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: Unknown heroes.

Living in Spain: Unknown heroes.

I was told an amazing story today by our friends who live on the beach in a vintage VW van. Our friends are a woman and her daughter who is a bit older than my daughter.

We hadn't seen them in a while and when we spotted the van it was repainted. She told me why: A couple of weeks ago she was using her gas stove to boil water, it was one of those ones with a small sideways disposable canister. I'd heard they are not safe, now I'm convinced! Don't buy one!!! She had the stove on a unit outside her van and was just inside the door when it went on fire. Two passing men noticed it and came and knocked on the door to show her. She now knows that she should have instantly grabbed her daughter and run away! But she didn't, she reached into the van for a large glass jar of water to throw over the stove! If she had succeeded in doing so she would have been killed as the super heated gas canister would have gone into metal shock and exploded in her face while she was holding a large glass jar. Luckily for her our two unknown heroes knew better and seeing that the woman and her daughter were not running they grabbed the whole unit with burning stove and supper heated gas bottle on top and dragged it between them some feet from the van. A few seconds later it did explode! Everyone was knocked down and the side of the van and surrounding ground was showered with twisted metal shards and globs of melted plastic the size of golf balls. In what I feel was literally a miracle the larger chunks missed all four humans and the each only had small plastic burns! My friends top was on fire and she had to pull it off and sit there in shock in her bra!

Without the courage of two unknown Spanish men my friend and her daughter would have been standing NEXT TO that explosion! 

I am in complete awe of someone who could look at a gas canister unknown seconds from becoming a bomb and decide to run TOWARDS it for the sake of two strangers! My life has never tested my courage that far, I hope it never will, if it did I hope I have half as much selfless bravery. I guess firemen and lifeboat crews make similar choices frequently, I'm in awe of them too.

It's been my experience in life that most people are nice, and will help you if they can. This story really impressed me with how true that is.

So here is to all the unknown heroes everywhere, ordinary men and women who do incredible things for others - real people are amazing! 

Finally some advice on gas stoves:

1. Get one with a bottle separated from the stove by a tube.

2. Keep a fire blanket or appropriate extinguisher within reach.

3. If you fit it in a van or home have it checked by a professional.

4. Never leave them unattended - even to pop in the door of your van!

Living in Spain: Sun buttered sycamore seeds.

Living in Spain: Sun buttered sycamore seeds.

To those in England now abed...or watching TV and winding down. I wish I could send you a few moments from my evening. Some sleepy harbour cats, the warm air, the red of the broken earth, and a slice of sun buttered sycamore seeds to view!

I really love it here. So do my kids. In some ways it's better than when we first arrived as we have solved our immediate problems: Where can we shop? What can we buy the kids will eat? That sort of thing. I mentioned to my husband that there must be an ideal balance between new and known. He tells me there is an equation for it, lots of science and research done. Scientists have worked out how much we should explore new things for our optimum survival! Well I'm no scientist but I can tell you that no new things is too little! I'm glad I shoehorned my family out of our rut!

I've decided that life's activity can be put into three categories; Making a fool of yourself, not making a fool of yourself, and doing the things you are brilliant at. The fun is all in the first and the last catagories.

For example I made a fool of myself when I told everyone I was going to have 25 facepainters working for me in Sussex, Kent and Surrey and had it all worked out to turn over £100,000 a year in facepainting! The most I ever had work for me was four, part time, and it was still only a marginally profitable business - but I don't regret all the hours of planning, organising and working! I had a blast making a fool of myself.

I think I made a fool of myself starting a craft fair in a downturn, when a farmers market a week was closing in the UK! I did start it, and it ran for several successful years but I was never able to expand it enough (get more fairs in different places) to make a living. I think I helped a lot of artists, I know I had a lot of fun, but honestly - didn't make too much money for the effort!

I didn't make a fool of myself when I took a job that was well paid doing technical textiles, not creative textiles, it was a good job, sensible choice, and I learned what it's like to drag yourself from your bed to face a hated 9:00 to 5:00 for six months, then I made a fool of myself and quit without a plan or a job to go to!

The other good category is "doing what you are brilliant at" joy is also to be found here. My four years doing a BA in textile design, messing about with fabric, dyes, paints, printing machines and looms panned out as fun, fun and happiness. Likewise my morning a week of designing for my current studio is a looked forward to treat. I get to work (instead of cook and change nappies) I get to excel, be me, be a designer, someone with a future, independence, and great competence born of study, observation and lots of practice, but, and here is my point, once upon a time I made a fool of myself trying to start a textiles degree while still unclear the difference between textiles and fashion! And long before that I made a fool of myself learning to draw. All the good stuff follows after making a fool of yourself!

And if you lack the confidence to walk into new places and new situations, I give you this brilliant tip from my big brother, pretend! Acted confidence, to the people around you is in no practical l way different from real confidence! And the beauty of this tip, we have both found that real confidence naturally follows pretended confidence, you start like you know what your up to and shortly after you do! 

So now I'm thinking what shall we do to make fools of ourselves in June when our time in Spain is over?

Buy a minibus and convert it, I don't really have the know how or funds so I'm bound to make a fool of myself trying! Try to get a house sit in some exotic location to give us more time to save for a built camper? Set off in a trailer tent with no plan! I'm not really planning to not make a fool of myself and rent a little flat and resume normal!

What do you think?

Living in Spain: You will think I made this one up!

Living in Spain: You will think I made this up to entertain you, but it's true!!!

One of life's great pleasures for me, and a very rare pleasure, is the fun I get from getting to be gracious about something done to me, that others have been horrible to me for doing to them! To literally be better, and know it! It sometimes happens with ex-boyfriends! It's like Oscar Wild said, "The best revenge is living well." Perhaps mine is a smug, impure pleasure, but if it pans out to being nice in practice - does it matter if I gloat a bit to myself?

Well those of you who have been following my adventure will remember that I had a campervan that I realised was not right for us and sold. It then broke and the buyer went ballistic- threatening to take me to court and forging my signature on a document to try to make the van legally mine again.

This evening I was strolling down the front with my daughter taking selfies with the palm trees wrapped in fairy lights, when who should I meet but the bloke I bought my van from! The Chevy! He was surprised and delighted to see me and said "You made it then!" So I gave him a short version of the breakdown, shipped the van to England, getting quotes to fix it... He was gutted for us and gave me the name of a garage that rebuild classic gearboxes. He kept saying "But I just drove it here and back no problems." I kept saying it's not your fault, it's old and it could have done another 50,000 miles or more, no one knew. He's a nice bloke and it's not his fault! But I got to walk away from treating him with respect and decency thinking "See! That's how that is done, I knew I wouldn't have behaved like those people who bought my previous camper and I just got to prove it!"

I'm also blown away by the coincidence!!! We talked about my trip and his lifestyle so we knew we were both heading to Spain, but it's a big-ish place, I had no idea where in Spain, I was not expecting to meet him on my pre dinner walk!!!

In other news I have failed to stop myself from planning the next van, to take up around this peninsula (France, Spain and Portugal) one day when I get together another shot at it. Here are the plans, and some photos of similar van, and other similar things to help give the idea. Feel free to comment your advice - I only ever listen to advice I like the sound of anyway - sorry, just a personality trait I guess!

Living in Spain: What exactly is that child learning?

What exactly is that child learning?

One of the strange things about homeschooling, or worldschooling (as they call it when you go off somewhere and they learn from the change of environment) is it's hard to say exactly what they are learning. I've been on the facebook groups asking questions and in response I get amazing stories of the success of this education method. Some of the worldschool parents teach a bit, some just let them learn. Children who had literally no formal education, dropped into the American school system often scored at their year level or above straight off the bat! So they learn, but what? You just mess about on the beach right? Well actually I teach quite a bit but that's not my point.

The other day Jasmine suddenly announced "Back home it's all, a plant! quick cut it back! pull it up! Here it's yay! a plant! grow, fill the bare earth!" Clearly she's observed the differences in climate, types of vegetation and how much there is around. We have seen irrigation pipes everywhere, keeping all the green spaces alive, and cactus plants growing to the size of trees. I found sea sponges on the beach and we looked them up, and found out they are definitely animals, despite having no nervous system, heart or brain. We also found out what it's like to shower with them! A walk to the harbour at night led to finding out about port and starboard lights on a ship and the lights on the harbour itself. Who knows if it's on anyone's required curriculum (except those who sail of course) but I'm willing to bet she's at least as likely to use it in life as I am trigonometry! Perhaps it doesn't matter what we learn - as long as we learn to learn and like it. If you think about it you have the same problem with school, you may know that they sat in a lesson, but you are still taking a gamble that they learn anything. I once took Jasmine to the Egypt exhibition at Brighton museum, she was so interested in the exhibits, and my stories from Egypt that we nearly missed our bus home. When she studied Ancient Egypt at school I expected her to be interested, but all I got, after a long pause, was "Um, they had pyramids." When I expressed my surprise that she was not excited she explained "Well mostly they just write on the board and we copy it." This also leads to beautiful work books filled with data, to further fool you that they are learning. I'm not blaming the school system, teachers or education, I'm pro education, I went all the way to degree level. I'm just saying it's an interesting problem to try to work out what a kid needs to learn and if they really ARE learning it.

I think my gamble will pay off, Jasmine seems to have learned more French in our few days in France than I learned in my entire time at school. She keeps accidentally coming out with it instead of Spanish! The good part is worldschool is very application lead. Is hard to interest kids in learning what they cannot imagine using except in some far off future others insist is coming. For example: Knowing I planned to tour this peninsula in a campervan, and seeing as Tim speaks quite good French, I tried to interest Jasmine in learning Spanish, together with me, some time ago. We watched a YouTube video of basic Spanish for kids, she got frustrated and annoyed with it. Yesterday I put the same video on and we watched it avidly together, repeating every word. When I went off to the kitchen to start making lunch, she put it back to the beginning and ran it all again of her own accord, by the time I had assembled some food she had made a page of notes, pausing the video to get the Spanish spelling right. The only difference is she could really see it's usefulness! Today, out there, I can use this to make a friend, or get what I want to eat! It's good motivation. Do I have a point? Can I prove my point? Not really until she's grown up and you can ask her if she judges her life a success, and if so, did her unusual education equip her for it? But I can tell she is learning and she is having fun.

If anyone urgently needs any trigonometry done this week, I'm only a message away, and I think I can remember about a third of it from school! 😂 (And if you really do need help with it, my husband, the tutor really can help you on Skype.)