Story so far...

 We've done five weeks of WWOOFing, nearly seven weeks away from the house and totted up over 400 miles so far so we've been chatting about how we're finding it. I think we've all hit a wall here and there, had moments of loving it and moments of wanting to click our fingers and make it stop. We've all learnt loads and made an excellent start to achieving some of our list of aims and objectives for the adventure.

We have had a pretty diverse mix of host in just the first three - slept in a tent, in Willow and in a cottage. We've had time living communally, time left to our own devices and times spent mixing the two. Work has been varied, expectations have been different and we have met the biggest mix of people from the most amazing variety of backgrounds and cultures.

Unexpected advantages have been Ady and I enjoying working together so much, I miss the kids being off doing their own thing so much but I don't remember the last time Ady and I had so much child-free time together, even if we are technically working. Not having as much time with the children as usual for me has been tough, in our previous life we were together most days, all day, often doing our own thing around the house or garden it's true but always with time cuddled up together watching half an hour of TV, reading a book, chatting about something or finding out answers to their questions together. I've missed that and they tell me they have too, I'm keen to find time to make sure that has been a temporary blip rather than a long term casualty of the year. We are definitely on the way to a fitter and healthier lifestyle - again this past two weeks have been a slight blip but even so we are eating and drinking far less and spending far more time outside, being active. I think regular swims and walks more than made up for the less physical work anyway.

We've learnt lots about nature - we've seen buzzards, sparrowhawks, otter, deer and various other wildlife, spent time with dogs, pigs, chickens, sheep, ponies, goats as farm animals and learnt about feeding and keeping them. We've sampled local delights including eggs and sausages from places we've stayed, local wine, cider, beer, cheese, ice cream, butter and so on. We've experienced an extreme off grid lifestyle, done tent dwelling in heavy frosts, lived in the van without hook up, seen some beautiful sights, some stunning scenery and above all met some amazing, inspirational and interesting people.

It's been a fabulous start to our adventure, everything we hoped for and more really. We're starting to anticipate what might be potential issues and discuss how we will deal with them as and when they might arise, getting a real flavour of what our year might bring at the same time learning that unexpected twists and turns to our careful planning are around every corner, along with new opportunities and unforeseen offers. We need to be flexible, subject to change and ready to roll with whatever comes along. These are great lessons to learn, a fab code for living and teaching all four of us so much about ourselves, each other and all the other people we meet.

Dragon:
I was expecting to only stay on farms, I was expecting to stick to our planned hosts rather than get invited to stay with people we only just met. I thought living in Willow would have been harder than it is. I'm not missing electricity as much as I thought I would, not missing a real bed, I probably sleep better in Willow than my bed at home. I'm having lots of fun, I feel healthier and think I sleep better. Before we left I thought I'd miss our house so much but I don't miss it at all. I am missing friends who live near us - Toby, Archie, Eliot, Jack, Maisie & Lorna and Granny & Grandad. I am missing friends who are far away but can't wait to see them while we're travelling. I love the fact that before we go to each host I am never sure what they will be like or what that part of the country will be like and so every time it is new and exciting, not like at home when all our days out were to places we had been before.

Star:
I was expecting us to have to work or we wouldn't get fed and there to be lots of rules and do as we were told even if we didn't know how to but it hasn't been like that at all. I really miss the chickens, ducks and our house but I am loving the freedom to run around, play in woods, going for adventures with dogs, goats. I like living in Willow because I like the fact everything is all here like our beds and the sofa. I like spending more time with Mummy and Daddy.

Ady:
So far I am finding the adventure far easier than I thought I would. Living in the van, travelling in the van and the work were all things I was worrying about but so far they have all gone really smoothly and far easier than I expected. The variety of people we are meeting, the generosity of people we meet is overwhelming and I never realised people could be so kind. I struggle with moving on from place to place, I get really at home and find it hard to say goodbye and move on. I like the work, being physical and outdoors.

Last night of 'freedom'

The 'holiday' or 'transition period' as I've been calling it is coming to a close. It's been a mostly lovely week. Cold, not our ideal campsite in terms of view and general environment but a short walk from the campsite is a section of the River Teign and we've spent plenty of time walking alongside it this week.

Star was been bringing out her wildlife tracking books and after seeing what she was sure were otter prints yesterday she's been desperate to actually see further signs of otters. We talked about them being nocturnal so highly unlikely to spot but right at the end of a walk this afternoon we did indeed see one. We'd been walking alongside a faster flowing portion of the river and enjoying the gorgeous scenery. It had been pretty busy, we must have exchanged smiles and hellos with about 50 people in the course of a 2 hour walk, mostly out walking their dogs. I am pretty dog-phobic but working very hard to conquer it and today I actually commented that I almost missed having a dog to walk along with us. We were returning and a load of noisy crows flew over our heads so we paused to watch them land and roost in their rookery when suddenly a flash of chocolate brown on the other side of the riverbank caught my eye in the setting sunshine and I realised it was an otter. We all watched as it went in and out of the river several times, giving us a fab display of swimming and clambering in and out of the water and followed it downstream for a few hundred feet. It was quite a while before we even thought to get the camera out and take a picture.

Tonight we're having an attempt at a Campervan roast dinner in the van, comprising pork chops, roast potatoes, stuffing, some mixed veg and gravy. We're watching a dvd and toasting the last night of hook up electric, before the adventure really starts tomorrow.

New normals

I remember sitting up at 4am with a newborn Dragon, over ten years ago now. I'd been in a proper full time career type job before I had him. I was a Manager and people did what I asked, when I asked them. I wore grown up clothes to work and talked to people in joined up conversations rather than that motherese way of talking we have when addressing babies. I'd never even really held a baby before Dragon, certainly never changed a nappy or been in sole charge of one so I was grabbing all the information I could from books, from parenting magazines, from the ante-natal classes we'd been to and from the other mothers each week at baby clinic with babies a bit older than mine. In my head I had this idea that there would be a sudden magic change at a certain magic date when everything would return to 'normal'. When sleep would happen in one whole block at night again, when food could be eaten without a child jiggled on my lap, when tea could be drunk while still hot. I clung to this idea of 'getting back to normal' for a few weeks, pestering anyone who had already had a child about what age they slept through, didn't cry for no apparent reason and allowed you to resume your life as a person in your own right. I realised, during one of those 4am moments, sat gazing down at him in his cot, stroking his cheek and listening to the tinkly Winne the Pooh song his mobile played that things had already become normal. The New Normal. What needed to change was me and my attitude towards life, not life itself.

It was a powerful moment and one which made me shake up and change some of my approaches to parenthood and life in general I guess. I let go of a lot of the parenting manual and magazine mentalities and dictats. I learnt to trust my own instincts and ideas, to listen to my son rather than the world around us and by the time I had Star two years later I was almost an old hand in adjusting my view and our life to suit what was happening in it rather than trying to make it fit my view. It's a skill that I think all four of us have in varying degrees, Dragon, Star and I perhaps slightly more so than Ady but he's learning and whilst his adaptation may be slower with a little more hiccups and clinging to old routines than ours it is one of the things he has said he hopes to get out of this year.

We knew when we started planning this year that there would be the things we could anticipate in advance would be testing and challenging and then there would be things that cropped up along the way and just tested our ability to cope with curve balls and living in the moment. Lots of people voiced concerns about how we would cope living in such a confined space. We're a week in now and this is probably the most intense period of living in the van we will have to deal with as we are cooking, eating, sleeping and full-time living in the van. When we are with WWOOF hosts we will probably only actually return to the van to sleep. So far we're doing fine, the dynamic has shifted and all four of us are equal partners in making things work. So far we have all made each other laugh, given comfort, shown compassion and empathy for each other. We'e also all shouted, been grumpy, felt fed up or hankered after home, got cross with one, two or all three of the others and been tested, challenged and learnt stuff.

Yesterday Star told me stuff I didn't know about squirrels, Ady told Dragon more stuff he didn't know about squirrels, we all learnt about spirit levels thanks to a random question and an answer provided by google, we all walked slightly further carrying heavier stuff than we'd have chosen, Star and I had a fascinating conversation about plastic surgery and body image, we all watched a film together and shared a dinner that none of us would have chosen as a favourite but all enjoyed nonetheless. We're getting used to moving things around the various spaces in the van depending on whether it is being a kitchen, a lounge, a  bedroom or a vehicle. Currently I am sat in the van writing this, Ady is doing the washing up, Dragon and Star are out playing in the sunshine in the field next to the campsite, so there is more than a shred of our 'old normal' still very much in evidence too.

I don't know what next week will hold- our first WWOOF hosts where we are due to sleep in a tent, what next month willl hold, as we ask Willow to get us another 100 miles or so along the route and I've no idea what next year will hold when our adventure is complete and we have to decide what happens next. But I know that living in this moment seems to be suiting us all pretty well and as Ady has just come back from the washing up room, I can hear the kids laughter calling me and the sun is shining I'm off to share the next moment and probably the one after that with the rest of the Wanderers.

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Wandering. And quite a bit of wondering too

Tonight will be the sixth in the van and we've already had adventures aplenty.

Saturday night was spent at my parents; a nice evening complete with beers and wine, fish n chips, a lovely hot bath and a night back in beds for Dragon and Star who slept in the house while Ady and I went out to the van.

We had a lovely lunch with Mum, Dad and my brother and grandmother on Sunday before heading off for our mid-point stop. We had two visits back to the car in storage during the stay at Mum & Dad's - one because I had forgotten to grab the tax disc out of the car (it still has four months to go so will be sent back to DVLA for a refund) and the second because I had also forgotten to pick up the tent which is coming with us. In theory we may never use the tent but if the van needed to be repaired at any point along the way it would render us homeless so it's good to have a back up and it may come in handy to stick up for extra storage or space along the way too. The first time Dad managed to lean in the window to grab the tax disc but the second time the car needed to come back out of the garage to get to the boot. Mum, who is much, much smaller than me slipped in and drove the car out, then I reversed it back in, doing a much better job this time enabling me to actually get out. When I'd put it in on Saturday morning I had spent a comedy ten minutes trying to work out how to actually get myself out of the car without getting rammed inbetween the car and the garage wall. I'd eventually had to go behind the car, along the passenger side and duck under the wing mirror, much to my Dad's amusement. This time I parked much closer to the wall on the passenger side. I am hoping by the time I retrieve the car in a years time I will be considerably thinner anyway!

We were waved off (again - we are really getting used to goodbyes) and headed for our first overnight stop in Dorset. When we were first planning our adventure I built in a weeks holiday before we start at WWOOF hosts, thinking we would need that transition time between leaving our jobs, the house and our old life and starting on our new reality. Time to get used to living in the van, de-stress and get used to a different pace of life, to iron out any teething troubles between the old life and the new and re-establish a dynamic of being a full time family of four rather than a three with Ady around at the weekend. Our first hosts are in Devon but one of the things we learnt in the first 48 hours with Willow is that you need to allow about double the travelling time we are used to. She drives at a steady 45-50mph rather than the more speedy pace we are used to in a brand new company car, plus we need to factor in a rest stop every 90 minutes or so - both so that we all don't get too motion sick and so that we treat her with the respect she deserves!

So I booked a campsite really close to our first hosts. I found it trawling the internet and reading reviews of campsites open all year, suitable for campervans, with electric hook-up. It sounded fab, had made it into Cool Camping and when I talked to the owner on the phone a couple of weeks ago I was reassured that it would be a perfect place for the week. Then we needed to find a mid-point overnight stop between my parents and Devon so I flicked through the C&CC book to find somewhere with hook-up and found somewhere equally lovely sounding with chickens and ducks, rang and booked a one night stay there and felt all was nicely organised. Of course life never does work out that way so last night when we arrived at the campsite (really poorly sign posted, had to do scary turning round manourveres and then head up a very, very puddly and holey road then across a rather uneven and muddy field) it was to the news they had no running water. Very, very fortunately we had picked up a big bottle of water from the supermarket, the guy charged us half price and we were not in need of showers or toilets or water supplies.


So we cooked a first dinner in the van, I read to Dragon and Star while they ate and it all felt very cosy and comfy. Unfortunately Star had been feeling a car sick earlier and once food had hit her tummy it rebelled and she brought her dinner back up again :( She is very calm and unpanicked about being sick and managed to get to the bathroom, position herself over the portapotty and hold her own hair back (sorry if TMI!) then proclaimed herself feeling 'much better'. Dragon joined in by feeling icky and needing an emergency dash of his own to the portapotty. They both looked very washed out and pale so we got them into pjs and up to their bunk, put our bed down and I snuggled into my sleeping bag and read them a couple of chapters of story before they fell asleep. Just before they went to bed though Ady called us all out to stand just outside the campervan for a few moments as it was an amazingly clear night with no light pollution and the stars were just stunning. The longer you stood gazing up the deeper the layers of stars came into focus.


We all slept well in the end and ate breakfast looking out over the field while a buzzard treated us to a spectacular fly-by circling over the field, hovering and gliding and giving us thrilling glimpses of it's gorgeous feathers and huge wingspan. Hurrah for skies and all the wonder they provide!


I'd determinded a mid-point in our 80 miles or so for today of Morrisons in Bridport. We sort of consider it 'our' Morrisons as we have been there so many times, choosing that area of Dorset for many holidays over the years and using the Morrisons as a stop off point for trips further along the South Coast too. We needed fuel - both for us and for Willow so we called in to get food, ate in the van, then filled up with petrol before the second leg of the journey.


We arrived at the campsite and were warmly greeted by the owner who took us on foot to the couple of choices of site for the van - one was in the garden, next to a fab oversized swing off one of the apple trees, the other at the foot of their land next to a little babbling stream, both gorgeous. Unfortunately 20 minutes of terrifying backwards and forwards, scraping of underside of the van on the muddy uneven ground and sides of the van on branches, fence posts and trees and revving to the point of smoke starting to emerge we had to conclude both also totally inappropriate for us and Willow. With regret we had to say goodbye to the owner and drive off, hoping we would be able to find somewhere else before Willow protested any further and conked out.


We drove further down scary up and down hill, narrow road bends before stopping in a layby to regroup. Star felt sick again, Ady and I both needed a cup of tea (at the very least!) and we needed to rather rapidly find somewhere to stay the night, it now being nearly 4pm. A peruse of the C&CC book, several hasty phonecalls, a visit to the portapotty and a kettle boil later we had a destination for the night sorted, a caffine hit satiated and a child making the rest of the journey in the loo! Star has veered between fine and cheery, and wobbly and a bit vomitty. I think tomorrow we'll get some more travel sick tablets.


The campsite we're at tonight is pricey, empty and not very us at all with it's manicured pitches and holiday club onsite (closed this time of year) but for one night it has been perfect. The kids got to play in the little playground, we're plugged in to hook up and have water just outside the door, we've had lovely warm showers, I've sat for 90 minutes in the laundry room and processed all of our washing while reading a book on the kindle (already our most loved campervan item I think).


We have a nearby campsite booked for the rest of the week. It's a working cattle farm and has an on site shop selling their own meat and eggs. It is not too expensive, has hook up and nice sounding showers and is close enough to the local village for us to walk in each day. I'll retain judgement further until we're there of course...


I think today the enormity of our adventure has rather hit us all. Both Dragon and Star are missing 'home' although when I asked them tonight how they would feel if I said we were going home tomorrow they both looked horrified at the prospect and said 'sad' and 'disappointed'. We are already learning loads - nappy sacks have made it onto our must have list of items for their perfect sick bag properties, we will always carry water, we are filling glasses only half full as it is less to spill if knocked over (remember our sofas are also our bed!), distraction techniques work wonders for homesickness, travelsickness and being super organised about where stuff is stashed and thinking about the next time you are likely to need stuff and how accessible it will be then is a really useful exercise.


Oh and our tenants? Apparently they are *definitely* going in tomorrow. I'll update then.


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It's a great day to start an adventure

So we survived our first night in the van :)

It was cosy, warm, comfortable and already feels like home :). I stirred a couple of times in the night - once for another visit to the portapotty (curse that tea!) and at least once just to revel in the fact I was asleep in my campervan :).

Dragon and Star slept well up in their bunk and we all properly stirred just before 8am and it just felt lovely to open the van curtains and see the world outside while still being snuggled inside my sleeping bag.

We've already shed a few things - the spare blankets and sleeping bags have gone back into my car which we have with us until the weekend when it will go into storage complete with anything stashed inside it. We're getting used to the idea of living in different  spaces - the kids bunk is effectively a storage space during the day and the cab becomes the storage space during the evening / night time.

After a lovely day with family we headed just a mile or two along the road to stay with friends. Dragon and Star's very close friends (and ours too) who live a similar sort of lifestyle to the one we hanker after ; growing their own food and being very much part of the local community. Dragon and Star instantly headed off with their boys and infact are sleeping in the house with them tonight while Ady and I have the van to ourselves. C & B came in the van with us and toasted adventuring with wine and crisps around the little table inside Willow.

Tomorrow we get a taste of WWOOFing joining in with our friends' Volunteer work day where local people come along and join in with growing in exchange for a share of the eventual produce.

Today the sun has shone, we have been outside in T shirts, shared food and stories with friends and family and particularly for Ady the first steps towards being free with no schedule, no time keeping and no pressure have begun. As first day of the rest of your lives go it's been a pretty good one.


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Adieu, Farewell, Au Revoir, See Ya, Bye Then.

The last four days have been one great big long round of goodbyes.

On Thursday I had my last day at work. I've worked at the local public library for just over four years, one and a half days a week. It's been one of my favourite jobs ever; close to home so no horrid commute to work, interesting and varied work, lovely work colleagues, a wide variety of different people coming in to borrow books, find information, use the computers and so on. It's had great perks too - no more library fines, free reservations of books (although frankly 50p to reserve a book and get it sent from any library in the county to your local one for you to collect is a real bargain anyway), a lovely working environment that Dragon and Star have spent lots of time in too and the kind of role where my personal stamp has been welcomed and appreciated. I have helped run events, design and deliver a kids book group programme and co-run a reading group alongside all my regular duties.

So leaving all that behind was tear jerking, particularly the lovely colleagues. 13 current and ex-colleagues (although I guess all of them are now ex-colleagues!) joined me for a meal out where I seat-hopped to spend time chatting to all of them, drank far too much until I was even louder and more enthusiastic about how fond of them I all was than usual (and I'm known for being loud and enthusiastic even when sober in broad daylight! A library was not a natural environment for me really!). I was presented with thoughtful gifts, lovely words and touching sentiments. I should probably apologise to the staff at the pub for keeping them late at work, the neighbours of my work colleagues who were dropped off before me where I insisted on getting out of the car for sentimental kerbside goodbyes with everybody and the final two friends both of who I dripped over as I got emotional. I hope they are reading this and know how much I've loved working with them all, how every single one of them means something special to me and they have become friends rather than colleagues.

On Friday it was Ady's turn. He has been in his job for nearly seven years and similarly 'workmates' have turned into 'mates'. He was taken out for breakfast, presented with cards, many gifts and then brought home (he was stranded as of course he drove his company car in to work but had to leave it there!). In just the same way Ady will terribly miss his friends at work, the camaraderie and laughs and whilst I don't think he'll miss the 9-5 he will certainly miss the people who kept him company during it.

Saturday was our 'Bye Then Party', our chance to gather both local friends and our friends from around the country for a big send off. We are very lucky to be part of a group of amazing Home Educating families who met online several years ago and have become almost an extended family to us. Our children are growing up with each other as peers, friends, part of a gang and us adults are in daily online contact with each other thanks to email, forums and social network sites. We holiday together several times a year, meet up at parties and celebrations and share the highs and lows of each others lives. It is this feeling of community and brief periods of living, cooking and sharing together that have inspired us to embark on a year of spending time living with host families while WWOOFing, learning from others, pooling resources and ideas and finding ways of working as a group.

The party was a true celebration of our adventure and I hope summed us up as a family and part of a group of friends. We obviously provided the reason for the party, hired a hall, invited people to come and then stood there in an empty hall with empty tables, four people, a cake and about a hundred inspirational quotes I'd written on different coloured paper. A couple of hours later the room was heaving; there were children playing together in the outside area, many of them with children they'd never met before. The table was laden with food and drink made, baked and bought by friends, music was playing, people were dancing, laughing, chatting and the room was alive. We were utterly overwhelmed with the thoughtful, generous and fabulous gifts people had brought, the well-wishes, hugs, occassional tears and cheerleading.

A mammoth effort turned the hall from a trashed party venue to a clean and tidy place once more and then a large group came home with us to help finish up the food and drink and spend the evening with us. Today a smaller group of us went to the local beach for a crazy hour of playing chase the waves until every child (and a couple of the adults) were soaked with sea water, we came home for hot chocolate and cake and finally the last guests left and it's just the four of us once more.

People have said some very wondering things to us in the last few weeks; told us the sort of lovely things you would like to think people think of you but so very rarely hear. We have been told we are brave, courageous, inspirational, adventurous...I'd love to think this is true and hope we prove deserving of their faith and belief in us. I know that it is the support, enthusiasm and love of friends that has made us brave, given us courage, been our inspiration and fed our thirst for adventure. It is the knowledge that so many people are indeed 'wandering with us in spirit' that means we think we can do this.

So many fantastic stories start with a page thanking everyone who made the telling of the story possible. So we'd like to start our story now as we count down the sleeps left in our house (three!) by thanking the amazing supporting cast of friends who might not fit in the van with us but are definitely along for the ride.

Swoosh rattle

Did you hear that? It's the sound of February hurtling past us.

Today was something of a Day of Days in that we finally were reunited with Willow. Not for long, but it was tender and emotional just the same. We collected her from DMM, paid the very reasonable (I suspect he knocked at least £50 quid off in a combined 'sorry I was shit about getting it done / sorry you are mental enough to think that will get you past Hampshire, let alone all around the country' discount) amount he asked for in return for a new battery and a key operated switch so we can jump start it. He had left the passenger window open though so that seat is sodden (maybe there was a bit of 'sorry you'll get a wet arse' discount in there too.). Ady drove it along to HBM and the kids and I followed behind

I've never really looked at the back of the van and certainly never driven behind it so it was pretty exciting watching her go. The kids and I were in very high spirits and Ady said he'd really enjoyed driving her, both from a 'hurrah we'll be off soon' point of view and I suspect because she actually started and went and felt reliable. Even in very heavy rain.

HBM *promised* to have her bodged sufficiently to get an MOT and back to us by next Wednesday which gives us a whole week to pack her up, give her a good clean inside and out and spend time stroking her and being glad she is back.






In other news we have a van hired to move furniture booked for the week after next, much of the house is boxed up and we have plans to get more done over the weekend and I really enjoyed taking a phonecall from Sky TV this afternoon asking why we have cancelled our subscription and replying that we won't have a TV so we really won't be needing Sky. This week's top well wishers and 'I wish I could do something like that' are our dentist, the bloke at Sky TV customer services and a little old lady at the library who invited me to come along to their pensioners reading group as a guest to one of their meetings and when I told her why I couldn't agreed our adventure did sound rather more fun that debating The Grapes of Wrath!

We're all really enjoying watching One Man & His Campervan which I know has had some rough reviews but simply couldn't be more timely for us. A bloke *loving* campervan living and foraging or buying local to feed himself using basic cooking facilities and seeing fab places around the UK.

Two weeks to go

Two weeks from now we will have left our house. Three weeks from now we hope to be somewhere in Dorset or Devon, enjoying the early onset of Spring and sleeping in our van. Four weeks from now we'll be sleeping in a tent at our first host.

Today was another 'last' at work for me, my last Wednesday shift. I have two shifts left at work. I told a couple of the regular customers today - both retired women well into their senior years and got resounding positive responses from both. I do sometimes wonder if the older generation look at my age group and wonder just where all our adventurous spirit has gone, hopefully we're reassuring them it's still there if a bit hidden under worrying about pension plans and plasma TVs.

A neighbour also came knocking on the door for a nosey chat too and was also very encouraging and supportive, telling me that her and her husband have a series of virtual boxes that they like to think they will tick all of before they die and aim to tick at least three or four per year. Ady and I both chatted to a very dear friend on the phone tonight too (waves at Rob) who was also full of the sort of positive encouragement it's nice to hear.

But let's have some 'firsts' shall we? Today I had my first real life conversation with one of our hosts. The place we will be staying at second. The host rang to confirm and to just tighten up plans, introduce herself with a real voice and say she is looking forward to meeting us all. There will be another family (with four kids) staying there the same time as us and she has loads planned to keep us all busy and give us a real flavour of what the lifestyle involves. It felt really exciting and very real to be actually talking to someone. We have had another couple of yes replies from hosts in Zone 3 and are now as booked up as we need to be, which is a great feeling.

Willow will be very briefly in our hands again tomorrow too as we are picking her up from Doom Monger Mechanic who is thankfully charging us a very reasonable rate indeed for the battery and some leads to make jump starting easier (the battery is in a *very* inaccesssible place, only really get-able to from inside the van, he's fitting some leads with a key operated switch meaning we can jump start the van from the outside if the need should arise. We have a really good charge-holding power pack with jump leads which should mean we have a first line of defence against unreliable older engines, with decent breakdown cover being our second line of defence. I'm not thinking too hard about a third - I suspect it will resort to chocolate, alcohol, sobbing and quite probably ringing my Dad to come and bring us all home again because we've had enough! Let's hope we never reach the third line of defense... So we'll be collecting her, finally, and then taking her straight to Happy Bodger Mechanic who assured me on the phone today he could pug the manifold and get it through an MOT *and* have it back to me for next Wednesday. It's tight, it'll cost money and it will mean we have just one week with Willow to get her packed up and ready to go but it's doable. A big characteristic of this whole adventure is the fairly small margin for error. We're on a tight budget, travelling in a van which is well into advanced years while we are not far behind ourselves but hope, optimism, sheer bloody mindedness, a huge support network of friends wishing us well is enough to propel us at least halfway round the country and I reckon the van is up to the other half at least.

Bad, good, learnt today

 Every year in January Ady, Dragon, Star and I sit down and make a list of the things we'd like to learn, achieve, see, experience, visit in the coming year. Although we Home Educate we don't follow a curriculum or have a structured approach to education, viewing our role as facilitators rather than instructors, cheerleaders rather than coaches, fellow learners rather than teachers. It's true I seek out things I think will interest Dragon and Star, introduce them to ideas or concepts, arrange visits to places I think will inspire them but it is very much a partnership with them asking questions and me helping them find the answers rather than something driven by me. This sitting down together talking about hopes and dreams and plans for the year ahead is a really valuable exercise for us and one we replicate to a lesser degreee throughout the year with regular conversations about how life is going. The whole Wondering Wanderers Adventure has been talked through in this way over many hours in the last nine months.

Last year for a while we did an exercise where all four of us would share something new we had learnt today with the others. These nuggets ranged from interesting factoids to startling new discoveries. Sometimes they were more 'life lessons' than trivia but it was an interesting exercise that we all enjoyed. Somewhere along the line life got in the way and the 'what I learnt today' sharing got forgotten but one of the suggestions Dragon made when we sat down this January of things he'd like to do this year was to reinstate it. I added to that with a Good and Bad thing too. I'd read a book recently which talked about sharing one good thing and one bad thing about the day with the rest of the family at dinnertime each day and I really liked the idea. I like the focussing on the positives, sharing the negatives and the realising that in every day when you summarise it there are good and bad bits. So for the last month or so we've been sharing a 'Bad, Good, Learnt today' chat before bedtime. I do record what we all say on a private blog and they are interesting to read back over.

Anyway in the same spirit of Bad, Good, Learnt today here is an update as we hurtle ever closer to Leaving Day.

Bad: Willow is still at the garage. Apparently a part is needed for the exhaust manifold. A part that is no longer made so will need to be sourced second hand and doesn't appear to be available anywhere. The mechanic has had the van now for over 2 weeks and I went from congratulating myself for getting it packd off there nice and early with 5 weeks still to go before we head off to panicking madly that it won't be ready to go in time. I want it back parked on our drive, MOT'd and ready to start packing stuff into. Instead I've been ringing the mechanic every couple of days for updates and getting nothing other than 'nothing to report' responses. Ady has now been along and talked to him and he's doing a couple of minor other things and getting the van back to us. Un-MOT'd and without the manifold done. We have another mechanic (who serviced it for us back last year) in mind to see if he can get it through an MOT and sort the manifold out but I am really very twitchy about it all being ready in time. We'd not really reserved any funds for the van before we go either, so that will be coming out of the 'contingency fund' we were hoping to keep more or less intact for emergencies along the way.

We are finding it tear jerking saying goodbye to family and local friends, knowing that seasons will have passed, life will have moved on, everyone will have had birthdays and other special occassions while we're away.

Good: Everything else really I guess! :)
We are getting such touching and supporting emails, texts, phonecalls, facebook messages and things said to us by friends, colleagues and people we know. It's so lovely to know we have people encouraging us and cheering us on, it really does mean the world to us.
The tenants are all still on track to move in, their references, credit checks and other paperwork is all coming back satisfactorily, the TO LET board outside the house has been changed to a SORRY, IT'S LET board and the agent is drawing up the tenancy agreement. They want to keep some of our appliances and the chickens which means we don't need to rehome them.
We are kitted out with waterproofs, thermals, boots, warm socks and other such essentials. Three have supplied us with a MiFi to try out (which I will blog more about once we're actually using it) so we've got our internet access in hand for the beginning of the journey.
We have pretty much filled our three zones with willing hosts. We have the odd week here and there empty which was always our intention so we have some flexibility built in to change plans or stay longer in some places, to take some down time and find a campsite or even pick up some casual farm or fruit picking work to boost our finances a bit if required. we have had some overwhelmingly positive responses from some hosts and we are so excited at the prospect of meeting people who we already feel a connection with having exchanged a few emails.
We've made great headway packing everything up. The house is starting to get put into boxes. With the exception of a couple of things still to be listed on ebay I think we have gotten rid of everything that isn't about to be boxed up or put into the van.

Learnt: I'm sure we've learnt loads already. I know my UK geography is already massively improved just by all that plotting on maps, trying to coordinate a route and book in with hosts. We've not learnt but have certainly experienced mass decluttering, carboot sales, living with less, letting go of the 'stuff' and working through what we actually really need and how little that is. I know the list of 'good and bad' will grow and grow throughout the coming year but I reckon the biggest list by far will be the 'learnt'. I'm hoping that the phrase 'live and learn' will be an equal ratio of massively enhanced learning via massively enhanced living.

Further wibbling

Yesterday we had a reply from one of the potential zone three hosts we'd contacted which was cloaked as a sort of 'we have these concerns, can you let us know what you think' type response but I suspect was actually an excuse to rant a bit at us. Maybe they'd had a bad experience in the past with WWOOFers. Their concerns were quite how we'd earn our keep with two children in tow and how much of a liability the children would be. This is of course something we have considered and talked about between the four of us. We know of one other family who have done UK WWOOFing with children before and another family about to set off. Within the listing of hosts there is a tick box to say whether or not you welcome children by arrangement.

One of the chief reasons we have got the campervan is because we know putting up a family of four is a big ask, in places where they are able to host us in the house that is great but often we will be sleeping in the van so all we really need is access to a bathroom, water and electric if possible (minimal use required, just charging phone / laptop / batteries) and food. The children will of course need supervising but that will be done by us, we appreciate it may limit the tasks Ady and I are able to complete if we need to have a child alongside us but they are not toddlers, or unused to that environment.

I did respond to the email and have since had a reply back to say they can't host us, which is probably just as well as I think we'd all been put off them anyway but it was such a contrast to the usual replies we've had from potential hosts. Reading around the WWOOF forum I have seen talk of hosts who do not adhere to the ethos of WWOOF and are out to get cheap labour for commercial operations. I had thought we would avoid any such places by virtue of not looking an attractive option but I suspect this was one such place where we simply wouldn't be able to work enough hours per day to pay for the couple of quid it would take to feed us. I know you can feed four people easily for a tenner a day which is pretty cheap for the work of two adults...

Fortunately I did get two, possibly three yes replies from Zone three (the possible yes is that they can't do the dates we were asking about but may be able to do others so I have emailed them some po. ssible other dates). Plus I am less worried about filling that final zone right now as we are still 6 months plus away from it so know a lot can change between now and then and any booked hosts will be provisional really. We are renewing our WWOOF membership and getting a paper copy of the directory too so will have phone numbers of hosts we can ring along the way to make arrangements as we go.

The second wibble is regarding Willow. I chased the mechanic today and he has had an initial look at her and gave me a long long list of things wrong with her. We talked it back down to a way shorter list needing to be done to get the MOT done (which actually doesn't run out til May anyway but we wanted to have it done before we go so we don't need to think about it during the year). He agreed that things like a minor oil leak can probably be dealt with by carrying oil and checking it regularly. There is clearly a balance between ensuring it is roadworthy, safe and reliable enough to get us round and chucking all our available funds at it. I think we'll go for bare minimum, good breakdown cover and learning as we go, hopefully from some hosts who will be mechanically minded anyway.

Ady will fret about this, poor Dragon had a nightmare last night that we'd gone to the host I mentioned earlier and they'd been really mean to us making us sleep on beds made of mud and eat cat fur ridden meals. Fortunately between the four of us we pretty much strike a balance of the crazy risk taker with a live for today attitude and an airy 'everything'll be okay' view of the future, a sunny natured 'isn't life BRILLIANT?!' optimist, an awake at night fretting over things which probably will never even happen worrier and a cautious, 'it's all in the details' thinker. I think between the four of us we manage to laugh in the face of adversity while still having a healthy respect for the chance of the whole thing crashing round our ears!

Off to research breakdown cover...

Wibbly heap ahoy!

You were warned!

I think we did most of last weeks job list along with some of this weeks too. The garage and garden wall have been painted and I've contacted all the Zone three hosts. The kids have waterproof coats, thermals, decent boots and waterproof trousers. I have my years supply of contact lenses. The van is still at the garage and we've given notice to anyone who needs it about our impending departure.

Our plan is to start boxing the house up now, storing the boxes in our playroom and then moving them into storage the week before we go. Once we get the van back we will start filling it with stuff coming with us. On our final weekend we should just have beds, sofas and other too large to fit into a car left in the house. We have friends staying for our Bye Then party and then 2 full days left (we'll have both finished work) to fully clean the house, hire a van to move the last heavy / large things into storage before locking the door behind us and dropping the keys off with the letting agent.

Lots of people are asking how we're feeling now it is all so real and imminent and the answer is 'excited and scared in about equal measures'.

Excited because this is something we so want to do and have been planning for months, it's a relief it is finally here, it's been quite a logistical event to pull off and I'm personally quite proud of making it all happen. What felt like a mammoth task ahead with lots of scary variables has indeed proved possible to get this far in. I'm excited to be on the brink of what I think will be a life changing event and catalyst for all sorts of things in the future of all four of us aswell as looking forward to the year for it's own sake - spending time together, meeting some very interesting new people, living with less stuff, getting fitter and healthier, having an adventure and creating a story to tell for when we're old and grey bouncing grandchildren on our knees.

Scared because there is of course so many different ways it could go wrong. Working phyically leaves many chances for injury or being incapacitated let alone just getting ill with colds or flu or other bugs. Scared because although we have a small contingency fund along with a tiny monthly income we will be living on very tight finances. If the house needed something expensive doing or the tenants left or failed to pay we'd be in trouble, if the van breaks down and can't be fixed in one day we have nowhere to sleep that night. We might find ourselves staying with people we don't like or have different expectations of each other. I know Ady is apprehensive about keeping the kids safe and happy in so many unknown locations. I'm nervous about food, whether we'll like what's offered and what happens if we don't, how I'll cope with the many, many dogs we are bound to encounter along the way!

So... boxes.

we are proud to announce...

our plans to the whole world :)

We have been waiting for everything to fall properly into place before the final stages of the adventure start and we 'go public'. Today Ady has handed his notice in at work so the rest of the world can now know.

We have firmed up a date to be out of our house and for tenants to move in which gives us slightly longer than we first thought. This is great as it means everything comes together as per my originial plans. It does mean we will end our time in the house without TV, phone or internet as I'd already given notice for the earlier date but I quite like the transition happening in staggered steps.

Willow the van is at the garage, having an MOT and getting checked over to see what is happening with the batteries to make the vehicle battery not keep it's charge. We've had the landlord gas safety check done and we have waterproof jackets on the way. I've ticked off most of this weeks job list, the chickens who left have done so and are happily installed in their new home, the rest are staying here as the tenants are keeping them on.

I anticipate life (and therefore this blog) to rather degenerate into a slightly wibbly heap for the next month as we frantically try and pack everything up, say our goodbyes, documenting as much as we can and heading off on our way.

Weeks rather than months....

Further developments to report!

Firstly, and most excitingly we seem to have tenants! There is still paperwork to be completed and final dates, signatures and checks to be done but it is all in hand.

This means today I am off to hand my notice in at work. They already know and have done for months about the plan and I had a provisional leaving date in the diary ages ago but I need to go and confirm it. A will wait until next week as he has a little annual leave to use up anyway which means he shouldn't need to work his full notice so we'll wait for everything to be fully finalised before he takes his letter in to work.

This gives us about 3 weeks left in our house to box everything up, clear out the last few things which need listing on ebay, taking to the tip or giving away on freecycle.

I've given notice to Sky tv, have lists of places to give notice to once we have a firm date, lists of people we need to try and cram a get together with before we go and a Bye Then party to plan with a large group of friends.

We need to sort out internet access for the van, a solar panel for the roof, waterproofs, thermals and decent work boots. I need to order in a years supply of contact lenses, decide whether a kindle is a worthy investment ;) and confirm dates with the hosts we've already booked and send out the first email enquiry to the zone three hosts on our shortlist.

Let the countdown to craziness commence!

Days like these

Anyone who knows me in real life, or indeed has followed this blog for more than a short while will already know I am an optimist. I tend to always see the light at the end, rather than the gloom of a tunnel, the glass not only half full but another bottle or a tap handily placed to refill it again, every mistake or bad move as an 'improvement opportunity' or lesson to be learnt.

I know this tendancy can be annoying to others, I'm not 100% convinced it is healthy myself, it can certainly be on the short sighted side, but I've got this far in life with an airy wave of my hand and an 'it'll turn out okay...' and thus far it seems to have done.

Today could be framed as a bad day really. My car, which has cost a bloody fortune to keep roadworthy and costs me about £15 a week just to have sat outside on the road in terms of insurance and road tax, isn't running. It doesn't like the damp and simply refuses to start. This is both annoying just because I don't want to be shelling out money I could put to better use for something that's not working anyway and it is inconvenient because if it was running we would have gone to a friend's today. If it continues to not start I will have various things due to happen this week that I'll have to cancel.

The tenant viewing didn't happen either. 15 minutes after they were supposed to be here, after I'd spent the morning cleaning mirrors, fretting about creating that important first impression and refusing to let Dragon & Star get anything out to play with the agent knocked on the door to say it didn't look like they were coming.  He came and had a look round the house anyway as he'd not been before. I don't know why the potential tenant didn't turn up, I guess it's irrelevant really.

So days like these, days when everything feels rather out of my control and like it's all stacked up against us are the ones when we have to really question what we're doing. I think it is far harder to be responsible for the source of your stress yourself, when actually it is entirely within your reach to stop what's going on and just decide not to do it after all.

As a Home Educator this is something I am already familiar with. We don't often have bad hours let alone bad days, but they do come along every so often. Days when life would be so much simpler if Dragon and Star went to school, I went to work and we were just like everyone else. Those are the opportunities for us to challenge what we're doing, question our lifestyle and re-evaluate whether it is still working for us. Thus far we have always concluded that yes, this is the right path for us and whilst the bad days would be for different reasons we'd still have times of stress and discord and wondering what it's all about even if we did what everyone else does.

I don't think there is much in life which isn't worth sweating over a bit, gritting your teeth at times and getting through the tough bits to the stuff that makes it all worth it. At the moment I would liken our countdown to the first bit of a rollercoaster ride. We're still in the queue at the moment, it's been a long, long queue. To begin with we were just fed up to be at the wrong end of such a long wait - that was us back last summer, knowing what we wanted but with very little to do other than hanging around waiting and shuffling forward a little every so often. Now we're near the front it's starting to feel pretty scary. I can sense how scared we'll be a few weeks down the line when we are strapped in and at the point of no return - that tough, uphill bit where every second feels like hours as you climb ever upwards. I can look further ahead to that hands in the air, wind in our hair, screaming for more, rush of adrenaline and crazy excitement as we realise how much we LOVE IT. Or we'll hate it, realise it was a big mistake and come off shaking and happy it's over. At the very least we'll never look at rollercoasters again and wonder what we're missing, whether it is something we should have tried.

So today I am appreciating the kids being able to choose a dvd to watch, a comfy sofa to sit on, I'll appreciate a hot bubble bath later, a glass of wine with my dinner and a warm snuggly bed to sleep in tonight. These are things we won't have in a few weeks time. I'm contenting myself that nothing really worth doing every comes easily and that these challenges and uncertainty and testing times will be what makes it all really rewarding when it all comes together.Which I am confident it will.... just hope it's soon!

8 weeks to go

give or take as many weeks as it takes to find a tenant.

In order for everything to go perfectly as planned we need to have a firm tenant sorted by 20th January. Eek, that's less than 3 weeks away. That allows both of us to hand our notice in at work and leave on the dates we planned, our Bye Then party to take place, a week in the van somewhere along the way between here and our first booked host from 7th March to fully leave one life behind before embarking on the next and everything to fall nicely into place finances wise.

Meanwhile I'm tying up lose ends on the little things, reducing mobile phone tariffs to bare minimums until contracts run out, checking notice periods on things like Sky TV, BT phoneline, internet provider and so on. My car will be put into storage while we're gone so the insurance and tax needs to end on that. We need specialist landlord insurance for the house, permission from our mortgage company to let it out and we need to finely tune our finances for the year so that we balance between paying stuff in full in advance and keeping enough of a contingency fund to ensure we can cope if things go wrong along the way.

So we're poised with phone numbers and addresses and websites all ready prepared for giving  notice as soon as a tenant is found, I've changed my car insurance to a rolling monthly arrangement and we've pretty much made final decisions on what is coming with us, what is going into storage and what still needs to go. I've done another load of ebaying and we still have some runs to the tip and some further ebaying to go. An unfortunate side effect of creating spaces in the house has been that they tend to get filled back up again so we are thinking about starting to box stuff up and allocating one room in our house to a box room from now, if only to give us that feeling of being about to move on.

My car had a very costly bill for getting through it's MOT and having work done to it which has set us back a month in terms of getting stuff done that costs money but will hopefully be worth the sacrifce now when we come back and have a roadworthy vehicle to use or sell depending on what we do at the end of our year. This means that stockpiling contact lenses, buying waterproof boots and clothes and a solar panel for the van are all on hold for now.

It is suddenly odd that we are no longer saying 'next year....' when talking about our adventure, it is now 'in 8 weeks...' which brings it all so much closer. We are having wobbles - at the enormity of what we're doing, at the fresh realisation of saying goodbye to things, comforts, friends, a certain calendar whilst at the same time trembling with excitement that it really is happening, that we will have such an amazingly different year in 2011 to that we had in 2010 - all the adventures, learning and new stories ahead of us poised to happen.

It's up and it's down

When we first started telling friends about going off on our Wondering Wanderers adventure we had a huge range of responses. Several friends asked if I would be blogging it (I have had a blog for some years and done various other blogs at different stages, about living a more frugal life, about Home Education, about moving towards a self -sufficient-ish lifestyle with our allotment, chicken keeping etc.). I said I would be and started to think about at what point to start a blog. I decided the 'story' of the WW adventure was a three parter really. The before, the during and the afterwards. I suspect they will have very different aspects, pace and plotlines in each part. I am also aware that this blog is being written by me and whilst I am writing an account about the adventures of all four of us it is very much in my voice. It has to be said I am very much the driving force behind the whole thing at this stage. The idea was hatched up by me and presented to the others, we have all had an equal voice in what we want but the logistics and facilitation are mostly being carried out by me. This is logical both as these are the skills I possess, I mostly enjoy being the one with the clipboard and I am the one who is around most to do these things with Ady working full time.

I've been reading a few books about adventure / experiments in life changing  pursuits - I think I've linked to them all before but the most relevant are: How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day, How I Lived a Year on Just a Pound a Day, No Impact Man: Saving the Planet One Family at a Time: Saving the World, One Family at a Time, The Tree House Diaries and I'm about a third of the way through The Moneyless Man: A Year of Freeconomic Living. All (except tree house diaries) are year long experiences just like ours is planned to be. All are life changing both in their own right for the year and for the longer term lifestyle, all have a massive leaning towards greener, lower impact, more sustainable lifestyles using less money and resources and more creativity and resourcefulness. Coming from different angles but all with very similar 'journeys'. A decision to do something radical, sometimes as a result of a sudden epiphany, sometimes a gradual realisation that a change is needed. A period of planning and preparation, the telling other people and dealing with their feelings and opinions, a bit of a reality check when the toughness and 'what the hell am I think?' -ness sets in - all this before you actually embark on the adventure in the first place!

During the 'experiment' there seems to be all sorts of highs and lows, unexpected hard times, steep learning curves, kindess from strangers, unanticipated good points, maybe some rationalisation or changes to the original idea. Plenty of serendipity aswell as the universe dealing one rough turn after another at times. Expect the unexpected, seize the day, trust the process, take responsibility all seem to be important things to focus on here.

All of the authors end their time changed in many ways. Ready to return to some aspects of their former life, adamant there are other elements they will never return to. All have learnt so many new skills, ideas and changed their priorities, have different agendas to what they started out with and every single one feels richer for the experience - not least because they have sold books about it! ;)

So back to us and our ups and downs. We are still at the very outset but have already started along the path of our adventure. In many ways we were heading this way for quite a while in others this has come quite suddenly - I have another post in mind in the style of a roll of honour, people who directly or indirectly have a part to play in our planning to go off and do this, I will try and get that written soon. But already we have begun to think further than our initial brief and come to realise there will be more to this adventure than we first thought.

The WW adventure has come about because we have this long term dream of living a self sufficient, sustainable lifestyle. We want to grow our own crops, rear animals for their produce and meat, we want to live off grid, we want to learn about self builds. We think. Chucking everything we have in the air and risking it on what we think we want is a risk too far, so we're going off to learn first. Learn both if it is what we want to do and how to do it.

I had not anticipated how difficult some aspects of the planning and preparation were going to be. I was being very logical about it and had a list: find people to have us to stay and teach us, buy a van to travel in / sleep in when required, rent out our house to pay the mortgage. This meant clearing the house of most of our belongings - to raise money and to empty the house ready for rental. It meant preparing to give up our jobs. It meant realising we'd be living, the four of us, together most of the time, in a small space or sharing housespace and mealtimes with other people. People we've not even met yet.

So we're coming through some downs at the moment. This feels tough because it's all our own making - we could stop now and change our minds and end the things we are struggling with. It's also tough because I am naturally an optimist and inclined to see the best of things or find the way to put them right. But I want to document it. I want to have an honest and accurate account of what we're doing and how it's making us feel. I want to be able to say 'remember when we found it hard and were not sure whether we could make it?'.

Ady and I are coming to terms with what will be an ongoing shift - a change in the dynamic of the four of us. To this point we have all had fairly clearly defined roles - Ady has worked full time and I have been the one at home most of the time. The Home Educating of Dragon and Star, the remembering birthdays, organising holidays and day trips, doing the shopping and deciding what we'll have for dinner, ensuring cars are taxed, insurance is paid, we don't run out of toothpaste - all of these things have been my domain. Now we are realising that next year roles will get smudged. I will no longer be primary parent. Mopping up tears, ensuring teeth have been cleaned, laying down the law etc, all of which Ady can and does do but generally fall to me will no longer be solely my domain. In our lives next year it will be other people teaching all of us, other people calling 'tea time', Ady with the upper hand of more knowledge in some areas and me in others. The dynamics, relationships and intricacies between the fours of us as indivduals and a group will all shift, alter, morph and develop.

Dragon and Star are finding getting rid of things hard. I don't think many 8 and 10 year olds have faced the sorts of dilemmas and life changes they are dealing with now but I think most adults have. I think having your choices laid out before you and a very clear 'if you choose this then you can't have this'. Giving our children a voice, taking them seriously and talking things through with them is very much the way we parent, protecting them from harm whilst at the same time giving them the opportunity to make decisions. So we're talking this through, agreeing that yes it can be hard, suggesting that it will be worth it and reminding them to think about all of the things they want to achieve next year and are looking forward to. Children are pretty resiliant and whilst I'd never patronise them or underestimate the depth of their feelings it is amazing how quickly the angst of sorting out old felt tips can be forgotten and gotten over after a nights sleep and their favourite breakfast cereal when all enthusiasm for next year is renewed.

We're in rather a limbo period just now, with lots of the tough packing our live up stuff done or being done and none of the potential upside of this close enough to touch just yet. It's hard living in a house without furniture, it's taking more discipline than some of us are used to to keep everything tidy and not just spread back out again to use up the newly created space. It's hard to be in work knowing you won't be around to see the results of those planning meetings. I think staying committed to one life whilst already having a foot in the next is just a tough thing to sustain for more than a very brief period. It's unsettling, challenging and a rather harsh reality I'd not necessarily factored in as a possible down side to this whole adventure.

All that said, all of the above has served to illustrate some previously unrealised ups too. I see how much Dragon, Star and Ady have to gain from this increased time spent together. Last weekend Dragon was upset about a chest of drawers leaving the house. It was bought by my grandmother for us when he was born and has been a fixture in his bedroom ever since. It was ten years old, there were knobs missing, several of the drawers were broken. It had done it's time and frankly even if we weren't about to leave it was on borrowed time anyway. Dragon was very upset, he said it was precious, he'd had it a long time, he wanted to put it into storage. I explained that it was no longer any use, not worth putting into storage and that it had to go. We talked about how some decisions are hard ones to make but for the right reasons. I pride myself on being pretty good at talking stuff through with my children in a no nonsense, caring, talking them round and helping them realise things for themselves manner. But I was going round in circles. So Ady took over. He went upstairs with him and they talked about the positives next year will bring - time together, no more 'not now Dragon, I'm busy', no more 'I can't today I have to go to work'. They talked about how they are going to learn new skills together and had the amazing brainwave of taking all the fixtures and fittings off the drawer unit and putting them in a small bag - screws, knobs, hinges and drawer runners. Next year they have pledged one of the things they want to learn is how to use those fixtures to build their own drawer unit from scratch - a reminder of what Dragon let go and considered precious will live on in those hinges and knobs along with new skills and precious time spent with his Dad. I can see from this that there is plenty to gain from me not being the person trying to put it right, that putting it right isn't the answer, coming up with an even better alternative is.

I think that's what we have to learn from this stage. It *is* hard, there are huge changes afoot and far from trying to get back to normal what we need to be doing is readjusting to our new normal and be up for change, ready to adapt and be creative and flexible in our approach. I hope the lessons we are learning during this time will stand us in good stead of the wobbles along the way and that just as we are finding more downs than we first expected it is all relative and unanticipated highs will be there in the mix too.

Back to my roots

I've been thinking about my grandmothers today.

Two women, very different people, a whole generation apart age-wise with the only common factor being that one's son married the other one's daughter. I've been wondering how my life compares to theirs, how much of either or both of them is in me, both my nature and nurture. I carry their genes and am the product of their offspring both in physical make up and in upbringing, values and ideas.

My Dad's mother, Beatrice has been dead for about 25 years. I have only wispy, photo-based memories of her. I only knew her as an old woman, infact as she was into her 40s by the time she had my Dad, her only child, he only knew her as a middle aged woman too. Beatrice was English but married a Welshman and moved to North Wales to live with her husband and his mother, a woman who only ever spoke Welsh to her (a language she never understood) and made her life difficult. My Dad was born just before WW2 and lived his early years in a tiny Welsh village that had yet to see electricity. Beatrice raised her son in a house with one room upstairs and one room downstairs. The cooking, washing, heating, drying clothes was all done over the open fire, the toilet was outside. Christmas presents were home made wooden toys, clothes were home made, hand me downs, donated by the church charity. Milk and butter were from the farm cow down the lane, eggs from the chickens in the back yard, veg from the garden grown yourself, the bulk of the meat was rabbits or pigeons trapped or shot by her husband or chickens that had stopped laying eggs.

My Dad was her priority, she took on the only credit she ever had to buy a piano for him to learn to play on, she stayed in North Wales until my grandfather died and then followed my Dad down to Sussex where he had moved at 21. She died, aged 91 having lived through two wars, seen electricity, the telephone, television, man land on the moon and indoor toilets all happen during her lifetime. My knowledge of her is limited to the dim memories of her giving me polo mints and the only time I ever saw my Dad cry on the day she died. My Dad speaks of her with love, affection, admiration and she is clearly his role model as a parent. If I had a time machine and could go visiting someone from the past she is the person I would choose. I'd ask her about my Dad as a small  boy, about the huge sacrifice she made moving to Wales and whether it was out of a grand passionate love for my grandfather, desperation to have a child or some other reason. I'd love to know what she thinks of me, of Dragon and Star her great-grandchildren, of the world today and of our plans to head back towards some of the lifestyle she lived.

My maternal grandmother, Margaret was just 19 when she had my mum and 21 when she had my uncle. She married a man about ten years older than her (my grandfather) and their marriage ended when my Mum was 21. She was evacuated to Cornwall during the war and spent much of her childhood apart from parents and siblings.


Margaret has been an incredibly successful businesswoman. She is a florist and has owned several flower shops, done floral arrangements for all sorts of organisations and occassions, had a deserved reputation in business circles and been chairperson of chamber of commerces and other such organisations. She is 82 now and although not in perfect health is able bodied, lives alone and independantly, still drives and works as a volunteer for charities, attends church and has an active, busy life. She is computer literate and online having always kept abreast of technology as a business owner and then carried on learning after she retired, going to college to learn about computers and getting herself a pc. She has travelled the world on cruises and aeroplanes and kept up with a rapidly changing and progressing world.

Two very different women, two very long and full lives, two very similarly minded offspring in my parents though. My parents are very materialistic, they have worked hard, both had their own businesses and spent time earning money to accumulate nice things around themselves. I know both their mothers are / were proud of them for their big house, nice cars, nice holidays.

I wonder whether there are elements of these women driving me? Is there a spirit entrepreneur and seeing what people might need along with an ability to keep abreast of progress there in me from Margaret? Am I channelling Beatrice in deciding enough is as good as a feast and what matters in life is love, family and simply providing?

In the 70 odd years since my Dad was born our planet has undergone huge changes and leaps forward. In our society we have gone from rations, struggling to have enough and spending time on simply providing for our basic needs to having more than we can ever dream of all laid before us to try our hardest to use up. We don't need to conserve, preserve, fret about waste, save up til we can afford to pay now instead of later. We don't need to harness energy from the elements (sun, water, wind) to power our TV sets, laptops, X boxes, chop wood to burn to to heat us twice (once in the chopping, again in the burning), grow vegetables, hunt animals, make clothes, bake cakes.... you can do the whole lot, online, from Tesco, delivered packaged to your door.

I wonder what Beatrice would have made of that? I can picture her, walking the aisles of Tescos, utterly bewildered at the whole business, dazzled the bright lights burning up electricity while she looks in wonder at exotic fruits flown in from all around the world, rails and rails of clothes, shiny plastic toys, a huge selection of equipment with plugs all designed to mop up the free time she will now have on her hands in the name of entertainment now the simple tasks required to meet basic needs are all done for her. Would she be delighted? Would she be amused or confused? How would she feel about being able to send email instead of writing a letter, walking to the post office for a stamp? Would she miss stopping for a chat in the village or talking over the fence to a neighbour while digging up potatoes when she could poke people on facebook or see what was trending on twitter? Would pulling a packet of biscuits and jar of jam from a home delivery of supermarket shopping give the same feeling as tipping a cake out to cool from the oven or serving up a slice of home made bread with home made jam?

Beatrice didn't need a gym to keep fit, she washed clothes by hand, chopped firewood, kneaded bread, walked carrying shopping. She didn't need social networking, she had friends up and down the street, she didn't need Ikea for storage solutions, she had as much stuff as she needed and space for it all, she didn't need Tesco to deliver her shopping, her food grew in the garden, ran in the fields, swam in the stream, was sold in the local shop or farm.

Progress is mostly good, inventions are amazing, saving time a wonderful thing. But I think we need to consider the true cost of our pre-packaged, home delivery life. I have this sneaking suspicion that our lives may be more convenient, easier but maybe slightly poorer and less rewarding as a result. When was the last time you were proud of something you had done? When was the last time you fell into bed and slept the peaceful sleep of the truly tired having used your body for what it's designed for? Are hours of your time spent travelling to work, hours more spent in unwinding from the stress of that work? Is your life being sucked away in mindless pursuits? If today were your last what has been your legacy? Will your grandchildren one day think of you and wonder what you'd have thought of their life and just what life and you leaving behind for them anyway?

If you try hard enough

I've often been heard preaching that 'if you try hard enough you can do anything'. This has disbelieving looks from people telling me 'you can't fly' or 'not anything'. I guess that does need qualifying a bit, you can't seem to cheat death for example. The thing with death of course is that it is inevitable. My Dad (who is known for words of wisdom every so often) says death is the only thing in life which is certain. And he's right. From birth we are hurtling towards our ultimate demise, some way sooner than others of course and we never know just how long we have left. But I do believe that we can have most of the things we want in life, just not all of them because in getting one, you are choosing not to have another. I honestly believe for example that if I tried hard enough this time next year I could have £1000000 in my bank account. I could work three jobs, deal in drugs, have a go at prostitution, the list of seedy and illegal money making pursuits goes on. But I choose not to, the consequences and compromises are too great. By the same token I could have maybe not a million pounds but certainly a lot more money than I do now by dedicating all my time to making money. But I won't, because there are other things more important to me - spending time with Ady, Dragon and Star, curling up on the sofa with a book, walking along the beach, sitting chatting with friends over a cup of tea, baking a cake, blogging... all pursuits which make me no cash at all but feed my soul, make me happy, will be the snapshot postcards that flash through my mind when I look back over my life.

Choices. Several people have said they wish they could do something I am doing before. 'I'd like to Home Educate but I can't afford to give up work'. Well you could, you could have less money for holidays, new clothes, you could move to a smaller house in a different area, you could bypass climbing the career ladder.


'I wish I could go travelling'. You can, sell your house, rent it out to pay the mortgage, find a way of working as you go to cover the costs.

What I'm saying is there are always trade off. For every decision and outcome there is an opposite and equal compromise or alternative choice you didn't make. Then there is the cosy, easy option of not doing anything at all. It's about finding the path you want to be walking and then maybe realising in order to walk it you need to clear some brambles first, get some stouter boots and a decent map so you know exactly where it's leading you.

Our plans for next year are involving compromise, tough decisions and moments when we question what the hell we are thinking. There are the worries we have no control over but can insure ourselves again as far as possible, these include: the van could break down and need expensive repair work - we have breakdown cover and will have a small contingency fund. We could find ourselves arriving at a maniac host who intends locking us all in their cellar - we will have an arrangement with someone who knows our planned movements and contact details and will check in with them at least once a week, there is the concern of just what we're going to do at the end of the year - will we move back into our house? If so how will we pay the bills? - I've no idea on that one but I doubt anyone is secure enough to 100% guarantee they will be able to pay their bills  a year from now, so probably not worth worrying about for now.

There are the more pressing, more tough because they are direct choices we have made and actually if we just chose to stop the whole plan right now we wouldn't have to deal with angst though. And they are the hard ones. This week I've found myself waking each morning in my nice soft warm bed and wondering why I'd give up that basic and enjoyed pleasure. I've held a sobbing Star who didn't want to get rid of her collection of soft toys that needed putting in the loft. I've had long talks with Dragon who didn't want to get rid of bedroom furniture bought when he was born. At every point we talk about whether we are all four happy to continue. I never want Dragon and Star to remember all the tough choices they have made in the months leading up to our adventure as forced on them, made for them by someone else and out of their control. We remind each other of the reasons we are doing this, the upsides of every step and the reversability of it all if we change our minds along the way.

I think its really important to enjoy, not endure, to remember why we're doing this and keep tallying the tough bits now against the potentially amazing bits to come, to appreciate we are making trade offs and for every thing we let go of now and find difficult we will replace it with someone better, richer, more precious along the way.


It seems wholly appropriate to link to a book I've read, witten by someone I admire enormously. I think we should all chase our dreams, once we've worked out what they are and whether we *really* want them and are prepared to walk that bramble-filled path to get to them. If you are at that stage right now, this might just be the book to galvanise you towards it.

The liberation of letting go

We're beginning to see an end in sight to the declutter. We stood yesterday in the playroom which has become the sort of holding bay for stuff we've sorted out as needing to leave the house before it actually does so. It veers between very empty and very full and has spent the last week or so incredibly cluttered as I have a large amount of clothing waiting to be collected by a friend. She is doing a Nearly New sale of clothes and gifts to raise money for her disabled daughter. She takes a percentage of what you sell and passes the rest on to you - you set prices for your stuff. Very similar to the NCT Nearly New Sales I have bought kids clothes from over the years. I also have the remainder of the books from the Open House Books Sale we did. We discussed how we'd not really thought our house was that cluttered to begin with but it has been fairly epic emptying it ready to head off. Of course our combined ages in this house total 100 years (how very tidy, hadn't realised that before :) ) so that's a lot of years worth of living and acquiring stuff.

A few new readers seem to have appeared lured by the promise of Extreme Decluttering Tips so whilst people who have been reading from the beginning may well now be bored with How Nic's House Got Emptied I'll do a bit of a round up as we are very close to the end of that phase now so it's a good time to do it.

I've always done at least one big clear out a year, mostly of clothes - my own if I have not worn them since the last clear out a year before and the kids if they are outgrown / worn out. I have used various methods of clearing clothes over the years - passing them on to smaller friends and relatives for the kids clothes, selling on ebay (I got more for my maternity clothes that saw me through both pregnancies than I paid for them when I came to ebay them), passing them on to charity shops and I also went through a phase of making rag rugs so cut up lots of clothing to do that (although technically that didn't mean they left the house they were in smaller, useful incarnations).

We've cleared toys fairly regularly too, mainly to make room for more toys it has to be said but better they leave than form the base layer of plastic in a sort of archaelogical landfill inside our home. They have mostly left by the same method - ebay for resale if worth it, donation to family, friends or charity shop or indeed freecycle. Board books and early picture books have gone the same way, we simply don't have a big enough house to home all of the stuff a family of four collects and as we had Dragon and Star just two years apart and knew we were done with babies after them we were able to decide each phase was over once Star reached it and get rid of toddler jigsaws, lift the flap books, stacking cup and shape sorters as we went.

But we still had a heck of a lot of stuff to get rid of once we started needing to clear the house. Storage is expensive and whilst my parents have kindly offered to take some of our stuff and we will have room in our loft for a few boxes so the few bits of furniture and things we can't part with will be kept stuff has really had to justify it's position not to be shipped out.

That meant going through our house a room at a time and making decisions on everything as to whether we could bring it with us, justify storing it or whether it had to go. Furniture, books, clothes, toys, cds, films, kitchen contents, appliances. Everything.
 


We'll be extreme living proof of the sorts of statistics you hear on Trinny and Susannah about how we spent 90% of our time wearing just 10% of our clothes (or something) so we'll be doing Capsule Wardrobe in a serious fashion. Any clothes the kids won't wear next year won't fit them by the time we get home. Ady and I have kept a suit for funerals, one for job interviews and a small box full of clothes between us (containing mostly Ady's collection of vintage Pompey tops and my wedding dress) and the rest has gone to the clothes bank or is awaiting collection for the nearly new sale. The kids clothes are all packed up ready to be passed on to smaller friends.

Cds and films were next to be scrutinised. A small selection of each will be kept but we had more music and more films than we could watch or listen to back to back with two being played at once for the cumulative totals of the rest of our natural lives. Precious music had already made it onto MP3 players so the cds went on ebay, collection only. It's not like we can't download any tune we want at some future point. Videos went on freecycle, after nobody wanted them on ebay. They are now part of an entertainment library at a local youth club. DVDs did sell on ebay, the smaller collection will be going into storage.

Books! I work at the local library and recently spent some time working out how many years worth of reading material there was just in our small branch. I worked out the avergae word count per book, the average reading speed and the average number of books per shelf. Did the maths and calculated how many lifetimes worth of reading you could get for free from your local library. We were not that far behind with our own book collection here! A couple of shelves were mostly ex library books or other kids reference / non fiction, gathered in the early days of our Home Ed career back when I cherished this notion Dragon and Star would request 'Mama, do tell me more of the pyramids in Egypt?' at which point I would gather a selection of relevant books from our in-house library, we'd read together, create sugar cube pyramids, dress with tea towels on our heads for the day, stick The Bangles Walk Like An Egyptian on and make lapbooks complete with hieroglyphics. The thing is Dragon and Star aren't that sort of Home Ed kids, I'm not that sort of Home Ed mama, we don't have enough sugar cubes, we've sold The Bangles Greatest Hits and we could just google anyway.

I also have a fair few books of my own, some biographies and autobiographies, a selection of fiction and a few other titles. The kids also had some childrens fiction on their bookcases (we have a ceiling height 7 shelf book case in our hall and the kids both have a 3 shelf bookcase in their rooms - all were full, along with a shelf of cook books in the kitchen). We were ruthless in our going through the shelves keeping only the books we simply couldn't bear to part with. For me that was a couple of parenting / home ed handbooks (Alfie Kohn, Sandra Dodd, David Edwards), dictionaries and thesaurus, a shelf of a few educational books, some Ladybird books and a shelf of books we will be taking with us - Collins books of nature, wildlife, trees, plants, food for free that sort of thing. Dragon has saved mostly fiction, Star mostly non-fiction from their shelves.

Books are tricky to get rid of really, heavy for posting so not great for ebay or amazon marketplace, bulky to lug back and forth to car boot sales but hard to see going for nothing. So I came up with the idea of an Open House Book Sale day, stuck it up on local home ed email lists and as a facebook event for friends and got in a supply of tea and biscuits, displayed the books on the table and in sorted out into themed crates and opened the doors. We had 6 or 7 visitors and it was a really nice day of chatting to friends about our adventure, seeing the books go off to new homes where they will be used and appreciated and watching the pot for collecting money filling up. I do still have loads of books left and have had some interesting suggestions for ideas on what to do with them including donating some to the local doctors and dentists waiting room (I know we have appreciated kids books in both over the years when waiting a long time for appointments), setting some free in the Bookcrossing scheme, giving some of the adult titles to residential homes, hostels, giving educational ones to schools, home ed groups with premises etc. All excellent ideas and some have been taken for those purposes, the rest are now on ebay as a big wholesale lot, with a couple of bids already from second hand bookshops, being sold as collection only.


Toys and general 'stuff' went through various processes - if we thought it was individually worth something it went on ebay. We have ebayed perfume, mobile phones, decent toys, small electrical appliances, branded clothing and raised several £100s. I confess to not liking ebay. The process of photographing, listing etc is time consuming and boring, the disappointment when something goes for 99p, the worrying that you have ripped someone off when it goes for way more than you expected, the trek to the post office with wrapped up items. But it is an effective way of getting rid of stuff and making money. Stuff not worth ebaying made it to the carboot sale pile. We did two car boot sales and made a decent amount of cash at each - we priced low and sold hard and it was an enjoyable few hours touting our wares in a field. We got rid of clothes, shoes, toys, more electrical stuff. Anything that didn't sell was donated to a charity shop on the way home.


Freecycle has been another route for getting rid of stuff. I love freecycle, we've done well from it over the years and it's nice to give stuff back. Toys have gone to grateful new homes, furniture we no longer need has gone to sit in someone else's home and it's saving landfill from our rubbish.


So decluttering stuff - easy to find new homes for pretty much anything once you have made the decision to remove it from your life: sell it, give it, donate it.


But I guess that's not the hard bit is it really? Time consuming, means for a time you end up with more mess than when you started as everything is strewn about the place awaiting decisions but the tough bit is actually making the decision to let stuff go in the first place. To accept that you don't need to hang onto it 'just in case', that there may one day come a moment when you slap your forehead and ask 'why did I get rid of X? It would be worth £500 now / would be perfect to have in this very situation' but it's a small chance and probably worth the risk.


I read something the other day about too much choice preventing us from actually making a decision and I think that's true. Faced with a jam packed wardrobe of clothes, most of which you have never worn it's really tricky to think which item to wear, faced with a solid wall of books it's very hard to select just one title to pull off the shelf to read. Who does that layer thing? That mental segregation or even physical dividing of stuff - the clothes you wear all the time and usually choose something for today from that often don't even make it back into the wardrobe but move just between the dirty washing, the clean washing and the on your back? Who has a full bookcase but generally selects books to read from the pile beside the bed which is a pre-selected 'read next' pile of newer books or library books or ones a friend has given with a 'you MUST read this' recommendation. So maybe accept that actually you don't need all the unworn clothes in the wardrobe, the unread books on the shelf and unused lotions and potions in your bathroom, sauces and spices in your kitchen and let them go.




I've let some interesting things go during this process. One was the box of cards we were given when we had Dragon and then Star. I also had folded up helium balloons in the box along with the hospital wrist band for Dragon (Star was born at home). A big box that has moved with us twice, never been opened to look at and if we were not doing this declutter and questioning every single thing we keep would probably have remained in the loft and moved with us if we changed address again. We looked at every card, racked our brains in some cases to recall some of the people the cards were from and then put them in the recycling bin. Did that make you shudder? Realistically they mean nothing, they were good wishes to us for our new babies who are now strapping young children. The good wishes came true, we now have years worth of memories and photos and times spent with those babies. If we stash those cards away again all we are doing is leaving those babies with a legacy of one day having to clear those cards away themselves; dustier, more curled at the edges and with even less chance of anyone knowing who they were from in the first place.


When we bought our house 17 years ago it was on the market as the owner had died. Mr and Mrs Rowe were the only previous owners, buying the house new when it was built in 1950 or so. They had no children and listening to our neighbours accounts of the elderly couple they were nice people, happy together living here until Mrs Rowe died a few years before Mr Rowe and he grew gradually more reclusive and less able-bodied. I think he eventually lived pretty much in one room. The house was cheap, run down and needing lots of work and being sold by a neice and two nephews with proceeds going three ways. The house was cleared by a clearance company and when we first viewed it the contents were still here, ready marked with destinations 'Sell', 'Skip' etc. The image of a brown suitcase, laid open on what is now my lounge floor still haunts me. It was marked 'skip' and contained some sepia photographs of the young Mr and Mrs Rowe along with the something blue garter I assume she wore on their wedding day. I don't know why they didn't have children or anything else about them but I know all of their collected stuff was one day picked over by someone and consigned, probably without any emotion, to it's next destination. I don't want to burden Dragon and Star with piles of stuff to make harsh decisions over one day after I'm gone, I'd rather read those baby cards one last time, smile at the remembering of those crazy early days of new parenthood, wishing people would stop sending flowers as the doorbell invariably rang and woke a baby I had just lulled to sleep or enjoying recalling how others shared our joy at the birth of our babies. Not cold or unemotional, but not needing pieces of cardboard locked in the attic either.


I'm not necessarily advocating a life without possessions (although that would be an interesting concept). Even in the van we will have the need for useful things, precious things and pretty things. For each of us these conjur up different ideas. For me precious things are not always valuable and valuable things are not always precious. I recently sold a small pile of jewellry I have had for years. I don't wear much - wedding and eternity ring, a ring of my grandmothers that my Dad gave me at the same time as my wedding ring (which was also hers), a watch from Niagara Falls that Ady bought me when we visited when I was pregnant with Dragon. I have a locket my parents bought me for Christmas when I was 16, a gold bracelet they bought me for my 21st birthday and a necklace Ady bought me for our first Christmas together (all of the ones I don't wear need repairing). I also had various necklaces, rings and other gold that meant nothing to me, I didn't like and never wore. Selling it paid for the service on the van. I will keep the few bits that do mean something to me but they are small enough to fit into my purse - one day I might get them repaired to wear again or I might do as a friend recently told me her mother had done with a heap of gold she had that she didn't like but had sentimental value and have it melted down and made into something I will wear all the time instead. Other precious possessions of mine include a giant wooden clock which hangs on my lounge wall and Ady bought me for my 21st birthday. That will be kept (I don't think we could hang it in the van!) and will again grace the wall of any other lounge I live in and probably one day hang in Dragon or Star's lounge I hope. I do have photo albums and framed pictures I love and we will keep those to again hang up, place on shelves when we settle into a house again. They are defining, personal things that make where I live my home. They are on display and I see them every day, I would miss them from my life if they were not there. Anything that does not fit into this category fails to be precious in my opinion and then unless it is useful it doesn't justify it's place.


So look around, walk yourself around your home and see what falls into the categories of precious, pretty or useful. The rest is just stuff. Letting stuff go is A Good Thing, it frees up space, lets go of the guilt of not using those things, can raise money, give you a good feeling to know it is now being used elsewhere. Dance in the open spaces it leaves in your home, rejoice in the lack of things creating and capturing dust, spend the money you make on something that *isn't* stuff, something freeing, something to celebrate releasing yourself from the shackles of stuff.