Are you getting bored already?

No, I’m not. I have posted in the last few weeks, but M hinted that it was not of public interest, or it was boring or something. Personally I thought the post - my reasons why I was not prepared to do any of the work our buyers’ surveyor had recommended - was both informative and thrilling, but I took it down anyway, as I am learning to be a better listener in preparation for family life in a shed on wheels.

We have just been to see a broad selection of sheds-on-wheelses in the wilds of deepest Kent, and the boys got quite excited picking the ones they like best - basically the ones with the best bunk beds (which are bigger and probably more difficult to drive). We are ‘motorhoming in’ on what we want, ho-ho, which is very different from what we thought we wanted a month or so ago, and now we are getting down to geeky little details like whether it is actually safe or legal for our children to travel in it. It seems strange that among the vehicles we are looking at, there are comparatively few which sleep four and have four seatbelts.

The exercise was kind enough to expose what an hilariously bad fit we are as a family for what we are planning to do. First I decided I’d better check the oil and water in the car before actually taking it out on the motorway and found there was little evidence of either having ever been administered to the poor vehicle. This was quickly followed by (11-year-old) E’s very genuine “Are we nearly there yet?” as we drove across Blackheath. Our standards of motor vehicle maintenance and tolerance of road journeys are both going to have to improve, and very quickly.

But not as quickly as they might have. Yes, we’ve put the whole thing back another month, as we realised that the earliest we were going to be getting going now was only about three weeks before the end of the school year. M suggested that it might be “The Right Thing to Do” to offer E the chance to complete his Primary Schooling, and we were a little surprised when he jumped at it. Does this mean that we are just going to be setting off on holiday in late July, the same as everyone else? Perhaps. And maybe that would be a good way to start. Then, when everybody else goes back to school, we can start our home ed stuff, our exploration and our search for a new home.

The past and the present are more important than the future right now. E has been going to our brilliant (as far as I can tell) local school since he was three, and is about to be dragged off the grid into a world of fewer rules, expectations and demands. It might be a bad start to suggest to him that it isn’t worth finishing something you’ve spent most of your life working on.