Losing a job and finding a job.

It's been a very strange week job wise. In September 2021 Dan got a new job, a remote job for a company in the Czech Republic which allowed us all to move to France. On Tuesday they made him redundant with 4 weeks notice. This was one of our biggest potential worries about moving, because I've left my job (obviously because it was in England) and my ability to earn money is a lot more limited here, due to the fact I'm language disabled. That's the new official PC term for the fact that I don't speak good French. 

So far we've survived ok on just Dan's income, which has meant I could focus on learning French, and I have learnt a fair bit of French. My favourite word is "talkie walkie" that's French for "walkie talkie." It was a bit of a shock for him to be made redundant, and I feel like they could have given him more notice. 

When he started the job he was employed (rather than self-employed) because the company had an office in London, but when we moved he had to become self-employed because they didn't have an office in France. It was a bit of a faff to set up and he had to pay someone to do it because it's a bit complicated if you don't understand the system. It was all going well and we felt really lucky that he had such flexible work, but the problem with being self-employed is that it's very easy for people to get rid of you, in a way that they can't really do if you're employed. So this week they just told him, "we're not really using you to your full potential, so we're going to get rid of you" and then the next day they said a different reason like "it's just not really working and we're going to take on someone else and give them a slightly different role," which was a further blow.

There's loads of people in his company that love him and some are very angry with the fact this has happened, like the lady Dan manages who has said he is the best boss ever and she doesn't really want to do that job without him. And the person who originally gave Dan the job said some incredibly nice things about him too.

It is a shame and it is a bit worrying because we don't have as many safety nets as we previously have had, but this is at least the third time Dan has either been made redundant or chose to leave a job with nothing lining up, and every time, eventually, it's worked out for the best, so lets see what happens. If you have any ideas let us know.

Meanwhile I had an interview last week for a job teaching English in a sort of fun club. It's just for Wednesdays because kids don't go to school on Wednesdays. The kids learn English though crafts and games and cooking, it's all really creative. Yesterday I had to go back to show a lesson plan and talk though my activity ideas and I got the job! So I'm happy about that. It will in some ways be similar to the work I used to do in schools - apart from the English bit. I was told I was the least qualified in teaching English, but that's not actually the thing they were looking for the the most. It was pretty weird getting the job the day after Dan lost his job. If Dan still had his job this extra money would be like bonus money for holidays and stuff, but now I'm already trying to think of ways to get more hours. If I can sign up some kids from my village for example I might be able to do more work.

I told the kids today that after our holiday to England Daddy will be looking for a new job. Eric said, "what does Daddy love to do?" and Percy said, "it doesn't matter what he loves to do, he needs to get a job so that we don't all perish!" That's pretty much what the people at the job centre said to me when I told them I had an Art Degree. 

In other news, we got a free meal at our village Bastille day celebrations... 

The boys made sunglasses cases using the sewing machine and I think they would do ok in a sweatshop, if we were about to perish. (If you want to see a video of them doing it it's on my art instagram @artisthannahjones)

I did some photo embroidery too.

And we're looking forward to hosting the lovely Rachel Goodsall next week.

Today's parenting was greatly improved by this beautiful sea.

My Weird French Life

This is my first June in France. We moved here in April 2022, but because of a misunderstanding of the visa appointment system, I had to spend almost the whole of June 2022 in the UK. I've done quite a few weird things recently so I thought I'd tell you about them. Firstly, I did stand up in French! This took weeks and weeks of practising and I still didn't get it all perfect, but it was ok. I got through it, I got some laughs and all the people I met were super supportive and lovely. I don't think I'll do it again in French any time soon though.

French comedy is odd. Maybe not all comedy nights in France are like this, but this one started with tapas, they didn't serve any lemonade, but they did serve orangina. Then everyone went to a 300 seat theatre. The show didn't start until almost 9 and there were several kids in the audience. There was no compere, we just knew the order and the acts introduced the next acts. I was politely clapping along to the guy who came on after me until Dan pointed out they were clapping for me. There was a guy doing a short intro, then me doing 7 minutes, then two stand ups doing at least 30 minutes each, and then a hypnotist doing an hour and 15 and NO INTERVAL, that was the weirdest thing. I spoke to the hypnotist beforehand, he was French Canadian so he spoke to me in English. He told me his bit had to be a minimum of 1 hour 15 to work. You can't hypnotise people in less time than that (unless you're the snake from Disney's Robin Hood). I wold have been really interested to stay, I don't think my French is good enough to be hypnotised in French, but I was intrigued to see what went down. But in the end after doing my set and then sitting through over an hour of stand up that I didn't quite get, my need for a drink was stronger than my curiosity to see if I could be hypnotised in French. So we managed to sneak out.

The next weird thing I did was a favour to my weird but cool artist friend Flick. She wanted to shoot a video where she was going for a great day out with her best friend in the world... her painting, and I was there as the gooseberry/camerawoman documenting their love. What I love about Flick is that I come across as very normal and sensible next to her, and that's a nice change. In my friendship groups in Liverpool I was always the weird one:

"Please Steve will you come with me to film a little promo video for my comedy club, can we ride together on a tandem and can I wear a horse's head?"

"Dan I had a dream where you were the Suez Canal but I was still me, and I want to reenact it for a comedy show, you're cool with that right?"

So we began the day with the painting which was on a huge canvas wrapped up in a roll in the back of her car wearing sunglasses and lipstick. The we drove to a well know tourist destination Colloiure. It's a beautiful picturesque little cove where you can take a rolled up painting on a skateboard, sit on the harbour wall and share an ice cream with the painting. You can dance with buskers and a painting, and a random passer by who joined in, and then you can get to the little beach and unroll your painting, roll around on it and then get in the sea and swim with it. The most surreal bit for me was when I was filming Flick in the sea with the painting while trying to explain, in French, what was going on to a random older lady who asked a lot of questions.

The weekend after that was a special art weekend, in Port-Vendres, the sightly uglier big sister of Collioure. It's actually very pretty as well but doesn't get the same amount of love from tourists. We had signed up for a weekend of plein air painting, and our works will be exhibited in September. On the first day we went to the beach so the kids could play while we painted. I had brought some canvases but last minute I decided I wanted to paint nature's free canvases (some rocks) instead. The boys also were doing portraits for 1 euro for passers by. They made 3 euros each and were very happy about it.

On the second day Dan took the kids, ours plus Flicks 6 year old, to see soap box racing in a local park while we went back to Port-Vendres (to the actual town this time) to do some more painting. I've no idea if this painting will turn out good or not, we'll see. 

Ive also been doing some embroidery recently, which has been fun. The main benefit compared to painting is I can half watch programs I don't really care about at the same time, so I've been watching a documentary about the Tour de France with Dan and I don't even resent him for it.

 

Friday was Eric's last rugby training, so they were having some kind of bring and share tea together. In England this would be everyone bringing shop bought sausage rolls and quiche and eating it off paper plates in a sports hall while in rained. In France it was everyone making absolutely incredible flans and quiches but so much better than I've ever tasted, slices of watermelon and then a barbecue they just did on the ground, where they cooked a load of delicious Catalan sausage. And then there were the desserts. I made some flapjack but there was some amazing pastries and chocolate crepes to. The kids were having a water fight because it was still boiling hot even at 8pm, they were filling the rugby cones with water and throwing them on each other.

Eric's in the front in the blue hat

The ground bbq.

Ive only got 2.5 weeks left now before the start of the summer holidays. I think this summer will be the opposite of last summer. Last summer it was boring, we didn't know anyone, we didn't go back to England or have any visitors and I wasn't very confident about driving anywhere with the boys. This summer will be packed with almost non-stop visitors, all visiting from the end of July until the second week of September. Hopefully it will be fun! After that I need to find a job and if that goes well maybe we can stay forever and buy a chateau. I don't know. Watch this space.

A new tiny person.

A brand new person arrived in the world on 5th May. I mean she was in the world before that, but she was packaged better, in the body of my sister Jo. I was hoping Jo would be crowning just as the king was being crowned (that would be fun) but she was 12 hours off. Her first baby was not straight forward and she lost a lot of blood. It was covid times and her husband wasn't allowed in the hospital and she ended up discharging herself because her care was so awful. This time it all went smoothly, she went in in the evening, had her at 10pm and went home at midnight. When I told my French friend, who has also just had a baby, this she couldn't believe it. My friend also had a simple birth, she went in on a Tuesday and chose to come out on the Friday, and then her visiting midwife told her off for not staying in longer.

Miriam Elspeth and Hannah Margaret

My sister lives in Bradford so I was very excited when I found out that this year Ryanair have started flying a new route, Perpignan to Leeds/Bradford. I once wrote a blog about how much I hated Ryanair, but I have now decided, due to this new route, to forgive them. I even made them an 'I forgive you' video on tiktok. I got very cheap flights, 40 euros return. I just flew with hand luggage so it was super easy. I missed out on holding my nephew who was born in covid times so it was super nice to hold my newborn niece. I can't believe babies exist, and everyone was a baby. I know I've done it twice but it's still amazing that a person grows inside another person and that they can squeeze out. She was very adorable and just wanted to be cuddling a person all day, and that was a lovely job mainly because the baby cuddler didn't have to do the other jobs. There were three adults so we did all do our fair share of baby cuddling and other jobs.

I think most people know this, but just in case you don't here's a public service announcement: If your friend has a baby and you visit them and just hold the baby when it's happy, you are not really helping. Your friend might be happy for the company, but she would be even more happy if you, got her shopping, did the washing up, held the baby while the parent sleeps, entertained an older child, cooked a meal, hang out her washing. I was only there 3 days but I tried to do some of these things. The most tiring job was entertaining big brother Zac who is 2. He is a very adorable little boy but he's also a savage (all 2 year olds are). He wakes up at 5:30am and he wants entertaining all day. Newborns and 2 year olds have opposite needs really, I don't know why it's so popular to have both at once. It's like owning a cute little house trained bunny and a wolf. In the long run it's a nice gap though, my kids have the same gap and most of the time they're best buddies.

I've really forgotten how difficult that stage is. I do remember it being difficult, Eric was born in May 2017 and I didn't get any nursery for Percy until September, and we were paying for that, so we did the minimum possible which was 1.5 days. They were cute, but it's so relentless trying to entertain a two year old when you haven't slept. You don't get any head space and you are constantly being touched. Baby groups were life savers though, I went to one my church ran and it meant Percy could go off and play with new toys and I could keep an eye on him while sitting down feeding Eric. It's kind of impossible to enjoy that bit when it's so relentless. Then you look back at photos of them and think "aww they were so cute, I miss that" but that's because you're not remembering the times when they thought 4:30am was an ok time to wake up and play, or they pooed in the bath.

But look how cute they were!

I think my sister and her husband are doing a great job though, Jo is super patient which really is an achievement given the circumstances. When I flew back I felt very grateful that my own kids were out of the baby bit, and although they have their moments they're pretty easy really. They had a great time when while I was away. We didn't realise that both school days I was away were actually holidays. In France there is no May half term but there are five random bank holidays, plus Wednesdays are off school anyway.  Dan couldn't really take the time off so very kindly my friend Flick took them out to the aquarium one day and a gallery the other day and then on the weekend Dan took them to see the Mario Movie, which they absolutely loved and didn't mind at all that it was in French.

In other news I passed my A2 french course! Last time I had to wait two months between finishing the A1 and starting the A2 but this time I started the B1 the next day which was great, although it's a bit annoying that it's on Wednesdays (as well as Fridays) because we have to pay for the kids to go to the school club.  This is the last course I can get for free, after that I will do some paid online evening classes and try and look for work. If I pass the B1 and jump through some other hoops, like have an interview, I can eventually get citizenship, which means we will all finally be EU members and we could move anywhere. Except why would we leave France when we've just spent so much time learning French.

I'm enjoying my lessons and I love meeting a random selection of refugees and immigrants. Last week I learnt how to play Rock, Paper, Scissors Ukrainian style. They chant a long rhyme before doing it which made it tricky because I went after they said 3 words, assuming they were counting, but what they were actually saying was "paper beats rock, rock beats scissors...etc" but guess what? they have a 4th thing! "The Well" as in what you get water from. The well beats the rock and scissors because they sink but paper beats well because it floats.

On Saturday I"m doing 8 minutes of stand up comedy in French!! If I never mention it again, it went badly, so don't ask me about it.

Bilingual and Cheeky

It was very cool to celebrate Eric's 6th birthday this week. I love a themed party and Mario was a very fun theme. I've come a long way in my Mario knowledge, since the days when I was asked to do a Mario mural for a neighbour, when I didn't have much of a clue about the characters. At that time I'd just found out I was going to be moving to France and I remember listening to learning French audio books while painting the mural, but now my knowledge of French and Mario has really improved. I've even played Mario Kart with Percy's French classmate, so I know all the Mario related French words.

Eric hasn't really ever had a big party. His 3rd birthday was in the height of lockdown, his 4th was still pretty locked down, for his 5th we had just moved here and knew no one, so it was about time we did something good. Percy had a big party for his 7th where we got a hall and a bouncy castle, so we looked into hiring a small bouncy castle for our garden here, but it was crazy expensive like more than double what we paid for Percy's party, for a much smaller castle. Some things are weirdly expensive here for no reason.  Another thing we used to do in Liverpool, but now can't afford to do, is get our car cleaned on the inside. We don't own a hoover because we don't own carpets so I wanted to get our car cleaned. I used to pay £12 a few times a year for the guys outside Dobbies (the garden centre) to give our car a mini valet. They made it great inside and outside, while I could go inside with the boys and get a free hot drink, because we got 2 a month with our Dobbies membership (which was maybe £12 a year). Anyway there was a similar looking business outside a big shopping centre, they wanted 60 euros just the clean the inside! 

Another thing you can't seem to buy here, but you could loads of places in England, is an inflated balloon. You can buy the foil balloons everywhere, but then you have to buy your own helium canister. We just wanted one balloon in the shape of a 6. Other random things that are hard to get here include: hummus, hash browns, black beans, halloumi, crisps in a bag that is just for one person, and a decent hot chocolate. 

We actually went to Spain at the weekend to see what is cheaper there and a lot of things were. We mainly went to buy me a new bike. I've had my lovely folding bike for 10 years now and I love it, but it's not a joy to ride anymore and I wanted the exact same thing but new. They don't sell it anywhere in France but they do sell it in the first major town in Spain - Figueres. I got the last one in the shop and I love it. 

She's called Rosa, (the girl's name we never used).

We also stocked up on cheaper meat, hummus and nice cheaper juices at a supermarket and this market...

But back to the party... After a lot of thought we didn't go for the crazy bouncy castle, we instead bought a second hand chocolate fountain for 8 euros, and made some home made Mario themed games. We made a Mario track in the shape of a figure of 8. Eric wanted "a figure of 6" because it was his 6th birthday and it was hard to explain why that would be difficult. He just invited 6 friends which was the right number to fill the house without it being too much. I did face painting and Dan was in charge of giving glow in the dark Mario temporary tattoos.  My decision to make the party bags from scratch using paper and glue only hours before the party was a bad one, but it turned out ok in the end.

We did two games: Pass the parcel and pin the moustache on Mario. The French kids had not heard of either of these. Before pass the parcel I tried to get the kids to sit in a circle on the sofa and chairs. This is where cheeky Eric thought he'd take a chance to make a joke out of my imperfect French. I wanted to say "sit on the sofa" but I actually said "sit in the sofa." He then thought it was hilarious to lift up a bit of the sofa bed where we store the duvet and try and get in there, saying in French, in front of all his mates, "what mum? you said sit IN the sofa Ha Ha Ha. " It was actually pretty funny.

He's so excited to be six, I always feel a bit sad every time he gets older in a way that I don't do with Percy. He's just a great age at the moment, very easy and agreeable, very affectionate and was so excited about the birthday party. I loved making all the decorations and doing the cake and stuff, I love a theme. I have no clue what I will do when they're teenagers and don't want decorations and a theme.

All Eric's toes used to fit on my finger.

After the success of Pin the Moustache on Mario, I was asked to make a Pin the ear on Charles thing for a coronation celebration we went to at my English friends house. I virtually never paint faces because they're hard! This actually turned out better than some times where I've tried to do a serious painting. Maybe I could go into business doing bespoke pin the x on y posters. 

Having a party soon? Want a random game? What's the most unusual one you can think of?

The best trifle I have ever tasted

The creepiest body for King Charles.

Ps My sister Jo has also had a baby... I'm going to visit her next week so she can have a blog dedicated to her after that.

Franceaversary

22nd April marked one year since we moved, potentially forever, to a city we'd only been to for one day in 2019. That trip was part of a two week camper van trip from Nice to Barcelona. At that point I had just had an operation 6 months earlier so we wanted to have some nice family time, and we wanted to make the most of the fact that Eric wasn't quite two years old and so was still free on flights. We'd never seen that bit of France before, and apart from the van being too small and Dan having to sleep in an "L" shape around Eric it was a pretty good trip. 

This photo was taken on our 1 random day in Perpignan in 2019.
I'm pointing at the mountain that we can now see from our window.

We were not really thinking about leaving back then, it's always been in the back of our minds, but we were pretty settled in Liverpool, my parents hadn't long moved up north, and remote working was less of an option. But we did really like all the places along that coast. It was pretty strange but exciting swapping a nice but entirely predicable life for a year where everything changed and really anything could have happened. And really I think in general things have turned out well. 

Some major things are harder: we have less money because we used our savings on the move and I am not currently working, we have less space in our house, although we've gained a second toilet and although our garden is smaller, we use it more because it hardly rains. We have fewer friends. They're some pretty major downsides. But I am the kind of person who likes change and there's been a lot of good change. 

We have made some new friends, not many, but we've met some cool people here. Among our old friends we're part of maybe 5-10% of people who would take the step to move country. No judgement on people who wouldn't choose to move, in some ways I wish I had no desire to move, it would be simpler, but among the community of other foreigners here, we are the very dull play it safe ones. I've met a few people that have moved multiple times within France or internationally, moving their kids schools each time. I know someone who first moved to Barcelona with a family then it didn't work out, so they moved to France and lived with their in laws, their husband couldn't find work here so got a job in London and the rest of the family will move back in the summer. I thought moving here was stressful but in comparison our lives are pretty easy. 

I've been getting to know some more Ukrainians. There's one on my course that told me the story of how she came here. Her city was very close to the Russian border and was the first placed to be bombed. She had an hour to pack her car and she focused on packing all the things her cats needed to survive. The day they left was her 19th birthday. She first travelled to a different city in Ukraine, but the roads were jam packed and a journey that should have taken 5 hours took 24 hours. They also struggled to get fuel as everyone else was buying it too. They were very cold in the car, it was February and they had to turn the car off when they weren't moving to preserve fuel. They then left to Romania and were sleeping in their car or on church floors. Eventually they came to France. Then for 3 months she moved back to a safer part of Ukraine to work and see her boyfriend. She remembers being on a bridge in a city and the very next day that bridge was bombed. 

In a weird set of coincidences I met another Ukrainian who lives in my village. When we arrived a year ago a Ukrainian family also arrived and were living with a French host family. The head teacher managed to find funding to put on some extra French lessons for Percy, the Ukrainian girl and a Portuguese girl. Then I started my A1 French classes in October and met some Ukrainians (who I didn't particularly talk to) but then, last week, I went to the boys end of term music concert and this woman (who I really recognised but I didn't know where from) started talking to me. At first it was awkward because I really didn't know who she was, but eventually I realised she was the Ukrainian from my old French class (I'm now in a different class in a different place). So she'd been in my village the whole time and our kids have been taught together and we had been in the same class but, have never met. We've exchanged numbers now and hopefully we'll hang out a bit, but we can only communicate in bad French currently. We sat down together to chat after the concert, and her daughter and Dan acted as our translators, translating our bad French to good French and then sometimes her daughter translated back to Ukrainian. 

On our Franceaversary weekend we travelled down to Barcelona to meet my parents, who flew there. On a plane, unfortunately they can't actually fly if, they could I probably would have mentioned it back when I started this blog in 2009. 

Anyway, I love Barcelona it's probably my favourite city but I am from Coventry, so the bar is low. I've discovered I really would like to live in a major city. I discovered this too late in life though and Dan is not a big fan of big places, plus having outside space and fields to walk in is nice too. But it was great being in Barcelona for a few days. We did some fun touristy things and I got to do my first comedy set for a year! 

It was a very lovely comedy night with a perfect audience in a very aesthetically pleasing basement. 

I talked to all the other acts who were all very friendly and from all over the place. I met a Mexican who did a gap year in Leeds, and I told him that's the wrong way round. I met a British comedian based in London who knew a load of my comedy friends from the north and it was just really cool to be in that environment and make those connections again. I just am a bit sad that I can't do it very often. 

I was a bit hesitant in the first half of my set, trying to remember it as it was 100% new material, but I relaxed into the second half and I think I have at least one good new bit. In England I could then do this set again, 10 times in different places improving it and tweaking it, but it would be pretty impossible to do that here. At the end of May I'll be performing IN FRENCH! I've no idea how that will go. It's very hard to learn it and I won't be able to do any ad hoc bits unless I need to say "J'ai douze ans" or "ou est la bibliotec" that kind of stuff. It could be a disaster, but then it might be great material for an English show that I might do one day about all the disastrous things I did when I lived in France.

My next blog will be about Eric's birthday and then I might possibly write a serious blog, I'm not sure I'm still thinking about it.

The Scariest Way to Learn French.

 Everyone likes to learn in different ways, my mum is the opposite of me and likes to learn by instructions. Not many people know that she is very good at art, she's sort of a closet artist. She does watercolour and she buys books about art techniques and she went to lessons once. She likes to follow step by step guides to doing stuff. She's the kind of person who reads all the instructions and counts all the bits before making furniture from Ikea. Once when she bought me my first oil paints as a teenager she also bought me a book of how to do it. I didn't see the point. If I wrote a book on oil paint it would say this: 

Chapter 1. You can't wash your brushes with water. 

Chapter 2. It takes about 2 months for you paintings to dry so make sure you have somewhere to store them in that time.

Chapter 3. Now have fun!

My way of learning is trial and error. And occasionally I say I can do something that I've never done before and then that sort of pressures you to do it. In 2010 I worked for a year for this company that sent me into schools to do workshops. Then in the summer holidays I got married and got a mortgage, and expected to be starting work again in September. But no work came in, after a few weeks of waiting patiently for work, I phoned up to enquire and was told they were focusing more selling solar panels to school than selling me. Cheers for the heads-up. So then I had to either find schools that wanted me to do workshops or find a new job. So I emailed a few schools and only one got back to me after a lot of back and forth they asked if I could do mosaics. I said "yes" because I had a friend who knew how to do them and I had youtube. 

My friend once told me how she was grouting a mosaic in a school and cut herself badly on the glass and when she came back to the class after sorting that out all the grout was dried on her mosaic meaning she had to spend days drilling it off.  I was terrified of ruining it when it came to that part too but luckily it went well and eventually mosaics became my most popular art project.

And last week I said yes to a new thing I don't know how to do. I emailed a local comedy club and said would you like a short comedy set in French? and they said yes! So I'm going to be learning french really quickly! 

I've had to write all new material for it I don't think my old stuff will work to just translate it, So I've started writing new material about coming to France and learning french, and then I'll have to learn it really well and hope that I won't get heckled otherwise I'd have to give a really primary school level reply like "your mum is a cow" but I don't even know if your mum jokes are a thing here. 

The other completely different thing I'm going to try is face painting or as the french call it "kid's make-up." This should be a lot more in my comfort zone because I already paint canvases and walls so this would just be like a small less flat canvas. but I thought it would help me firstly to get to know people because I can volunteer to do it for the school fair or for church stuff and it's just a nice way of being part of something with minimal language skills required. and also I could maybe do it for money and money is a handy voucher that you can swap for most things you need. (you might already know that.) I've never really done face painting before but if I had to write a book on it it would go like this:

Chapter 1 if it goes well great well done.

Chapter 2 if it goes badly just make sure no one has a mirror.

I ordered the paints from amazon. and they have been arriving one by one, first I just had orange so on that day I could only paint your face if you wanted to be a carrot or Donald Trump or an Oompa Loompa. which are the 3 least commonly requested faces.

The road by mine that I go running on

I hardly ever ran in England. I only feel like it with these views.

Other than choosing two new career ideas (French comic and face painter) I've finally started more french lessons this week. I had to wait two months since I passed the A1 (basic french course) but now I'm onto A2 with a new random selection of immigrants.  This time we have a Russian and a Ukrainian which was a little awkward. Especially when we had to write anonymous list of three things we liked and didn't like and the the teacher read them out. She read out "I hate the Russian president" and everyone guessed it was the Ukrainian but actually it was the Russian. I hope this class will provide great comedy material for my upcoming gig. I feel like a load of foreigners trying to learn to integrate might make a good sitcom.

Lunches there are very unpredictable, I feel like in a uk staff room I could make an accurate pie chart of peoples pack lunches. In fact I will:

You've always got that weirdo eating cottage cheese spread on Rivetta as if putting the worst kind of cheese on the worst kind of carb makes you thin. 

Anyway international lunch rooms are so much more varied, theres a lot of delicious rice based stuff. The girl from Tahiti eats battered chicken. I don't know if all girls from Tahiti eat battered chicken for lunch but she must represent at least 1% of the population of Tahiti right? and then a Moroccan ate beetroot and raw onion. yuk! maybe that the Moroccan version of weird diet food I don't know. I need more data to make a new pie chart. They also all share all their food. So far I just made one guy from Afghanistan drink some British tea and they were all shocked it had milk in it. He was trying to be polite but I think he hated it.

Whats the weirdest thing you've ever taken for a packed lunch? Let me know and I'll make a pie chat. 

Unexpected

I didn't really know what to expect when we decided to move to France, but I was up for it. I wanted to make my life unpredictable again. I feel like in my early 20's my life was fairly unpredictable. Kind of unstable. Between the ages of 20 and 25 I lived in 5 different houses, I had two long term relationships (not at the same time), I was a student, then unemployed, then I volunteered, then I had two jobs and then went self-employed. I spent 2 months in the Middle East, I went through at least 4 bikes and then learned to drive, got engaged, got married and bought a house.

It was quite a lot of change and then you kind of want a bit of stability. It would be nice to not move house every year, imagine living somewhere long enough to bother to find a window cleaner. That would be nice. And we had those things for a bit and then we had kids and job changes and two more house moves. And then we had a whole 5 years of a lovely house. It was big enough and no body was murdered directly outside it. We had a nice little local community with our church and the kids school. I had my comedy mates too and work started going really well. I easily could have lived that life forever and I would have been happy. But, there was just a little niggling feeling that this was the time to swap everything we knew for something different, just to see what it was like. It's like that old saying, "the grass is always greener..." in England because there's too much rain. It was my dream to live somewhere grass struggles to live, and butter is perfectly spreadable at room temperature. 

I had no idea what to expect and in the stressful time when we were clearing the house I wondered if I really wanted to go at all, but I didn't give myself any time to think about that. I thought it was best to get on with the job and worry about if I'd made the biggest mistake of my life later on. I knew it would be sometimes amazing and sometimes I'd find it hard, but my predictions about when I'd find it hard and easy have been totally the opposite way round.

We arrived at the end of April just as the weather was getting hot, so I thought, "we'll have a great summer enjoying the beach and being in the honeymoon period and then as it gets to October/November it's going to get hard. The weather won't be so good, there'll be less to do and we'll be really missing people by then." But in actual fact the summer was really hard. Way too hot and we didn't know anyone. But November was great, it was still warm for a few hours a day and we were thankful that it wasn't as hot as the summer and the best bit was, we started actually getting to know some fun people. 

My birthday last month was a strange but lovely time. It's odd inviting people over that you've only known a few months. I was a bit nervous that it would be awkward because I didn't know anyone well and they  didn't know each other at all.  I was joking with my friend that we go way back, we're practically childhood friends, because I met her in May. She is my artist friend that I met at the English church. She has 2 teenage girls and a 6 year old. She does very cool messy abstract art and is exhibiting in "The other art fair" in London next week (you should go if you live near London). Then we had our board game friends who we met on an English speakers in Perpignan Facebook group. They are two girls (a couple), one is French and one is German, but their common language is English. They both speak very good English but they have asked us to correct anything they say wrong, so when they kept using the word "somewhen" e.g. "I would like to play this game somewhen" we had to inform them that that is not actually a word. They are super fun, very generous and they are great with the boys too. They now come over every Wednesday for board games and Haribo. I also invited the one person from my French course that spoke English, he's Nigerian. I really liked everyone on my course and we had good banter even though hardly anyone spoke the same languages as each other. 

The course was pretty dull so there was a need for some laughs. Once I made everyone laugh when I didn't know the French word for fireplace, so I acted out a whole elaborate scene where I was chopping down some trees and then cutting them up and setting fire to them. Sometimes I come out with the odd Arabic phrase which amuses the Sudanese guy. Sometimes I've made French jokes that most people get, but sometimes I just wanted to make a sarcastic comment in English and then the Nigerian was the only guy I could say this stuff too. It's hard work being a repressed comedian. 

Birthday party

Anyway the party was a beautiful mix of nationalities and ages in every decade from under 10's to 40's. It was actually nice having the kids around for it too, they had a great time and stayed up till ten. When we put Percy to bed at night he said, "My hot water bottle wasn't hot but I cuddled it anyway and the happiness I was feeling was keeping me warm." I think he's a people person like me. I felt the same. I don't love that at 37 I'm into my late 30's now, but I'm very grateful for all my family and friends and that I get to live in this beautiful place.

We had a few other cool weekends recently. There was one saturday where we had no real plans for the day but it looked so nice out. It was really sunny but also there was a lot of snow on our mountain. We'd made one failed attempt to find snow before when we arrived in April and could see snow on our mountain, but couldn't get to it. But now there was a lot more snow and we had better knowledge of where to go to get to it. We drove for an hour to near where Percy had gone skiing with school. First we found a good slope but too near a road, then we found a safer flatter bit, but then we saw the perfect sledging hill. Amazing views, pretty steep deep snow, and no one else around. 

And last weekend we went to Marseille to visit Dan's Auntie, who lives right in the centre and gave us a tour of the city, as well as taking us to this massive outdoor and indoor adventure playground.

It's still hard sometimes. I see some of my comedy peers doing so well and I am genuinely so happy for them and they deserve it, but I always wonder what would have happened to me if I'd continued, would I be at that level now? And I really do miss work now, I loved my art job, it was the best job in the world. I worked really hard to make it be a real full time job and then both times after having kids, I had to start again pretty much from nothing, so it was pretty sad to give that up and you don't get the kind of good bye that you would get if you were working for over 10 years in a real job. My last day was painting a mural in Prescot by myself and I took a photo of it, sent it to the boss of that job and then packed up and went.

If I start thinking too much about the future it becomes a bit of a head wreck. The idea of living in France for the rest of my life is weird, and the idea of going back to my old life is weird. I think I just have to be ok with not knowing what is going to happen next and hoping that things will fall into place for a job, or something I can do that I feel passionate about, after I've learnt a bit more French.

a painting I'm in the middle of