Do What You Love, Love What You Do



 

I've only recently heard this quote and wish I'd learnt about it years ago. I've been a skateboarder for over half my life but looking back I can't say I've skated that often. In recent years I've been lucky if I can get out on my board once in a blue moon and even back in the day I seemed to spend more time photographing and filming skateboarding than actually doing it.

So from this year I am going to skate as much and as often as I can. There is a new skatepark being built this year in Haverfordwest and I am going to make it my mission to skate it regularly as well as get plenty of downhilling done on my longboard.

Working part time means I have plenty of spare time on my hands and living in the van means I have everything I need with me. Who's up for a skate?

There Is Neither Good Nor Bad But Thinking Makes It So

William Shakespeare wrote that line for the play Hamlet, I think he was on to something.

The way we perceive a situation is what makes it a problem, not the situation itself.

Last night I drove a little too fast through a deep puddle and Ol' Bert coughed and spluttered to a halt in the middle of the flood in six inches of water. I knew what had happened straight away, it meant there was water in the distributor cap. It was dark and pouring down with rain and the only solution was to sort it myself or call the AA.

So I jumped in the back, dug out my wellies from the bottom of the wardrobe, pulled them on, grabbed a torch and some WD40, threw on my coat, opened the back door and went for it. I walked round to the front of the van, popped the bonnet and with the torch between my teeth shining into the engine bay I unclipped the distributor cap, gave it a squirt of WD40, shook out the excess, clipped the distributor cap back on, closed the bonnet, jumped back in the cab turned the ignition and the old boy fired up straight away! Job done and I was on my merry way!

I didn't think much about it, I knew what the problem was, knew I could fix it and just did it. I could imagine that there could be hundreds of things that could go wrong that I wouldn't have been able to fix just like that but nothing is a problem unless you think it is.

I've been accused from time to time of being too laid-back for my own good but it's not that i'm laid- back, i'm just not the sort of person that gets in a flap. If something happens you deal with it, if you can do it yourself great, if not ask someone who can help. I had a heart attack last year and needed bypass surgery and naturally I certainly couldn't do it myself but there's no need to get stressed about it. Once i'd accepted it needed doing I just let the doctors get on with it, job done! (I'll write more about that experience in another blog.)

I read an equation that Jack Canfield, author of Chicken Soup For The Soul said in one of his books that goes E+R=O which means Event Plus Response Equals Outcome. How you respond to something will dictate the outcome. I can't say I've learnt from that lesson since I read it, I still make silly mistakes but it still holds true, even if you respond to an event the wrong way that will still dictate the outcome. E+R=O, brilliant!

Meet Ol' Bert

There's something that tugs at your heart strings when you own a classic vehicle, I couldn't quiet put my finger on what it is but the other day I was driving towards Swansea for an appointment at Morriston Hospital and it suddenly struck me. I used to drive one of these vans back in the seventies when I worked for Kent County Council as a groundsman! Obviously it wasn't a campervan, it was a council van but the layout in the cab is exactly the same, no wonder I don't want to part with it, I have a nostalgic attachment to it. Everything from the seats and seat belts, to the steering wheel and dash is identical and I'm almost certain that somewhere in the family photo archives is a picture of me sat in one! Next time I visit my parents I must see if I can dig it out.

My campervan is a 1977 Bedford CF 250 lovingly called Ol' Bert (Bertie Bedford) and I've owned it since early 2008. I have lots of happy memories from times spent not just living in it but using it for days out at the beach, visiting family and friends and even using it as a local run around. It always attracts interest and I've even seen people taking photo's of it from time to time. This man stopped me once in Newtown, Mid Wales to say he used to own it and told me he had it for years back in the eighties and had chosen it's current colour scheme. He gave me his contact details and promised to dig out some photos. 

After some initial teething problems with the carburettor it's been pretty reliable over the years, needing a starter motor and the brakes done, a new coil, distributor cap, HT leads, spark plugs and a tyre, that's about it. Made in Britain by British engineers using British parts, you can't beat that.  

Ol' Bert when it was done up and ready for our road trip, you can tell it's had a womans touch!

Winter Weather

The temperature inside my campervan tonight is a balmy 21 degrees centigrade, (70 degrees fahrenheit) just right for a comfortable evening and night. I'm lucky in that I'm plugged into the grid at my friends house and am eternally grateful for that as winter living is normally very difficult in a van. My campervan is really a summer vehicle but I have tried free camping in winter using firstly a gas heater then a paraffin heater. As you can imagine it didn't go well on both occasions.

The problem with gas is that the by product is water and condensation is horrendous and everything gets wet including under the mattress after a nights sleep. The paraffin heater I have is way too powerful for the size of my camper and is impossible to regulate, it's just hot! It worked brilliantly at the static caravan where I used to live up by Strumble Head lighthouse, getting a much larger space warm in about twenty minutes and staying warm hour after hour.

The other problem with gas and paraffin heaters is that you can't safely leave them on all night, so as you can imagine the teperature quickly plummeted and made for an uncomfortable night both times. Bang went that idea.

So the only way it was ever going to be possible to live in the van and get through winter was to plug into the grid and use an electric convection heater. I bought one for fifteen quid, it has two temperature settings and a thermostat so it's easy to use and makes for very comfortable van dwelling. The other day there was snow and ice outside but inside the van I was able to keep toasty warm with a nice even temperature all evening and all night.

It would be fair to say that by being plugged into the grid I'm not really living free and that's true but i'm still living in the van and I did have heart surgery six months ago so I'll take it as a given that as it's freezing outside it's ok to compromise and use electricity through the winter.

 

One Foot In The Rat Race

I can't say that by living in a campervan i'm out of the rat race completely, I have a job after all, but I feel that I'm half in and half out. I don't live in a property so I don't pay rent nor do I have a mortgage, I don't pay council tax, gas, electric, water rates, tv licence or any of the expenses that comes with living in bricks and mortar nor do I claim a single penny in benefits either.

I do have my van to look after and pay maintenance on but I'm happy to do that as it's bought and paid for and I decide what to do, how much I want to spend and when to do it. I had the van valued recently and was pleased to discover that the value has increased since I bought it in 2008. One of the advantages of owning a classic vehicle is that the value goes up rather than down and being British built, parts are pretty cheap. As I'm over fifty years old the classic insurance is dirt cheap, less than half the price of car tax and although it's a bit thirsty it's still a lot cheaper to run than a home. So all the money I earn I keep and decide what to spend it on.

I've managed to declutter my posessions right down to almost nothing, just enough to carry in my van and feel all the better for it. My logic is that if you have nothing then no one can take anything from you. I can honestly say there isn't one thing I own that i'd be bothered about losing, it might be a little inconvenient but everything is replaceable.
So not needing as much money to live on means I can work part time and have more free time to do the things I love. (More on that in a future blog.)

The van dwelling way of life isn't for everyone granted but for me personally it's working out just fine.

How I came to be living in an old campervan down by the beach.

Way back in 2008 life was getting on top of me and I decided to quit the rat race and go travelling for awhile. Initially, a girlfriend I was seeing at the time and I intended to spend that summer travelling then we were going back to the rat race to resume our old jobs. That never happened of course, once you taste freedom there's no going back!

So what happened? Well we spent a couple of months travelling then found ourselves in Pembrokeshire in South Wales, we liked it so much we decided to stay. By the time October/November came around it was getting a little cold in the van and we were looking for somewhere to live. We both had part time jobs by now, I was working in a coffee shop by the beach where I still work today and my partner worked in an hotel. 

We were looking for a flat or house to rent but the prices were too high for our part time incomes. Just as we were thinking we might have to quit and move back to the city we saw an ad in a local post office for a static caravan on a farm near Strumble Head lighthouse. It sounded idylic and was unbelievably cheap at just £200 per month! We lived there together until September of 2009 when my partner decided to move back to her home town of Doncaster. She left and I stayed on and enjoyed another two and a half years at the farm.  

Eventually the van dweller life called and I decided to make it my mission to spend the summer of 2012 in my van. Everything was going swimmingly and I left the farm and started van life on the 1st of May. Unfortunately, before the month was over I had a heart attack and got rushed into hospital and had to undergo by-pass surgery. That kinda put paid to van life for the next eight months while I recuperated. After six months I gradually returned to my old job at the coffee shop by the beach and by the time christmas and new year 2013 rolled round I was hankering to return to the van life and live my dream.

Living in a thirty five year old classic camper is brilliant fun in the summer months but it's not made for winter use and keeping warm is trying to say the least. Fortunately I have a friend who lives in a great big house nearby who lets me park in their drive and plug into the mains electricity. So despite sub zero temperatures outside it's toasty warm in the van. I have an electric convection heater with a built in thermostat that keeps a nice even temperature, my fridge works, I have lighting and of course my laptop works. So living full time in my van is a real possibility at last.

I have plenty of photo's to share and I'll keep the blog regularly updated. I might ramble on a bit and i'm not very articulate but I'll just write what I'm thinking and take it from there. I hope you like it and thanks for reading.