Leaving and Arriving.

 

We've arrived!

Thursday (21st April)

This was the day all our stuff was being shipped. The van was arriving at 8am at our house in Liverpool and we were living with my parents in Cheshire. We left the boys with Granny and Grandad and headed off, nervous about whether everything would fit. On the way we discussed what stuff we would leave behind if we had to. Dan had been taking phone calls from France over the last few days trying to make sure we had electricity when we arrived, it seemed to be needlessly complicated. Apparently our house, number 4, didn't exist on the grid even though 1, 2,3 ,5 and 6 did. It's a very new house, built in 2020, but we're not the first people to live in it. We needed to find the name of the previous tenant to sort out our electricity and connect us. We also had to find away to connect to the internet straight away, because Dan's job is online and I really like to watch Netflix.

The Van arrived minutes after we did and they started packing up everything in the dining room, which was completely full of boxes, bikes and small bits of furniture. outside the room was also our mattresses and the fridge. One double bed was being left by a pervious tenant in the French house, so we decided if there was room we would take our king sized bed and use the double as a spare, but if there was no room we could at least sleep on the double. It turns out there was loads of room, which I was happy about but also a bit annoyed that I could have taken more stuff (or paid less). We had agreed on 20 cubic meters, which is hard to imagine, but the guys packing said everything in the dining room was 10 cubic meters, so I'm guessing with the extra bits it was around 13 cubic meters. So sort of annoying but I guess I should be thankful it all fit. 

I was so happy when the van left it finally felt like the most stressful bits were over and we really were moving. This is me literally jumping for joy as the van left. 

I feel really proud of myself that I managed to pack up a whole house. Dan has done all of the difficult french admin stuff but in terms of packing he really only did his own stuff. I did mine and the kids and the stuff in the loft and the shed and everywhere. We're a good team, if Dan was in charge of packing and I was french admin we would still be in Liverpool. I kind of wanted to celebrate that it was finally done, but it was 9 in the morning and I was just in an empty house I didn't even have a kettle. We stayed for quite a few more hours as I had to paint over all the holes that I filled in from all the shelves we'd taken down. I also had to paint over the kids bedroom space mural, including their rocket heigh chart which was a bit sad. 

I kept thinking we were done and then spotting more jobs. The estate agent that we're renting out the house with came to see it. He is responsible for putting in the new kitchen before they get us a tenant. Just before we left Dan got a call about the electricity they said it will be switched on on Saturday, hooray!! But that it will be between midnight and 11:59 pm- not so great. So we still didn't know if we would arrive to a house with electricity.

Friday

"WE'RE MOVING TO FRANCE TODAY!" the boys shouted as they danced round in circles. We tried to pack the last of our bags up. We went for the Ryanair family package which meant 1 20kg bag between us, a 10kg bag each and a small backpack each. In retrospect that was way too many bags especially as we had to get a train once we were in France. Carrying all these bags around was especially annoying because we had about 7 square meters of shipping that we didn't use and 90% of the stuff in our bags we didn't immediately need and we could have just shipped. But we had all our stuff from the last week of living in other peoples houses. As we'd last minute shipped an extra king sized bed, we also had another duvet we wanted to take, but hadn't been organised enough to put in the shipping so most of our biggest bag was taken up with that.

We said goodbye to my mum who was ill, so Eric gave her a hug he learnt in covid times (where you hug yourself). She is really sad about us leaving and (falsely) claims that she first heard about our plans to leave by reading this blog. My Dad gave us a lift to Manchester airport and we said a quick goodbye because if you park up for more than 10 seconds Manchester airport charge you!

We checked in our many bags and the Ryanair woman said we didn't really get the best deal and it would have been much cheaper to take two big bags. Easier to carry as well, but I swear that wasn't one of the options when we booked it. I have a fear of flying, not a like a normal persons fear of flying, I just have a massive anxiety about being late to a flight or having the wrong size bag or wrong documents. This is because I once missed a flight, and I once turned up at an airport with a ticket for the previous month and had to buy a very expensive last minute ticket. And then after they sold me that they said "run because you might not make it!" Anyway this time it was all fine, and were were in the departure lounge for longer than we were on the flight.

A cool lady with dead locks from Dan's Grandpa's town Malpas took this photo

The flight was fine and we arrived in Carcassonne around 5pm. This was Dan and the boys first time travelling on their french ID cards. They gave them in so they didn't get a stamp in their UK passports which means they can stay forever. 

I got a stamp and have to come back in May to get my visa. After we'd got through that bit we walked out to a group of Hari Krishnas all singing ready to welcome this guy on our flight, who was wearing entirely orange, including orange socks and crocs. That was surreal. We got onto the transfer bus to the station and Dan said "I can tell you this now, I didn't know if that ID card thing would work, I've never done it before." We got to Carcassonne train station and there were no trains until 8:20pm which was over two hours away. We strolled off with our many bags in search of food.

Moving countries sounds like it should be the most exciting day of your life, it's definitely one of the most significant ones, but actually this was just a full day of waiting around. Really nothing exciting happened. The kids had a little play on a nearby playground, (we know the area a bit from our recce) and then we ate at a restaurant, sitting outside so as to not annoy people without our nine bags! Then we headed back to the station the train said it was delayed 15 minutes but just as we arrived on the platform a good 10 minutes before the delayed time of leaving, it arrived and then left, so we actually could have missed it which would have been a nightmare. 

We got into Perpignan around 10pm and we were all very tired! We had another little bit of a walk to our airbnb, the kids did so well considering how late it was. We stayed in this really trendy little flat with two tiny loft bedrooms off an open plan room. Eric was giddy with excitement seeing how cool the flat was and then immediately fell asleep with the light on the moment he lay down.

Saturday

This was the fun exciting day we'd dreamt of. Dan got up early to collect this hire car which was tiny and electric. He absolutely loved it and we all thought it was pretty cool too. He then went to buy car seats in a big supermarket and paid the same for them as it was to hire them for one day! 

the way the doors open is really cool.

He came back to get us and we sped off to see our new house for the first time (even Dan had never see it in real life before). The surroundings were very rural, fields and country roads and tractors and beautiful mountains in the distance.

We met the estate agent there and went to look round. It's super modern, all white with black tiled floor everywhere. Three bedrooms that are all a really good size. The garden was bigger than expected which made me both happy and annoyed that I hadn't bought my hammock. I really love my hammock, its one of my favourite things, but it's on a frame that takes a lot of space. When I saw photos of the garden I thought if I took the hammock they'd be no space for anyone else's stuff so I left it with my parents. The house is great though and the electricity was working! I love that it has electric shutters on all the windows that properly block out all the light, and I really love that you can see a snow topped mountain out of the window! This mountain is called Canigou, which we have been joking is like a Scottish person saying, "I cannee go." 

The view from our bedroom window!

The kids immediately filled the floor with lego, they had been given a couple of new kits which I was saving for when we arrived at the house and our other toys had not arrived. 

full house tour before our stuff arrived.

Our stuff arrived two hours after us and the driver helped us carry a lot of stuff upstairs. Unfortunately the TV snapped off the stand and is pretty unusable and a computer screen has cracked. The company are not being great about fixing it, saying it's our fault because of the way we a packaged it but the screen was wrapped in bubble wrap and cardboard so I'm not sure what more we could have done. We went to a massive super market to get some essentials in and stared the unpacking, tired but feeling very grateful to be in.

how we are eating until we get a table 

Sunday

Nothing is open in France on a Sunday, not much anyway so it was nice to have this day as a day off. We went to visit an English speaking church, where we had been invited for lunch after. The church was around 25 people meeting in the really big home of the church leaders. It was kind of a similar style to the church we came from. The church is run by a couple who moved to France around 24 years ago. The english speaking church is connected to a bigger french speaking church which we will also check out. It would be easier to just go to the English one but we do want to integrate and know French people, and if there's more kids at the French one then once our kids know French, they might enjoy that one more. 

One of the guest speakers was this lady about our age from Newcastle who was an A&E consultant doing medical work, including helicopter rescue, and then just as a hobby because that's not dangerous enough, she takes 3 months off to help in a war zone. She's just back from Ukraine, but she's also been to Iraq and the Bahamas (after a hurricane) and a load of other places. We had lunch outside in their court yard: us four, the couple who run the church, the war zone doctor and her friend who was also really cool and interesting (she left her job as an accountant to work in community theatre). I respect that a lot. I feel like everyone at the table were interesting cool adventurers, and the fact that we had just moved into a house without seeing it, the day before, made us part of the adventurous crew. 

The couple who run the church know someone giving away a dining table and chairs too so that's a bonus. We've been haemorrhaging money in the last few weeks, paying for a new kitchen in our old house, and shipping our stuff. We didn't bring that much furniture, so we still have a lot of stuff to buy including a car, so I'm very grateful for a free table.

Because we had the electric car I suggested we went somewhere cool after church, so we headed to Ille-sur-tet, about 15 mins west of our house. It's an area with a little town/village and some crazy rock formations. We parked up and started climbing up this big rocky path, the views were incredible and I can't believe we live so close to a place so beautiful. It was such a lovely day, and I really can't believe that we get to live in this amazing area of the world. I guess the lady in the pharmacy was right (see my previous blog) I really am lucky.

Ille-sur-tet

Next blog: dragging the kids round 8 shops in a day, meeting the mayor of the village, my terrible french, exploring our local area, buying a car, and whatever happens when I take the kids to town on the train today.

P.s we're going to make a Podcast about moving to France with tips about how to move, and funny stories. We've love suggestions for a name for it. The best one so far is "ex-scouse my french" 

Lucky and Brave

I'm writing this at the airport. We've got through the stressful bits and we're sat in the fun shopping bit. I have 49p of English money I want to get rid of but the cheapest thing you can buy is chewing gum for 60p. We've emptied out all our waters to get through security and are now drinking warm water from the toilets. mmm.

Two phrases that people have said to me a lot recently that I think are slightly weird are, "you are so lucky," and, "you are so brave." Brave is a funny word. I'm not quite sure in what situation I would call someone brave but it wouldn't be in my situation. I'm basically retiring to the south of France. I'm giving up work for a while to live somewhere sunnier because I want to, and I'm in the privileged position to be able to move because Dan is half French and we have enough money (we hope!) to pay for the cost of moving. It's hardly brave, I'm not moving to a war torn country to do humanitarian work.  I get that I'm taking some risks, financially and leaving people and also putting myself in awkward French situations, but I already put myself in plenty of awkward situations in the UK anyway. 

Lucky is an interesting word too. I am lucky in almost every way, I'm lucky to be with Dan not just because of his EU status but he's actually quite a nice guy! We've been lucky to have two healthy boys who are pretty chilled about all the change and the idea of moving. A few weeks ago I was sitting on the sofa reading a story to them when a man turned up to buy the sofa, and we had to continue reading on the floor, and they were kind of fine with it. 

We're lucky that Dan has a job that is remote so we can actually choose where in the world we want to live. Hardly anyone actually chooses where they want to live, I'd say at least 90% of people live somewhere because either that's where they were born, that's where they found a job or that's where their family or partners family live. 

But when people have heard I'm moving to France and have said "I'm jealous" or "you're lucky" its felt a bit weird, because the last month has felt like one of the most stressful of my life. I don't want people to see nice pictures of us on the beach without having seen the time about two weeks ago, when I was manically trying to shove a frying pan into a public bin by a bus stop because our bins were overflowing. But funny enough I didn't take a photo of that. There were days I woke up motivated to get stuff packed, and days that I woke up so overwhelmed by the task of packing or getting rid of everything I owned, that I just couldn't get anything done.

For most of March I was constantly putting things on facebook marketplace. Some things sold well and when it works it's great, but then there's other times when a man comes to the door to buy a house plant and as you bring it out it's shedding it's leaves everywhere, and he asks if it'd dead. Oops.

The last two months have been so stressful, with the stress peaking around three weeks ago when we didn't have a move in date, the boys french ID cards hadn't arrived, and I found out it was impossible to get my visa sorted on time. Even two weeks ago we still didn't have a confirmed move in date, and the shipping people were threatening to give our dates to someone else if we didn't pay our deposit immediately.  

The visa issue never got sorted, which means at the end of May I have to come back for 25 days which is a super long time to leave Dan and the boys for. I'll make the most of my time here seeing people, staying at my parents house on a river and maybe doing a bit of paid work, but poor Dan will have the kids and still have to work.

I had to got to the pharmacy to pick up some medication and I explained it was more because I'm moving to France and she said "lucky you!" and I really am lucky, but really most people can do fun exciting things with their lives if they are willing to put in loads of work and stress to make it happen.

The last Days

Dan's last day at work was 12th April and we got our flight on 22nd April, so those 10 days were mainly filled with mad packing and French admin. We had to completely clear our house, the estate agent we're renting out house out with wants it to be unfurnished so everything had to go including the loft stuff and ideally it needed to be painted white, so there was a lot to do, but we did have a few nice days off within that time. 

Eric's birthday is 3rd May, but we wanted to do something nice for him before we left. He originally wanted a whole class bouncy castle in a hall party, which I was not thrilled about (his class are lovely but I really didn't have the capacity to organise that the week before leaving the country). One day he mentioned he wanted to go to lego land Manchester and I was so happy when we agreed to go there with another family, instead of a party. It was a lovely chance for him to hang out with his best school friend Theo, and for us all to hang out with a family we love and will miss, and I didn't have to make 30 party bags!

The next day we had off packing was my sister Sarah's wedding on Easter Saturday! She was originally meant to be married in Easter 2020 and managed to get legally married then with just two witnesses, then she had a little garden party wedding with just her household (Luke's family) where she wore the dress and got on the news. But this was the big party that she paid for ages ago. It was so lovely to finally get to celebrate it. She looked incredible in her dress and the whole day was beautiful. I was a bridesmaid and the boys were page boys. Percy and Eric got super into dancing in their very original way (sort of skipping mixed with breakdancing) and a lot of people including me were very happy to watch a totally uninhibited 7 and 4 year old go crazy on the dance floor rather than dance themselves. I'm really happy Sarah and Luke finally got to celebrate.

The next day was Easter day we had our last day at our church, they all prayed for us and they bought the kids some lovely gifts, and took this photo. 

Then we had lunch with the legends that are Zac and Jude. They are the loveliest friends. They let us live in their house for a few days while we cleared everything out of our own house, they were on holiday for a bit and then we lived together for a few days too. We were the worst guests. We were tired and stressed and only brought the dregs our our fridge to their house and they looked after us in every possible way. On the day of our big leaving party I had planned to make a big cake, but then there was lots of left over wedding cake from Sarah's wedding and Jude spent all day making cookies with her kids for the party too. They even gave us a spare fridge they had which has made its way to France, meaning we could leave ours for the new tenants. 

The day of the party was crazy, I was awake at 5:30 am feeling anxious about everything. By 7.10 am I was on my bike cycling to the house to do more sorting, which mainly consisted of walking room to room wondering what to do with the bits that were left that we weren't shipping, like all our post, a half empty bottle of shampoo and an old pound coin. I went to Morrison's to pick up some helium balloons and bumped into a mum friend Jo. I was embarrassed to be seen un-showered and with no make up on. In the hour before the party I was manically trying to get the kids ready in their little suits while Dan was at the venue. I also had to get myself ready and pack a bag for the kids to go straight from the party to stay with my parents. At one point I was shouting at the kids, "where are your socks?! you were wearing socks earlier, where are they!?" They both didn't know, so I grabbed some new ones from Zac and Judes tumble dryer. At this point Eric innocently asked "are they dark socks?" and Zac smiled remembering the wedding two days earlier when Dan was in charge of dressing the boys and I told him, "you could have put them in dark socks!" (instead of lime green ones). We then got in the car and just as I was strapping them in I noticed Percy had his trousers on the wrong way round. 

Then began the least relaxing party I'd ever been to. I arrived late and they were a lot of kids running round trying to take the helium balloons off chairs, which I'd carefully arranged in the colours of the French flag. We had a ceilidh which we had at our wedding, it's like a barn dance where they tell you what to do which I like because I'm bad at real dancing. It was fun and lots of people came that I hadn't seen for ages, even people who didn't really know anyone else came and that made it really special. 

The band were great and they adapted it to make it easier because there were so many young kids. I have to say it was a relief to get home. After that we spent one more night with Zac and Jude and then moved in with my parents who had the kids all day while we were at our house again and then fed us at night which was a real treat. They've also already booked to see us in July and Dan's parents are coming in May.

I've written a lot, sorry. I can't wait to get onto the next blog where we actually leave and arrive. Spoiler alert: it's amazing and shoving a frying pan into a public bin is now just a distant memory. 

Bonne Nuit.

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.