Bucks and Sussex

So we have been at it for a week now. A kind of Holiday of Readjustment, traipsing from place to place on the map in an absurdly haphazard way, bypassing cities and towns in which we might consider making our future home, in order to string together random locations that we would surely not. This wildly disorganised and expensive vacation season must surely give way to something more methodical soon, if only to spare the lungs of the people from the evils of our diesel fumes. We've clocked up over 500 miles, and yet have felt like we haven't really started.

After a visit to the small and weird Royston Cave left our children wondering what on earth it was that their parents were mistaking for something important, we spent the night in the car park opposite The Harrow, a nice-enough Chiltern Hills coaching inn with friendly staff, tasty chips and the most unremarkable beer offering imaginable. This was conveniently close to Great Missenden, where I sought the truths behind Roald Dahl's farmer and old lady of whom he told my friend Big H. But did not find them, of course.

We then moved on toward the South Coast. M has wanted to visit Charleston for some years, and so wasn't about to let the Philistine Men of her family ruin it for her. We remained in the van in the car park and made pasta, then I sat over E while he ate it, explaining in some detail why Making Himself A Sandwich Instead was no longer an option. 

We found such a good parking spot outside the fantastic Snowdrop Inn in Lewes that I was reluctant to leave, especially as they had all sorts of delights from Burning Sky and Wild Beer on the bar. It's pretty clear why Nice Families left East Dulwich in droves for the home of Harveys throughout the early 21st Century. Lewes is a very pleasant town indeed, apart from the shitbiscuit who hit his horn when we had to stop at a >6'6"< width warning and turn around. Perhaps I should have proceeded regardless and wedged my new home firmly into the thoroughfare in front of him, to see if he liked that any better.

Now we are parked outside the boys' oldest friends' house, in Worthing, where they've lived for about a year. Toilet cassette and waste water emptied, the best broadband we've had in a week, and a gilt-edged parking voucher in the windscreen, we are getting pretty comfortable in a great town that has a bit of everything we are looking for. But there is an awful lot to see out there, and we do seem to be really getting started on it at last.

Norfolk - Suffolk - Cambs

We are gradually getting to grips with this vehicle. The water tank, which fills all of the space under the kids' seat, and takes about ten minutes to fill with my Dad's garden hose at full blast, only seems to last a couple of days' modest use. 

I filled it a second time using the AIR AND WATER machine at a BP garage near Lowestoft, which cost me about three quid in tokens and cramp in both hands, but seemed to work in the end. The toilet cassette, likewise, demands attention every couple of days, despite a whole-family commitment to keeping Materialisations of The Brown Lady for special occasions. On the suggestion of some bloke on the Internet, we've been using biological washing machine liquid instead of the blue stuff that is designed for the job, and the jury is still out on whether it is as effective. 

We've done another three nights without paying to camp. The first was in a council car park at Overstrand on the Norfolk coast, a gorgeous cliff walk to, and beach walk back from, Cromer, which is a much nicer town than one might ever have guessed from the expensive campsite of lost souls. 

The next night we drove to Knettishall Heath in Suffolk, en route to pick up a few eBay essentials (mains hook-up cable, another USB power bank, and a charging cable to connect this to the kids' 3DS) from my mum and dad's. We spent the night in a secluded muddy lay-by, and the nice fella who informed us the next morning that we are "not really supposed to" camp on the heath seemed to accept that there is very little that can be done to make the policing of it possible, and that even if there were, he certainly isn't being paid to do so. 

Last night we were as comfortable as we have been so far in a tiny cul-de-sac in Cambridgeshire. This was obviously all in the head - the fact that M's mum lives in one of these neat little bungalows wouldn't have made any difference to the way that passers-by looked at us, as nobody knew who we were, but we were confident in our right to be there. Maybe this frame of mind might serve us just as well when it is erroneous, too?

Was it a good idea?

"I don't mind admitting, when you first told me about this, I thought it was A FUCK IDEA," my 74-year-old Dad is saying. He is rather drunk and making strange new use of rude language, but is also expressing his enthusiasm for our motorhome, which does indeed seem to possess all of the features required to make a life on the road quite possible. Later that evening he will walk out of his front door in total darkness, fall over and start talking to a frog that is sitting in one of his plant pots. 

Fast forward three days, and I'm lying in the strange extra-single bed space at the back of the van next to the bog. I got a bit pissed myself last night, on Dark Fruit Strongbow ("When In Rome...") in a horrible bar on a campsite near Cromer that occupies the elusive middle ground between the outdoor experience and Butlins. As a result, I wasn't confident to clamber over a sleeping M in the double bed, so I ended up here. 

This campsite cost us thirty quid for a small space on a steep slope that served to empty the sink onto the gas hob and has stopped one of the rings working. Admittedly I might've noticed this happening if I'd drunk less nasty cider, but then I would have suffered more from the soul-destroying awareness that campsites like this are no way of discovering the geographical area in which they exist. 

The night before, I got even less sleep as I was nervous. Our first night sleeping in the van, we were determined to go stealth or rogue or wild or whatever it is, and lay awake in a van that bounced and swayed through some truly awful weather in the enormous riverside car park at Walberswick. The famous old lady with a beard who ran the campsite next door is surely no more, and we wouldn't have been able to get the van down the narrow track to it anyway, but there is a perfect understanding throughout the family that this project won't work if we have to go looking for a place to park and sleep in each locality where nobody can come and tell us to piss off. 

Admittedly, the man with the gorgeous wood-and-glass-built home looking out to sea, who was our nearest neighbour that tumultuous night, would have been quite mad to brave these raging elements just to tell us to sling our hooks when he surely could not have seen or heard us, but a combination of new experiences meant we could not rest easy. We will get used to it, M and I, we expect, but we have some way to go before we give as little of a shit as the kids do. They slept like logs.

Ready for the off?

The move was about as smooth as it could be, although the removal men arrived at half seven in the morning when my brain was still sleeping, and I forgot to show them the loft. Predictably, they weren't best pleased when M remembered it, so I had to shift all the things up there myself and attempt to pass them down without sweating onto this muscly Polish bloke. I didn't have the heart to bother him with the three dozen ‘last few bits’ that were loose up there, as he had long been receiving boxes I could barely lift with his fingertips, a grimace and tightly-closed eyes.

So I had to do an extra run to the lock-up at Jumbo's Safari Shithouse and didn't get back until three o’clock on our last London morning. In an otherwise empty house, I found H blissfully asleep next to M on the inflatable mattress we’d borrowed, leaving me a foam dog-bed that was squashed completely flat under my weight, with a towel for a blanket. I got precisely three hours’ restlessness before getting up, seeing the boys off for their last day at school and making my testimonial visit to the dump. After overloading the Focus to the point that my tearful sons in scribbled-on uniforms had to sit cross-legged on piles of pillows, we headed for our bolthole in Suffolk, where my dad was pissed and my mum went to bed straight after Celebrity Mastermind.

Living with my folks again (four nights, so far, is my longest-ever stay with my whole family) has been surprisingly comfortable and easy. They are lovely old people who live a quiet life and have made space for us in a home that would usually make our ride out of Peckham look roomy. Both are fond of whisky - dad a little too much so, as evidenced by the loud banging we heard when M put a half-load of washing on yesterday morning. We stopped the machine and found mum had hidden a litre bottle of Lidl blended Scotch from dad under a towel in there.

We are picking up our van on Wednesday evening and are planning a short trip up to Cromer first, for that inevitable first-week breakdown. M has friends near there and my great aunt has a chalet that's  hardly ever used, so we have somewhere to stay while Norfolk’s least-reputable mechanics go mental rebuilding the entire bloody engine and giving us a bill that doubles the price we paid. They are probably Norwich fans, although they don’t actually exist yet.

My brother saw this van, a Hymer box on a Fiat Ducato, advertised on a noticeboard at work. This appealed to both M's instincts to get some kind of bargain that very few people would know about, and my instinct to hastily throw cash at the first thing that comes along. A couple in their fifties had been using it for the last SEVEN YEARS while getting their even-older-and-more-ridiculous camper fixed up. After a little conversation I had a lot of faith in them, and therefore their vehicle for sale. But I have been known to be wrong about these things.

What’s Going On?

Um, not a lot. We are waiting out the final few weeks of the extension to the appendix of the over-run moving period, and are expecting to finally hit the road within twenty-eight days.

I’ve started moving my records back into my parents’ house. There are about six times as many of them as there were last time they lived there, so my aging ancestors weren’t that thrilled when the first carload arrived, but they do understand that valuable plastic and card can’t just go in the storage container next to the dual carriageway with everything else.

Meanwhile, I have been making a project of reducing my alcohol consumption, bringing it down to a respectable average of a pint a day over the last month. Or at least up until yesterday, when I enjoyed an afternoon at every place you can buy a drink on Borough Market, with an ex-colleague who holds the dubious honour of being the only teacher I have ever worked with who drinks more than I do. This requires a little more work before I enter into a new life that involves driving a large vehicle nearly every day.

The final details of the move are being tidied up, but I can’t deny that I have more time on my hands than I know what to do with. As evidence of this, what follows is an extract from an email I've just sent in response to a quick enquiry from the nice people who are buying our house:

Hola.

A table 2m long would fit, sure, but would only leave about 40cm clearance at each end. This would be enough for me to squeeze through fairly comfortably (and I have frankly enormous buttocks), but my personal feeling is that such a table would be just a tad too long. However, we only actually use the other side of the table when we have guests to dinner (virtually never) and I'm guessing most of your guests would be more agile and less curvaceous than me.

Other factors to take into account are that our existing table has curved corners (has yours?) and that about three quarters of the table's width at each end will have more clearance, as the kitchen unit and the wall next to the back door will mostly be either side of the bench, not the table.

You may disagree with my assessment, of course, and I rather hope you do. I would hate myself if I had crushed your table dreams. The width and height are perfect. Maybe you should come and have a look at ours again before ordering anything. It is not out of the question that our existing table and bench may be available if you want them, but you might have your heart set on something different.

Okay, I'm ducking out now. This is the single greatest responsibility I have taken on in months, and I can't handle it.

Tb.

So I think I have to accept that I started this blog too early, really. I mean, I wanted to write about the house sale and how we felt about leaving London as they are relevant to the rest of the unfolding story, but I can’t kid myself that anybody would want to read about this Dead Zone before the move. Please do check back in a few weeks though, as there’s sure to be some thrilling material about living with your parents again at the age of 44. Or perhaps we might have to just buy the first vaguely suitable vehicle we can find, and get going.

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.

Ha-ha. No, really - what kind of van are you getting?

Once again we are ahead of schedule. I said we might change our minds about the camper at the last minute. Not only have we done so already, but the last minute has been put back. We treated our housebuyers to my cooking at the weekend - a barbecue gave them a chance to see whether they still liked the house when its atmosphere was fifty percent paraffin fumes. After a few drinks and then a few more, we were able to discuss how soon it will all be done. It looks more like the end of June now, which I’m not going to allow to bother me, even if it does mean that I might run out of things to write about here before we get started.

So we have been thinking more about what we need from our rolling home. Do we need a shower? Nah. As part of my meticulous preparations, I’ve been teaching myself not to wash so frequently, conditioning my skin and glands to deal with a new routine where they have to sort themselves out. Then there will be visits to public baths, and anybody who’d like to register for us to come round and block their plughole is free to use the comments section to do so.

Do we need an oven? Again, I'd have to say no. ‘You would,’ counters M, ‘because you would never use it anyway.’ I think about reminding her that I do most of the outdoor cooking at present – which admittedly amounts to three or four times a year. I think about telling her that we are living to her exacting standards and if it were not for her, I would eat soil if I was hungry enough (and even if I wasn't, if I had some sriracha hot sauce to put on it.) Finally I think about telling her that if cooking duties are restricted to the preparation of beans on toast or tinned ravioli - "shitpillows" as M calls them - I will actually be able to pull my weight in this department, at least. But once a teacher, always a teacher, so I decide to hold this promise back for a moment in the future when I have to set myself some targets for improvement.

A comment on the last post (not the bugle tune but the thing I wrote about campers the other day, that wasn't really about campers) reminded me that a van without a pop top for one of the beds would be preferable, if we are to be indulging in STEALTH CAMPING on residential streets. Not for any real, practical reasons, but just because we don't want it to be obvious that we are taking the piss by very obviously residing, if only for one night, in a neighbourhood where we pay no council tax, have only contributed a tenner to the economy for egg sandwiches, and are waiting for a quiet moment to empty our chemical toilet into the gutter.

We won't do this of course. A full chemical toilet appears to be a huge responsibility. Even one of those little port-a-potty things that we could fit in a California. One review said something about how emptying one was not as bad as you might expect- "it just looks like lumpy chocolate milk" it said. Ew.

So the fundamental issue here is the toilet. We are going to need one in the van, there is no doubt about that. It would probably be better to have one in its own little room behind a closable door, as although we are not exactly squeamish, any of us, watching each and every member of the family curl one off every day may leave a trauma on the psyche of one or both of my children that goes undetected until their great dirty protest of 2037.

And the issue of what to do in the same situation at night is rather more, um, messy. When the rock 'n' roll bed (for I believe that to be the parlance) is folded down and M is asleep in it, there will be no remaining floor space for me to treat myself to a midnight poo. The only option would be to take the port-a-potty out of the van, which might be workable in a secluded area, but once again, in a quiet residential area of a city or town I've never visited before, it would be brave to sit on a glorified bucket doing a shit.

In order to have a little more space and a little more privacy when it is needed, we have shifted our sights onto a larger, high-top van. This will mean we deny ourselves the pleasures of Britain’s many wonderful multi-storey car parks, but if Peckham is to lose the jewel in its crown, we should probably boycott the others in solidarity. 

It seems that such a vehicle could even be cheaper than the Volkswagens we were looking at, so it really is a no-brainer. Certainly, we look to now be following the advice of the aforementioned Friends With Campervans. They will be delighted, I am sure.