside." I wasn't allowed in because technically I didn't need to be there, even though it is easier for Dan to have a French chat without having to answer Percy's continuous questions the whole time. So I wandered the streets praying that it would all be ok.

One of the things you have to provide is the photos that will go onto their ID cards and earlier in the week Dan had taken the boys to get some done. He had them taken in Max Spielman, the same place as Dan had got his done for his ID card back in October.  When the woman asked for the photos, Dan opened the envelope and a look of horror came across his face: he had accidentally brought the photos of himself!!

It's a good job I wasn't there because this would not have gone down well. Imagine spending hundreds of pounds on a London holiday only to not be able to do either boys ID card! "Don't worry," the lady said, "we have a photo machine here." 

PPPPHHHHEEEEWWWW!!!!!

And after that they let Dan do both boys! Dan had prepared many arguments about how you can't do both at once, or how he could come back later in the day, or tomorrow, how it was half term and if we came another time it would mean taking the kids out of school. But the guy he was dealing with now started listing these arguments himself saying, "it saves you another trip." Honestly I can hardly believe our luck, and the way some of these things are falling into place makes me feel like this is all "meant to be." Or, if you want to be Christian about it, "God's plan." 

On the other hand I really struggle with that kind of philosophy. What about when stuff doesn't go right? For example, we're trying to get a a new kitchen sorted at the moment so our house is more up to date for renting, and that is the opposite of falling into place. Does that mean anything? When we were about to move to a new house in 2016 and it all fell though and we ended up sort of homeless for 9 months was that God's plan? Now it's easy to think, "well I wouldn't have met a lot of my good friends if I had moved to Speke instead of Belle Vale." But what about all the people in Speke that I didn't meet? Anyway that's a whole other blog post, but I'd be interested to hear anyone's opinions on that kind of stuff.

While we were in London for that we thought we might as well do some fun London things. We did the London Eye and then all the free stuff, the museums and Sky Garden, which is my biggest recommendation. It was almost as good as the London Eye and completely free (but you do have to book). It's a very tall building and you can get the lift to the 35th floor. It's like a massive glass place with lots of tropical plants, but you can walk round and see the views in every direction. You can pay to eat in the fancy restaurant or just buy a drink or cake in the cafe but it is totally acceptable to not buy anything. 

Another supposed bargain was top secret comedy club. It was around the corner from where we were staying in Covent Garden (we were actually upgraded to there from the more business kind of district and it was amazing to be in that very central area.) I got tickets for a Monday night show for £1 each, and it was quite famous people including Harriet Kemsley who I once did support for. What I see a lot of is new comedians doing their best stuff but this was the opposite: established comedians doing their new stuff. It was fun, but in a very packed non ventilated room I felt like my chances of catching Covid were super high. The weirdest bit of the whole night was when we had to pay to leave! It started off like they were just going to do a bucket on the way out which is fine, and I am happy to support live comedy. I often do gigs where I don't get paid, or I get paid less than my petrol costs so I really do want to support comedians, but I was not so happy to be forced to pay to leave. You had to line up on the way out and were asked "cash or card" and you were told if you had a job you should be giving at least £10. It was all a bit awkward.

Overall though it was a great trip and the boys loved it. Eric thought we were in a foreign country the whole time, I only found this out when he said, "You left the bedtime stories in England." When I explained we were in England he was shocked! I think its because we came down on the train with a suitcase and last time we stayed in an apartment like that we were in France. He's still pretty confused about France and stuff when we talk about going he often says "are we going tomorrow?"  He can't really understand any time scale other than tomorrow.

We arrived back in Liverpool on Tuesday and on the train down Dan had a phone call to say he had won 2 tickets to see rugby (England vs Wales) and sleep over in a hotel for the night! Perfect timing for him as this weekend we set aside for a big house clear out. I think he might have faked that whole phone call just to get out of it. 

We're now planning on leaving at the end of the Easter holidays. After Easter and my sisters wedding we'll move into my parents house for a week and we'll be back and forth emptying the house and stuff. We're trying to arrange a leaving party for Easter Monday, but nothing is sorted yet. On Thursday I took the boys for a much needed hair cut and as we were walking back I said, "probably one more hair cut before we move to France," to which Percy replied, "great can we do that tomorrow?!" As if the only things on our to do lists were two hair cuts. He cracks me up that kid.

One Step Closer to France.

When Dan first got his new remote job, back in August, we decided to move to France. Back then I guessed we might be gone by January. It made sense to stay around for Christmas and for Eric to start school and just to give us chance a to get a lot of things sorted. BIG NEWS....we're still here. and there's a few people that I don't know super well that have seen me and said "you're still here" and lots of people that have asked how it's going. Until yesterday I was answering it's not going well. We're on stage 2 of 3, which is getting our marriage certificate and the kids birth certificates transcribed, which apparently takes FOUR MONTHS! 

So if you've asked me in the last few weeks I would have told you, we don't know, but maybe the summer. But then yesterday there was a very tense moment, I saw the self addressed special delivery envelope on the mat.... we had seen it come back twice before with corrections we needed to do, but this time it had taken a lot longer this was either good news or really bad news....But then this beautiful green booklet arrived!

full disclosure I sent a much more in the moment genuine selfie round our family whatapps but I looked disgusting so this is a better one. The yellow really contrasts nicely with the green right?

It's got all our names and dates of birth in and it means that we can move onto stage 3 of 3: getting the boys ID cards and my visa. Stage 1 was getting Dan's ID card so we already know how this stages goes, because we wasted weeks trying to figure it out. You have to get an appointment to go to London to see a french woman in a building next to the V & A museum. You have to book the appointment online, virtually every time you look there are no appointments. After a long time trying the honorary consul of Chester told us to try in the middle of the night. The only appointments that come up are cancellations and they come up for the briefest of times, more often in the middle of the night. So last night Dan stayed up until midnight and managed to grab the 29th March. 

It's not ideal at all, ideal would be in February half term so that we don't have to take the kids out of school and we could have a few days holiday in London, but it was better than nothing. 4 weeks after that date we would finally get the document posted to Chester and then we could collect it and leave this cold grey country behind. Today in the afternoon I told Dan to check the website again and MIRACLE a date in half term was free! Before grabbing it Dan had to cancel his 29th March appointment because you can't have two appointments. He cancelled it, clicked on the half term one, but it had already gone! And so had the 29th March one. In less than 30 seconds someone had taken our cancelled appointment. There is a happy ending to this probably boring story of a ridiculous computer program. Just this evening we did manage to get one for the beginning of half term, 21st Feb which means by the end of March we're allowed to move to France!!!

Just got to empty our entire house and make it rentable, decide where to live in France, find a school for the boys, sort out a french car, get rid of our old car and our old rabbit, and get my visa, but that randomly is quite simple, it only takes 20 days and I only have to go to Manchester.

Anyone want this lovely but very old bunny Lola? She's soft and tame.

My sister Sarah is having her long awaited proper party bit of her wedding at Easter time, so we will be staying for that, and we'll have a leaving party, and Eric really wants a party like Percy had, and even though his birthday is not until May it's only fair that he has one surrounded by people he knows. So there will be a lot of parties and visiting of everyone to do.

Kid quotes of the year 2021

When I was a kid my Dad had a little book and every time us kids said something funny/interesting he would write it down. Here's a few from 2 year old me:

"what's baby tom got on his bottom?!"

(Seeing a tights display in M&S) has that lady fallen through the wall?

(seeing fog for the first time) look! dark light

I now do the modern day equivalent and tweet them using #percyquotes and #ericquotes, and then at the end of the year I do a summary of my favourite ones. To be honest Percy age 3 or 4 was probably the peak. (I've not got that many this year, maybe I just haven't been good at recording them.) Percy's always been a big questioner of life, but at that age his questions were very surreal. Eric at the same age just isn't so bothered by philosophical questions, so he's not asking when we die will our house die? If we gave him an ice cream Eric just enjoys it and doesn't think about if ice creams and snow get on as friends.

Percy has a very unique mind and it was interesting to watch it develop at that age. He used to have an imaginary friend who was a carrot. The carrot was just called "carrot" but the carrots brother was called "boatius". For about a month they were friends, one time we were driving to somewhere and he asked if we could go back home because we had left carrot at home. He was freaking out and we had to make up this whole story that carrot was getting the bus and meeting us there. After a month or so of the friendship of Percy and carrot, Percy ate the carrot. 

Fast forward to now and Percy gets to put his special questioning mind to good use. Often in church they have a space for one of Percy's theological questions. For example:

"does heaven get bigger and bigger to make room for the new people dying every day?"

"did insects go on Noah's arc" 

"why is God a boy?"

"did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?"

I had similar questions, aged 5 I asked "can God count from 1 to infinity in one second?"

Here's the rest of the 2021 quotes:

Percy age 6-7

"Daddy your face looks like a world war."

"Wee and poo are married."

"how many bubbles are there in the world?"

Percy talking about the Euros "why do people put flags up in our street when the England team won't see that?"

Percy talking about dressage in the olympics "that sounds boring, I'm only watching if the horses do backflips"

Percy: I don't think those 2 ducks are married.

me: Percy animals don't get married.

Percy: how do they have babies then?!!

Percy: what's tennis?

Dan: you don't know what tennis is? (explains tennis)

Percy: Oh it sounds a bit like badminton.

(very loudly in public after riding the pirate ship ride) "that makes my willy feel funny"

Eric age 3-4

What shape have you made Eric "a Mexican...its like a hexagon crossed with a house" 

"a long long long long long long time ago......or maybe not that long ago, I wasn't alive"

one from today..."There's two things I want to do: tidy up my train track, and not tidy up my train track."

love them.

I hope 2022 will be full of lots of funny quotes due to us living as foreigners. 

P.S. read previous years top quotes here:

2020 (this is very good actually probably because we were with them all year)

2019  a big year for questions about death and God

2018 contains such classics as "how do you milk a ghost?"

2017 the year we had 2 babies one made out of plastic and one made out of real

My Comedy life (2018-2021)

I wrote the prequel to this a few weeks ago now, but I've finally got round to part 2.

So 2018 was a fun year for me, I mean compared to the start of 2017 where I was a homeless pregnant mess. (Skip back to this blog if you didn't know me at the time.)

I did my second hour long show and I was really proud of it. I'm actually going to release it on youtube soon. I wasn't going to originally because I was booked to do it at 3 other comedy festivals, but that got canceled due to covid and now too much time has passed for me to go back to that material now. I decided after the show to spend a year taking as many opportunities as I could in comedy, traveling everywhere and doing everything for a year. My goal was to do some paid work by the end of the year, and I reached that goal after about 4 months. The other bit of my goal was to run my own night...

Early Risers Comedy Club

Over 100 people had come to my show and so I thought if I put on a night with some other comedians with my demographic as the target audience it could do well. I quickly realised it's a lot harder to get people to come to a regular thing than a one off thing.

I wanted to make my night different to other comedy nights, friendlier, quirkier, high quality, in a nice venue and most importantly with a definite early end time. My demographic (parents in their 30's) would rather pay to have a nice venue than have a free night with horrible toilets, like the night I learned to do comedy at. I never liked not knowing how long a night would go on for, especially when I was still breast feeding. But I found most men in their 20s that put on comedy nights didn't at all think about this. Surely everyone would want to stay out as late as possible?

What I realised after a few months of doing Early Risers was that everyone liked the early end time, not just parents. Anyone with a 9 to 5 job wanted to know they weren't going to be back to late and acts who had traveled far wanted to finish early too.

I started off trying to market the night specifically to parents. I even said you can bring babies, which someone did to the first one and it did not go well. The baby cried and it was pretty distracting. I should have specified sleeping babies only. But yeah after a while I was conscious of trying not to alienate the people who weren't parents, so then I tried to drop the parent thing.

I really didn't want to MC the night at first. Being an MC is scary, I'm not great at improv or dealing with heckles. So the first few I got a guest MC and I put myself on as an act. The people I got did a good job under the circumstances, but they didn't know the acts that I booked so they couldn't introduce them with a anecdote or big them up. Also the MC has to be the time keeper and if an act goes over really it means the MC has to do less. Everyone appreciates the early end time but it is a challenge to do. So after a while I felt like I should just MC after all. I wasn't good at it to start with, I still wouldn't say I'm amazing at it now, but by the end I felt confident to do it and did really enjoy it. I wouldn't feel confident with someone else's night though. Early Risers is like my baby and I think I know it's needs and how to look after it, but MC ing another persons night would be like me looking after a teenager. It might be fine, but it might be awkward. 

Early Risers has had 3 venues (4 if you count the one off Christmas special.) We started in Blackburne house and then 7 months in had to find a new venue an hour before the show started! Our headliner that month had come all the way from Surrey and the night had just been mentioned in the Echo, so I knew people were coming. Every month for the past 7 months it had been in Blackburne house but in August I arrived to a sign on the door saying this venue closes at 4pm in August. Cheers for the heads up guys. So me and the guest MC literally walked the streets pleading with any venue to let us in, and that's when he managed to get us into the basement of Grilla which was such a perfect venue. It was too late to tell people about the venue change on social media, so I had to just stand outside the old venue and redirect people. And it actually turned out to be such a brilliant night. Quite a big crowd and the venue change really put people in a good mood. I managed to negotiate us being there every month, and the night really started going well there and I began to feel a bit more confident MCing it.

There were two pretty terrible ones (July 2019 and November 2019) and two people (Hannah Sloan and Harriet Gilmore) that just went to one of the terrible ones and I still feel awkward that you went to a bad one. Conversely my friend Sean Mullins went to two of the best ones and has a much higher opinion of my night than he should do.

Some of the best bits were the headliners genius musical comedians Jollyboat, Kate Mccabe, Sian Davies, and comedy rapper MC Hammersmith.  I really enjoyed the awkward moment when Grilla no longer wanted us in their venue anymore and I decided to make it even more awkward by writing an Adele parody and singing it to this poor guy who wasn't really responsible for that decision. (See that here) And the Christmas special that was very special.

It was sort of like an offensive nativity play where me and Dan were MCing the show in character as Mary and Joseph . The premise was that we'd travelled to the venue by donkey and I was allowed to stay the night and give birth there if we hosted a comedy show. Very believable. The show was actually like a competition between two teams of comedians: the Shepherds and the Angels. Every comedian got 5 minutes to do their best set and then we voted for a winner. It was so much fun, but so much stress. I actually cried on the morning of it because there was so much to do. I had 10 acts to communicate with  and a load of stall holders to communicate with because I decided to add a Christmas craft fair into the mix. The stall holders were continually dropping out all over the place and then I kept replacing them. I couldn't keep up with the messages and I was a full time parent to a toddler at the stage, so it's not like I had a relaxing time in the day to organise this stuff. I remember my friend Steve coming to my house on the day to stuff a million little stickers (which were used for voting) into tiny crackers while I was going a bit mad.

Anyway it was any amazing night and such a good laugh. All the acts were brilliant and I got to live an unrealised dream of being Mary in a nativity. The finale was giving birth to Jesus, who I'd been wearing up my top the whole time, and then giving birth to the placenta shortly afterwards. Because that's what's missing from all nativity plays everywhere: placentas. I made mine from red jelly and pomegranate in a zip lock bag and yes I did eat it, that was part of the script.

We moved venues again to Allerton and had our first show on 13th March 2020. We were all having a good old joke about covid and we gave away toilet roll as a prize. A week later people stopped joking and stopped going out to anything and we didn't return until September 2021. I enjoyed doing my last 3 shows there, but only because I knew it was coming to an end. After the big break of covid I realised how much comedy I had been doing, how exhausted I was and how much I hadn't seen Dan. And although I'm really sad to be giving it all up soon, I don't think I could have carried on forever.

The Circuit

As well as my own night I did a lot of open spots on other people nights, on an average night this involved driving about an hour, doing 10 minutes of stand up in a pub to strangers for no money, which normally went fine. It's a weird thing to do with your life though if you think about it.

So mostly it was fine, not that exciting but not terrible. But I'll tell you about some memorable ones.

The good ones

Beat The Frog is a big competition that happens every Monday in Manchester in a venue that's been doing comedy for 25 years or something. It's a gong show, so it means that 3 people in the audience hold up cards  when they don't like you If no one hold up a card you get to do a whole 5 minutes. If you win you get to come back again and open the show with 8 minutes at your own expense, and you get into the end of year final. And maybe if they really like you, you get offered a 15 minute spot on a Thursday for £20. If you think comedy is an easy way to earn money you are wrong. So I turned up, it was I think my second ever gig outside of Liverpool. I was really nervous, I didn't really understand the format, it seemed scary, but I won and it felt amazing! 

Other great gig's were the Comedy Store Manchester, which I did very early into my year of doing everything. It felt like a really big deal. There was a dressing room with a mirror with lights going round it. It's where I first met Anna Thomas. We were both very new (unless you count my secret years) she was just great and also one of the loveliest people in comedy. I got her to do my night when it started and then begged her to headline when she had enough material. She headlined on the terrible night when there was hardly any audience and the sound equipment was playing up and she still smashed it. She has just won the BBC New Comedian of the Year award and I am super chuffed for her.

I did a fair few nice gigs at Hot Water. They always get a great crowd and sometimes I was on with semi famous people from the telly. It's very blokey, run by man, virtually never a female MC and in my opinion they don't really try and get women on. But having said that, people have always been very welcoming, and a male MC persuaded me to do some of my breastfeeding material, which actually went really well and a random male audience member said he liked my set at the end so that was pretty nice to hear.

One of the gigs I'm proudest of doing is when I did tour support for Harriet Kemsley, she was so lovely to me and it was just a really fun friendly night.

One of my favourite nights was when I did something like a 6 hour round trip for 2 minutes of stage time at a gong show. It sounds like it should be on the bad list right? But it was just a fun road trip with nice people, and a really big gong show, in a proper theatre. but the banta on the road trip was the best part.

.

The Bad/ Weird Ones

The worst one by far was a gig in Burnley where it was a trial for more paid work. The audience was nearly all men, a few women and a dog. The acts were all men. As I got up I was immediately heckled, and after I was done a man came up to me and just said "you were shit" and walked off. And then I got an email confirming that I would never get more work from them.  

Other bad ones were just more annoying, like leaving a barbecue with friends, to travel over an hour for no money, to go to a gig in a pub where no one was there to see comedy and the mic didn't work.

A pretty weird one that ended up good in the end was when I headlined a gig in an upstairs room of a pub in Nottingham. I was getting paid £50, roughly the cost of petrol to Nottingham. It was a super long drive but having Alex (the girl who's taken over Early Risers) in the car with me made it a lot more fun. We arrived and all the other comedians were men. We all sort of said hi and some of the guys did that classic thing that comedians do when they big themselves up and say about all their achievements. (I would say 5% of people and 20% of comedians haven't yet learnt that listing your achievements when you first meet someone is not the way to make people like you.)

The gig started and the audience were awful, they were very drunk and heckley. Then in the break they all left which was a relief for some, but a bit of a worry for me. I knew that if the gig got cancelled I would not get paid and I could not afford that £50 of petrol. So before the woman in charge had a chance to cancel it I went to the pub downstairs and persuaded as many people as I could to come upstairs for the gig. It was mainly older ladies but they made for a better audience. I did my set and actually I did a really good gig. It's the best feeling in the world to know that you've made people laugh and you can afford to drive home.

If you want to book me for gigs I'm still here! The France thing is taking forever, the earliest we will be leaving now is easter but we may not leave till the summer.

My Comedy Life So Far (2007-2018)

Last week I had my last ever Early Risers, which is the comedy night I set up in January 2019. This week I handed over all the social media accounts to the new owner of Early Risers - Alex. It's a strange transitional time for me, but here's the story of my comedy life so far:

2007 (age 21) 

I had just got together with Dan and was trying to impress him. Dan liked comedy so I got us surprise tickets to see Ross Noble at the Empire Theatre. It was quite a lot of money to spend for a student and wasn't even for a special occasion. I thought it was unfortunate that I probably wouldn't enjoy it. How could anyone really enjoy watching just one man on a stage saying things. If I was going to go to a theatre I ideally wanted costumes and several people, songs and a set and a story line. Not just one man. But I was in that sickeningly in-love stage where I was trying to impress him. I also took a whole day off uni to make him a birthday cake that looked like a piano with keys made from white and dark chocolate. And he hired a car from Southport and drove it all the way down to Heathrow just so he could pick me up from the airport. Disgusting. Ross Noble turned out to be better than my very low expectations.

2011 (age 25)

I was going to a poetry night with a bunch of friends from my church. My church had recently split into groups depending on interests and we were part of "studio" the group of creative people. Every month we went to see a creative thing, we went to exhibitions and stuff. Once we went to see something that described itself as "a piece of magical live art theatre" which turned out to be a naked woman just wearing a pair of red heels and a horses head. Anyway the poetry thing we were going to got cancelled and so we quickly had to find an alternative. It just so happened that a comedy night was running at the same time and almost in the same place. It was not a polished night of high class entertainment, it was a sketch troupe of 3 comedians Rob, Lee and Oli doing their alternative comedy sketches and a few stand ups and the occasional comedy puppet show where you were asked to donate £1. It was amazing and often very clever and very funny, apart from some times when it was awful. But thats what made it amazing because you never knew when a drunk open spot was about to do too long on stage and have to be forced off. It was in a semi-abandoned building with terrible loos and no heating and I once took my own hot water bottle. 

I didn't realise then this was not a normal comedy night. This was my first experience of comedy so I had nothing to compare it to, but if I could go back in time to that night now I would. I carried on going to it as much as I could until it stopped about 5 years later.

2012 (age 26)

After a year of going to this night I thought I'd like to try comedy. I was show off as a kid, always putting on performances for the grown ups with my younger sisters and cousins, but I hadn't really performed anything for 10 years. I was quite into drama all through secondary school but around the time I was doing my GCSEs I stopped being a show off. I didn't want people to look at me, I quit my after school drama group and pretty much stopped liking myself. I had originally wanted to do drama for A-level but it didn't work on the timetable with the other subjects I wanted to do. Me approaching that situation now would be like, "ok what's the solution maybe I could go to a different college" but me as a 16 year old just went, "ok well I'll probably be rubbish at it anyway, so why don't I just pick a random subject that I don't care at all about and do that half heartedly?"

I stayed away from showing off for a long time. I loved art but I hated having to talk about my work. I gradually got better at that stuff and started liking myself again. Doing art exhibitions in second year helped me because it was sort of like putting on a show, but a show where you do all the work beforehand and you can't mess up some lines: you only put on the wall what your happy with. By age 26 I was ready to be a show off again. The standards were varied so you didn't have to be great to be not the worst person on, you just had to be fairly sober and have done a bit of prep.

I started this blog in 2009 so I had been writing funny observations for a while. So when it came to writing a 5 minute set I just sort said some things I said on my blog. I used a flip chart too with pre drawn out cartoons, because drawing was something safe to me. Dan also did 5 mins on the same night. 

I cringe at some of the set now but I went home with the biggest buzz I've ever had. I imagine it's like drugs, you can never get a hit like that first hit again, even it you sell out Wembley arena. Rob and Lee still refer to me as their comedy godchild, because I was "born" at their night. Aww. you can watch a set from that night here.

2016 (age 30)

I carried on for years doing comedy at this one comedy night, but I did a few other nights too if people asked me to. There was a night set up in the back room of a pizza place and a night in a little tiny theatre that I used to do too. They were all in Liverpool city centre. I did consider then wether I should try other nights in Manchester and stuff, and whether I should try and get paid for it, but at the time I was quite new to doing art projects in schools and I loved it. It was easier to keep that the thing I did for money and comedy the thing I did for fun and not try and mix them up. I traveled to Manchester enough for work already, I didn't want to be traveling there in the evenings too. I enjoyed doing comedy when I was pregnant with Percy. 

If you fancy watching my heavily pregnant comedy from 2014 click here

I went to the Edinburgh fringe (just to watch) when I was heavily pregnant and Percy came with me to the comedy night when he was 6 weeks old. Then there was about a year when I didn't go, and it was never quite the same after, partly because Dan couldn't go with me and I was out of the scene a bit. I really wanted to go to Edinburgh and do a hour long show but I knew it would be impossible with a baby, so a friend suggested doing Liverpool comedy festival. One show in Liverpool is a lot easier that 3 shows a day for a month in Edinburgh. So I wrote my first show in 2016. It was called "Best days of you life" and it was about going to school in the 90's and 00s. It was fun! 

Lots of people came, I was proud of it at the time and I'm relatively proud of it still, unfortunately the camera switched itself off, so there is no record of it. Which is a shame because Dan even had a small part as the Suez canal in a surreal dream sequence. 

2018 (age 32)

This was the year I decided to go for it properly. In 2017 I had another baby and moved house, there was no time for fun in 2017, it was just a survival year. I knew the real fun wouldn't start till 2019. You just can't do stuff you want to do when your kid is under 2, in my opinion. The art job was hard to get back to, childcare is expensive and you can't just do it whenever you have the work. I wanted to do something with my life that was not parenting. I had time for one hobby and that was it, and I decided to go back to comedy. I thought "I'll write another hour long show." I realise now that this is not the normal way people go about doing comedy. It's much more normal to write 10 minutes and perform it everywhere straight away than to spend 6 years writing 2 hour long shows before ever performing outside your own city, but no one told me this. It's not one of those careers that are mapped out for you by a careers advisor

The nights I used to go to had all stopped. All the venues we used to create fun in were had been made into student flats. I had to find a new night and go out without Dan, who was home with both kids, and I had to get back in time to breastfeed in the night, because baby Eric would never ever take a bottle! So I started going to this night at the Unity theatre. It was a monthly night I could test material at. I didn't know many people and it felt like a weird thing to do, to just go out by myself and try jokes, but I tried some new stuff, I got to know some new people and I stated putting together my new comedy show about parenting "job done".

The show was coming together and the theatre was booked when I found out I had cancer (read my hiarious account of this here). So it was a strange time. I did my show, which I was really proud of and I still am really proud of. It sold out, so I added an extra night. Over 100 people came in the end and it was just lovely. It felt like a proper achievement and I didn't want it to end there. Unfortunately it had to end there, because the next week I had the cancer removal operation followed by a month in bed. 

Watch a little 6 minute best bits from this show here

I'm bad at resting, so I spent that whole time booking myself into as many comedy nights as I could. I decided I was going to spend a year taking every opportunity, going to everywhere that would have me. Two people encouraged me to go for it at this stage, the sound guy from The Everyman, who I can't even remember his name. He said this is exactly the kind of thing The Everyman should be putting on and encouraged me to start my own night. The other was one of MCs from Hot Water Comedy Club, Freddy, who told me to enter competitions and get practise in all different kinds of audience. He even said my breastfeeding stuff was good, because it was different. and I never would have considered doing that stuff in a hot water audience but it did actually go really well.

So I set myself a target, to do comedy as much as I could for a year and see if I could make money from it by the end of the year. And to start my own monthly night. 

I'm going to write all this in another blog because I've already written loads. Part 2 will cover the highs and lows of actually trying in comedy, and how my comedy night evolved, and what happened to comedy in the pandemic.

The Recce to France

What a weird stupid word "recce" is. I've only seen it written down recently and I really think it should be spelt "recky" like Becky.

If you can get over that, you might be able to tolerate this blog. Over half term we spent 6 days in France visiting 3 locations in the hope that we would "get a feeling" for one and decide to move there. It felt pretty extravagant to go away for half term, given that lots of people haven't been abroad since before the pandemic and we went to Greece at the end of August, but I made myself feel better by telling myself this wasn't a holiday, this was a recce. We were going to go to a bank and an estate agent, not just sit around all day eating pain au chocolat. Although we did a lot more eating pain au chocolat than visiting banks. We flew to Carcassonne and as were were going through the baggage check they asked us if we had any ipads or electronics in the kids bags. We we said "no they don't even own an iPad." Then Dan started saying about how we're pretty old school and they just have books and card games and stuff, and they guy seemed surprised and maybe a bit impressed. Then Dan went to far and said we just have chisels and stone and I had to reassure the man that we did not have a bunch of chisels in our hand luggage.

The places we visited were all quite close together in the middle south, which is the more affordable bit of the south coast. We basically just wandered around looking at the town centre and then a bit at the outskirts, trying out public transport, and places to eat and parks and then judged them all against each other like a game of top trumps. Why don't you play the game yourself? I'll give you a paragraph of description and 3 photos for each place and then you tell me which one you would choose...

1) Carcassonne.

The furthest away from the sea (an hour by car) and the smallest population, but the cheapest place to live. There's an airport so you can fly directly there from Manchester. There were lovely old city walls on a hill with nice touristy shops and cafes inside.  It had a river and a canal, it had a nice square with loads of restaurants and a fountain. The streets were very narrow. Only one car can fit down at a time so a lot of the roads were one way.

2) Narbonne.

Slightly bigger population than Carcassonne. Only a few miles from a lovely sandy beach, so you can get there on the number 8 bus from the city centre. No airport, so you would have to fly in from Carcassone or Beziers. Big square in the centre by the river with restaurants all round it. There was a permanent indoor food market and an (I'm guessing weekly) outdoor market.

3) Montpellier.

A much bigger place than the other two. A city with a tram network so that you can easily get all over the city, just like you would get a tube in London. City bikes that anyone can hire, (you get two hours for free) a lot of students, a very young aged population on average. Not far from the beach but you can't get directly there from the centre on public transport. You'd have to get a tram and then a bus. Lots more things to do just because it's bigger. Not many houses with outdoor space though, the majority of people live in apartments and it's more expensive to live there than the other two places. There is an airport but they don't fly to the north of England, so you would have to go to Beziers to fly to Manchester.

So which one would you choose?

I'll tell you our thoughts later, but in the mean time here's some of my general observations about the differences between the French and the English that I spotted on this trip:

The French are much more likely to have very round Harry Potter style glasses, especially children.

Red trousers are more common in France especially among men. You don't have to be a hipster to wear them, or maybe all French people are hipsters?

Smoking seems to still be cool in France. There seemed to be a lot more people doing it publicly in parks and stuff.

Gingers are pretty rare in France, although people did still assume I was french before I spoke, so I don't stick out as much as I have done when I was in the Middle East.

The places we went in general all seemed a bit more multi-cultural than Liverpool.

Public transport was really good value, but we got 3 trains and all of them were delayed. 

Food in supermarkets was generally more expensive than in the UK. A french homeless person asked me to buy him cheese... I don't think that would happen here.

Restaurants don't open till 7 at the earliest. So if you want to go out to eat at 5 or 6 you have to eat from a lunch place, so you could get a sandwich or a crepe, but not a proper hot meal. 

Loads of shops shut for a hour or two around lunch time!

The french were a lot more stick about covid, we had to wear masks everywhere and show that we've had a vaccine in order to eat out.

Deciding where to live

Before we left we had emailed a few international churches, because it is important for us to find a good church there. We got responses from all of them and they were all happy to have us and very helpful and welcoming, but the one in Montpellier seemed to have a better mix of people, i.e. not just old people, some families and stuff. So I went into the trip thinking "I hope Montpellier wins and that we can afford to live there."

We liked Carcassonne, and then we liked Narbonne even more, but all the time I was hoping Montpellier would be amazing. We weren't the on a Sunday unfortunately to go to the church, but I did go to a ladies thing at the church, which was food, chatting, a bit of Bible study led by a really nice American lady. I met women from all over the world, a lot from French speaking Africa, some American, some other Europeans and one other Brit. There was a good age range and they were all really lovely and welcoming. So I would really love to be part of that community, but there are two major things in the way:

1) It is quite expensive to live there. The problem with Liverpool being so cheap is that everywhere else seems expensive. So we could probably only afford a 2 bed apartment, or that kind of thing.

2) I don't love the city that much. It was fine, there were lots of nice things about it (like I love the trams). There was nothing wrong with it, but I just got a better feeling about Narbonne. 

It's really hard not to be influenced by the weather though, it was 19 degrees and sunny in Narbonne and I swam in the sea! Whereas in Montpellier it was grey and rainy.

So our next steps are to look into the towns near by Montpellier. Is there somewhere we could live quite near the city, that is more affordable? Then maybe we can get a bit of outdoor space and still be a part of Montpellier international church. That's the next thing we will research. Nothing's decided, we might completely go back to the drawing board and look at another city that we previously discounted for being a bit far north, for example, but that's where we're up to. Thanks for reading.