A day out in Oswestry

Once every couple of months I go in the car and take the dogs over to Oswestry to have them made beautiful.  It’s about an hour’s drive out from the yard, but worth it for a few reasons.

Firstly Debbie (www.thebristlesdoggrooming.com) is a genius with a pair of scissors – She is one of the top groomers in the country and does loads of  national competitions and demonstrations.  She specializes in Bichons and Poodles and has a divine full size poodle of her own. Going to her is like an ongoing course in dogs. Not just how to clip them either.  She’s a goldmine of information about them, their health, their psychology, their pedigree.  And of course she’s brilliant with them.  She has no problem with my two who just give in to her aura of confidence and care. In fact, she does do courses and a few years ago I did an afternoon with her on grooming and that’s why I feel able to keep the two of them looking ok between cuts and for the shows.  Mimi loves being pampered and Blue puts up with it! I will post a photo of them looking their best at the end of the blog so you can see Debbie’s great skill for yourself. 

Secondly a few hours in Oswestry is a holiday for me.  Away from the dogs I can wander around, go into places I never usually go, visit all the charity shops and the treat of the day is a spell in Wetherspoons.  No I haven’t fallen off the wagon and maybe for the first time it didn’t bother me to be just ordering a coffee.  Plus a Manager’s special for £2.99 and I feel I’m living!!  It’s where I’m writing this now.  I’m a great Wetherspoons fan, as I think I’ve mentioned before. Oswestry’s is a converted Post Office, named after Wilfred Owen, the first world war poet who was born here.  Not in the Post Office, but in the town! 

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gurgling form the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as cud
Of vile, incurable sores on the innocent tongues,-
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

Oswestry feels like so many of England’s small towns – a bit sad and run down really.  Lots of empty shops and desperate faces. But the up side is the charity shops and the bargain stores.  So I go to stock up on all the stuff I can’t find in Chester and have so far managed to save a fortune by shopping around between the various cheap shops.  I think the definition of poverty is doing a price comparison between B&M and Poundland!   But I don’t think I’m alone in that occupation, especially in Northern England today.  Perhaps we’d better avoid politics or you’ll really have me going…

The third thing is I love about Oswestry is just being a ‘flaneur’.  I love that word but more I love the notion behind it.  There’s no real equivalent in English.  Strolling, ambling – both too passive somehow.  It suggests something far more creative, artistic and active and I revel in it in my time in this town.  Over the years I have been coming here, many ideas and actions have grown from these few hours spent wandering enjoying what Balzac called ‘the gastronomy of the eye’.  Of course you can do it anywhere, but it does imply an urban not a rural stroll.  I do more than just wander, I drink it in, consume all the sights with relish, so ‘gastronomy’ is right.  Oswestry’s a great banquet for the flaneur.  Its wonderful history with the Welsh border running through the town.  Of course in the centenary year of the start of the Great War and with the link to Wilfred Owen there’s a lot going on here this year.  And it oozes out of the walls and I taste every drizzle.  Sometimes an idea will be buzzing in my brain, ready to burst out into some project or idea and today into this blog.

At the end when I collect the two cute canines, I feel regenerated and refreshed, and their stunning beauty, linked with the wonderful welcome they always give me, is the exclamation mark; the candles on the iced cake of the day.

If you have a chance, visit Oswestry.  You definitely wont be disappointed.

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

PS  When I returned to pick up the pooches today, Debbie told me the sad (and in some ways happy) news that she is retiring in April, on doctor's orders.  A lifetime of lifting dogs has taken its toll with her back and she is going to lay down the scissors, although she is to continue with her adjudication of students.  My booked trip in March will be my last to be a flaneur in Oswestry, so I shall relish it, along with all the others when spring will, hopefully, be in the air and the promise of the new season just around the corner.   My goodness we will miss Debbie though!!!

Debbie, we wish you every joy and luck, and thanks for all you've taught us! (woof, woof, lick, lick!)

The economy and ecology of living in a lorry, Part 2

Yes the blog you have been waiting for!  Mr Alexander’s Waste Disposal blog! 

It comes down to this.  What comes in and what goes out.  That’s all there is. And you are almost forced to think about it more carefully if you live in a small mobile space.

Partly because of weight and space, but mostly to do with a closer awareness of personal need.  If you look online for Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs (http://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html) you will find a fascinating breakdown of the basic human needs, and living in the lorry throws these into very sharp focus.  This blog is about the lowest level of the triangle – the physiological - food water shelter and warmth. We’re talking the waste from these four.

Waste from food.  I have managed to reduce the kitchen waste down to one carrier bag every two days.  Most of this is soft plastic but there is always the carcass of the dog’s chicken. I really ought to convert it to stock but to be honest I’m virtually veggie so it just is chucked.  I do use the jus minus the fat to put in the boiling water so it flavours the dog’s rice.  They eat every bit! I give small bits of food to the birds. I have really almost eliminated any other food waste and I choose packaged items in Aldi with care so there is little goes to landfill. I separate cardboard, hard plastic and glass and recycle those locally.  The single bidiurnal (posh word for every other day) carrier bag is taken to a service station, Aldi carpark and sometimes a friend’s dustbin.  I try not to let it mount up as it is obviously a mouse magnet if left, for example, in my small trailer.  And I do spread it about in different places.  I feel almost ok about this as I pay taxes, National Insurance and over the odds for LPG but I also feel I do need to give something back to the community so I can justify the fact that I don’t pay any Community Charge.  And I do think about it.

Waste from water.  I empty the toilet cassette about twice a week in the toilet at the yard and use biodegradable toilet fluid in it.  There’s loads on the internet about portable toilets if you want to know more.  I find the process of carrying the cassette and emptying it a leveling experience.  There is something purifying about it too.  Anyway enough of that. The waste from washing, dishes, body and clothes has been called grey water and I usually just let this run into the ground.  I pipe it several metres away from the lorry so it doesn’t cause any smells while it is dissipating.  Rain then washes it all clean. And there’s certainly been enough of that lately. The recent floods have made us all aware of how fragile our waste water system is in this country.  I think letting it drain into the ground is much better than sending down the sewers.  I am careful not to let too much food waste go down the kitchen sink because of smells.  If I was next to the garden I would channel it into there.

Waste from warmth.  The ashes from the fire I spread out on ‘waste’ ground at the side of the yard.  I’m not totally happy with this but maybe I can use it on the garden eventually.  Perhaps I can find a way to grind it up.  The gas water heaters and space heaters vent the carbon monoxide into the air. The smoke from the wood burner too. Not good but I could offset that with planting in the garden. The ‘waste’ warmth from the woodburner also heats a kettle and dries my clothes, so from time to time the lorry is more like some strange Chinese laundry than a living space!

There’s no real waste from my shelter, but the lorry engine is obviously bad for the environment. I spent a fortune last year on special particulate filters for the exhaust, good enough to avoid the London Emissions Zone Charge, so if it’s good enough for Boris, it’s good enough for me.  I try to keep any engine oil or other engine fluid leaks down to a minimum, but it is an elderly lorry.  I’m trying to do more local events, but at the end of the day I do have to travel.  I’m a Travelling Show, so it goes with the job.  I would like to use more solar power and I’m planning some investment along those lines as soon as I can afford it.

Finally I have spoken previously about not owning too much and the weight issue in any mobile home is crucial.  Once every 12 months I go through the larger items onboard and if I have not used them in a year they’re out.  The barbecue nearly went this year but I did use it once on the Isle of Wight so it’s had a reprieve.

The things that are hard are the sentimental ones, the objects that remind me of people or occasions.  Art is hard to leave behind too as it is uplifting for the soul. 

Checkout the Hierarchy of Needs – it’s all there and it’s fascinating. I'll work up the Triangle in a later blog.

And so that’s it Mr Alexander’s Waste blog.  I hope you didn’t find it a waste of time as well!

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

The economy and ecology of living in a lorry, Part 1

It’s Part 1 because I’m not sure that I will fit everything I have to say about this subject in one blog-length blog, so this gives me the chance to return to it again.

I hope that some of the things this blog will do is to persuade you that the possibilities of living well, comfortably, legitimately, morally, ethically and above all happily in a mobile home are well within almost anyone’s grasp.  In fact I am very surprised how few others do it as it has a great deal to be said for it. And that’s just financially.  And of course there's the romance of all that travel!!!

But no digression today into the realm of ethics or romance, let’s talk money!  Rent to start with.  Well if I didn’t have a travelling theatre, too many props and a need to keep all that stuff looking good and working properly then I would have no rent as such.  There are plenty of ‘wild camping’ sites in the UK (check out www.wildcamping.co.uk ), where you can park for free.  Provided the vehicle is road legal the police cannot arrest you for living on the road.  We will talk about what I spend on the lorry itself later on, and I suppose road tax, insurance and maintenance is the equivalent of rent.  But for me I do need a place where I can work on things and the side of the road is not a good place to do that so I rent a yard and a big old redundant factory alongside.  There is space to pull the theatre trailer inside so during the winter months I can take everything out, repaint and renovate and build new illusions.  The owners know I live in the lorry and turn a blind eye as I contribute to the ecology of the site and they know that. This space costs me £140 a month and includes electricity.  I don’t abuse this but I do plug the lorry in so I have tv, radio, light and chargers keeping up the batteries and computer, phone etc.  In return for electricity I am developing the garden as you know and I do an annual free show on their open day.  So the yard becomes a base for the lorry and a kind of home I can head back to in the season.  Very nice at this time of year too when there aren’t shows to go to, but not somewhere I have a huge long term affection for, as my home is most definitely the lorry and that could be parked anywhere there is a road!  The developing garden might change that, but I am trying not to become too attached to any one location.  This a photo of my yard, lorry home, cars, trailers and the workshop on the right.

To keep warm in the lorry I have my trusty and beloved wood burner which cost about £200 from Windy Smithy (www.windysmithy.co.uk) and is by far the best thing I’ve ever done to the lorry.  It’s the smallest one they make and it is FANTASTIC.  A basket of logs and a few smokeless fuel bricks lasts a day and a night and the heat is drying as well as warming.  I have the logs as a bonus for working in the garden, but sometimes buy a £50 load which last winter lasted three months.  The smokeless fuel costs £13.50 for 25 Kg and I bought a bag in early December and it has just run out, so at least a month.  It’s good as it keeps the wood going and spreads out the heat, especially at night.  The embers of this fuel are often still glowing when I light the first fire of the day and I can re-use any that still have some form to them.

I have a 60 litre tank of LPG which fills at any LPG station, costing about £22 to fill.  And that includes road fuel tax which I feel is unfair as I’m using it for cooking and heating, but I guess I do dispose of some rubbish without paying Council Tax. More about that later. Again the current fill up has lasted since December 16^th but I’m not sure how much is left as the gauge is bust (a job I keep avoiding), I don’t think there’s a lot left though.  The gas runs the oven, hob, water heaters and space heater (if I’m too lazy or cold to build a fire or if I’m on the road and need an instant heat - I’ve never travelled far with a wood fire actually burning but I think a nasty (or for that matter any) police officer would probably say that a burning fire in a vehicle going down the road is illegal)

Road tax and insurance, maintenance and fuel are an item, but because I am paid by gigs for travel costs I can load the fuel and maintenance on to them.  Road tax is £165 a year and insurance is £700 ish. I could probably load the yard rent onto the shows too, as without shows I wouldn't need a yard.

A few pounds towards a tv license (I will talk about that later). I piggy back a wireless internet site at the yard) and use FON (www.fon.com) and iPhone tethering for internet when travelling.

So just to keep going on the basics that all works out to about £250 a month for yard rent, fuel, heating, tv, internet and the lorry equivalent of rent.  I think you’d be very hard pressed to do the equivalent in a bricks and mortar home and this could be more than halved if I didn't rent the yard and workshop, though there would be other costs (e.g. logs and electricity) if I didn't.

The disposal of waste is free and I will talk about that in the next blog because, as I predicted, this is going to take a bit longer than one blog to talk about.

OOOooo a waste disposal blog, you’re thinking, I can’t wait!

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander

Cultiver votre jardin

Now I am writing this blog more regularly I will try to tell you more about the travelling life, and the shows I do, places I visit.  At the moment though I’m facing the prospect of the down time – January through April, when there are no shows and I’m permanently in my yard near Chester.  So until the shows restart in May I’ll tell you something of my daily life and what I get up to during this quiet season..

I’ve talked a little about the garden that I am working on here.  I spent more time on it today, clearing the rest of the years of accumulated detritus from the greenhouses and paths.  I love the rediscovery of the old garden, totally overgrown and neglected but with a few hints that at sometime in the past it was loved and cared for.  There are three greenhouses!  One is very large and has an old vine with dead bunches of last year’s grapes still in place and a great deal of overgrown weeds and plants, some of which may be ok.  I’m leaving this one till last as the other two are chocker with pots of some dead and some just living plants.  I cleared out one of those today and found to my great surprise a rusting pipe stove that must have heated this greenhouse many years ago.  It was full of rubbish and rotting stuff, but when I had cleared it out I decided to try to light a fire in it and amazingly it worked fine.  Before long the whole greenhouse was warm and cosy.  I almost heard the plants say ‘OOOOHHH that’s loverly’ and when I then watered them all and cleared out the dead ones it felt as though I had blown a new breath of life into the place.  It was blowing a new breath of life into me too and I finished clearing the paths around the garden and now the area is ready for some real creative work.

Tomorrow I will start digging.  There is a large space that I shall make a into a vegetable plot and concentrate on some early potatoes, spinach, beetroot and French beans.  A little later on I will go for all the tasty salad stuff, rocket and lettuce, spring onions and radish.  I want LOADS of fruit too.  There is already a big strawberry patch I found, totally overgrown with weeds and too many plants so an early job is going to be thinning that out and weeding it so we can have some yummy fruit salads in the summer.  Maybe grapes too if I can find out how to maintain the vine! I’m going to plant raspberries and thornless blackberries around the veg patch.  It will be great to take a fridgeful of homegrown goodies on the road in the summer. 

I read Candide by Voltaire years ago and recently listened to In Your Time on Radio 4 which had the book as the subject.  Candide at the end of all his adventures finds himself with his childhood sweetheart, cultivating his garden (hence the title of this blog).  Even though I never had a childhood sweetheart, I am cultivating my garden, and I still hope to have a few more adventures.  It will be great to return to a garden though. And the sweetheart?  Well who knows!

Tonight I’m relaxing writing this and listening to an audio book – The Hunger Games - a brilliant scifi trilogy, now a film too I think, but I will read the book first before seeing the film.  Always the best way round I think.  I’m not a great reader – my eyes become tired very quickly but I love listening to a good story and this one has already hooked me.  I love strong female heroines and this one has a great one. So writing this now, there’s almost the sense of the worst being over and some hope on the horizon today!  Not drinking has certainly helped.  I don’t even think about it now, and there’s still some beers in the fridge which have stopped beckoning to me every time I open the door!

Finally I had some very nice feedback from one of my regular readers.  It’s great to hear that there is someone out there.  Please let me know if you’ve read this and what you think.  All respectful criticism gratefully received! And any unwanted plants!!!

All the best from a road near you,

Mr Alexander