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.

What sort of van are you getting?

Here’s a fun experiment you can try for yourself at home with the kids. Start telling people you are going to quit your current job, which is the only one they’ve ever known you to have. It helps if it's a job that nearly everybody knows all about and thinks they couldn’t do because the pay is a bit shit and you probably get loads of grief off of badly behaved boys and misguided middle managers. But they also have this notion that it must be “rewarding” in some pseudo-spiritual way and say things like “You are bound to miss it, though, aren't you?”

This is where teaching becomes rewarding for the first time. When you look them in the eye and say “I doubt it.” Because what you’re really saying is, “Although I never said anything about it at the time, spending a thousand hours in the company of your kid and his mates wasn’t as much of a thrill as you might imagine. And it was only when they went home that I was actually able to get any work done.”

Next they are going to want to know where you are planning to go and live. London is expensive and they might want to sell up and ship out themselves one day, so if there is somewhere else that is worth going they want to know where it is. When you say you have no idea where you are moving to they are going to be very disappointed.

Tell them you are going to mooch about the UK until you find somewhere you like. Be prepared for them to ask you what sort of campervan you have got. They would really like to have a campervan because it would be brilliant for going to Latitude and Bestival. But otherwise they wouldn't use it very often and so it would spend a lot of time standing parked in what is actually a very nice residential street in a leafy neighbourhood with a surprisingly low crime rate but nevertheless campers get nicked there all the time. Especially older ones without immobilisers that can still be hot-wired by the most amateurish vehicle thieves. But even modern ones with immobilisers get nicked a lot by being loaded onto the back of flat bed trucks which takes a fair amount of organisation and a lot of balls but still happens astonishingly frequently.

It has now emerged that everybody knows more about campervans than you do. They are also forgetting that you are always, always flat broke and there is no way that you could afford a vehicle that would be so expensive to buy, insure and run but that you never actually have any time to use before it gets stolen.

Once they are past the disappointment of you not actually having this campervan that you are pretending you're going to live in for a year or something, they will want to know what kind you’re going to get when your house sale goes through.

They expect you to know exactly what kind of campervan you are going to buy, as if you will be able to pick it up, whatever it is, at Dulwich Sainsbo’s because they just have everything. Do not blame them for doing so. They want to find out if you are actually serious about this or if you are just making it up to appear more interesting than you really are. You have, as far as they are aware, always been a teacher, and therefore you always must be one, otherwise the fabric of the universe will become unstable before their very eyes like a special effect from a recent episode of Doctor Who.

They want to imagine you in one of those split screen vintage buses that look cool but are very expensive and break down every thirty miles. Or perhaps they want to imagine you in one of those enormous mobile home things like the one that is always parked in front of their house blocking out all the light. They want you to take it away from London and ruin somebody else’s life with it instead.

Surely you are going to want a really big, well-appointed one if you're going to be living in it for that long? Aren’t you? Erm, no. We are going to want what is just about the smallest vehicle that four people can actually sleep in. Why? First and foremost, it has to be easy to drive and park. We only really intend to drive it and sleep in it, so it doesn't need to be any bigger. Or am I being ridiculously naive here? When I visualise myself in my new life on the road, I'm walking hills and dales, rowing a boat on a lake or just exploring a park, or a pub or restaurant or whatever. Actually it was pubs I thought of first, and I pictured me getting drunk and then just being able to sleep in this big comfy car instead of having to drive home.

The perfect vehicle for us, it emerges, is a Volkswagen T5 California, which “is much too small for a week away, let alone several months” and will make us “look like a bunch of London wankers” according to some friends who do actually own campers and use them regularly. Why are we refusing to follow kind, considered, expert advice from people whose opinions we respect? Gosh, I dunno. Maybe we are contrary. Maybe we just like a challenge. Maybe we weren’t listening properly. Or maybe we will change our minds at the last minute, which will be in about a month.

In the meantime, I would really value any input I might receive in the comments below, from anybody of a mind to share some. Thanks for the comments so far, friends and strangers. I don’t know if I am supposed to respond.

Or how to.

Who needs estate agents?

Not us. We paid our seven hundred quid and the fella from the internet-only agents came round a week ago, took marvellous photos, and added them to his company's website. It went on Rightmove on Thursday evening and I got a call on Good Friday to arrange a viewing.

It went okay - they seemed to like the place, but it was out of their price range. I had a couple of cans of White Star to celebrate (I'm totally skint again, and White Star is the same price, the same strength, and much easier to swallow than White Ace). Then I got a call about another viewing.

The second couple came, had a look, had a chat, and were very friendly. I left them to themselves for a bit. After ten minutes she came downstairs and said, "I'll be frank. We want to buy your house."

They made an offer the next morning, which was actually pretty decent. I'd given them my number when I'd seen how keen they were and she sent me a text to ask me what I thought. I said we reckoned we might be able to get the asking price, so she offered that instead. It was exactly that easy. As I said to my friend that afternoon, if flogging records is as easy as flogging houses, I'm going to be a millionaire.

Now, assuming it doesn't all fall through, I have to accept that we have been hugely fortunate – at least lucky enough to find the perfect buyers. People, it seems, for whom ours is the perfect house. That said, with the housing market as it is, surely every property that goes on sale has the perfect buyer for it out there, as long as the price is right, and the person showing them around is able to answer all of their questions? But they're not going to be looking for it in a shop window in the high street, are they? They're going to find it on the web, specifically on Rightmove, aren't they?

What, I asked one of the (lovely) 'proper' estate agents who came and gave us a market appraisal, was he going to do to justify the extra ten grand this would cost me? "You'll get a professional agent, dressed like me," he began. He was talking about his suit, which was very nice, but surely could not have cost more than one twentieth of the fee we were talking about.

In conducting this crucial viewing half-cut on tramp juice, I can’t imagine that I came across as professional or sartorially elegant, but the good people seemed happy with the service I provided. They were a lot like us really - just ten years younger, a fair bit taller and better-looking, with lots more money. And they are probably less likely to judge people by their appearances. Or drink White Star.

We haven’t done this entirely without estate agents, of course. The nice people on the internet (whose company name I’ll reveal when the sale is complete, if you can’t work it out for yourself) sent a guy who did EVERYTHING except the viewings, which I would now suggest any reasonably proud homeowner should do themselves anyway. I said to him, "This'll probably sound pretty rude, but have you ever been a normal estate agent? It's just that you’ve been brilliant, when you could be forgiven for not giving a damn whether we sell this or not now, if you don't have any commission riding on it?"

He smiled and shrugged. “Yeah, I was once. What can I say? I like my job, and I want to do it well.” 

I hadn't really thought about that. I've been out of a job for four months now, and can't remember the last time I had genuinely taken pride in my work. 

It would probably be better for this blog if it did all fall through. You know, it’d give me something to moan about. The twists and turns of the whole process. If it's all plain sailing, this spiel is going to lack realness and I'm going to keep coming off as Pretty Damn Pleased With Myself. But I would encourage my readers never to give their business to a high street estate agent again. Take the time off work if you have to, but sell it yourself. Nobody knows what makes a house worth buying better than the owner.

Assuming it does all go through though, I suppose at least that our buyers' enthusiasm should give some indication of how much we are giving up in return for our New Bohemia. It is the sacrifice that keeps me humble. Yes, that is burning martyr that you can smell.