Jones family updates

It's been a busy time seeing a whole load of family.  The summer was a long summer with no visitors and then in October we had my sister Jo with her husband and little boy Zac, followed by Sarah followed by Dan's parents. I'm not going to write a load about it, but it was fun as well as a bit tiring, but we always appreciate people making the effort to visit. Here's a few highlights:

But now for some family updates starting with the person who has the most exciting news: 

Percy

1) He has finally lost his front tooth age 8! He last the 2 bottom front ones ages ago, but they're not very noticeable, but now I feel like it's really noticeable that he's the only one in his class that still has baby teeth. Kids have even asked him about it, not it a horrible way, they're just curious. So he was very happy with this news and he told me in French. 

2) He's going on a ski trip! His school won some funding to take kids skiing for a very discounted price. It's 60 euros for 3 days. The normal price would have been 300 euros. I still have to get him some ski clothes though, which is expensive, but I'm trying to get a few bits second hand. It's 3 random Tuesdays rather than a 3 day trip. They have to be at school for 6:45AM for a 2 hour coach ride to the mountains. In his old primary school he went on one trip to a local park in the rain. At this school he's already been to a castle and to the aquarium and sailing and now skiing. I'm also going to go on one of the days but I doubt I'll be much help seeing as I don't ski and I'm bad at french.

3) He played his first basketball match at the weekend! He was super chuffed to be chosen to play with some of the kids who have been doing basketball a year longer than him. His team Thuir (pronounced twe-er) were playing against anther small village Toulouges. Unfortunately they got beaten 34-4. Dan even thinks the 4 goals they got was down to the other team's coach telling them to let them get a few goals. We're super proud of Percy for giving it a go though. He'd pretty much written off sport in England because the rules in Scouse playgrounds are play football with the boys or play make believe with the girls.

Eric

1) He's really into art now which I'm very excited about because Percy has now declared art, "not his thing." He's aways drawing, making cool stuff up from his imagination and he's tried copying from photos too. Here's some lino printing he did:

It's a robot that shoots ice creams out of his arms.

2) You know when a toddler might make sounds or connect words randomly? He's doing that with French,  he's just saying gobbledygook. I google translated something he said today and it came out as, "I have paving."

3) Eric is very interested in the idea of heaven right now and asks questions such as, "will tattoos last is heaven?" And now when I tell him he can't do something he'll say, "I'll just do that in heaven then." Like when I told him he couldn't slot his drawings into some kind of hole in the back of the TV to make a program. He told me he'd just do that in heaven and then I felt bad and told him one day we can make a stop frame animation and put it on youtube and he can watch it on the telly.

Hannah

1) I currently have Covid, for the first time ever (that I know of). It's like the symptoms of a normal bad cold but with the added bonus of not being able to help out so much with housework and kid stuff. Annoyingly though the day I felt the worst was Sunday and it was impossible to get hold of paracetamol because everything is closed on a Sunday. We had to get some off a couple we know who also gave us a Covid test that they advised us to take.

2) Before all this I had a great day helping out on this refugee lunch. It was one of the first days that felt like I had a bit of a purpose and community. I did screen printing with some of them, both adults and kids, while others were making a huge meal. Most of the people I know seem to be refugees at the moment because I am also going to French lessons with refugees.

3) I'll do another whole blog post on this sometime, but what shall I do with life life now? My goal was to move countries but I didn't really think about what to do when I got here.

Dan

1) Dan is very busy trying to do everything, paperwork wise we're still not done, the medical stuff isn't sorted yet for us if we needed treatment and we're not getting the equivalent of child benefit yet which we eventually will. Tomorrow he will be collecting his National insurance number.

2) Just to add to all the things Dan has to do, he has to take on another job. In England he was employed by a Czech company, but they don't have an office in France so he has to be self employed. And just like in the UK you can't be self employed and only have one client, so he has to do a bit of something else. Last month he met up with a guy about doing some kind of business together.

3) Dan is still wearing shorts everyday. It is still hot in the middle of the day, like sometimes 28 degrees (in November!) but it's odd because that feels like summer, but then it still goes dark early and is cold at night. 

P.s 8 out of 10 episode of of podcast are out here.

Percy's 8th Birthday

Saturday was Percy's 8th birthday. Eight is the age you can best get away with eating a bit of their cake before they do....

He didn't even think to ask what happened to the middle bit.

Last year on his 7th birthday we knew we were moving to France at some point in the near future, so it was nice to give him a big party in a hall with a bouncy castle and lot of people. It was a huge amount of work to do party bags, space themed food and decorations, including a thing you put your face.

Anyway I delegated the cake to Dan as I was doing everything else. It was actually nine cakes, (the eight planets of the solar system plus the sun -obviously) but watching him make and ice them really was difficult. I get you can't delegate a job and then tell them they're doing it wrong, but aghhh it's hard to watch someone pour sprinkles onto a cake with no kind of icing for glue, and then just wrap it up in cling film to stop them falling off. What I'm saying is I'm glad the cake job was back in my control this year. 

Its not the most profession looking cake but at least the chocolate is sticking stuff together.

It would have been tricky organising a class thing this year, because we don't really know what there is to do for parties and what is normal and how to go about it. Also our house here is not as big as our old house, so it would be hard to host something. We gave Percy the option of doing a class thing and he chose not to. I was slightly disappointed because I want to try and make friends with the other parents and it's a good opportunity, but I was also relieved that it would be a much easier job. All we had to do was have a fun day.

We got him a basketball net, because since being in France he has really got into basketball and goes to basketball club on a Wednesday when he's off school. 

So he began to day by unwrapping that and a few other gifts. Then we moved onto a family game of Taskmaster. If you don't know it, it's one of my favourite shows, where comedians get to do random competitions against each other. I would love to be on that show, either as a comedian or just the person who makes the props or thinks up tasks. It's a petty unlikely dream, seeing as I'm not pursuing being a comedian any more and I live in France. This is not the first time I've made a Taskmaster game for someone, I did one last year for an adult on my parents river and it was so much fun (read about it here). We've just got into watching the new series as a family. It's a show for adults, but they do a bleeped version with no swearing and our kids are now at the age where they find this kind of show interesting. 

I placed the tasks up the stairs with a medal for the winner.

 The first task was this:

You have two minutes to go round the house looking for an item beginning with "P" and an item beginning with "S". You get a bonus point if your item is yellow. You get a bonus point if your item is the smallest of all the items.

We went one at a time round the house with a backpack on to put the items into and then we sat at the table for the big item reveal. I thought I was super clever with a pea for "P" it must be the smallest item too, right? But then Dan trumped me with sand. Small and beginning with "S" but we deemed it not yellow enough to get the bonus point. We did a few more tasks including a team task: rescue the paw patrol from an ice block while holding onto you partners hand. 

It was all going so well until we did a more subjective task (design the most unusual but fun water park) and then there were tears because Percy does not take it well when he doesn't win, and the game had to be abandoned.

After a big chat with me he did do a good job of getting over his disappointment, turning the day round and moving on to enjoy the afternoon. In the middle of the waterpark task there was a knock at the door and a school friend came over to deliver an envelope for Percy. We all assumed it was a birthday card but actually it turned out that she didn't know it was his birthday and it was a hand written note that she's written in English, inviting him over for a playdate on Monday. He came back pretty exhausted it was 6 and a half hours of speaking french (we did offer to pick him up earlier!) I didn't get much out of him about what they did, they played some games ate chicken nuggets and went to the park, him and three girls. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall, not in a nosy way, but I'm just intrigued as to how much French he's speaking and stuff.

After Taskmaster was abandoned we thought cake would be a good shout, and then we headed out for some more unhealthy food at Buffalo Grill. 

From there we headed to a soft play place we'd never been to before. There was a big hall filled with different kinds of bouncy castles and other inflatables, and then another room with a kind of adventure play with a zip line and stuff. But the best thing was that these two rooms were joined by a room with a bar in it. I've spent a lot of time in soft plays in my time as a parent, but I've never thought to combine alcohol with soft play before, but it is absolutely what soft plays are missing. I'd love a kids party with all my mum friends where the kids were playing and we all have a few wines. Apart from one responsible driver of course, who has to keep an eye on all the kids and parents. 

In the evening we got back and watched Percy choice of film, Harry Potter 2. Last year he received Harry Potter book 1 for his birthday, and is now already reading book 4. 

Happy Birthday Percy Jones.

Teacher's pet

For the first time in my life I've been the teacher's pet this week in my new French classes. I was often a bit naughty in school, not the cool smoking on the bus kind, the playing pranks on teachers and being cheeky kind. My top prank was when I wheeled this big sign that said "injections taking place no entry" from a place where it wasn't being used, to in front of some stairs. This was at a time when the school was experimenting with a one way system where one set of stairs was for going up and one set were for going down. So this messed up the whole system. No one saw us move it, which meant we could then stand around and watch the whole thing unravel. At first people were just confused, then people started disobeying the sign and then a teacher saw people disobeying the sign and took it upon herself to enforce the sign. But there was no way for people to get upstairs and so more and more angry people started clogging up the area, then more teachers got involved and started arguing. It was an interesting lesson in conformity which I late referenced in a psychology exam about conformity.

The closest I've got to being a teachers pet was A-level art. I was never that great at art at GCSE, I only got a B. I didn't spend much time on it because there were so many other subjects to focus on, and then at A level I really enjoyed it, and did it every day (and got an A). The geekiest thing I did was read a book about African batik where they use starch, and then I experimented with loads of different starch based things. I found one that worked and started dying fabric that way, and then I had to demonstrate my findings to the class. But for some reason you don't get bullied for being an art geek, so that's nice, because I did get bullied for plenty of other stuff. 

A-level art was the last time you could get good marks for painting nice pictures. When I studied it at uni they didn't care about nice pictures anymore, it was all about the concepts and I went back to being average again.

awkward teenage me with my GCSE art work.

Some of my art from second year of uni.

This week and last week I started two different French classes. The best thing is that they don't know about each other, so they might both think I'm making great progress, not realising I'm making the expected progress for someone doing 4 days a week of French. First I started a very local French evening class, which is like a club you sign up to. The teachers are volunteers and it only cost 20 Euros for the whole year, for two evenings a week. No one else in the class is an English speaker. It's two chatty Spanish old ladies, one Dominican lady, a Mongolian guy and me. The teachers speak zero English and so it's like a massive game of charades/pictionary. It's ok for me because I speak enough French to work stuff out, but there was a 10 minute game of charades just to try and explain the past and future tense to the Dominican. I'm still not sure she really understands anything.

My other class is the one I legally have to go to, to get my visa. A few weeks ago I had a medical and a french test at the OFII and after doing the test I was award 200 hours of free French lessons.

This is the office for immigration and integration logo, but look closely at it....

why is that guy with creepy Mr tickle hands trying to grope the blue lady's boob?!

It's always nice to do a test where if you fail you get free stuff, though last time I did one was my dyslexia test. Basically if you fail a spelling test, you get a free laptop. I'd narrowly missed out on dyslexic money a few years earlier because the test included the word "Psalms" and my Christian upbringing had scuppered my chances, with my knowledge of spelling Old Testament books. 

I started these free lesson on Thursday, it's mainly refugees from Afghanistan and a few others like a couple from Georgia and me. There are no other native English speakers again, but some of the Afghan guys speak a bit of English. The teacher is really nice and I managed to get a reputation for being one of the good ones. At the beginning of the first day she asked me name, I said, "Hannah" she said, "can I call you Anna?" The French really struggle with "H." She asked if it was a British name, which it isn't really it's from the Bible, so I think it's a Hebrew name. But I looked it up today in the French bible and Hannah (in the book of 1 Samuel) is called "Anne"- what's that about?! You can't just go changing names like that. Also John in the French bible is Jean and James in the Bible is Jacques. It makes me wonder how close "Hannah" is to what they said back in the day. Guess how they spell Psalms though? .....PSAUMES! I really hope that for someone reading this, this comes up in a pub quiz or as the final question on a tv gameshow and you will millions all because you've read my blog. French spellings of Bible books is a common topic on pub quiz's, right?

While it is a nice novelty to be the good one in the class, I do think it's slightly unfair on the people who have to learn a whole new alphabet. I do have the advantage of GCSE French and the privilege of having the money to do some online lessons before I arrived. We had to go round and say why we came here and what we like about France, and some of the them mentioned fleeing war and that they loved the freedom of France. I felt bad to say I just moved here for fun to enjoy a wider variety of cheese.

The teacher also speaks Spanish (and a little bit of English), she was saying how English is hard though and gave the example of the work "knife" and said how this was a stupid way to spell it. Which gave me the opportunity to explain everything that it stupid about French (in French). 

For example, time. I've learnt time before, but it's only this week I noticed when French people answer the question, "what time is it?" they don't say, "it's 10 O'clock." They say, "he is 10 O'clock." Time is a man. 

There are many stupid examples of the masculine feminine thing being ridiculous, I'm sure I've mentioned before that the French word for vagina is masculine. 

At one point we were learning about household jobs. She taught us the word for "washing" and "stain" and "clean" and "dirty." She has to teach all this though mime and explaining in French because we all speak different languages. When I worked out she was explaining the word "dirty" I said it out loud in English, because sometimes it helps the Afghans and then she said, "oh? like dirty dancing?" and then I had to explain what "dirty" in the dirty dancing sense means in French, which is always fun.

I think the boys French is coming along, they understand a lot now and are starting to say short sentences.

It was Percy's birthday yesterday, so I'm going to write about that in its own blog.

A Visitor and an X-ray

Hey, I haven't written for a while, I've been putting more time into recording and editing our new podcast. We're doing 10 episodes (we might do more later on but for now we're just doing 10). They're out every Monday for the next 10 weeks, but the recording period was from February until October, because we wanted to make sure we had enough interesting things to say. If you follow my blog you will know lots about our move, but there are lots more funny stuff that I've included in the pod that I've held back from sharing on here. We talk about my french fails, times when I've said stupid stuff to the kids teachers because I can't remember the right word. A disastrous time when a french family knocked on my door and Dan was in the shower and I made a proper fool of myself. Every week we do a feature called "French for maniacs", where we teach you a completely mad French phrase and dare you to say it to a real French person. If you do know anyone moving countries please share it with them too because as well as the silliness we have tried to include some actual useful tips about the logistics of moving countries. It is here

Last week has been a super fun week for me, mainly because the lovely Esther came to visit just for a couple of days. Esther is actually the first visitor we've had that isn't a parent of me or Dan. (We were meant to see another family in August but that plan was ruined by chicken pox.) Esther is someone I've known since my early 20s and I respect a lot. She is an actor and director and works and lives all over the place including sometimes in a van with her adorable dog Robin. After a crazy and difficult lockdown time when she fled from London like everyone I know did, she is on a kind of pilgrimage to find out about herself and life and God. Doing a lot of walking and thinking and stuff. You should really follow her instead of read this secondhand nonsense from me.

We were in a nearby park when we saw this: Esther's plane arriving 15 mins early, we raced off and managed to beat her to arrivals.

We picked her up and went straight to the sea. It's still warm enough to swim, but it was a bit windy and it wasn't burning hot, but it is burning hot today (about 30). On the way back home we picked Percy up from his first ever French birthday party. It's so sweet to see how his classmates really love him. I'm very proud of how he's doing in school. He had to read the poem below out loud in front of his class last week and he did really well.

This is how he has to write now. The French are very particular about handwriting and so, alongside learning that letters make slightly different sounds in French, he also has to learn this curvy writing that I can hardly read.

On Monday and Tuesday the boys were in school and Dan was working which meant that me and Esther got to go on some little adventures by ourselves. On Monday we set off to a gorge, stopping on the way to check out the view from the big hill you can see from our house. Driving on a tiny very steep road is not my favourite thing but it was worth it for the views. 

The difficult drive continued as we made our way to the the gorge. I've only been there once on a very hot August Saturday when it was rammed. This time I followed the sat nav, and it took me not the way I really wanted to go. I ended up on little windy path in a vineyard with a parked tractor blocking the way. There was a small gap but neither me nor Esther thought I could squeeze through without hitting a big rock. Then a guy appeared and waved me through. If I had better language skills I might have tried to argue that it was a bad idea, but I thought it was better to just try and I made it! 

I then discovered that the road lead to nowhere because the car park I was trying to get to had been blocked off with a giant rock, and you can't just park in a vineyard. I mean I was going to, but Esther said I shouldn't and then I saw "we'll tow away your car" signs. So I had to try and 3 point turn and squeeze past the tractor again and find a different way then. (Luckily the tractor had actually moved.) Eventually we got to the gorge a different way, but the entrance was all fenced off as if it just shuts in September. But as I said as a child, you can't pray the bit in the Lord's prayer that says "forgive us our trespasses" if you haven't been trespassing.

It was totally worth it to have this whole absolutely gorgeous gorge all to ourselves. There's like a long interesting rock corridor that you can swim down and then 2 places where you can swim and jump into a pool and the water is the most beautiful colour ever, and still warm enough to be ok at this time of year. After a lovely swim we climbed up the hill to try and find some caves, unsuccessfully, but we got some ace views.

The best colour in the world

The view from our climb

The next day we went on a long walk to a very cool waterfall. We had some deep chats about life, reminiscing about our 20's and the fine line we walked between having a genuine Christian faith and accidentally being in bit of a cult and how we make sense of all that now. (I've got no plans to unpack all that in this blog anytime, but happy to have real life chats with anyone who wants to.) At the end of the walk we reached this beautiful waterfall and some surprising things happened. But what happened at the waterfall stays at the waterfall (Its really Esther's story so I'll let her share it on her blog.)

I'm writing this now on the coach back from Montpellier, where I went for a meeting with the immigration and integration board. Before going I read a blog from someone who has been to this meeting (which also includes a medical examination and a french test) and she said it was incredibly stressful and disorganised, no one spoke English and she cried afterwards. But I've actually had a pretty good day, and yeah there were moments where I thought if they had translated the word "breastfeeding" then it would have meant a middle aged guy with man boobs wouldn't have had to mime breastfeeding to me. But then where would I get all my blog and podcast content from? HE CUPPED HIS MAN BOOB AND SUCKED HIS THUMB - honestly it was hilarious! And I will be doing a full in depth analysis of the many humorous moments of the whole day on the podcast, but not till episode 10.

Would you let me have a long stay visa based on this picture of my boobs? Well the French think it's good enough. Whoop whoop!

This week we're having a couple that I met online over for tea, just because they're from Warrington. Imagine doing that in the UK. Imagine going to Ikea for example (I really can't think of another reason you would go to Warrington) and imagine you got chatting to someone in the queue and then you just invited them over for tea. That's weird right?

C'est tout. Bisous.

French Septembers

 September was sometimes a bit of a sad time of year, as a person who loves the summer I always felt in September like I didn't get enough sun to go into autumn yet. But this year is different because my love for the sun has taken me to a place with much more of it. So now it's like some kind of sun inflation has taken place, where the sun has no value now. I could stay inside and play board games on a sunny saturday without feeling like I'm wasting the day. It's 34 degrees today, I think the temperature will stay in the low 30s or high 20s this month. Going down to very variable in October before it's finally cold by November. but by then it's only 4 months until it's sunny beach weather again.

The kids started back on 1st September, they were more than ready to go back by then, Percy said "7 weeks off is fine but 8 weeks off is too long." It was a very long summer especially given the fact I saw hardly any other people in that time I had 3 play dates in 8 weeks. I normally have 3 a week! 

In the UK the boys would be going back into year 1 and year 3, but the french school system is different. In England Percy is one of the oldest kids in his year with a birthday in October and Eric is on the younger side with a birthday in May. But here everyone born in the same calendar year is in a class together. So in England Percy's class would all be 7 in September and turn 8 that year, but here most of his class are already 8 and they will be turning 9 from January. So he's sort of skipped a year and if we stay in France he would start secondary school a year early, I feel like I've lost a year of his life!  Eric on the other hand is still kind of in nursery here. He doesn't legally have to be in school until next September. Even though the building he goes to is part of the school Percy is in, and they share a playground and play with each other at break time. Also this is all free, not like nursery in the U.K which is really expensive.

Percy had a good first day, it was very cute taking him back after lunch and seeing him play tag with his classmates pointing at himself and saying "moi" to show he was on. Eric was extremely tired after his first day and had a tantrum about the positioning of his ketchup at tea, they take away naps now he's in the "La grande section de maternelle" (big class of nursery) last year he had his own tiny bed in school!

At the moment they still come back home for lunch but they will be staying in for lunch soon. The first morning at drop off it was really nice, it's so relaxed compared to their old school (it's about a quarter of the size) They were playing music in the playground including john Lenon's Imagine, it's like they were trying to make parents cry. I also think the teachers seem happier. I'm a big fan of the no uniform thing for kids and teachers . The reason schools always give for uniform is "it prevents bullying" this is massively undermined by the 2 or 3 times a year you have to pay a pound to wear your own clothes. My mum also clearly wanted me to get bullied in primary school because even though 95% of people had the school sweatshirt with the school logo, you were allowed to just wear a red jumper. Or a red cardigan your mum knitted. I remember a dinner lady commenting on how lovely it was and just thinking "you are the last person in the world I want to impress"

 Dan went to chat to the headteacher about how we sign up for lunches, and asked how she was, and she said something like "I'm great, I'm in my element" I just don't think a British head teacher would be that happy on the first day back. but when you get to wear shorts, have a 1 hour 45 for lunch, Wednesday's off and an 8 week summer holiday I bet teaching is not that bad. I don't think the teachers have to do lunch duties either, I think they go home for lunch too. There's a different organisation that's in charge of lunch times, after school clubs, Wednesday club and holiday clubs. So now that we have just signed the kids up for lunch club we can apparently just email on the day and say can my kid attend after school club today, or we need them to go in for one random Wednesday.

At the end of the day Percy's teacher gave us a big list of things he needed that we should have seen in July:

That's a lot of stuff right? if you don't speak french here are some of the things we had to buy:

 I actually think this is a good thing because I worked in school and school never have glue sticks in the summer term. I've asked to borrow some before and I had to use the office staff's secret stash of 3 good ones for a group of 20. But if every kid has to bring two sticks in in September that does get rid of that issue, and probably kids will look after them a bit better. French kids get given about 300 euros in August to buy all this with. Unfortunately we didn't know about this until a few days too late so didn't receive anything.

One of the things on the list was a calculator, Dan was packing Percy's stuff this evening and wrote "boobs" on it you know 58008 upside down, that classic. It made me wonder what do the french write on their calculators upside down? Any suggestions? Tell me!

In Britain in September freshers fairs will soon be taking place for students, in France the whole nation has a fresher's fair in September. What I mean by this is every Marie (town hall place) has a list of clubs they do, our local one doesn't have much I'm interested in, they have a walking club, a knitting/sewing one, petanque (a french ball game) and a few others. but you aren't limited you your local one. One in a bigger village near us has loads more great ones to choose from including horse ridding and rhythmic gymnastics! They almost all have an open day some time in September where you can see a demonstration of the club and meet people and sign up, just like you would join a society at freshers fair. Then you have to pay for a year's membership in September. It's going to be an expensive month because we're going to all try and join clubs so that we can get to know people and integrate, Dan is going to do a Marshall art, Percy has in the last few months got super into basket ball and wants to do that. Eric wants to do rugby and I'm going to do french lessons and thinking of joining a gospel choir as well.

I would say Dan is pretty integrated into french society now though, he went for a haircut last week and the hairdresser started complaining about foreigners to him. That's when you know you've truly integrated. I wonder if I will ever reach that level of french. I was at selling art and an art festival at the weekend and a woman said "C'est Jolie" about by work. I replied "Merci" and she just said "English"

my lino prints
(let me know if you want one £10-£15 and easy to post without the frame)

Acrylic Paintings

It was a fun festival to be part of, in a really lovely random town called Amelie-les-bains. I didn't want the kids to be bored so I go them to do portraits of people and they totally stole the show. They might have been the only people there that made any money. They made 8 euros between then but they felt like they were millionaires. Erics already spent half his takings on chocolate yoghurts.

Thanks for reading. 

p.s I've started an instagram for my all art stuff since I moved here, plus a you can see more of the boy's portraits.  @artisthannahjones

The pros and cons of a summer here.

It's the long long 8 week summer holidays. Every time we've been on nice beach holiday over the past decade me and Dan have always asked ourselves, "what would it be like if we lived here?" So now we actually do live in a top holiday destination how does it compare? Here are the pros and cons of a summer in Perpignan.

Pros - it's hot,

What's really annoying about England is that you can never plan anything. I tried to plan a get together with some friends in June when I was back in England, staying at my parents river house there was one day everyone could make, but it was cold and grey and rainy. On a sunny day it would have been a lot of fun, and there was a lot of outside space for people to hang out in, but it was nowhere near as good without nice weather.

What's great about being here is you can make plans to go to the beach or park or anywhere in the summer and know that there's a 98% chance it won't rain, and if it does rain it will probably be a brief refreshing break from the sun. I don't take a coat anywhere because if it rains I want to get rained on.

We went to a pool party planned two weeks in advance with no backup option!

Cons - it's hot

It's too hot! I hate to be someone who complains, I never complained it was too hot in England, but it really is crazy hot. It's normally 32 to 35 degrees, but it can be up to 40 and that's just stupid. Today when we got in the car after it had been sat in the sun, the car said it was 43 degrees! We've seen about 5 forest fires since we've been here. After once living somewhere that was so cold in winter that nothing really needed the fridge, it became my dream to live somewhere where butter is spreadable at room temperature, but here it's actually liquid. We have one air con unit downstairs that we use a lot and we bought a portable one for upstairs. We put it on in the kids room a while before bedtime and then move it to our room and put it on a hour before we go to bed. It's a bit annoying having to work out when to put it on and it takes up a lot of space, but it does help. 

forest fire seen from our bedroom window

In England when we used to sit and eat outside I always said I felt like we were on holiday, and we told people we moved here for more of an outdoor lifestyle. In reality though I often take the boys out first thing, leaving the house at about 9, and we stay out for a few hours and then stay inside the rest of the day. We rarely open the shutters on the windows upstairs because it lets too much heat in, so the upstairs of our house is just a dark hot box. When I'm doing work on the garden and I listen to a podcast on my phone outdoors I can only listen for about 5 minutes before the phone overheats and I have to put it in the fridge. 

We could have chosen to live anywhere in France and at the moment I can't help thinking "I bet the north is a lovely temperature." But May was nice, so I hope September and October will be lovely and I'll get used to the heat.

Cons - not many friends

I'm getting a little bit bored of the 3 people I live with. Much as I love them I need more people than just them, we established that a long time ago in lockdown. I am slowly getting to know a few people here, last week I had two play dates, one with a French speaking mum of two boys who I met online, she lives not too far from me and she is keen for her kids to learn English. We've met twice, once she came to mine when the kids were in school, and last week we met in a park with the kids, who refused to really speak to each other. It was good for us adults to practise our French even though it was awkward and embarrassing at times. I also had a play date on the beach with a South African mum of a baby that I met at the English speaking church and that was a lot less stressful. This mum is hoping her baby will be Trilingual (English/French /Afrikaans) by age 3. I'm so jealous of babies that are learning multiple languages. I really wasted my baby years. I'm also really jealous of all my comedian friends in Edinburgh right now. I so wish I could be there for a few days. A year ago I was doing Jonesfest in my garden. Such a fun weekend. If I could just spend ten minutes time traveling I'd go back to this moment and hug all of you:

Pros - It's beautiful everywhere

A massive benefit of being here is it's just beautiful everywhere you look. Even the car park of my local big supermarket is amazing, because you can just see a big mountain from there. Even a run down house has a rustic French charm that a run down house in Liverpool wouldn't have. 

There are so many nice views and I've been out painting them with the boys which has been a lot of fun. In fact today we went to this lake and even though I wasn't going to do any art, Eric really wanted to, so he sat and drew this:

More Art

Lake vinca is such a big win. 1 euro each on the train, the kids play happily in the sand and go in the lake for a swim, I can sit on the sand and read a book and they can entertain themselves, or I can go for a proper swim. As long as I can see them they're fine in the shallow bits. It's the parenting dream. 

Lake Vinca

Apart from today when Percy lost his shoe and we never found it. He had to get the train home wearing a shoe I made for him out of some card from a plaster box as a base, a sanitary towel stuck on (to add comfort), a mask and a hair bobble wrapped round it all attaching it to his foot, and a sock over all of that. And yes a man on the train did notice and I had to think of the French for 'my son lost his shoe in the lake.'

Cons - parks

Liverpool is great for parks. Theres so many and theres a few really big ones that have playgrounds and sell ice cream. Sefton Park has festivals in in the summer and Calderstones has a fairground and fake beach. Theres not really an equivalent of those parks here. There a playground in our next door village with a basketball/ football space and a little bit of skate park, but there's not a lot of grass or trees. And then we went to a park this week that had a high rope course for kids in and 2 proper restaurants and a bit with inflatables (you have to pay for all this stuff). it was a nice park, but still nothing like Sefton Park.

Pros - beaches

There's loads and they're all great. Perfect temperature, clean sea. Every day of the summer is a possible beach day. There's also no tides (because it's the med) so you don't have to do that annoying thing where you have to move where you're sitting. Or that even more annoying thing where you arrive at a beach only to discover it's high tide and there is no beach.

Collioure 

Argeles

Pros - road trips

There's some great places within two hours of Liverpool, like the Lake District and North Wales, and we've been to a lot of them over the years. But I am very excited about all the places you can get to from here. We're two and a bit hours from Barcelona, and Andorra. Also were near Carcassone and Narbonne. When it snows we'll be just over an hour from skiing places. There's also smaller little towns, and loads of mountains and a whole load of new places for days out like safari parks, water parks, kids farms, castles etc. So far we've been to a safari park and Andorra for one night which was very interesting. The main city was full of duty free shops, because it's a tax haven. Diesel was 20c cheaper too. The mountains there were also amazing, we saw so many epic views. I also saw someone on ski's with wheels practising skiing up hill like a crazy person. 

Andorra

Pros - childcare

There's a bit of a different childcare culture over here compared to England and it makes a lot of sense. In England in the summer holidays if both parents work then you're fighting other parents for a week off in August. And then you get the grandparents to help out one week and you might send them to a camp for a week and it's all a bit stressful. I was lucky that I had a term time job, but loads of women (and maybe some men, but I don't know of any) just get a rubbish job they don't really want, because it fits round the school holidays and 3:15 pick ups. In France you can just pay for childcare at your kids school, or nearby, all summer if you want (it's about 15 euros a day) and it's totally normal and not something they feel guilty about and they do a full day like 8am to 6pm. The woman I met up with said she sends her kids in even when she does have time off work. No woman in the UK would admit to that without feeling bad. 

Pros - Food

The cheese and different kinds of bread are amazing, but probably my biggest food love I've enjoyed since arriving has been the ice cream. It's the range of flavours as well as the quality of ice cream that makes it great. Currently in my freezer I have apple sorbet, pear sorbet, and mango, pineapple and coconut ice cream. What ice cream do you currently have in your freezer? I genuinely want to know. The other great thing I've discovered is frozen paella. It takes 10 minutes to cook in a pan and it's got prawns, mussels, calamari, veg and rice all delicious. And it works out less than 1.50 euros per adult portion.

Pros - Cost of living

Things that are cheeper include:

Gas - we buy a big gas canister for cooking it costs about 30 euros and lasts at least two months.

Electric - I don't think it's especially cheap compared to the UK a few years ago, but it's cheap compared to how crazy things are in the UK know. 

Wine 

Train tickets

Council tax, if you're renting it's paid by the landlord. 

School trips - so far our kids have been loads of places and we haven't paid anything.

Child benefit- were about to switch to the french system and I'm not sure yet but it looks like it's more generous. We were told if we had a third kid it would be really generous.

Cons - cost of living

Dan earns the same as when we were in England, our rent is more that what we paid on a mortgage in England but we make a profit on our old house that we rent out, so that's all kind of equalish. A big change though is that I am not bringing in money now.

And here are some things that are more expensive:

Most stuff you would buy from a supermarket. Especially sliced breads, which you have to get from the foreign food aisle. I like to get baguettes sometimes but I can't be getting fresh bread every day. Meat is also really expensive, and I can't find any meat alternative stuff like Quorn. 

I've heard if you go just across the border to Spain, about 30 mins away, you can buy a load of stuff like cosmetics and cleaning products and fuel a lot cheaper, so we will try that out one day.

They don't really have charity shops either. I did just join a clothes shop for kids though. You pay 30 euros for a years membership and you get all the clothes half price and free delivery if you wanted to buy online. It's nice stuff too all very bright and fun. 

So overall it's hard to say really whether I've had a better summer here. Sometimes it's been amazing, sometimes it's been a bit boring and too hot to be honest. It's been very different and I wanted a change This with friends would be amazing.

I feel like that's a weird slightly sad ending so I will cheer you up with this place I walked past yesterday: