On the mend

A lot better today.  The better weather the day after New Year started the spell and it was helped by the close attention of good friends whose concern for my several predicaments has been not just touching but really helpful.  I think I’ve been a bit of a worry for a few people.  So this is to say that I’m now on the mend again and feel I have the resources to cope with the vicissitudes of fortune from wheresoever they may befall.

Among all the problems I’ve had recently, the death of my car was a major one.  I bought it about nine months ago, spent a small fortune on it only to find it finally was only fit to scrap just before Christmas and I couldn’t afford to replace it.  In steps my good friend Colin with an offer of his recently SORNed car, a good solid VW Passat diesel and he offered it for free!  And until it is ready I have another one to use from Hilary who has just upgraded hers and instead of giving it partex has generously let me have her old one.  So now I am a man of two cars!!!  I think the Passat will be better suited in the long term because I can have a tow bar put on it and use it to shunt the trailer around the yard, whereas Hilary’s lovely little shopper Fiat Panda wouldn’t have the engine for that, but will be good for pottering around.  Not sure though I can afford to insure both, but I will keep the Panda insured until that runs out in February so I can see which one suits best.

Anyway thanks to both good friends.  Another good friend Russ got me out of a problem with my ancient computer and his partner Suzanne (the cabinet maker who made my rock pool table) listened time and time again to my depressive ramblings over the last couple of weeks. So thanks to them too.

Today I shopped at Aldi, spending £30 on food that would certainly have cost more elsewhere and £10 at B&M.  I’m going to see how long it lasts.

Hilary came for tea (which is a quite regular and very pleasant occurrence) and kept me buoyant with her mind’s meanderings.

I’ve finished my accounts, or rather I’VE FINISHED MY ACCOUNTS!!!  The annual rummage in my past, in this case March 2012 to April 2013 is always interesting, but in this case I think added to my psychological crisis as it was a difficult year (yes another one!), and however much you try to avoid it those occasions are remembered as you go through the diary working out the debt. I am going to try to locate an accounts package that I can run on my laptop and complete regularly rather than lump it all together in a four day fiscal frenzy.

Just returned from the 50p shop which was closed until January 18^th.  Nightmare! But I did discover a mobile hairdresser in the local village so saved some money and a trip into Chester.  Roundabout and swings!

I’m going to start an allotment plot here near my yard.  I always used to have one when I lived in a house and I miss gardening a great deal, but this is the problem solved.  The area used to be part of the market garden for the Big House, so there’s old greenhouses and all sorts, all in various stages of dilapidation, not unlike me, so I’m going to make a start today clearing stuff.  It’ll be good therapy too. Here's a photo of the space, or some of it:

Quite a lot to be done, but hey travail c'est la sante as the French say.

Wind and rain bashing the lorry yesterday but quieter today.  Good day to start an allotment…

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

The Mr Alexander tea ceremony

If I had to choose between tea or beer, then beer would have to go.  It would be impossible to do without tea. 

For me there’s a ceremony involved.  My first tea of the morning is a sacred ritual.  It’s usually cold in the lorry when I wake up so the first thing I do is to fill and turn the kettle on (if I’m lucky enough to have electricity, if not then on goes the gas kettle). A teabag (Clipper tea) in a clean mug the clean spoon alongside on the coaster.

While it’s heating up there’s enough time to empty the fire of ash and embers, light a firelighter and build up the fire.  If that goes smoothly (a sign of the start of a good day) then by the time the firedoor is closed with the crackling embryo behind, the kettle is just coming to the boil and I can poor the newly boiling water on the teabag.  The moment is fundamental.  It’s never quite as good if I have to reboil the kettle if the fire has taken a few seconds longer than normal.  Either way it must actually be boiling as it hits the bag.  A few seconds wait (how many, who knows but long enough to open the kitchen blind, wipe the condensation from the window and check the weather) a pinch of the bag on the spoon squeezing out the final strong juice drops with forefinger and thumb and dumping it in the bin.  A drizzle of cold milk and some sugar, a stir and back to bed for five minutes with the warm sleepy dogs letting the heat of the fire fill up the double cube of my space and the tea cool long enough to be drunk in two or three goes.

Last night was harder than my first night of abstinence on New Year’s Eve.  The black dog stalked around the lorry and the quarter bottle of gin promised relief.  It was only writing this and thinking of your disappointment if I gave in.  It was touch and go with the rain and wind rocking the lorry.  It all felt so fragile.  Me included.

But then this morning’s tea ceremony revealed a wonderful sunrise and a calm sky. I’m so close to the weather and the elements in this space.  A walk with the dogs and all seems a lot more possible somehow.  I’m proud that I didn’t give in to the gin.  The thought of having to confess here that I’d fallen at the first fence would have been at least embarrassing, at worse a disgrace!

An there’s always another cup of tea. 

And I’ll plan the Aldi and B&M shop now. Whoay, who says living on the road is dull?

All the best, and still on mission, surviving on a road near you,

Mr Alexander

A challenge to myself

I’ve been thinking.  This blog needs another dimension to it.  I was hoping that the whole idea of talking to you about my life on the road would almost be enough, but I think it needs something else to make it work.

I think that this is going to be something of a confessional, and if you find that embarrassing or uncomfortable then just don’t read any more. Writing it helps me.  I have something to believe in.

I will promise total honesty so you will come to know some of the most inner thoughts about my life, past and present.   I will try to make it interesting as well as honest.  In another way it’s a challenge to myself as I am going to be honest with myself through the blog, and that might be difficult.  This isn’t the persona of Mr Alexander, it’s just me talking as me.

The next few months are going to be very difficult for me financially.  Although the travelling show had a good summer and the theatre company, called Cat’s Paw Theatre, I started seventeen years ago and with whom I work a lot through the year is going very well, I have another business which causes me enormous problems, heartache and financial anxiety.  I’ve managed to keep it going for nearly ten years but it takes every spare penny from the others and I can’t get rid as other people depend on me and ditching it would create real problems for them.  I will tell you more about it at some point but not just now.

So the starting point is that I have to survive the next few months, really until May when the shows start and right now I’m not sure how I’m going to do it.  So the challenge to myself is to survive and how I do that is going to be the subject of the blog and please join me, support me on the challenge.

So to begin with, I’m going to stop drinking. Mostly because it’s taking a lot of money to support the habit.  I have been spending between £5 and £8 a day on drink, and that is far too expensive to carry on. Actually I have already stopped as I avoided alcohol entirely last night.  It was New Year’s Eve.  It was hard not to have a drink as I still have a few beers left in the lorry, some whisky and a quarter bottle of gin but I didn’t. It wasn’t as hard as giving up smoking all those years ago, but it was hard.  I’m going to leave the bottles staring at me as a reminder.  They’ll do for guests. Last night was the first night I had not had a drink in probably two or three months.  I’ve been drinking every day, depending on the numbing warmth of whisky and the refreshing balm of the beer to take the pain away.  But it has to stop, not just for health reasons.

I’m going to be highly frugal.  That will be part of the challenge.  My biggest weekly financial outlay is for the dogs.  They live on a diet of chicken peas and rice, cheap ham, a little cheese and hot dog sausages.  I also treat them to Bakers small dog mix which they really enjoy but I suspect is not entirely good for them.  Someone told me it was the equivalent of a MacDonalds for dogs.

I tend to nibble a little of their chicken, and use cheap ready meals, augmented with some fresh vegetables.  I enjoy proper cooking though and for example have just made a saucepan of Chile Non Carne with a packet of Quorn mince, a tin of kidney beans and a few mushrooms, tomatoes and an onion with some chiles, garlic and herbs and it lasted me three days augmented with a baked potato, some frozen chips or wedges and some peas, leeks and asparagus.   I shop in Aldi and B& M and we have the Famous 50p shop a short scooter ride away and there are some great bargains there.

I just watched Steven Fry and Bear Grylls on catchup.  The one where they went up a mountain in Italy together.  If you missed it, watch it. What an inspiration they both are.  With role models like them I can’t go wrong. 

So the challenge is there, the gauntlet thrown down.  Survive now and thrive later.  I will keep you in the picture.

Another tea night looms!

Until tomorrow,

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander aka David

A micro tour of my lorry home

 Not that I have ever made any New Year’s resolution I have kept longer than a few days, but this year the resolution is to write this blog more regularly and to become better at it.

As I set out originally to talk about living on the road, but I don’t think I’ve done much about that I thought I would start today with giving you a word picture of the space I live in, along with some real ones. Here’s a photo of what I see from where I’m writing this.

On the right is my bed which pulls out from the head end to make it wider so there’s enough room for all three of us.  More about my Menage a Trois another time!  Suffice it to say the other two have four legs each and are small and fluffy! My two mobile hot water bottles. Under the bed is a big open cupboard which has all my shoes and shelves for trousers, tshirts, socks and underwear.  There's also a gas water tank heater under there which keeps the bed warm at night and the clothes from the dreaded damp.

I have a big flat screen above the foot of the bed linked to an automatic satellite dish on the roof, a selection of favourite dvds and a link to the laptop for catchup programmes if I can receive an internet connection. I'm really into technology and love all that gadgetry.

To the right you can see one of the several original art works I have in the lorry. That one is by Chloe Needham and is a fortune teller - poster style. Following on to the right is my eye level oven and below it a wardrobe, mostly for costumes. To the left of the bed you can see through to the workshop/porch which is where I keep all the stuff I don’t need all the time, where I feed the dogs and keep coats etc. You can see the fold down dog food table. Beyond the porch is the cab of the lorry which I can crawl through to if it’s pouring and it’s where the dogs have their daytime space. Carrying on left is the wall of the shower/loo room and you can see the stove pipe from the woodburner and the small table which is a kind of office table. And the other small wood table is my dining table (I usually eat alone but if I have a guest I have another small plug in table like that one and a much bigger one for dinner parties which is stored away under the sofa).

And another photo from the other direction, which is where I’m writing this.  This end is my living room. Under the big rear window I’ve recently added a lovely burr veneer table top made by my friend Suzanne who is a furniture maker and designer ( www.suzannehodgson.co.uk ) – it looks like a rock pool and hides my really cool miniature twin tub in which I do my washing. Suzanne also made the strip wood cupboard doors you can see at the top above the sofa. The sofa turns into a guest bed in case anyone stays. Under the sofa is the gas air heater and a large log store for the woodburner. You can see the wooden lamp which I made when I was a boy, my chandelier (a little indulgence!) and the corner of the kitchen.  In the top right hand corner you can see the photo of three of my five grandchildren, Izzie, Jake and Jack.

This photo shows my kitchen and you have a slightly better view of the rockpool table on the right with the laptop I am writing this on.  I have a two ring burner, a microwave above it which you can’t see in the photo, a big fridge freezer and the usual cupboards and drawers.  Underneath the floor is a 100 litre fresh water tank and a 60 litre lpg tank which heats the water and the hot air blower and runs the fridge.

And finally the shower room/loo which is a wet room.  The water is heated by a gas boiler in the porch/workshop and gives a lovely hot non-stop shower, limited only by the 100 litre water tank! The loo is the standard caravan cassette type. You can see my chandelier reflected in the mirror!

So that’s really it.  A micro tour of my home.  If you’re thinking of breaking in to steal things I also have a very sophisticated alarm system!

There are many other little shelves and cupboards hidden away so I can store quite a lot of things I don’t need everyday. It is all designed to maximize the use of space and importantly in a way that stops things moving around when travelling down the road. It can all be packed down ready to travel within ten minutes.  One of the challenges of living on the road, often solved by blutac, Velcro and bungy! With a magic sprinkle of imagination!

I hope you enjoyed the tour. Living small as I do means that I have to be very picky about what I decide to live with and if it isn’t useful or beautiful and preferably both then it’s not on board.  I think it's a great way to live.

If you meet me at one of the shows, I would be more than pleased to show you round in the flesh, so to speak!

Until then, all the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

New for 2014

A few good things to report for Summer 2014 which is shaping up as another great season.  Firstly, one side of the lorry has been painted.  Mural artist Greg MacMillan has created a wonderful trompe l’oeil mural on the side.  Here’s what it now looks like:

This was taken at the British Library when I did a show there in October and turned quite a few heads. (Oh yes I appear at all the very finest British venues!).  Greg is aiming to do the other side soon which will be the rear of the house. Then it’ll be the cab which I think will be traditionally painted in showman’s burgundy and hand painted gold line work. Greg has amazing talent which you can see at a distance as in this photo, but up close the detail is superb.  Do try and come and see it for youself.

The calendar for 2014 is up on the website (www.mralexander.co.uk). A few new festivals.  Check out the website  for details of the Vintage Nostalgia show (www.vintagenostalgiashow.co.uk) in Wiltshire which promises to be a lovely event.  Vintage Nostalgia?  Very me, don’t you think? Another new one for me which is provisional at the moment but I am confident it will be confirmed; the Rhythmtree Festival on the Isle of Wight (www.rhythmtree.info).  I love the Isle of Wight and would live there if I ever won the lottery.  Not that I do it, I just dream of winning!

I’m really looking forward to the Just So Festival at Rode Hall in Cheshire in August.  Again just provisional at the moment, but I’m optimistic.  It was certainly my favourite event of 2013.  A really creatively designed event with so much to do, especially for the children.  Check them out too – a very nice website (www.justsofestival.org.uk) and an absolutely great event.

And I’m back at the Shrewsbury Flower Show after a few years of absence.  So happy about that as it’s a lovely traditional event with some great performers and displays.  And right in the centre one of my favourite British small towns.  Well worth a visit.

The truly great Bunkfest (www.bunkfest.co.uk) winds up the summer 2014 in Wallingford.  What a great free Festival of folk music, steam and beer.  Last year’s was a top highlight with one of my favourite bands the Oysterband headlining.  And the new layout on the Kinecroft (which was the free grazing for pigs and cattle for the people of medieval Wallingford) has improved the event tenfold.

And next year’s Great War event in Middlewich in October promises some fantastic nostalgic moments.  Another new one for me too.

And of course all the annual favourites.  Llandudno, Hollowell and the mini-highlight the Betws Y Coed Ferret Derby.  All three have been on my annual Calendar for over twenty years.  The summer would not be the same without them.

Anyway, it’s lining up as another classic year, and I look forward to seeing you at one or more of the events. 

Christmas may not have been that great but the New Year, that’s a different story…

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander