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?
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