An Exciting Month

Jones updates...

It's been a busy time since schools have been back. I've had a load of work which has been amazing. I've been doing a mural of about 20 key workers at Percy's school which is nearly finished and just before that I did a massive mosaic. 

Dan's been busy applying for jobs because he will be getting made redundant in September.

Percy is getting very into the football, he's been given Ukraine in the class sweepstake. So we let him watch the only match that started before his bedtime: Ukraine vs Austria which ended 1- 0 to Austria. We are the least football family ever, but we tried to make an effort just in case he wants to get into football one day. As a comedian and hater of football I find it almost impossible to show any kind of genuine support for the footballers. We were trying to come up with child appropriate football chants. He has got quite into it though and has been filling in his little chart keeping track of the scores.

Eric has found out what class he'll be in when he starts school in September, and we're going to meet up with a few of those kids today. He's really excited to join Percy at school. They are particularly excited about getting the school photo together.

July...

Next month is looking exciting. Dan is going on a tv game show! It's a new show called the 1% club where he could theoretically win £100k by answering logic questions. you know stuff like "what cheese is made backwards?" (Edam) In practise if you get to win a share of 100k you have already won 10k that you have to gamble and we've already decided that that is not a risk worth taking for us. Realistically he is much more like to win nothing or maybe £1000 but it sounds like a fun day out, and Dan will get to meet one of his comedy heroes Lee Mack, who is the presenter.

Other things that are happening in July are: I have an interview for a job teaching art to people with neurological conditions.  If I get it I'll explain more about it.

On 23rd July it will be our 10 year wedding anniversary. I'm super excited about this because we will be having 5 nights away without the kids! The most we've ever had before is 2 nights and I just can't even imagine having 5 nights. Imagine being able to have a full conversation over dinner without having to wipe somebodies face or arse! Yesterday at dinner I said that classic mum line "eat with your knife and fork, you're not an animal" to which Percy replied "humans are animals actually."

We're ending July with what I am super excited about and Dan is tolerating for the sake of my happiness. JONESFEST our festival in our garden. Everyone that knows me is invited. It's like a weekend long party to make up for an 18 month long lockdown. I refer to this lockdown period as introvertfest when I'm trying to persuade Dan that Jonesfest is a great idea. We did a cut down version of it last year at the end of August in between lockdowns. We cancelled the evening things but we did a circus skills workshop and a drama workshop and kids baking and a family bike ride and breeze block sculpting. It's quite a lot of work to put together but then on the weekend it's just so lovely being with people and doing interesting things.

This year I'm most excited about my comedy panel show "Mockmaster". It's a mixture of 2 of my favourite shows Mock The Week and Taskmaster. I've loved putting it together and I'm super pleased with the line up. I won't go in to detail about the tasks I have in store, but let's just say Dan has already declared he is taking no responsibility for it if things go wrong. That's the level of fun it's going to be.

Other fun things happening at the festival are my favourite childhood wide game in Childwall woods and my sister Jo teaching an arial hoop class.

Redundancy, hugs and DIY

A few weeks ago Dan was told that he is going to be made redundant in September. It was weird news, his job which is writing procedures for a housing company is all he's ever wanted to do since he was 5. Jokes. Ok it's not the most inspirational job but someones got to do it... Actually thats not even true they've had a big restructure and decided that no one needs to do that job. 

It was a good job though, it was quite well paid and very flexible and he liked his team and since the pandemic he has worked entirely from home, which has made things even more flexible with childcare and homeschooling stuff. If this had happened a year ago it would have been a much more worrying situation because I lost all my work from March to October. Then I worked 3 jobs until January when everything closed down and I had to homeschool again. So Dan's income kept us afloat in all that time. At least now I have lots of work and hopefully I can continue working in September. 

Dan's been thinking about all his options. We don't want to rush into any old other job just yet. He's been considering the police. He always wanted to do something active and physical and thought about the police when he was 18 or so, but the anti-social hours and pay cut he'd have to take are a bit off-putting. If only criminals could keep their law breaking to 9-5 Monday to Friday it would be much more convenient. They should make that the law. But the big plan A idea that we've talked about for so many years is moving country. 

There's been so many times before when we've considered it. When we got married we saved for 2 years to go on a massive trip cycling though Europe to the Middle East. On that trip we went with a view of trying out countries for living in, but actually much as we had an amazing time we missed our Liverpool community, and decided to have a baby here. 

Cycling on a nice Swiss road in 2013

The next time we thought about moving was when we suddenly became homeless after our house sale fell through. We had all the money for the deposit still in our bank and thought maybe this is the time. In the end we found the house we currently live in which has been really great, and for a good few years my desire to leave went away. I would still be gutted to say goodbye to our friends and family and home but it's got to the point where we think we would if we got the chance.

Finally getting a house in 2017 a few months before Eric was born

We've been in many circles with what country, but it's been narrowed down a bit by Brexit to France. Dan is half French so him and the boys could live there, the same as French people and I could get a spouse visa. I actually remember saying in the last general election that if Labour won we'd have a third child (because we might be able to afford it) and if the Tories won we'd move to France because we wouldn't want to live here anymore. Sort of a joke but a little bit true. 

We also thought about going further afield, like Australia or something, but I wouldn't want to go anywhere that far for more than a year. For a year we'd go almost anywhere though, apart from the south. We decided if we were going to uproot ourselves there's no point doing that to go somewhere where it still rains a lot. So we've narrowed it down to Liverpool, and the rest of the world except the UK, and space, we haven't ruled that out. If you know of any jobs let us know!

In national news hugs are back from Monday. I'm personally not going to hug anyone on Monday though, because I don't like the idea of hugging people when Boris tells me to. So I'll be giving out hugs to anyone who wants them on Sunday and Tuesday. This is the day I've been waiting for since they announced the lockdown easing in February: The day you can have another human in your house. I'm going to go so crazy with seeing people and I've just finished decorating the dining room so we can have people round for dinner.

Before...

During...

It's the obvious thing to do with this paper

Our dining room was briefly a kids gallery

Dying the curtains. Dan said they look like giant tampons

Sticking on the panels

After.....

It was a lot of work. It took 5 or 6 tubes of no more nails and some nails.

That's a painting I did in lockdown.

Percy designed this bit with the jug.

Can't wait to hug you and feed you all soon. x

Getting back to life

Yesterday was the best day I've had for ages, I've been working super hard. In December I had 3 jobs with the theory I should just take the work while I can because I knew I would have no work in January, so I could take some time to relax then. That was only half true: I had no income in January but there was no time to relax as I had to home school again. It wasn't awful, I'm pretty well qualified as a homeschool teacher and Percy is a pretty good student but I wouldn't call it relaxing. We did some nice things and we formed a childcare bubble so sometimes I was homeschooling 4 kids and sometimes I did have a day without kids where I could do all the other jobs.  When Percy went back to school he came home with a honorary teacher certificate for us with an attached KitKat and 1 tea bag which me and Dan shared. 1 finger of KitKat for 3 months of homeschooling seems fair payment.

Now that school is going back I finally have some art projects to do again, one of them has been delayed a whole year. So I'm really excited to be getting on with that again, when it's all going well and I have loads of work it's my dream job. It has been hard work though, I've made this mosaic bigger than it should have been because I'm not very good at estimating the area of circles. These 2 mosaics will use up approximately 8000 tiles.

Those pink things are meant to be flamingoes, (I copied them from a child's drawing)

both mosaics are not quite finished.

But yesterday was the best day ever, the first hot day of the year. I love the sun so much (if I lived in a sunnier place I would be a much nicer person) and I love water, and my family are ok. So a sunny day on the river with the family is probably my favourite way to spend a day. And thanks to the Rule of 6 in gardens, it was legal. (Apart from the bit where some of us were inside a canal boat and I thought 'just because we're moving and this isn't a house doesn't mean we're not indoors.')

The boys were very excited to see Granny and Grandad again. Percy has recently got really into chess. He's read 2 children's books on chess and is now reading an adult chess book. He beat grandad at a game and was very smug about it. Percy has also combined his love of chess with his love of dancing. I helped him write some of the lyrics to his chess dance and he does the steps to show which way each piece moves. e.g

"forward forward side,

is the way I like to slide,

you may call me "horse"

but I'm the knight, of course"

and...

"what you're looking at,

is my lovely pointy hat,

the bishop that is me,

I move diagonally."

He is not your average 6 year old.

Eric also had a lot of fun playing labyrinth, the maze board game, and winning a tug of war with his secret tactic that he told us about later: "not letting the other person know that they were playing tug of war." The boys have finally reached good ages that I think I'm suited to parenting. Baby's are cute but they're not well suited to a day sitting on the roof of a canal boat.

Having such a good day makes me wonder should we try and move to a sunnier place near a lake or the sea? Or should we just enjoy getting to go here and see family on sunny days. I feel very rested there but if I actually lived there maybe I wouldn't feel like that. It's not exactly been a restful home for may parents over the last few months. The street was completely flooded and so nearly all their neighbours have moved out and most won't be back till after the summer which is really sad. 

Yesterday

a few months ago in the flood.

I'm trying to decide what things to go back to when things hopefully get normal again. When we went into lockdown I was doing way too much and I was relieved to have a break. Comedy had taken up so much of my life, most night I was out gigging or practising a set or doing all the little jobs I have to do to run my own comedy night. This was all a choice of course: I decided to take every comedy opportunity for a year to see what would happen and some things had happened, I had progressed, I was getting paid work, I met loads of people, I was booked in to do a hour long show in 3 different cities. But the year had ended and I was 6 months into the next year and it wasn't sustainable to carry on like that forever.

The problem is that a lot of the people who make it in comedy are those who just give it everything and work super hard and don't give up. I don't think you can really progress if you choose to just do it once a week, or choose not to travel to other cities for example. There's so many comedians whose relationship breaks up due to never being in, or who's mental health is terrible. They are a weird but loveable people group comedians.

Much of my drive to do it came from feeling like there wasn't much representation of people like me in the comedy world, there are loads of women in comedy but there's often only one on the bill. There aren't that many married women or mums. I find the MCs and the promoters and club owners are almost always men, which makes the atmosphere blokey. 

I know I can't go back to doing as much as I did before lockdown, but it's hard to decide what to do and how much to do it. I will have more time now because Eric gets 3 days a week of nursery and in September he will go to school. But hopefully a lot of that time will be spent earning money. I was considering stoping doing my own night (Early Risers Comedy Club) and focusing more on gigging other places, but I've decided to keep my night, and focus on writing more new stuff and to cut back on traveling long ways for gigs, unless they're really good ones.

Early Risers

Other things I want to make time for are having people round for meals, joining a group for either singing or dancing (I can't decide which and I don't have time for both) and church stuff like getting to know other families in our church, by helping to arrange some social stuff for the kids. There's a million other stuff I want to do too, but I guess you can't do everything at once.

The Ginger Bet

I haven't blogged for ages, I felt like nothing significant had happened just the same old days of home schooling, going for cold walks and decorating the dining room, which is a bit exciting- I cut a very thin bit of wood at a 45 degree angle today and I was super proud of myself. But even more exciting than that, I was reminded of the ginger bet and there's been some very exciting developments!

If you weren't an avid reader of my blog in 2013 then you might not know that that was the year me and some friends entered into a 15 year long bet. "Who could have the most ginger children by 1st Jan 2028" now only 7 years away! Check out this previous blog for a full list and photos of contestants and all the small print rules. The bet part 2

Here are the up to the moment updates.

Sad news to begin with: I'm out. 2 kids, no more planned, both not ginger. Gutted. I feel like I've let my people down.

Continuing to hold the lead is my mum, with 2 ginger kids (and one non-ginger). 7 years is enough time for us to go grey though. I'll be 42 by 2028, it could happen. The crazy thing about this is that my mum and my Dad are both non-gingers.

But here's the exciting news: 3 of the original bet partakers have had babies in the last 18 months and all those babies have a tinge of the ginge!

First up baby Zac 

He is my sisters Jo's baby born in December. She is a strong ginger, ginger since birth (unlike me who was a blonde baby) but she's married to a non-ginger. In my opinion it's too early make a call on baby Zac but let's just say he's in with a chance.

Next up baby James (Jimmy)

The adorable baby of Katie and Mike, both not really ginger but sort of fair haired. The kind of people that look like they are carrying a bit of recessive ginge. Originally this bet was just between them and me and Dan. We seemed fairly equally matched, but as word spread everyone wanted in on the bet.

The third new baby of the ginger bet is the lovely baby Hannah, who was born in December 2019 and therefore has lived nearly all her life in lockdown. Her parents are strong ginger Lydia and non-ginger Tom. My money's on Lydia and Tom at this moment in time. If I can't win myself then the next best thing is a baby I share a name with to win.

One more piece of exciting news on this bet. Joe Fred (well his wife Katie) is expecting a baby in July, they are both not gingers but Joe has a ginger Mum so he's in with a chance.

It's still all to play for, next update coming 2024. EXCITING!

Good One Boris

Do you think anyone in the whole world woke up today thinking Boris Johnson is a great leader? I bet even his own family didn't. After receiving an email from Percy's school yesterday morning hearing that school is definitely on, we put them to bed in the evening telling them we didn't know if they will be going to school or nursery tomorrow. We woke them up to tell them that Eric would be going to nursery but Percy would't be going to school. They took the news surprisingly well. They are pretty resilient to change at this age, at least they have some understanding of what's going on. Not like the time we were kind of homeless when Percy was 18 months, that was a mad time for Percy, it was like now were visiting Grandparents, now were visiting auntie Sarah's student house, now we're visiting the other grandparents, now we're living with another random family for 9 months and then we'll move to our own house and have another baby and auntie Sarah will live with us. Maybe that chaos has set him up perfectly for Boris's mess, maybe it's psychologically damaged him. Only time will tell.

I've tweeted Boris a few times but surprisingly not had a response yet. 

I worked so hard in December and November at my 3 random jobs. I'm glad I did because it will be hard to earn any money now till schools go back, but I was really looking forward to some more decorating work for a neighbour and having a bit of time off to myself in January. Part of the reason I took the Royal Mail job in December is that it would help me be eligible for the 30 hours of free child care from January to March. I'll now be spending that time as an unpaid teacher. 

When I realised before the announcement that schools were going to shut I had a little cry and then I had a hot bath. With hindsight I should have cried in the bath to save on water bills. I can't believe that on Monday some kids went to school! Imagine going to school for one day and mixing with other kids who have seen family at Christmas only to be told that is it no more school till at least February. Or all the schools that had inset days to sort out the safe return of children, when what they needed to be organising was how they're going to teach the key worker kids and how they're going to do online learning.

Everyone's had a bad birthday this year. It's mine next week and I knew restaurants and stuff would probably be closed but Dan took the day off work so that we could at least enjoy a kid free day together, go for a cycle and watch a grown up film, now we will have to involve a 6 year old and maybe a 3 year old in whatever plans we make. I just hope that by the time it's Eric's birthday in May things will be normal again. I'm worried that he actually can't remember what normal is: Covid has taken up nearly a quarter of his life. I asked him the other day what he would do for his birthday and he said "play with Roy" which is one of his toys. I don't think he can remember real parties.

I am super glad nursery is still open for now. It's great that he gets to socialise with other kids, he was the one that got missed out when we homeschooled in the spring. Percy had a lot of things he had to learn for school so Eric got ignored a bit. The nursery have said you shouldn't send them in if you don't have to, but I'm not going to let them guilt me into keeping him off, he loves it there and having only one kid to homeschool makes it way easier. Today I taught Percy batik for the first time. There is no way I'd ever get hot wax out with a 3 year old around. Not sure how I will get through the next month, but today in-spite of everything was actually a nice day, and a very rare chance to spend time with just my eldest.

unfortunately just after taking this I spilt ink all over my chameleon

Kid Quotes of the Year

 What an absolutely ridiculous year 2020 has been, it's like 2020 looked at 2016 (the year all the celebrities died) and thought "I can do better". For the past few years I've been tweeting funny stuff my kids say and at the end of the year doing a round up of my favourite ones. This year more than any, we need a bit of humour. So here it is my 2020 kids quotes of the year, in chronological order:

Percy age 5-6

1) "Eric is too confident" - yes thats a 5 year old talking about a 2 year old.

(Photo by Lindy Rogers Photography)

2) "Mummy you have lines on your head just like Mr. Worry."

3) "Mummy I NEED to watch fireman sam so I can learn about fire safety."

4) "While you're running the bath it might be a good idea to tidy the landing" - he's referring to his mess I asked him to tidy 4 hours earlier.

5) "Mummy I don't really think I'm an omnivore because you force me to eat veg." - I'm sure the Triceratops feels the same.

6) "Mummy I love you from the ground to space, Daddy I love you from the ground to the top of a giraffe" - very sweet, but I did the maths on this and it turns out he loves me 20 thousand more times than he loves Daddy.

7) "Can Ice creams put out fire?" - I put this question on facebook and the general consensus was that if you had enough ice cream and could drop it on a fire it would help. My favourite ice cream question from Percy a few years ago was "Do ice creams don't like snow?"

8) "How big are God's ears? I think 11 houses long."

9) Me: It's 31 degrees out there that's mental.

Percy: Is it more mental than an egg that doesn't split properly?

Me: ?? (remembering back to a conversation weeks ago) Oh you mean a conjoined twin...er I guess 31 degrees is more common than conjoined twins.

10) Playing firemen:

"I put out a fire that was 100 meters big, it weighed 20 tonnes and it took all the water from the Atlantic and Pacific ocean to put it out."

11) Me: GO... TO... BED  

Percy: Mummy you're talking like a robot

12) "Did Adam and Eve have belly buttons?"

13) "If Adam and Eve were white why isn't everyone white?" 

14) "What does F...U curly C kicking K spell?" - it spells we're never taking you to this skate park again.

Percy's learnt to read and write this year. check out this short story he wrote this week:

Translation: Once upon a time there was a little boy who wanted to be a magician. He had practised and practised, he was getting better. Till one day something happy happened he was part of the magic circle. The end.

Eric age 2-3

1) "Mummy there's a fire in the lounge." - I went to look, it turns out he meant a fire place.

2) "I have 19 fingers" - he might need to work on his counting a bit.

3) Eric: "Its my baby's birthday" 

Me: "How old are they?" 

Eric: "40"

4) A game of Simon says with Eric:

"Simon says jump like a camel" 

"Simon says cuddle your hair."

5)"What is your nose stuck on with?"

6) "When I'm 91 I think I'll be grown up"

7) "Everyone in the world is my best friend"

This year I have to include a special category for Dan this year:

1) "Could a hamster use a tiny grain of rice as a tampon?"

2) Han: I'm so happy I've finished cleaning out the rabbit. (It was cold and wet outside.)

Dan: Well if I knew thats what made you happy I wouldn't have bothered learning where the clitoris was.

Merry Christmas.

P.s If you enjoyed this you can follow me on twitter where I tweet this stuff as it happens.

Or you can read the best quotes from previous years

2019

2018

2017

My Well 'Ard sister.

I have two sisters Jo and Sarah. This year Sarah got married in lockdown and got on TV and Jo had her first baby. I'm in serious danger of not making it on to my family's Christmas letter, it's a very really threat. A few years ago Jo didn't make it on because she'd just had an ordinary year doing her job as a doctor, saving lives... but that's not good enough. You need to get married, have a baby, move countries or get on TV to be sure to get on. I once had cancer and that didn't even make it on.

But back to Jo. Back in week 1 of lockdown, while everyone was making banana bread, they were making a baby. The 3 sisters had a WhatsApp call together and we all chatted for ages about how we were doing in lockdown before Jo shared the news... We were both very excited! I already have an adorable niece and nephew on Dan's side, but this is my first on this side and I know they've been thinking about it for a while, so I was very happy for her and her husband Elisha. It also brings me one step closer to my dream of being a smug parent of older children. Theres been a few family holidays when I've been up all night breastfeeding and they rock out of bed at 11am and say "lets got to the beach now" and they're ready in 5 mins but I have to pack snacks and water bottles and nappies and swim nappies, and a spare set of clothes and a bucket and a spade and armbands and then suntan lotion 2 squirming little people. And then my kid is at the beach just eating sand while Jo and Elisha are trying out surfing. I can't wait to go on a beach trip where we just shout "boys get your beach stuff!" Does that ever happen?

We had a nice online baby shower where we did a few games and a quiz about babies. Did you know the most babies born to one woman is 69? Yeah, 69 a position they should have tried. I also learnt only 5% of babies were born on their due date. Jo's baby was in that special 5%. She ended up getting induced last Saturday in the late morning and we were all taking bets on the time of arrival. Percy was the official winner with a guess of 5am but the baby didn't come out till a bit later than that at 8:35. I was up at 5:30 with the news she was fully dilated, we had a bit of WhatsApp chat.

 

Then she went for an instrumental delivery which sounded scary. I was a bit worried and praying everything would be ok. Thankfully it was all ok, he came out and is beautiful. Zachariah Edward Hastings welcome to the world.

Jo lost a lot of blood. 2.6 litres that's A LOT! Like way more than you can mop up with a tea towel. That's like a life time of periods in one go. They gave her a blood transfusion 12 hours later after she'd been fainting everywhere. I was there to support her every step of the way through her blood transfusion, by sending empathetic photos, like this one:

She had a terrible nights sleep that night, about an hour, ( and that was the second night of just an hours sleep) that is not ok! I recently talked about this on my podcast, but I become EVIL on less than 4 hours sleep. 

Because of Covid Elisha was only allowed in the the hospital for an hour a day, so she desperately needed some help and some sleep, but they wouldn't let her go because she needed either blood or what they were actually planning was an iron transfusion, but getting her more blood was not on the top of their to-do list. It was getting late and she was facing another terrible night (she'd already waited 36 hours since first loosing the blood) so decided to do a brave thing and discharge herself. She felt fine blood-wise, but knew she needed more sleep and help so she had to sign a thing to say she was leaving against medical advice even though she is an actual doctor.

Elisha was there ready to take on the role of Dad to a newborn, which is wearing the baby in a sling all night while playing computer games. I remember Dan doing a lot of that in the first few weeks. 

It's wasn't till week two when there was a time when the three of us were all asleep at the same time for an hour or 2. Sleep deprivation is the worst and probably the main reason we have decided against having another one.

Our family is now overrun with boys. I grew up in a household of 4 females to 1 male, I also had 5 female cousins and only one male, and both my parents only have sisters. But now our extended family on my side is 4 female to 7 male. I'm hoping for a granddaughter one day.

I can't wait to meet my new nephew. It's such a shame I cant just go round, my parents are going to go but we are Christmas bubbling with Dan's side this year. The last time I saw them in person was when I was doing a comedy gig in a pub in Leeds, just before they went into tier 3, and on the way back I thought "I recognise this road" and then I was less than a minute from her house so I knocked on for a doorstep chat which was a super lovely surprise.

Congratulations Family Hastings, I hope to cuddle you all again one day xx