I was suddenly aware that this weekend is
my second anniversary of living in my lorry fulltime. How time flies when you’re having fun. So today’s blog in my very occasional series
is about the joys and some of the tribulations of living peripatetically!
I have touched on some of these things
before - the teaspoon test? I was
talking to friends in Harbury at their wonderful triennial Victorian Street
Fair and they agreed that their attics and some of the spare rooms were just
Repositories of Rubbish! If they were sensible they would put the old TV on
Ebay immediately while it was worth something and not just stash it away and
find that it now really isn’t! Or give
it away in one of the excellent Freecycle groups. The happy recipient will come and take it
away free! And we’ll feel magnanimous! But
no, it’s got a value, mostly sentimental, so it is stashed away for a rainy
day, because, following that law that says if you have the space, you’ll fill
it.
When living in a lorry it can’t stay
because it has physical weight, it costs diesel to drag it around the country
and that means it has to justify itself.
My rule is simple. If I haven’t
used it in 12 months, it goes. To a
friend, to Freecycle or most likely to the Recycling. October is decision month and there’s a few
things going this time. And the
beauty/utility rule still applies. To
come into the lorry it has to be beautiful or useful, but ideally both.
This means that living is very basic and
simple. I like that, it clears the mind
and makes me aware of how little stuff anyone really needs. Most of the world lives like this and have no
choice. Sorry to claim the moral high
ground but I’m not living on the road to prove anything to anyone. I just like it.
The fact of having to source water, even on
occasion having to carry it from a tap to the lorry, to dispose correctly of
all waste materials, again by carrying it all makes me feel in touch with
myself in a way I never did when I lived in a house. What comes in and what goes out (of the lorry
and myself!) is somehow more distinct in my life now. I certainly think about it more and that feels
like a good thing.
What do I miss? My allotment and garden, but I do have some
plans in that direction, not for another Heath Robinson trailer with begonias
and broccoli but to work as part of a co-operative with some adults with
learning disabilities near my yard in Chester.
Of course there are moments. Like this weekend when I found at 10.00 pm after
a hard day’s juggling in Harbury that my leisure battery had died so the fridge
wouldn’t work, I had no water and no tap around, the leaking power steering
fluid reservoir on the lorry was empty so it was back to manual steering (VERY
heavy doing a three point turn in a narrow Harbury street which I had to do
with the whole village looking on), and then the generator refused to
start. All I could do was go to bed and
hope there was enough ice in the freezer part of the fridge to wait until
morning without the food rotting.
But there was and I limped back to the yard
and will obtain a new battery today and meanwhile can plug into the mains at
the yard. And there’s a tap with a
hose…. So no, I haven’t yet cut all the umbilicals with 21st century
plugged-in living.
Maybe someday I will, but until then, like
the rest of us, I am very grateful for those luxuries we shouldn’t take for
granted… like 240 volt mains and running water.
All the best from a road near you,
Mr Alexander
Mr Alexander
