I was going to start this blog with an apology for not writing for the past two weeks, but I guess you could say moving house to another country during a global pandemic has been just a little time consuming, not to mention quite stressful. I am well aware that timing isn't our strong suit, but when life gives you lemons...move to the South of France!
Now there are many reasons why we decided it was time to leave our hobbit-sized house in Surrey and while it wasn't a decision we took lightly, it was one we knew we needed to make. It's safe to say 2020 has not been our year. Memories of loved ones both human and four-legged seemed to haunt every room of the house and it no longer felt like home. Now we're not big on feeling sorry for ourselves so we sprung into action, putting the house on the market and deciding where our next adventure was going to take us. Brighton? Bristol? Somewhere deep in the Kentish countryside? None of these seemed to fill that wanderlust shaped hole in our hearts. So, to the land of cheese and wine, we headed...well, not before we spent a good week putting half our life into storage and cleaning every square inch of the house. But you don't want to hear about that.
Now I don't know if any of you are familiar with Brexit or Covid-19, you know those two things that have been ruining our lives as of late. As you can imagine, both of them presented quite the hurdle for us to leap over if we were ever to achieve our francophone fantasies. The weeks that ensued our house finally being sold were filled with my mum furiously filling out form upon form in a desperate attempt to attain dual-citizenship. As thankful as I was that she took charge of this arduous task, I felt very little sympathy. She did vote Brexit after all. That's karma for you.
As law-abiding citizens, we, of course, booked ourselves in for not one, but two Covid tests. At the ungodly time of 4:30 am, we headed to Heathrow for our first test of the day; the PCR test. We then waited for 7 hours till our next test; the antigen test. We arrived on time and were greeted with a lovely 4-hour queue and some very stressed out looking staff. At long last, we had finally made it to the very front. Cue absolute chaos. I'm talking mutiny. Hundreds of people charging, with luggage in hand, towards the testing doors regardless of their place in the queue. It was like something out of a dystopian film. Children were screaming, Karens were shouting at distressed staff and any semblance of order had completely vanished. My mother became the spokesperson for the people who chose to respect the order, marching up to a member of staff and demanding them to call security. Soon enough, much to everyone's delight, some very buff men arrived and at the behest of my mother, demanded that everyone who had overtaken us, swiftly return to their rightful place. I was left utterly flabbergasted that in a mere 5 minutes, I had simultaneously managed to lose and then gain faith in humanity. Story of 2020 if you ask me. In short, we received our results and then proceeded hit the road for a 21-hour drive to Nice. Allons-y!
Along with our beautiful and somewhat bewildered cat, we arrived in the Riviera at our new but temporary home. With suitcases still unpacked, we decided the first thing to do was to decorate the tree which had sensibly been organised prior to our arrival. Once all the baubles were up, the Christmas lights were on and we couldn't stand any more Michael Bublé, we decided it was to time to hit the sack...after a few episodes of Gavin and Stacey, of course.
Christmas day was unlike any other I've ever experienced. For one, it wasn't rainy and windy. We popped open the champers and opened the few presents we were able to take down with us and then decided to hit the beach. Looking at the Christmas lights and decorations that adorned the old town of Nice while simultaneously being bathed in gloriously warm sunlight, was a fairly surreal experience, to say the least. We then returned home, watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation and ate our body weight in crisps. A few gins later, it was time for that classic Christmas dinner...some pizza and an Indian takeaway, obviously. Games were then played, and won by yours truly of course. Then it was time to pass out in bed...or on the sofa in my mum's case. A truly unorthodox yet still traditionally Springham Christmas.
For now, I'm just working on my course, taking a ridiculous amount of cat videos (follow The Wondrous Wibble on TikTok for some quality content), and reminding myself every day to not be so hard on myself. It's okay to spend hours binge-watching Netflix. It's called self-care sweetie. And on that note, I'm off to watch Bridgerton. À bientôt!
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