Re-covered the foam seats (also a brighter blue shade painted on the doors which I love). The old seats were shredded & faded from months of us all clambering on them, but the foam is still solid, if a little wonky. This is a different pattern from last time (still from YouTube). Last time I cut a separate panel for each surface and stitched together with a velcro opening at one end. The problem with this for a novice is…
An excerpt from one of the earliest OUTSIDER entries over a year ago. We’ve come so far in the time since this was written, both geographically & psychologically. Am I a different person? Or am I finally becoming my true self? Either way, these words continue to ring true, & I resolve to keep letting go of that comfort so as to welcome adventure into this wild & beautiful life. Link to full piece here.…
This poem is a good eight years old, but still, I’m thinking of it just now because I’m lying in bed, in a van, in a heatwave in the north of France. When the wild first came alive in my mind I did my best to ignore her, did everything to walk a different path from the one she was calling me down, and yet years later here I am, my entire worldly possessions fitted into this van, parked in…
I’ve always loved cooking. When the kids were younger we got a weekly vegbox delivered and then later I became part of a local CSA. Now we’re on the road it takes a bit longer to hunt out local farmers markets, and to be honest they’re not always on when we’re passing through, so it’s a mix of markets, local shops and supermarkets. These days we’re vegetarian and I’m creating more vegan meals as the time rolls on. Only having…
As much as Instagram might want to prove otherwise, Vanlife isn’t all syrupy sunsets and myth-filled forests of giants. We spent yesterday day & night in this camping superstore car park near Magenta, Italy surrounded by other vans, facing a noisy, traffic-filled roundabout. It made me think on the phrase: happiness is a state of mind. It doesn’t really matter where you are or who you’re with, if you’re not happy in yourself then you’re going to find things to…
Woke this morning thinking how far we’ve come since first having a dream to sell/gift 95% of our possessions and head off to explore Europe in a self-converted van. We had to learn so many new skills to make this work – the first one being self-belief. This is an ex-delivery van (Mercedes Sprinter hi-top LWB) that originally had ply-panelling throughout and a giant metal bulkhead. It took us from April – Nov 2017 to do a complete refit. Mainly…
I had a dream the other night that I had a table full of cakes. There were so many cakes! More cakes than I could ever eat. When my friends came around I shared the cakes out as much as I could, even tried to get them to take some home. But then a group of young lairy lads showed up and I didn’t want them have the cakes even though I was being polite & they were all sat…
My thoughts keep returning to opposites lately. Years ago I discovered the Tao Te Ching and it blew my mind. The concept of nothingness: that real understanding lies in emptiness, not accumulated knowledge or wealth, is not something I’d previously encountered. And then to read of the simplest thing: left creates right; up creates down. If this is the case then the further left we go, the further right is created, and vice-versa. What does it mean then to stand…
We stayed in a campsite this weekend for the first time this year (and only the third time in eighteen months). It’s great in some ways, but I’m starting to realise how many of the things our culture considers essential are not so. They’re part of the system that tells us we need these things instead of dreams. I saw an advert the other day for a house with four bedrooms and four bathrooms. Four bathrooms? Have we really begun…
Maybe we are our memories, but we are not the inanimate objects our culture teaches us to imbue with these micro-histories. If part of the role of poetry & storytelling is to keep alive memories & ideas then perhaps this explains why they feel sidelined to ‘entertainment’ in our capitalist society. Who needs an abstract poem when we have a tangible object to hold and store, and eventually forget about? Living in a tiny space forces us to think differently…