Living in Spain: homeless by choice.

Living in Spain: homeless by choice.

So we are in our last five weeks in Spain and I'm thinking about what is next. Home early May. The plan is get a van and stay in Sussex, letting my daughter binge on her friends while we see family, Tim does local tutoring as well as the usual Skype tutoring (which he is still working hard to build up to acceptable survivable levels) and in September we take the van to Santander (the city in Northern Spain, not the bank). It's a bit odd having nowhere you come beck to in terms of “our house.” I'm torn between, “Yay! I shed all my stuck middle class ideas on being sensible and struck out into the world” and “Why am I homeless?” It's a bit off, to say that we are less stable now, as we rented a house and had an epic quantity of second hand furniture and toys to store. Now if we rented again we could get a smaller place comfortably, having shed our Ikea/ toysRus load. Technically that makes us more stable. It just feels different. I've always returned “Home” before. But I don't want to go back to more of the same, I'm just riding the adjustment wave on the transition to one of those oh-so-cool worldschoolers who casually chat about taking the kids to volunteer looking after elephants after they finish in KL (Kuala Lumpa, not my initials)! I guess they must go “home” too, and sleep on their relatives floor a few nights, and have coffee with all their old friends, and think “Gosh I'm a weirdo!” Even Facebook thinks I have become a weirdo, perhaps through searches or groups I have joined all the advertising I now get shown is for hideous, shapeless, green woolly hippy clothes! I despise green and shapeless knitwear, I like sleek lines and classic styles! I would love to look after elephants but I AM NOT WEARING GREEN HARIM PANTS!!!! I will go back to doing PR in an office 9 to 5 first!

The plan is that home is a van of course, but I'm starting to realise that is a bit complicated, like so many things it would not be too complicated if the budget for it was £22,000 but it's not. I started a bitch fight on Facebook when I asked if I could drive a converted minibus on my licence (in the self build campers group) that ran to over 30 comments, “Yes” “No” and everything in between, some quite horrid to me and others, scattered links to unclear government guidelines and ended with some wit commenting “Well that cleared that question up then!” I've seen less controversy in a post about vaccines or US politics!

I called the DVLA the answer is “no” unless I've fully converted it and re-classified it as a motor caravan with the few remaining seats. So no driving it around while I get stuff done, and no recourse but sit a new test if they judge the conversion not fully a camper!

However all this research suggests we can add seats to a van, something the camper shop told me was not OK – come to think of it they may not have been fully unbiased. The government web site is clear this time but the insurance companies have a say... It's a minefield. I plan to entertain you with every tiny regulation regarding converting a vehicle to live and travel in – oh what? You don't want to know? But I thought everyone loved insurance company stories?!!

If we can't find an automatic van for £2400 that is big enough to stand up in, and reliable, we have plan B (the plan not the movie studio).

Plan B is actually very cool. Possibly quite cold and definitely wet. However it would be fun. I buy an estate car, just a big car, and we take my mum's tent (she has the sort of tent that people who have really camped a lot buy, it's not that big but you can stand up, the ground sheet is part of the upper...) and go to Scotland. Living in a tent in a posh camp site in Sussex, in high season, is literally as expensive as living in a flat there! So Scotland it is, you can wild camp, camp away from camp sites in the forest, moors or next to the beach...my big brother has done it, and it sounds cool. Then you rock up at a much cheaper camp site and wash all your stuff and dry out. Also one of us speacks the language.

My kids will get to see their roots and I will get to continue the mountain-fix that Spain has been supplying, but Jasmine will miss her friends and so will I. I'd rather do the home a while, away a while thing, we will have been gone six months by then and it seems that middle class, retirement community, nothing happened since the doomsday book, East Grinstead is “Home” for me??! How did that happen?

Living in Spain: Travelling

Living in Spain

I'm really starting to come across more and more people who travel but not the package holiday once a year. Some of them travel in vans, some house-sit, some rent a place and stay a while.

My friend who runs the soft-play place here (she rocked up here from South Africa, via the UK) met a family passing through who had come from the UK on bicycles with two teenagers and an eight year old! I even heard of a family who travel with no budget, they work for food and a nights stay wherever they go, with two small kids!!!

There are lots of options. Scotland recently legalised wild camping, you can rock up with a tent and camp anywhere! I'm thinking about going up there in the summer and having a wonder around. Really you just have to get out of school and you can go anywhere!

I've always been into seeing places, I remember in school they used to teach this idea “People are the same all over the world.” I know what they meant, they meant people have the same rights, and basic needs, all over the world, and deep down are the same eternal stardust or whatever. I remember my utter delight when at twelve my dad took me to Holland for four days (at my insistence) we had Youth hostelled all over Scotland but this was the first time overseas, to my astonished, and lifelong enchantment, I discovered that people are different all over the world! This was HUGE!!! They have different architecture, different bone structure, different cakes, different rules, different faiths...you get the idea.

It became a thing with me, I need to see more places. When I grew up I started a series of trips to different destinations around Europe and eventually also made it to Egypt and Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand and America, I'm really keen to see India and Japan.

Poland for Christmas and New Year stands out, I had never seen such bleak concrete, recently-ex-iron-curtain harshness. Nor been treated with such warmth and hospitality. Old men stood in the snow in -20 OUTSIDE the church to give me a seat at midnight mass. You can imaging how I begged to swap places but eventually realised I was starting to dishonour my hosts and accepted.

I had also never eaten cold jellied carp that had lived in the bath for a week to make sure it was fresh at Christmas. We had to relocate six large carp into a bucket to bath or shower, (I gave them all Scottish names) then the women of the house stayed up half the night on Christmas eve (the half not taken up by mass) to jelly them whole – seldom has so much effort gone into cooking something so unpleasant as a cross section of cold carp in clear tasteless jelly!

That trip I also got stranded up the mountain skiing, total beginner, -20, fading light, ski lifts shut, no snow left on the easy slopes so I have to start down the red slope with about one hours practice under my belt. Being Scottish I knew enough about mountains to know I was in real trouble. When I cracked and burst into tears about half way the two lads I was with said “It's OK we made a plan to piggy back you down but we left you alone because you were doing so well!” Then began the wild piggy back ride down the mountain in the dark clinging to the back of my Polish friend who said blithely “If I can't stop don't worry I'll drop you in deep snow and come back.” Lucky for me I was tiny and about 8 stone, we made it with several dumpings in deep snow. For a few amazing minutes I was a pro skier without the work to learn – whipping past the black pine trees with sheets of show thrown out beside me. The moral of my story should be if three lads who can ski plan a trip to Poland and then one backs out, don't say yes to the spare bus ticket if you can't ski – but actually my moral is DO SAY YES!!!

Italy also blew me away but I think I will tell you about that another day....