Percy's big party

I've been in France all week trying to decide where to live, but before I write that blog here's one that I started just before we left:

This weekend was the first time we hosted a proper big birthday party. This year Percy requested a hall party. So far we've only ever hosted parties in our house or he's taken a couple of friends out, once to Gulliver's world (a kids theme park) and once to Mattel play (a really good sort of soft play place). We've been to a lot of hall parties for people from his class, some with a bouncy castle and some with an entertainer who would do games or be in character as a super hero. 

trying to stop kids going on the bouncy castle before it was fully inflated.

I actually can't believe the effort people put into parties these days. I don't know if things have changed party wise since the early 90's, or maybe my experience was different to other people my age, but I can only remember one whole class party from my childhood and that was in a big soft play. 

Almost all of my parties were in the house, apart from one swimming party I had joint with my sister. I had a few friends round and we played games like; the chocolate game, where you have to take turns going round the circle rolling a dice. When someone gets a 6 they have to put on gloves and a hat and eat a bar of chocolate with a knife and fork. They eat as much as they can before the next person rolls a 6. It's such a great game! Occasionally I meet people now that haven't heard of this game and I just can't believe it, what were you doing in the 90's if it wasn't that? I was thinking about doing this game at Percy's party but it isn't very covid safe to all be dribbling on the same bar of chocolate. Also, given how aggressive pass the parcel got I think this was a good choice.

I felt very grateful to be able to use our church hall. It's 5 minutes walk from our house and a good size, they actually don't normally rent it out at the moment, but because they know us, and we were willing to just have the keys and do all the setting up and cleaning up afterwards, they let us have it. We paid to hire a bouncy castle and then everything else we got for free or made ourselves. Percy chose a space theme which was a lot of fun. Unfortunately we couldn't get a space themed bouncy castle, but Percy choose PJ masks because, "they come out at night" and space is like a huge night time world, right? I hope everyone at the party got that tenuous link. 

My sister Sarah did face painting which she's very good at and everyone loved. I'm surprisingly bad at face painting considering I'm an artist. A 4 year olds face is really the most annoying canvas. I never consider it as a surface, although maybe I should. Sometimes I do the food shop with Eric in the trolley seat facing me, if I wrote my shopping list on his face maybe he'd feel like I was engaging with him more.

I loved that a boy requested that Sarah paint a black hole on his face and I love even more that when Sarah made a facebook status about this she accidentally missed out the word hole. She said "today I went to a 7th birthday party which involved painting a child's face to look like a black." I think facebook should have permanently banned her for that.

I did the "entertainment". I used my sound system and mic that I own from comedy and I led a few party games. It was a lot of pressure being the person who decided who was out in the games, I was relieved when I thought to delegate that job to another kid so that I didn't have to feel the guilt. There was a lot of tense tactical playing going on in pass the parcel. It's crazy how competitive kids will get for a sweet when theres a table of sugary treats right in front of them.

We had glow in the dark temporary tattoos, which I really loved the designs of. I wonder if I should get a real tattoo. The problem is though I could only get one on the upper half of my body because I had my pelvic lymph nodes removed when I had cancer, which means I have to be careful not to get any cuts on my legs because the magical bits that go and heal cuts don't work properly. So I'm only allowed to permanently scar my upper body.

I made a lot of stuff for the party including this photo thing. I don't know what you would call it, but comedian James Acaster calls it the opposite of a mask. 

If you want this thing please get in touch, I can re paint it with a different name and number.

I also made this fun alternative to a government slogan as a sign for the face painting. 

I made some alien biscuits and alien space crafts from a Tunnock's tea cake and a meringue and a grape, not as one child asked me, an olive. That would be a pretty disgusting snack. Because I made all of this stuff I delegated making the cake to Dan. Percy wanted a cake of the solar system, just a nice easy 9 planets plus the sun and moon. It took so long to make and I am a bad delegator. I like to delegate but I also like things done the way I would do it. Dan has really no cake decorating experience, so watching him was like watching a 4 year old. It was a tense time but we managed to make it through without getting divorced. Hooray for us. 

Fun game: If you had to date one of these guys which would you pick?

Dan's solar system cake, this photo doesn't really do it justice. it was pretty impressive and the inside of the a lot of the cakes were coloured too.

We really have upped the bar for parties though, on the way back from this party Eric was describing his dream party. He's pretty new to parties because he was 2 when we went into lockdown and cant remember the before times. on his 3rd birthday (which was his second lockdown birthday) we asked him what he wanted to do for it and he just said "play with toys" because he actually didn't know what a party is. Now he's asking for a mario themed party! Hopefully by his birthday (May) we'll be in sunny France. More about that soon.

If you came to Percy's party thank you. He had the best day ever.

France update

In August Dan, who had been made redundant, got a new remote job based anywhere in Europe which means we are going to try living in France (if you want to read a previous blog about Dan's job and our decision to move click here).

People now keep asking us, "how are the moving plans going?" It's like when I was engaged people always asked, "how are the wedding plans going?" and in the first 6 months of being married people always asked, "hows married life?" No one asked me anything about my job the whole time I was engaged and no one ever asks me now "how's married life?" I think people are scared to ask that to people who have been married over a year in case it's not going well.

But to answer the question the moving plans are going slowly. The major thing that needs to get done before we can go is our French identity documents, which is a very long process that we could have done years ago but never got round to doing. Like writing a will. (If I die Dan can have my stuff I hope this blog will count as a legal document.) So the first step in the process is Dan getting his french ID card. And even though the whole world has been doing everything remotely for the past 18 months, you still physically have to go to London to do this. Trying to get an appointment has been a nightmare. You can only book online and all the slots are always fully booked. There's a French consulate guy in Liverpool who you can meet, but he only works Thursday afternoons, doesn't respond to emails and also takes long holidays. 

Dan went to visit him in one of the short windows of time he was meant to be in and he still wasn't there, so we gave up on him and emailed the Chester woman. She responded to the email with useful info we wished we'd know weeks ago: there's no way around going to London, you have to use the online booking system, if you look in the middle of the night you might be able to get a cancellation. After 3 nights of getting up at midnight we finally had an appointment. Dan managed to get the train down see the consulate and continue working without his new job realising. From that day which was the end of September it takes 4 weeks and then the document should arrive. They can't just post it to you though, that would be way too easy, they wanted to post it to the Liverpool guy who's never there but we managed to get it posted to the woman in Chester who sometimes responds to emails. Woohoo!

Once we have Dan's ID we can begin all the other bits of getting the boys ID and my visa. We might even have to go to London 2 more times because I'm don't think they can do 2 kids ID cards in one appointment. How ridiculous is that?

Other stuff we've done to prepare: I've started online french lessons, which are actually really fun. The teacher is lovely and we play games like we split into 2 different zoom rooms and each think of a celebrity and then we play a guessing game asking things like "c'est un homme?" "il est anglais?" Last week we had to order something from a menu but ask for some changes, so for example say something like "I'll have the salad but please swap the peppers for tomatoes." I accidentally reverted back to GCSE Hannah and suggested to my partner who I was meant to be practising with that we do silly ones. e.g "instead of the peppers I would like some horse meat." Then I realised this is the kind of stuff I did at school and told him and he said "What, you covered up a bad french accent with humour?" Then I realised I cover up everything awkward with humour and admitted to being a comedian. It sort of turned into online therapy until we were back in the main zoom again and I was making everyone laugh with my outrageous french orders.

I recently performed some new material about learning French at my comedy night. I ripped into the masculine and feminine thing. Did you know that the word vagina is masculine? Yes, some old French guys have decided that my vagina is a man. Rude. I also talked about the different ways you say "you" for formal and informal and that I wasn't going to learn both and so I have to choose between having loads of acquaintances or just a few close friends. Naturally most people would choose a few close friends, but how do you make those friends when it's rude to say "tu" (the informal you) to someone you just met. SO my plan for moving to France is to go up to strangers and say "voulez vous le binge drinking sur le weekend?" (yes thats an actual french phrase!) Then if the say yes, we go out and have fun, but if we become friends to the point where they start using "tu" then I will cu them out of my life completely, because no friendship is worth learning two different verb endings for.

The boys on our campervan trip to France in 2019. The van was too small and Dan had to sleep in an "L" shape around Eric for the whole trip.

I've also just started trying to sort out the house. We're going to rent it out, probably unfurnished, so that means every single thing that we own needs a decision on if it's coming with us or going to a charity shop or being stored for a bit. If we were buying a house we'd probably just get everything shipped over, but I think we'll be staying in an airbnb first and then renting a furnished house. so we don't want to just move everything. There's things that I'll obviously take like clothes and things I'll obviously get rid of like toys the boys are too old for, or big furniture. But theres a lot of stuff in the middle sized stuff that I just don't know like my fruit bowl, pots and pans, the bathroom bin or a duvet. Cheap enough things that I could buy again but small enough that they could go in the car but not all of them. I got a bit stressed about it all last week and at 1 in the morning couldn't sleep so went downstairs listened to some music drank a hot chocolate and did some doodling. It was the best emotional breakdown I've ever had! Our current plan is I fly over with the boys and Dan drives with a car full of stuff, and then next time we're in England Dan drives back and we all four fly back leaving our car here to sell. Then we all fly back and buy a french car. Everything is complicated and expensive, it would be some much easier to just stay here but where's the adventure in that?

Last blog I wrote about the places were considering living. A few places, like Lyon and Marrsielle, are off the list now mainly for being too expensive. So we now have 3 places on our short list Montpellier, Narbonne and Carcassone. We're going to visit all 3 in half term and hope that wandering around them we will just know which one is right for us and that we won't disagree! We're going to do some boring thing while we're there, like go and ask questions in a bank and an estate agents, but I've also invented the patisserie challenge. The boys have been doing well at learning French online with Mr Innes French on youtube, so I said we could go into a patisserie and they can have whatever they like as long as they ask for it in French. I forgot they have learnt numbers, until I heard Percy practising "Je voudrais trente pain au chocolats, s'il vous plait."

A bientot.

My Weirdest Job

I meant to write this two weeks ago but I've been so busy with my random jobs that I've had no time to write about them. With Eric in school I now have 5 days a week where I can do random stuff, and on my first full day of freedom I did the best job ever, I was paid to put on a surprise Taskmaster party where I got to be Alex Horne. 

If you don't know Taskmaster it's a TV show on channel 4 where comedians and other celebrities do silly tasks. Some are creative tasks like recreating your favourite video game in real life, or painting a picture of a horse while ridding a horse. Some are more like logic puzzles; get a basket ball through a hoop without using your hands or empty a bath tub without removing the plug (or tipping or damaging the bath tub). Some even involve random members of the public that happen to be near the Taskmaster house in Richmond.

I love the show, I especially love the creative tasks where you can interpret them in different ways. I would love to be a famous enough comedian to be on the show. I'd love that much more than actually being a famous comedian, but the next best thing is coming up with a load of tasks for people to try. This is the 3rd time I've done a version of this. I first did a taskmaster day for the kids during lockdown which was fun but a bit limiting with young children. We did "eat your biscuit into a shape of a dog", and "invent a new Mr man." 

Then in Jonesfest (our annual garden festival) I hosted a night called "Mockmaster" where I got 4 comedians to do the stand up challenges from Mock the Week and some Taskmaster style games. The best of the games was called Burgle Our House. The 4 comedians had to sneak round our house in the dark and then fill their bags with the most valuable things they could find without waking 3 sleeping children. It's one of the most fun things I've ever done, and I really need to get round to editing down the footage of the whole night so I can share it. Anyway with 2 Taskmasters under my belt I managed to get the job of Alex Horne and the surprise birthday Taskmaster.

What made the day so epic was bribing my parents to go out for the day so I could use their house. Everyone should get to use their house because it was paid for by the government as my parents were forced to relocate due to HS2. So if you've ever paid tax you are allowed to borrow my parents riverside house. Its the perfect Taskmaster location...

The first task involved me throwing rubber ducks into the river every 30 seconds while they had to collect them in a net and put them in a bucket. We were all on some kind of boat.

Another one of the games I did here and at Mockmaster was blind connect 4. I scented the pieces so the red pieces smelled of peppermint and the yellows smelled of perfume and you had to play a game by picking your counter from the mixed box using your sense of smell. Every 3rd go a seeing person gets to put a counter in. It's surprisingly interesting.

And here are the results from the decorate your cake to look like a celebrity round.

All in all it was a lovely day. Thanks to Rob for letting me do my dream job and to Gemma for having great taste in birthday fun.

No job could compare but my other jobs at the moment are pretty fun too. I'm starting a new mosaic project at Woolton primary, even though I just made them the biggest mosaic I've ever made...

I'm doing a Super Mario kids room mural and will soon be running 2 after school art clubs. I was a Covid tester for a bit in a school, that was a lot less fun, and I've got 2 more comedy nights to run before I start getting ready for the big move to France. 

More about that in the next blog.

The First Week

Eric started reception class last week, it really is the end of an era for us. I actually wanted to call this blog "end of an era" but I already used that title on a blog post I wrote years ago. I wrote it when I decided that I wouldn't wear bikini's anymore. An update on that... an airbnb guest from Italy left a bikini in our house. I probably should have posted it back to her but instead I wear it. I don't feel great about it body wise or morally, but I guess the bikini thing wasn't the end of an era after all. Just like when Percy started in Reception and I thought that was the end of an era, then 6 months later I was spending all day every day homeschooling him. 

So anyway, Eric has been very excited to join his big brother in school, he said "I have been waiting for this for about 2 million days." I said, "how many days do you think are in a year Eric?" and he said "5?" The school do this staggered start thing, which is very annoying for pretty much everyone. The first week that Percy was back Eric wasn't. Then Eric was in for 2 hours a day in the afternoons, then this week he's in 8:55-1:30 and then this coming Monday is his first whole day. He was so desperate to go but by day 3 he said, "oh school again, I've been for soooo many days." I think it's just hitting him that he has to go 5 days a week for 3 times his life time, and that's quite a lot.

So far he seems to have done crafts and a lot of playing in the sandpit and theres a few boys names that he mentions that he plays with. He's coped with it really well considering he's one of the youngest and possibly the smallest in the class.

I remember being really emotional about Percy's first day. It felt like a really big deal that I wasn't going to see him so much anymore and he was going to make all these new friends and like he was going to lose his innocence. I didn't have a great experience of primary school - I was dyslexic but didn't find out till I was 16 so I always found reading and writing really hard work, and also I joined a new school in year 2 and struggled to fit in. But so far Percy doesn't seem to have had any of the issues with reading and writing that I had and he loves school. Hopefully we won't ruin that all for him when we move him to France! I thought I would be really emotional about Eric starting because it's such a life changing thing to have them both in 5 days a week and I don't really want him to grow up, I miss him being tiny. Not like a baby, I don't miss those days at all, but I really miss two year old Eric. 

The staggered start made it less of a big deal though, and then it turned out I was actually working as a covid tester on that day, so Dan took him.  I felt no emotion taking him in for day 2. I'm weird like that sometimes, I can be really emotional thinking about something that might happen. I remember thinking about the day when we would get a house, in the days where we were sort of homeless, and then when we actually got given the keys and it was just me and a tiny Percy who didn't realise this was significant, it felt like that was not the time for emotion. And then my head quickly moves to all the things we need to do and maybe that pushes out the emotion.

It's been quite a different experience for me - Eric starting school compared to Percy. This time I've made Facebook friends with some parents who have kids starting in the same class, we've had a few play dates and theres a class whatsapp group and I think everyone is enjoying getting to know each other. Whereas with Percy, I knew two other parents from his class and I didn't really make new friends. We've been to loads of whole class parties and I'll obviously say "hi' to other parents but I actually think it would be a bit weird for them if I started trying to make friends now.

Today Eric came out of school saying "mummy I got a sticker for bumping my head!" We asked how he did it he said he didn't remember. Not a great sign. I also find it hard not to read the "wow" and "terrific" without sarcasm.

Both boys have already been to class birthday parties this term. Percy has had so many invites, but one less than I thought. He came out of school one day saying he was invited to this girl's party, but we couldn't find the invite anywhere. I thought it must have gone missing so I messaged a friend who had the invite and they sent me a photo of the invite. yesterday I messaged the Dad of this girl to say "thanks very much but we unfortunately can't make it." He said "thanks for letting me know" Then Percy tells me that this girl said he was actually never invited, and he just saw an invite and thought he was invited. EMBARRASSING.

Thanks for reading x

Sailing with kids

On Sunday my extended family all got back from a sailing holiday around the Greek islands, we've all shared beautiful photos and it looks absolutely idyllic. We were very lucky to go, there were some amazing moments, but before everyone feels jealous I feel a bit of a duty to share a bit of the reality of what 8 adults 2 kids and a baby living on 2 small boats in a pandemic is actually like.

How we got into sailing:

me in 1993

My Dad has always been a big sailing fan, he was in a sailing club as a kid and learnt on small dinghies. When he was a student he helped his rich uncle sail from Guernsey to Malta. Rich people generally love to owe yachts but don't know how to sail them.My Dad tested all of his many girlfriends out on boats and my mum passed the test. 

My Dad aged 21

Women who unsuccessfully auditioned for the role of my mum

I went sailing in the womb and all through my childhood, but because my Dad was such a good sailor I didn't pick up that much. I did my RYA (royal yachting association) level 1 when I was about 12 that was very basic sailing on a topper, which is a small boat that is easy to capsize, but it's like fine to capsize it - you actually have to capsize it and then make it the right way round again as part of RYA level 1.

1987 when I was bald and my Dad had hair

1995 mum stayed at home with baby Sarah and me and Jo and a load of men sailed to the channel islands. I did that pose on every single picture of that holiday.

2005

Dad regularly hired boats from near Southhampton with us and a few friends and sailed to France or the Channel Islands and back in a long weekend. It would be like a 14 hour over night sail, go out to a French restaurant for tea and then sail back. I loved it. I love adventures, I really like the rocking boat thing, I like roller coasters and stuff and it's cool to get somewhere for free just by the power of wind.. Some people we took did not like rocking so much. I remember sailing to France on the day of my last GCSE with a school friend Duncan where everyone except me and Dad were sick, and I remember Duncan shouting "pass me the saucepan, I'm going to be sick."

When we were planning our big trip cycling to the middle east it seemed the obvious thing to ask Dad for a lift across the channel, we packed our folding bikes onto the boat in Southampton and 4 days later we got dropped off on the river Seine and began the cycle to Paris.

The Channel is a difficult bit of sea to sail in. It's a busy shipping lane, it's never really warm and like most seas it has tides which you really have to think about or you might run aground. The Mediterranean on the other hand is normally warm and doesn't have tides because it's really like a huge lake.

In the year 2000 we went on our first flotilla holiday (that's when you sail with a load of boats), and the kind we went on is when you have a lead boat that tells you what to do and fixes stuff if it goes wrong. So each morning you meet up in a outdoor cafe in Greece or Croatia and the 3 people on the lead boat tell you 'today we're going to sail to this island, it will take 3 hours if you do 6 knots. Steer on the compass point 160 degrees and watch out for this rock here.' And then you all go there. The lead boat helps you come into the harbour by telling you exactly when to drop your anchor and being there for you to throw your ropes to, and then you all jump in the sea for a nice swim and then go out for a meal. It's the easiest way to sail, you can even do it as a complete beginner. I did it twice as a teenager but this holiday was the first time I did it as a parent. It was pretty hard work. We did have a great time and I'm vey grateful to have had the chance to go, the boys absolutely loved it but here are 4 things that make sailing with kids in a pandemic not the most relaxing holiday:

1) Space

This is the layout of the boat.

and this is the reality of putting 6 people in that space:

We intended the boys to be in the front, me and Dan to be one side, and Sarah and Luke the other, but we quickly realised the boys can not share a little bed. The first night it was very warm, quite noisy and a bit rocky and they were just rolling into each other and poking each other, so we had to separate them and so the rest of the week Dan slept with Percy and I slept with Eric in a triangle shaped bed. The worst shape for a bed. Especially when sheets are famously rectangular. I'd carefully put Eric to sleep on one side only to find him completely in the middle and I basically had to work out what shape to sleep in after he had gone to sleep. It was reminiscent of the time we hired a camper van and Dan slept in a "L" shape around Eric for a whole week.

2) Covid

Greece is on the amber list, which means you can go there if you jump through some very specific hoops but if you accidentally jump through the wrong hoops you will be fined. So we had to take this special test that you have to pay for, it was vey similar to the free ones except you had to pay for this specific one and take it 72 hours before flying back. So on that morning everyone got out their red and white covid test box and we got our green and white one. Yep we had the wrong one, and if we didn't get hold of the right one soon we would get fined £500 per adult. So that was a tad stressful. My sister Jo managed to accidentally capture the moment we realised this. Luckily the sailing holiday crew came to the rescue and we managed to buy a test off them and take it just in time.

3) Down time

In a normal day at home, even in the summer holidays, we get a bit of a break from the kids when they watch T.V. for 45 mins to an hour a day and then they go to bed at 7 so we get our evenings to ourselves. And they're getting better at just playing together, so it's not like when they were babies and they needed watching the whole time. But on a boat there's no T.V., the only screen time was the etch-a-sketch (which is really fun by they way, I got into it). But yeah no real space to play. And we had communal meals out at 8ish and so they boys were not going to bed until about 9:30 most nights. 

Lakka harbour on Paxos in case it wasn't obvious

4) Actual sailing

I love sailing, but I'm used to having my Dad around who knows what he's doing. Because we were on 2 boats and my Dad is only one person... you do the maths. We were on the non-dad boat and my sister Sarah had been picked as lead skipper, purely because she didn't have children. It was quite a lot of pressure on Sarah on the first day to go to all the briefings and learn all the stuff, but she did a great job. 

We didn't really do much actual sailing at all because we were only doing short hops. Dan is also not a great fan of sailing because he gets very seasick. On our first ever sail together across the Channel he was sick about 10 times. He also didn't know that when you sail it's normal to be on an angle, so you would normally sit on the side of the boat that is right up in the air looking down. So the whole time he was in a constant state of fear thinking we were going to capsize, but we were wizzing along loving it. This time he was much better because it was shorter bits and he took anti-seasickness tablets but he still felt rough.

all worth it for this though

When we got home Percy lay out on the floor like a star fish and said it's so good to lie down without mummy's suitcase on my feet. For at least a day afterwards we were all gently swaying. I had the best nights sleep I love sleeping on a rectangle.

Big Jones News

We're moving to France!! 

Dan has been looking for a new job for a while because he was getting made redundant on 1st September. He's know for quite a few months that this would happen and has been considering different job options. Although his job is great in terms of flexibility and he enjoys working from home, writing procedures for a housing company is nobody's childhood dream. He was ready for change and a bit of adventure. He considered joining the police, which is something he's been interested in since he was a teenager, but there were quite a lot of downsides like random shift pattens, less money, and scallies shouting abuse at you. So he was also looking at remote jobs based in Europe meaning we could move abroad, and he got one! 

Because Dan is half French him and the boys can live in France (or anywhere in the EU). I can get a WAGS pass but only to France not the rest of the E.U.

The job is technical writing for an IT company based in the Czech Republic with offices in London too. So for example he would write a blog abut their stuff in English and French. Here's the kind of thing I would write if I'd got the job: 

Have you heard about our computer thingy? It saves loads of time. Instead of pressing loads of buttons everyday to check your computer system is all fine you just press this one button and then our special thing does all the stuff for you, like an overprotective mother. Think of all the free time your employees will have to just muck around! They'll be so happy they'll probably kiss you. 

Somehow him writing that but better is Dan's new full time job.

We've talked about moving countries forever. I can't really believe I've stayed in Liverpool this long. I've always thought I'd move somewhere Arabic speaking. In 2005 when I was 19 I went to volunteer at a community centre in Bethlehem, I had such a great time that I went back again in 2007. There was a time when I thought I might end up there more permanently, but then when I got together with Dan it felt a bit weird to take him to my gap year place and I thought maybe we should find a new place that's ours rather than mine. 

sleeping on a roof in Bethlehem 2007

We did our big trip cycling from Liverpool to Kuwait in 2013 with the view of possibly finding somewhere on the way that we might like to settle in. We really though Lebanon might be the place, but after spending a while there we didn't really get the feeling. You have to pay to visit the beach there, hotels buy up the best beach spots and make it like a resort you have to pay for, and I'm just not down with that. Also there's occasionally bombing and the electricity doesn't work half the time, but mainly the beach thing. We loved Jordan a lot more though, if I had to pick an Arab country to live in now Jordan would be it. It's a great holiday destination if you're looking for something a bit different.

A cool bit of rock in Petra, Jordan.

When we got back from our trip we realised how much we missed Liverpool. We were so well connected there and as we wanted to have a baby we thought actually it makes sense to stay where our support network is. There was a time when we were tempted to move again, when our house sale fell through and we were suddenly sort of homeless with a house deposit burning a hole in our pocket. It wouldn't really have been great timing though. It worked out well in the end, we bought the house we are currently in and had another baby. I felt really settled. I've enjoyed decorating the whole house, there was definitely a time where I really had no desire to move and Dan was worried we'd live here forever. 

In the elections a couple of years ago I said that if Labour got in I'll have another baby (because they had some free childcare policies) and if the Tories get in I'll move to France (because I hate them). I was a bit joking but a bit serious. That day was kind of the end of me seriously considering a 3rd child but I always thought if I didn't go for number 3 I'd want to do something else more fun instead, so that I wouldn't look back and just think that was a thing I didn't do.

So Plan A is rent out our house and rent a house or apartment in France for one year. We could go anywhere so we're currently trying to pick somewhere. Our criteria is:

1) The south because I'm not learning a new language for the weather of Devon. Why not just move to Devon.

2) Somewhere you can get to from Liverpool or Manchester airports. Because no one wants to travel to Gatwick.

3) Somewhere near the sea or a lake. 

4) Somewhere near an international church. I do want to fully integrate and learn French but it would be nice to have some English speaking friends, and to know some Christians.

And out of those places we'll see what you can get for your money and which ones we like. So far we are researching Marseille, Lyon, Montpellier and Beziers.

Then if plan A goes well and we like France and the boys are happy and stuff, then we might try and buy somewhere or at least move to somewhere a bit more permanent. But if it's not going well and we want to come back then we can. We might have lost the kids school places but we'll still have our home.

We told the boys, Eric has really no concept of time or geography so he doesn't really get it. Percy seemed fine about it. I asked him what he would miss thinking he might say the grandparents but he said "well we haven't see Stonehenge yet so we should probably visit there before we go" -sorry grandparents.

Percy in Nice 2019

I've signed up to French classes that start in October, until then Dan is teaching me. The kids are learning though "French with Mr Innes" on youtube. I forgot how annoying French is with all their gender stuff. like that I have to say Je suis AngalaiSE but the boys would say Je suis AngalaiS. It really made me think about French people who change gender and how difficult that would be for friends and family because there's so many more opportunities to make gender based mistakes.

I've been telling people we're going in January but that's really just a date I've picked from thin air. There's a lot of boring stuff to sort out but were going to do it! And we'll have a big party before we leave.

Au revoir mes amis.

Jonesfest 2021

I'm just recovering from the maddest weekend. If you didn't know me well maybe you'd think I'd had a big night out drinking - that's what normal people do in a mad weekend right? But I am far from normal. I'm recovering from having about 8 families doing a ceilidh in my very average sized garden, followed by my house being pretend burgled by 4 comedians for a game.

Jonesfest is a festival I hold in my garden for no reason. People keep asking me "what this in aid of?" and "are you raising money for something?" and "is it someone's birthday?" No. I just love people. I've missed people, and I don't have the right personality for a January birthday. It came about last year after we finally got our garden fixed. We got this decking area for eating outside, but when you take off the table and chairs it looks just like a stage. And when you own sound equipment and have lots of creative friends it's just rude not to put on a festival.

The first one was last August. At the time it felt like we were celebrating the end of covid but we now know it was just that little sweet spot between 2 lockdowns. It was more restricted last year, it was the rule of 6 indoors and 30 outdoors. I cancelled a lot of the things I had planned. We had a circus skills workshop and a drama workshop for families, a bike ride, a baking for kids session and a breeze block sculpting workshop. It was a lot of fun and not too much work.

This year I decided to go bigger. I'd planned two evening performances, a music night and a comedy night, as well as a load of other workshops and stuff. It was a lot to organise, probably a little too much and about two weeks before I was pretty stressed and had no time. I could have put less effort in, but once I have the idea in my head for something I find it hard to back down. I don't think anyone would have complained if they didn't receive complementary Jonesfest tote bags, but that didn't stop me getting up at 6am, before the kids, twice so that I could print more Jonesfest tote bags. I also took a whole day off work to sew together plain cotton bunting so that every kid could paint a bit to decorate the garden and then at the end they could take their bit home.

The Friday was the bunting workshop and the all age music festival (with face painting and hair braiding). Dan was going to play some of his album (Exhume check it out on Spotify) and then I had 2 other very talented friends that I had somehow managed to persuade to play. I woke up to heavy rain and Percy running in saying "happy jonesfest!" he was so excited! It was a difficult decision to cancel the first nights activities, but I think it was the right one. We did have gazebos and stuff but I don't think many people would have come and and I don't think it would have been that fun to be out in the rain. Percy was so gutted though and was in tears. I was pretty sad too, but we continued with the bunting making which the kids loved and then saturday was a big day of fun.

The day began with a crochet workshop led by my mum and a simultaneous chess tournament. I've never done crochet before it's really hard! It's like a magic trick, if you're good you just wiggle a stick next to some wool until it makes a flower, if you're bad you just make a blob.

The next event was the kids show. This was the one thing I knew a lot of people were coming to. Half an hour before it started it was pretty stressful. I had a house full of family we were trying to make lunch for, sound equipment to set up, I was running all over the house trying to find rugs to cover the slightly wet grass, some good friends that we haven't seen for ages arrived early and I just didn't feel I had the capacity to be nice and get things done (sorry friends don't take it personally!) but then it all came together. and by the time more people arrived I was pumped and answered the door like "WELCOME TO JONESFEST!!!" the garden filled up with families and it looked mad like a real festival.

We started the way all good festivals should start with my Dad playing nursery rhymes on the accordion. I'd forgotten I'd agreed to sing them on the mic. Then we had the absolutely awesome Leila doing a teaching some super hero style dance moves, she's so good at what she does. If you have pre-school kids you should take them to her group, it's so much creative fun. Here's her theatre company 

Then we had my good friend Steve and his granny puppet reading a story. He did this a bit on Facebook live in lockdown, and I'd forgotten how genuinely hilarious it was. He was just reading the book A Squash and A Squeeze by Julia Donaldson but the accents and the little asides and the way he interacted with the audience made it incredibly entertaining for all ages.

The finale of this mad show was my dad attempting to teach everyone the eightsome reel, a sort of ceilidh dance. He only recently started learning the accordion and is good considering that, but he was not good enough to play and shout the dance moves so it descended into a beautiful chaos, and then I tried to help by shouting random things like "right hand star!" with no clue if that's what they were meant to be doing.

After the kids show there was meant to be an adults aerial hoop workshop, which turned into a bit of a free for all mess around on the hoop. We watched Jo be amazing and other people struggle to get on. It was loads of fun though and very kind of her to drive her hoop set up all the way from Bradford with a baby.

Baby Zac getting into the festival spirit

The evening was my comedy night, I couldn't wait. I had 4 of my most favourite comedians who I would also call friends to entertain the audience. 

a calming rabbit cuddle is what comedians need before every show.

We did a mash up of the shows Mock the Week and Taskmaster. So for mock the week we did things like "unlikely things to hear in a covid briefing" and everyone stepped up to the mic with their funny suggestions. Then we did some Taskmaster style silly tasks, they had to recreate an artwork on a teammate's face. Then we played a blind game of connect 4 where I scented the pieces. The red counters smelled of peppermint and the yellow ones smelled of next perfume. Blindfolded contestants had to take a piece from a mixed box and place into the connect 4 game. Every third go the non-blindfolded member of the team got to play a piece. While I was setting up for this game I was thinking "maybe this is a rubbish idea for a game, I should have given it more thought," but it was actually incredible. What made it so funny was that Mike (who is Bulgarian) had never heard of the game Connect 4. So it got to his go, he was on the red team, and there were about 5 red counters in and only one yellow one - it was an easy win for the red team if only they knew what was going on. Mike seem to seriously have not worked out from the title "Connect 4" that you have to connect 4 until his frustrated blind team mate shouted out "JUST GET 4 REDS IN A ROW!"

The last game was the maddest and the one that Dan thought was not a good idea. But I think most of the time, as risk increases fun increases. The game was to burgle our house. So the 4 comedians got given a bag (a Jonesfest totebag of course) and they had 5 minutes to go into our house, in the dark (because it was late by this point) and search around for the most valuable items. There were two kids and a baby asleep upstairs: if you wake anyone you loose the game. When you think the 5 minutes is up you have to go out into the garden and climb behind the shed, over a bit of chicken wire to some wood off our property. No one was allowed a watch or phone, they had to just guess when 5 minutes was up. Then they all came back and revealed their loot.

Lee had misunderstood the value thing and squeezed a breeze block sculpture of a head in his bag. Mike had a load of random thing like several pencil cases of felt pens and a wii remote. Anna had taken the kettle, but Sean was the clear winner with our house keys, our car keys, my sisters car keys and the house keys of our neighbours who happened to be in the audience! The night came to an abrupt end when we got heckled over the fence by the neighbours and then it started to rain. It was the most bonkers joy filled thing. Mike wanted to chat to me about using this panel show format again and I'm happy to see if that's possible, but something makes me think it was a "you have to be there" kind of moment and those people and this weird garden festival scenario was the perfect combination for this exact type of weird silliness.

Sunday was a lot more chilled and started with a lino print workshop. It's something I've been learning for a few months and it's really fun and I love to share things I've learnt. 

After lunch we headed out to Childwall woods for a wide game. This particular game, called dragons, is one I grew up playing. The knights have to find a flag and take it back to base, the dragons have to catch all the knights and take them to the secret lair. It's so enjoyable to play and way better exercise than a walk in the woods. I arrived dressed in a full dragon onesie of course, and Percy was in his generic reptile onesie (crocodile or dinosaur maybe?). When we pulled up, there was a big group of people in hi-vis jackets that were "Friends of Childwall woods." They demanded an explanation of why were we dressed like that and then I had to explain the concept of wide games and then Jonesfest. I showed the guy a video of people doing a ceilidh in our garden, as if that was some kind of explanation of why I was dressed as a dragon.

I must have first played this game about age 10 and continued playing it until my early 20s. One of my friends Ben that came with his son says he remembers playing a game of it in a park with me back in the day and getting weird looks for chasing me. It was exciting to be passing on this game to the next generation! To make it work with small kids we didn't let the kids go off independently, so Dan had Eric and I had Percy. We also made a whatsapp group before we started so we could communicate vital info like "it's the end of the game." This was a new dimension that didn't exist when I played before. As well as communicating important stuff we could send threatening messages like "we're watching you little knights" and that's always fun. I quickly discovered that a fleecy onesie and wellies is not the quickest outfit for chasing people. It makes sense if you think about it, you never see Olympians wearing wellies. The whole thing was a lot of fun and I'm really up for doing it again, the more people the better so if you're in Liverpool and up for it let me know.

The finale of Jonesfest was a bring and share tea. I was so exhausted by this point my legs were aching from the aerial hoop and dragons and I just wanted to sleep, but only my sister Sarah and the Curtis family, who are big fans of Jonesfest and have been to nearly everything, came and it was a really lovely chilled out end to a mad 3 days.

There were points where I thought I won't do it again, it's a lot of work and sometimes it can be disappointing when people don't turn up to something you've planned, or the weather lets you down, but by the end I was so happy with the whole thing and I'm already having thoughts about Jonesfest 2022. If you helped out or just came along thank you so much for being part of this very weird but fun idea of mine.