Status report or All the things I should have told you but couldn’t

Apart from the lil event of Baby C’s arrival there have been strange going on’s afoot with our Gran Can life.

Long story short we are leaving the island and I will have to think of a new title for my blog.

Short story long……

In the autumn last year Mr. C decided he wanted to sell the divecentre. He put it up for sale and had a few enquiries but nothing that came to anything until the end of the year. The gentleman that was interested wanted to come over and see the centre but kept putting it off from one month to the next. In the meantime I was up the duff and so this added a new angle on events.
We decided we would aim to sell and move off the island by May or June. If we managed to leave before then we would go to England as I can get well paid work there and qualify for maternity benefits and if it was after we would go to France as it would be easier for Mr. C to get a job for after I had had the baby.

Well it didn’t work out like that. The chap came with his wife, liked what he saw, made an offer lower than we liked and then during negotiations pulled out completely. This was in May sometime. So we decided to make the summer here and see what turned up.
In the end nothing turned up and we made the decision to close the divecentre. The next new plan being that Mr. C would get a diving job with another centre and we would stay until the following summer. This way we would get to enjoy our first year of being parents without the stress of the business or of relocating again.

Well that hasn’t worked out either.
Mr. C had a job sorted and started two weeks after Baby C was born. All was going well with him when in the third week his bosses friend came out to visit. One evening in the bar this chap, who had been on the sauce all day, clapped Mr. C around the ears and in doing so burst his eardrum.

This is a very bad thing for a dive instructor. You cannot dive with a burst eardrum and if you can’t dive then you can’t really work. Eardrums can take up to eight weeks to heal so we weren’t sure how his boss was going to react. In the end the chap that did it was persuaded to give Mr. C something towards his lost earnings. But that didn’t turn out so well as it was only about ten days pay and he gave it to Mr. C’s boss who said Mr. C had to go to work for it.
Which from his point of view looks like his boss is getting a worker for free as it isn’t his money which is paying him.

On the positive side his boss said he would keep Mr. C’s job open for him. So we figured that Mr. C could pick up some bar work for a couple of months to help pay the bills. But then his boss decides he wants to get a full time replacement and the only way to do so is to offer a four month contract. So Mr. C has a job but not for four months.
So we have to decide if we stay or go. We decided to go. And to top it all off Mr. C’s ear healed two days after the new instructor arrived, so now he can dive but has no work.

After all that the upshot is that we are going to France to stay with the French-in-laws for a couple of months while we regroup and try to make a plan for the next few years that isn’t made in a matter of minutes and won’t be derailed by daft things happening to us.

We are extremely bummed by this chain of events. We were really looking forward to this year, to having a relatively stress free life in which we could get to know our baby, get to grips with being parents and begin to get to know the island beyond the resorts and divesites that have dominated our life here so far.
We had installed ourselves nicely in our new flat and had started to carve our a little life and routine in the new town. So all in all, things were going well.

Since we made the decision we have been trying to look on the bright side. This mostly involves one or other of us listing good things about living in France. This takes place rather randomly. So far the list goes something like this (in no particular order);

• Great food
• Great wine with more than just Spanish wines to chose from, and it’s cheap
• Proper big supermarkets
• Maximum 40 hour week with two days off each week and five weeks holiday a year
• A snowy Christmas in the Alps
• Free babysitting while staying with the French-in-laws
• A more predictable postal service (I hope)
• Seasons and having to have lots more clothes to choose from
• Administration systems we (at least Mr. C) understands
• Being closer to family and friends

So that’s what we are up to at the moment.