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?

Campervan: doing things I didn't know I could!

My current art form: campervan, or doing things I didn't know I could!

So we bought a motorhome (29 year old Mercedes) to travel Europe for a couple of years.

I've been weeping on poor Tim because I attacked all the damp wood with a claw hammer and then found the mess a bit overwhelming (classic Kirsteen, if I'm honest, throw yourself off to see if it's too high). Also my wonderful step dad paid for a service, but they were so disparaging about the rust, oil leak, tyres, pipes… that I've been going around expecting a wheel to fall off ever since! But we borrowed our neighbor's ladder and Tim helped me and I attacked the front of the van with a serious amount of sealant. It now looks like it lost a snowball fight with a mad artist but it's raining hard out there and my VAN IS NOT LEAKING!!! YAY!!!

Also I took out the great big seats myself, they are no good in a crash (which I won't be having) so we want to replace them with proper bus seats with seatbelts! I thought it was a job for a garage, but Tim sat on one and we ran over a bump and it collapsed! Yay! 30 minutes with a screwdriver and they are on the drive under a tarp!

Tim is referring to the camper as “My current art form” because any time Dylan sleeps and Jasmine is at a friend's house, I race out there and put new locks on cupboards, fix light fittings, lay flooring… but I think I've figured out what my current art form is, it's doing things I didn't know I could! Like driving it, let's hope that applies to driving it onto the ferry and down through France, Spain and another ferry to Morocco! You see we have a plan now, so it has an oil leak, so it's got so much rust it might not pass another MOT, well we are going to take it to Morocco and get LOTS of work done cheap! I'm calling it Moroccan Motorhome Makeover! Perhaps if their is money left we can have exotic carpets, curtains…

Here are some pictures of the huge seats I took out, and the huge can I drove, looking better!

Europe in a motorhome, campervan, van! The van has worms!

I'm coining a new emotion, I have joy-terror! It's the emotion you get when you propose to take your young children, and husband to Portugal in a beat up van.

Even the van itself is giving me joy-terror! I cleaned it from top to bottom, the kids in the street (who have played in it 47/7 since it arrived, mostly because it wouldn't lock) all joined in, they had buckets and mops and a hose and everyone got soaked, my tow year old didn't quit get the game and sat down in a bucket! That's the joy part!

In the process of cleaning I found damp and strange worms under the kids mattress, I'm not sure what sort of worms they were but whatever they were they didn't like the mold killer, so ex-worms. So it needs some work, we knew that... breathe!!! It needs a worm pill, like a pet, pets are nice... breathe!!!

However it looks better.

Another joy moment was going into a charity shop and looking through the box of maps and guides, "I'm going there, and there, and there, not that one, and there..." I've drooled over travel guides my whole life, I've never bought 14 in one sitting, with full confidence I need them! Joy!