Living in a box

I'm back

2009-06-16T23:11:00.006+01:00

TLB and I have been living in the grounds of a stately home in the Purbeck Hills which has been very nice but all good things must come to an end. We are leaving because we want to pay our way in the world and we want our own home. We do not want to outstay our welcome but the tent is not an option at the moment as I need to be able to work from home. Thus, the house hunting started in earnest a few weeks ago.

The reason that TLB and I first moved into a tent was to clear debts and to have an adventure. We have certainly had an adventure and debts have been cleared but I still have a way to go, on both fronts. We have lived rather too well over the last 6 months, getting functioned up with alarming regularity and commuting from Dorset to Reading weekly has placed different pressures on my perpetually dwindling bank balance.

A few weeks ago some people that we know heard that we were house hunting and offered to let us a gorgeous little cottage on their estate. Being within walking distance from TLB's new job and within our budget we agreed instantly. We move in on the 4th July and have both vowed to make use of the tennis court in the garden to get fit. I do however think the role of ball boy will be well beyond the dogs meager capabilities, for he is a simpleton.

The dog is in excellent spirits and has had the best few months of his life, with the last 5 months spent staring at a hole in the garden. At his disposal have been woodlands, gardens (walled and otherwise), fields and pastures to roam about in and he has ignored them all in favour of his obsession with the hole. On day 4 of living here, he managed to catch a rat, a rat which came out of the hole into which he now gazes longingly. He hasn't caught one since. On the occasions that he has managed to make it further afield he has been to a local conservative party meeting in the big house (alone I hasten to add), has diced with death on the edges of the cliffs and spent lots of time squashing bluebells. His new home is bound to have a hole so he can hone his staring and loitering.

Between us TLB and I own enough things to fill one medium sized tent, which means we are starting from scratch. We have no TV, no sofa and no fridge. TV is very far down the list and I am going to start reading books and blogging more, first we are going to raid the auctions and freecyclers of the world so we don't have to sit on garden furniture in the living room. We do have a lovely wood burning stove, a trailer, some plastic crockery and a collection of lovely Afghan rugs.

I now have about £4k of debt, having paid off about £6k whilst we were living in the tent, I have abjectly failed to save since living here but am newly enthused about clearing the burden. The house we are moving to is within our means but we will have to be sensible about things if we wish to thrive. The combination of budgeting and incredulity at the world around me* made me miserable enough to stimulate my creative urges.

We have been incredibly lucky and have met some fantastic people along the way but now is the time to get serious about escaping from the shackles of debt and building ourselves a house. Key phrases to look out for will be vegetable box, on the wagon, joint account and dog grooming incident.

*Gordon Brown. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king.

Dear Boxshifters pt 2

2009-02-18T14:32:00.001Z

Dear IT Support

Your swear filter is somewhat less effective that I thought it was. I have managed to call my colleague a cock muncher, shitbiscuit, gobshite, felcher, arse-eater, dog fluffer, wang daddy, cock beast, hootie mama, jizm gobbler, cum guzzling fuckslut, cumdrain, winnet eater, shitface, dog breath, bananaman, arsefucker and spunk bucket in the last few minutes alone.

However jerk, faggot, bitch and arse are all illegal, all of which could quite conceivably have meanings that are not considered abusive.

Muff diver gets flagged up as racist abuse but Paki and Nigger are completely fine. I cannot imagine what sort of perverse mind could mis-categorise so wildly.

Should you require me to provide consultancy regarding the correct configuration of your swear filter I would be very happy to provide a comprehensive list of abusive terms, racist abuse and sexually discriminatory remarks,

Regards,

Ben

Dear Boxshifters...

2009-02-18T10:32:00.001Z

Dear IT Support,

I have recently been having some problems with my dog in that he has been eating the cushions and soft furnishings in my house. When I was trying to explain to one of my colleagues what a little pillow biter he is, I was shocked to find that your profanity filter started flashing up worrying warnings about sexually discriminatory terms.Imagine my surprise when discussions about a friend of mine, a landscape artist who has been working on a number of uphill gardens, were flagged as profane. How very dare you!

I am all for sensitivity to our sexually diverse colleagues but I think this may be going a little far. I have decided to spend a little time working out exactly what I can and cannot say so that I will in the future be aware of when I transgress the very sensitive and somewhat prudish communication filter. If you do find a strange upsurge in the number of ambiguous sexual terms going through the swear filter please excuse me and be aware that it is a very short term period of experimentation.

Regards,

Ben

Turnaround

2009-02-18T01:10:00.003Z

Okay, so we moved house, to Dorset and have had a couple of weeks to acclimatise. I am going to have to change the name of the blog to something more suitable but feel that I should have sufficient adventures to keep what little readership remains amused.

When I first heard of the prospect of a free stately pile in the country I was overjoyed. My tent had collapsed only a week prior to it becoming available to us and we had camped in laundry rooms and in the houses of sympathetic farmers for the duration of the snow. The tent is now back up and running, sat in the garden of our new home and we are installed in what is possibly the most peculiar circumstances one could imagine.

TLB, the Dog and I are now part time house mates with an ex-General, a lovely chap who is equipped with the most dazzling array of stories and can name-drop for England, quite literally. He seems to be very close to the apparently small world of the rich and famous, the good and the great. He often talks about The Queen as if she were just another person, which to him I suppose she is. By virtue of TLB's job we now have at our disposal a cleaner and a gardener, a good supply of wine and endless supply of awesome scenery for the dog to piss on.

So imagine our surprise, a week after having moved in to be told that the Stately Home, the grounds of which we have been living in has been sold. There are 13 houses on site, a few businesses and all of them are being vacated. We have our marching order and until August to enact them so we may well be heading back to the tent after a brief bout of luxurious living.

Oh no, our little home, what has the evil snow done to you?

2009-02-05T18:18:00.003Z

Today I worked from my friends flat where we have been holed up for the last few days, primarily because it had snowed and the journey would have been painful but also as it would enable me to go and check out the tent during my lunch break. I had not yet had a daylight opportunity to go to the farm and sort it out and today was a bit of a grizzly chore.

When I arrived the old girl was in a sorry state. Covered in snow and ice, the entrance was the only think that marked it as a tent rather than a pile of snowy lumps. I got out my ice shovel (thank you snowboarding brother who abandoned his kit with me last year) and set about clearing it. Once I had shovelled all of the ice and snow from the top I could lift the sopping wet canvas just enough to be able to get out the things that we knew would not survive. We grabbed bedding, rugs and clothes. Tuff-crates, stoves, air beds and the like would be relatively unharmed by a couple more days in the drink and time was very short.

The pole had bent clean in half. Monica (the farmers wife, I can talk about these things now that I am leaving!) came over and grabbed the pole insisting that it would be fine in 5 minutes and scuttled off with it. True enough, she appeared 5 minutes later with pole in hand. She had been to see Richard my welding buddy who had done a credible repair to the pole, chopping off the top that was bent and inserting a new, tougher bit of iron bar and welding it into place. Grand. We got a chance to quickly put it up to make sure it was strong enough and we then we laid it to rest for fear that it would collapse again under the predicted volume of snow.

When up, we could see that the tent had quite extensively flooded and where one of the rugs had been sat in standing water for some time, it had leached some dye into the water. This made the tent look like the floor was covered in blood. Which was then traipsed across the snow as rugs and the like were removed. It looked like serious violence had been done upon that spot, I tell thee.

So, we have been offered a bed tomorrow night on the farm which we are going to take up. We are going to get up nice and early on the Saturday morning and we are going to take down the tent and pack everything into the trailer, upon whence we shall bid farewell to our home since September last year. The atmosphere has been quite solemn since we got back after lunch. TLB remarked that she was sad and just wanted a few more days in the tent before we head off to Dorset. Life in the tent is just not possible now, bedding is with dry cleaners*, floor is flooded and there are not enough daylight hours available to sort it out whilst we are both working.

It has always struck me as a bit of a vulnerability of tent life. We often considered cleaning the tent but to do so would take at least 2 days. Clear the tent, take it somewhere to hose and scrub, apply waterproofing gubbins, take it home, allow to dry, reinstall stuff. Any major changes to the tent environment hinge around the fact that we have to sleep in it. We couldn't send off bits of the stove for repair as we needed them on a daily basis to cook and stay warm. We are now on our third airbed and each time, we have had to obtain a new one** within a day just to ensure that we did not have a miserable nights sleep.

I think what I am trying to say is thankyou to TLB without whom this whole caper would have been infinitely harder. Her day to day sprucing and stoking, hunting and gathering has given a dimension of domesticity to our little tent. Without her it would have been a great deal harder to maintain a reasonably civilised persona at work and at home. This has been her adventure more than mine and I am hugely looking forward to the adventures that she can take me on in our new home in Dorset.

This all sounds very final. On the upside we have a fantastic but slightly weathered tent and stove, trailer and towbar, loads of memories, new friends and money in the bank. When we get to Dorset I am going to take up Morris dancing. The adventure is far from over.

*It may seem to some that we are the epitome of middle class campers and this is probably not untrue, but we do require a certain degree of comfort in order to make this whole ventureworthwhile. When your £150 goose down duvet is stained and soaked through, I am inclined to give it to an expert to salvage rather than ruin it myself.

**I have fixed many a bike puncture, but trying to get an entire airbed underwater when every drop within a mile is frozen to find the leak is not something I can recommend.

Crisis!

2009-02-04T13:55:00.002Z

Well, what an adventure the last week or two has been. I seem to have recently lost a bit of momentum with regards to the blogging, partially because I have had no peace in which to scribe my whitterings but mainly because I have not been doing much camping.

I took a couple of days holiday at the start of this week and TLB and I decided to head down to Dorset for a long weekend and explore our new home. We arrived on Saturday morning, stocked up on cheese and bread from the local market and set about finding the beach, the garden etc. Sunday saw extreme weather warnings which we heeded and decided to cut short our trip to Dorset in case we got stranded. I had booked a day at a spa for TLB and I to celebrate her birthday which we very much wanted to get home for so we set off into the bright sunshine and clear skies, cursing the weather that had better come.

We went to stay with a friend, knowing full well that if it did snow, the farm would be cut off from vehicular access and we would be stranded. On Monday we woke up to a blanket of snow. We got a call from the Farmers who were sad to report that our tent had collapsed under the weight of the snow. There was no way to get to the tent, even the farmers, with quads and a tractor had not been able to get out so we went snowboarding for the day instead. Tuesday was the day on which we had to go to the spa, which we did. Today is the day when we are going to have to go and rescue the tent.

The farmers have done a little investigating and reckon that the canvas is not ripped and that it must be a bend in the central pole. The padlock that we fitted for security purposes has prevented them from investigating any further. My theory is that as the snow built up on one side of the tent, it caused the tent to lean which made the central pole slip on the cold ground and bought the lot down but until we can get there, there is really no way of knowing. All I am sure of is that all of my worldly possessions are currently in a large soggy pile in a field.

In many ways I am counting my blessings, we are neither stranded at the farm, nor were we in the tent at the time of collapse, which would have been truly horrible. We have a house available to us immediately which we can go to at any time we choose. We plan to move in this weekend so our homelessness is very brief and a very good friend has been putting us up for a couple of nights in the meantime.

It is absolutely typical that we have the coldest, snowiest winter for decades at the same time as I decide that camping out for Winter would be a brilliant idea. This may seem like a somewhat inglorious end to the camping odyssey and could mark the time we have spent in the tent as a failure. I do not believe this is the case for the following reasons:

We have now lived in the tent for 6 months in all but the most extreme weather, we have survived local flooding, temperatures below -10C and high winds, and have taken all in our stride.
My aim of saving money will be going from strength to strength as we now have a free roof over our heads and I will be working from home a lot more, saving further money on fuel and lunches and the like.
I have managed to pay off far more debts than I would have been able to living in the old house, and have not accrued any more.
We have both had a fantastic time, which we will one day tell our kids about, and hell, may even repeat when the summer comes if we fancy it.

I sometimes wonder if we are chickening out by making a dash for the Dorset house but I think I would have given considerable ammunition to my detractors and their claim that I am insane if I were to forsake a warm, dry, free house just to make a point. As I have often said, if the sole reason that you are doing something is the principle of the thing, it is probably not worth doing.

And for all those of you who need a top camp site, not too far from London but suitably out in the sticks, I can very strongly recommend Mellow Farm, near Dockenfield in Hampshire, James and Monica have been the best landlords we could have hoped for and we will miss them very much.

Tell them Ben and The Lovely Bella sent you.

From the sublime to the ridiculous.

2009-01-24T12:06:00.000Z

This post may err on the scatological but I will do my best to keep it decent. As no honest person can deny, the clear up required after a hefty and satisfying discharging of ones bowels varies in it's involvement. On Thursday night I found myself at the wrong end of a serious clean up and decided that I would just skip the tissue and leap straight into the shower. As I went to get into the shower my family turned up and would not, despite my insistence, leave the bathroom. I remember the sensation of anger rising in me and I ended up screaming the house down, raging against my unwelcome intruders as I desperately wanted to get clean. Dreams can be most peculiar things.

Feeling the separation of the buttocks caused by an epic klingon, all I wanted to do was to get clean. I hysterically battled with my mother to leave the bathroom, the location of which remains a mystery, until eventually she took offence. Then it was tears, recrimination and blame as all I could think about was cleaning my polluted posterior. I was aware of a shower nearby and being naked as I already was I left the room and headed into the middle of the high street, covering myself as best I could, to find this surreal open air shower unit. It was not working so I returned to the shower room from whence I came. The room was clear, the shower was functional and just as I was about to get into it, one of my colleagues materialised in the shower and blocked my entry.

It was at this point that I woke up. Shocked at my sleepy adventure and pleasantly surprised to find I had not soiled myself in my sleep. My colleague was most surprised when I greeted him with a slightly harrowed 'I dreamt about you last night'. I am not usually one to read meaning into my dreams but I was acutely aware when I awoke that I do not have my own ablutionary facilities. No privacy in which to enjoy cleaning, it is all in public facilities, be they friends houses, the shower block or the shower at work. I cannot wait to have somewhere I can safely leave my soap.

That looks to be approaching very quickly. TLB returned from her meeting last night very excited and keen to talk about our new adventures in Dorset. I have asked her if it is okay to blog about the subject and she has kindly allowed me to share my excitement, as long as I do not mention names or places. So, the plan as it stands is to pack up the tent in 3 weeks and transplant our lives to Dorset.

TLB has managed to secure housing in a clock house in the grounds of a stately home on the Dorset coast. The house is the holiday home of a Knight who has been helping her to secure funding for a fossil museum and he has kindly offered to let us stay in it for the foreseeable future. The house, complete with walled garden, cleaner, wood burning stove, pool and horizon lake will be a world away from the tent. Wood will be delivered weekly and chopped for us and the track down to our private beach will make for excellent mountain biking. It would appear that we are going from the sublime to the ridiculous.

It all seems quite surreal. For many years I have always been the instigator, in matters of housing (or tenting) I have always been in the driving seat and for the first time I get to sit back and enjoy the ride, and what a ride it promises to be. TLB and I will both be working from home for quite a bit of the time. We will be able to share lunchtime walks with the dog, who will continue to be in seventh heaven, evening strolls to the seaside and balmy summer nights in our rural idyll. The mind boggles, I can hardly believe it is true.

Up and down.

2009-01-22T16:22:00.002Z

TLB is away for the day finalising details of her new job in Dorset so the dog has come to work with me. At lunch time we set off across the fields over the road from work entirely unprepared for what we were about to witness. As we crested the first hill we gazed down upon a sight that simply took my breath away.

5 Red Kites were playing over the fields, antagonising a flock of pigeons that were resting, chasing off magpies and bombing each other playfully. The dog trotted out into the field to see what all of the fuss was about and one of the kites hovered about 10 feet above him, giving me a perfect view of what has to be one of the most magnificent birds I have ever seen. I have seen them from a distance a few times but today I got a chance to watch them in all their glory and it has made my day.

Back in 1977 Red Kites were all but extinct with only a couple of breeding pairs in the entire country, though there was a small population in Wales. Today they are thriving with an estimated 600 new birds being born each year in England alone. In the west country Buzzards are two a penny but they are most inelegant creatures when compared to the Kite whose long wings and relatively small body make for a very agile flier.

It looks like, one way or another I will be moving to Dorset in the next few weeks, TLB's job is looking more and more like a certainty. My employers have said that I can work from home for a few days a week but I am starting to wonder about the logistics of doing it from a tent.

The thing is, we have put in all of this effort to acclimatise to the winter and whilst it has been far from unbearable, it has been a learning experience which I will not forget. The thing that has kept us going, aside from the meagre cost of our day to day lives, is the promise of summer. The evenings are very slowly starting to draw out, the coldest of the weather seems to be passing and it is all downhill from here into a glorious summer or barbecues, parties and t-shirts.

Living in Dorset and working from home will require me to have a desk and a stable supply of electricity and bandwidth. For all of the things that we have made possible in the tent, I suspect that these will not be feasible and it is all quite a disappointment. There is also the fact that I will be away from home for at least 2 nights out of each week and I would not like the thought of TLB being alone and vulnerable in a tent whilst I am away on a sofa or a spare bed. It seems that accommodation will be thrown in with TLB's job for free which means that I will be able to continue to save, pay my increasingly modest debts and so forth but I will miss the camping terribly.

It will also relegate me to the status of a blogger waffling about my mundane ordinary life which I suspect would be rather boring. Therefore the options as I see it are:

Give up camping and blogging.
Pitch a tent in the garden of my new home and live in it.
Find a whole new and exciting odyssey to embark upon in my spare time and write about that.

If anyone has any ideas let me know, meanwhile I will continue to try to amuse and inform my readers with tales of camping while I work on the sequel.

There but for the grace of god go I

2009-01-15T09:31:00.006Z

It turns out that the people with the snappy dog were not in fact a young couple, nor were they on holiday. They are father and daughter who are homeless. They spend their days sitting in the car and their nights sitting in their leaky tent.

Last night we invited them over for some food, thinking that the extension of a warm hand of kindness might make things a little less bleak for them and they seemed to relish the attention, being unusually candid about their situation.

The father has never had a home, has been in and out of jail and after a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse, had finally pulled himself together just enough to be able to look after the only person in the world that mattered to him.

He explained that when he reached his teenage years he found out that the woman he had always thought of as his sister was actually his mum and his mother was actually his gran. Dyslexia had made school unbearable at the hands of unsypathetic and spiteful teachers so, feeling betrayed and lied to, he left school early and hit the streets. He spent the next 20 years living in shop doorways and hostels, eeking out a living where he could doing odd jobs, fruit picking, labouring on building sites and rummaging amongst bins. When the minimum wage came along he could no longer find work that was not illegal so he became a beggar.

I could tell that he has had drug problems the second a plate of food was in front of him. TLB rustled up a hearty sausage stew which he picked and prodded, never quite getting up the momentum to finish the plate. From what I could tell, on a daily basis he ate very little and his daughter lived on packets of savoury rice cooked atop their little gas stove. My heart went out to them so much.

The daughter did not speak much, we managed to ascertain that she was 21, has never had a job and is fleeing from a violent relationship. She joined her dad on the open road as her only option about 2 years ago out of fear of staying still and being tracked down by her ex. They got a dog, a yappy little jack russell/staffy cross who they both dote on and they endure life on a daily basis, rummaging for new bits of cardboard to line the floor of their dilapidated tent as the old ones go soggy. They both sign on but their transient life makes even that hard. I have never felt so lucky in my life.

The thing that struck me most though was how kind they were. They both automatically took off their shoes when they came into the tent. He had bought a few beers to drink so as not to have to take me up on my offer of a few of ours. We have a spare dome tent and a couple of camp mats which I offered them but they refused, somehow maintaining enough pride to be able to decline. They were profusely grateful when they left, I suspect mainly out of surprise that anyone would actually invite them into their home.

It occurs to me that these two are just two of thousands of people in similar situations. And they are some of the lucky ones. The dad has enough wherewithal to sort out a car and a tent, to get off the drugs and to feed their dog but it is apparent that not all campers are born equal. I can see that if my family life had been different and if I had not enjoyed the opportunities that I have had, I could well be in the same situation. My brother is dyslexic (but thrives nonetheless), my father has had alcohol problems in the past (and conquered them admirably) and I live in a tent.

I know that whenever I have problems in the future, I can look back at our nomadic neighbours and count my blessings. There but for the grace of god go I.

Strangers came...

2009-01-12T12:59:00.003Z

Wind sucks. This morning I was awoken at 3:30 by gusting winds that made the tent more akin to a boat at sea. The lantern on the central pole was knocking back and forwards, spurts of smoke were being forced out of the stove and into the tent, the walls billowed this way and that and the tarpaulin that covers my trailer was flapping and undulating in the gale. All in all not a very peaceful nights sleep. Cold is, by comparison, a doddle.

We have been joined by various hardy (and not so hardy) campers in the last few weeks. The first was in the week between Christmas and the new year. He turned up with an improbably large tipi which took him about 3 hours to erect, he had a fire bowl which he started outside and then dragged in once he was all set up. We were told by the farmers that he had started to take his tipi down by about 5:00 am having suffered a bitterly cold night and I am sure that said tipi will be found on ebay any day now.

Then we had a chap who was complaining that the cold snap had ended by the time he had arrived. I could only guess that he was going to Greenland on some mad expedition as he had a tent very slightly larger than he was and a sleeping bag that he boasted was manufactured solely from the down from 2.3cm either side the centre of a gooses breast. Clearly mad but fared very well.

Last night we had a young couple and their snappy dog arrive on the latest leg of their holiday. They arrived after dark, pitched their tent and then sat in the car for the entire evening. I was quite surprised to see them still in their car when I left for work this morning. I can only assume that the wind has made life in their little dome tent a bit too uncomfortable and that they were rethinking the rest of their holiday.

2009 has mostly been cold so far.

2009-01-08T20:52:00.003Z

The difference between -1 and -11 is astounding. I laid in bed the other night, took the sleeping bag from over my head and let the heat seep out of my face and into the freezing air. I could feel the cold sucking the heat out of me and my face felt like i was melting into the air. Creepy. I whipped the sleeping bag over my head to create a nice pocket to warm up with my breath as was as snug as a bug.

Mornings are the hardest bit, we often have to break the sponge-scourer thing out of a block of murky ice and then defrost it on the stove so that we can wash up. We have to save the last bit of water in the container so we can get more water, which will go through a cycle of solid and liquid until it is used to defrost a tap.

I have always rained scorn on people who dress their dogs up in coats. Cold has turned my dog gay. In the night he likes to snuffle about at all hours, and will often shed his blankets, which then need replacing or we will wake up to a meek looking shivery dog trying to get into our sleeping bag. In my defence, the pooch poncho is brown, aside from the maroon bits, and it is made out of 3 wale corduroy, in accordance with one of my demands. I found him trying to shred it the other day and though I scolded him, I was secretly proud.

I have also become very aware of the variance in quality of tea lights. We use a lot of them and have even become sad enough to develop a favourite. We had some of them from the garden centre down the road and they required a great deal of attention to light and then died in about half an hour, with most of the wax unburned. Useless. Bolsius candles from the market will last for about 4 hours, almost to the minute, will burn all of the wax and are easy to light. Ideal.

We are running out of heat logs which means either re-order or start using other sources of wood. The welding dude whose workshop is on the farm has a mate with a big pile of wood which we are investigating.

Other than that, it has all been very laid back. We eat well, personally, rather too well in fact having put on a few grams since I moved in, we are warm in the evenings and nights and cold in the mornings, I have paid off more debts and we have not so far been mistaken for gypsies and hounded out of the neighbourhood on the wrong end of a pitchfork. We keep getting invited to increasingly weird dinners with the farmers and I have taken up archery.

It is however illegal to hunt rabbits with a bow and arrow in the top field beyond the pigs. So I won't be doing that. A guy here who has recently closed his adventure sports company has a barn full of archery and mountain biking kit that he is flogging cheap so I intend to obtain a compound bow (very dangerous, myeh heh) and some of the associated gubbins (like arrows), and do some shooting in the field, at targets. A mans gotta have a hobby other than fantasising about women about land rovers.

Losables

2009-01-07T14:55:00.001Z

As a complete aside to my camping adventures, I recently discovered a new category of objects that I am trying to find a suitable name for. The definition of this group is 'Objects whose primary functionality determines that they are highly likely to be lost'.

Being the mildly obsessive sort I have been looking for additions to this category and have so far found 4 items that I think qualify for the accolade of being included in my newfound clutch of items. These include Aerobie's, anything camouflaged, spectacles and marijuana.

If anyone out there can come up with a suitable name for the group or any items that should be included in my eventual submission to the authorities I would be most grateful.

Cooooold

2009-01-06T09:52:00.003Z

This morning my glass of water was frozen solid, the car took 20 minutes to defrost and the temperature was -11C when I left for work. The butane in the cannister had frozen and only a trickle was coming out when I went to light it first thing and the dog was most reluctant to come out from under his blankets. Winter has truly arrived.

I reckon that this has to be the worst of the winter, doesn't it? Whilst wrapped up in a 15tog Goose down duvet, inside a fluffy double sleeping bag it is pretty much impossible to get cold, I am still sleeping without pyjamas, I have not felt the need to start wearing clothes in bed and I can't see it getting too much colder. Lord please don't let it get any colder, if for the simple reason that getting out of bed is a visceral and very determined morning gauntlet that must be run and it is not much fun.

I have had a couple of weeks holiday from posting, sorry if anyone thought I had frozen to death, I have mostly been holed up in peoples houses enjoying luxuries like taps and electricity. Some good friends joined us, along with the farmers and we spent new years eve around a fire and were all remarkably comfortable, using the Romanian Grappa provided by the farmers to keep warm. Not to drink you understand, but to fuel the fire. A few days on a friends sofa doing laundry and one softens up considerably, I found that I was very reluctant to go back to the cold of the tent. Once back though you settle in pretty quickly, the old routines of fetching wood and water, food and fuel quickly returned and the romance has not been entirely frozen out of us.

It is now only a matter of days before we have a firm idea on what TLB will be doing and when her new job starts in Dorset so I will soon be able to make some plans about what I am doing. Work have provisionally authorised a couple of days per week working from home so I may find myself out of the tent in a matter of a couple of weeks, a fact I am slightly sad about on the quiet, as is TLB she tells me. Will post more tonight when I have some more time and in the meantime, wrap up out there!

Cool Yule

2008-12-26T12:12:00.002Z

This morning my brain feels very well connected to my body and that is something of a shame. If it were not then I might be spared the churning stomach, pulsating head and generally over indulged feeling that plagues my freshly awakened senses. It is boxing day, Christmas is over and save for a few new year festivities we are over the hump. Life can start to return to normal and I can start making new plans for the forthcoming year. I have quite a few plans blossoming in my withered brain and I should be back up to full power in no time.

There are quite a few people booked to come to the camp site on New years eve so TLB and I have taken it upon ourselves to bulk up their numbers. We will have fireworks, a BBQ, loads more brain rotting booze and a few good friends joining us, it should be a very good night and anyone feeling a little hardy would be most welcome. To be honest it has been incredibly mild so camping should not be a strain at all, a thick jumper and a good sleeping bag should be all that are required.

TLB is away for a couple of days this week as she is hoping to secure her new role as fossil queen of the UK. The job is based in the west country and is accompanied by a free house. It is too far to commute on a daily basis so we have been discussing the options should it all come together. Part of me is really quite disappointed that our camping odyssey may be cut short through the arrival of a pesky free house but if it means that TLB has a chance to thrive then it can only be a good thing. It is also rather good for the purposes of saving money, being cheaper than living in a tent, if such a thing is possible.

I am going to angle to work from home for a day or two a week and then camp and sofa surf for the evenings I am going to be required to be in the vicinity of work. We shall see, suffice to say my adventures are far from over.

As of the 1st of January, the company policy regarding non essential company car users is changing and at the expiry of the current lease, we will be required to hand the car back and have a car allowance instead. It would appear that the Lexus' days are numbered. I have opted to return the car as soon as possible as the combined relief from tax and the generous car allowance would make quite a difference to my monthly income, a Lexus is a nice if you like that sort of thing but it keeps getting stuck when off road and has all sorts of practical limitations, I cannot fit my bicycle into it, I cannot sleep in it should I want to and other annoyances.

I have been considering my next vehicle move and have been feeling myself irresistably drawn towards land rovers. For many years I have poured scorn onto the owners of SUV's, considering it to be much more of an image based decision than a practical one. In my former house, a school laid between myself and the main road each morning and a fleet of seven stone women in seven ton trucks used to play bumper cars up my road in order to deliver their precious offspring for the day.

It would appear that the seething resentment that I had for these creatures is now to be turned upon myself as a large landrover would provide me with a place to sleep during my weekly attendance at work, would allow me to permanently keep my bicycle with me and would last pretty much forever. It would probably also provide me with a chance to use the welding skills that I hope to acquire in the new year! It would go off road and it would play very well to my sense of adventure so I intend to take a test drive in the coming days to see if the sloth, discomfort and lack of sparkly buttons would be acceptable.

It would appear that the new year will be ushering in plenty of change, TLB and I have resolved that we are going to have a big party in the new year once everyone is recovered from Christmas and the spring starts to creep in. As a perfect opposite to the camping party that we had in my old house, we have decided to have a black tie coctail party in a field. More details of that to come when we have banished the post Christmas malaise. In the meantime, a very happy Christmas to you all and a merry new year.

Connectedness

2008-12-15T19:20:00.004Z

Camping is often referred to as getting back to nature. I am not sure if people mean that it represents a communing with the ways of our ancestors, honouring the ancient behaviours of huddling around fires and sleeping in the open or whether it is to do with our proximity to spiders and other bits of nature. Both are accurate and since I started living in a tent I do feel a lot closer to nature in every sense. For some reason this makes me very happy, even tonight on a cold winter evening, surrounded by spiders, I am feeling quite perky.

Through my life I have had a few notable experiences that have immersed me in a feeling of utter joy, chance happenings that have made me feel euphoric, ecstatic beyond reason and utterly overwhelmed with emotion. I am a pretty level headed chap most of the time so these incidents stay in my mind. The catalysts to these states of mind are various but the ones that instantly spring to mind are sexual, musical and natural experiences.

One instant that I will remember to my dying day was when I was about 17 years old, I took my video camera out onto the moors where I lived, it was about 5 in the morning and I intended to film the sunrise. I set up the camera on a tripod, sat back and awaited the appearance of the sun. As it rose I found myself feeling incredibly small and was overwhelmed with the power and majesty of the enormous glowing orb before me. I remember laughing uncontrollably and saying aloud to myself, 'everything is going to be alright.' I knew to my core that no matter what happened in my life that the sun would keep on rising and falling and any trivial fears and aspirations I had meant nothing. The thing that I remember most was the feeling of connectedness, that I was only a tiny part of this huge universe but an important one nonetheless. An eye of nature looking back at itself with love.

Without wishing to get carried away, I have rarely experienced anything so powerful. A few other experiences are comparable, the intimacy that one feels whilst making love to someone you care about, the rippling cheer of an enraptured crowd or a deep immersion into the vibrations of music. These are the things that not only make us feel happy but make us feel fulfilled, connected to the world and all it's beauty.

It can't be bought, it can't be drunk or injected, it can't be given or taken. It is in all of us all of the time and only one thing can make us feel it. Nature. Be it an insight into our own nature or a connection to the earth, it is the realisation that we are all one entity, made out of the same stuff, endlessly feeding back on ourselves to greater levels of complexity. If you accept that, then how could you wish to harm another? When I look back on my life, it has been the sole source of solace in what can seem like a cruel world, the only reason that I have any faith in mankind and the only real way to experience uncomplicated joy.

The reason that I am writing about this is because in the last week whilst I have been on holiday I have felt this connectedness to TLB, my family and friends, the dog, the earth. It has reminded me that despite all of the evil in the world there is an overwhelming power that cannot be taken away by greedy banks and fraudulent governments, it is much bigger than them. That power is the power of Chuck Norris.

Erm, no, sorry, it's not Chuck, it is Love. As Captain Beefheart so sagely sang, 'the stars up above are running on love' and the more people realise it, the less likely we all are to end up, remortgaging our children to pay for our ipods. Life is simple and getting back to nature would do us all a lot of good. Buy a tent, you won't regret it.

Back from Holiday

2008-12-15T10:17:00.005Z

Sorry for the lack of posts in the last week but we have been on holiday. We made it our mission for the week to take in some of the finest views available to man from around the west country, we spent the first half of the week on Exmoor and were very pleased to be able to upgrade from the tent to a shed in my fathers garden. When I say a shed, it is actually a wood panelled out house full of carpets and paintings with a glorious view of the sea, from which we could stage our various ascents up the hills in the area. The only notable failure was from the top of Dunkery Beacon where we found ourselves shrouded in cloud for our whole visit, other than that it was a most uplifting visit.

The second half of the week was spent visiting our mothers, reassuring them as to our well being and catching up on the gossip. It surprised me how much I have adapted to living in a tent in a relatively short time. Seemingly trivial things like taps and power sockets were amongst the most adored facilities, allowing us to run baths, charge phones and laptops and wash up with surprising ease. I have never been the most disciplined washer up but having spent a few months heating water on top of a wood burning stove, I will never again take for granted the convenience of taps.

By the end of the week both TLB and I were starting to miss the tent and we were very pleased to get back on Saturday to find a pallet of heat logs awaiting us and that nothing had been stolen from the trailer which had been left on the farm. All in all a very satisfying holiday with minimal cost incurred. I have now only a week or two until the Christmas season kicks on in earnest and can enjoy another healthy dose of leisure time.

I must admit that the fire logs feel like a bit of a cop out, they do exactly what they purport to do, but there is something of an artifice in their use. Without considerable facilities it would be nigh on impossible to manufacture them myself, but I can justify this through my lack of storage space to season and process my own wood. During my holiday I bought a fire steel, I have decided that whilst living in a tent it would serve me well to use some of my new found spare time in developing my skills as general wild man.

I have found the best thing to catch the sparks from the steel are those small cotton wool pads. One of these will very quickly take the spark and provide enough flame to catch the kindling. I look forward in due course to finding material that will replace the cotton wool pads with something that I can forage myself so I may spend a little time this week, gathering some different types of bark and seeing which will shred into the best sort of spark catcher. There is no huge shortage of disposable fire making apparatus in Hampshire but it does keep me entertained nonetheless.

In one of the buildings on the farm there is an metal artist's workshop. He installed a wood burning stove a couple of weeks ago and I popped in to say hello and enquire about the possibility of having a fire bowl made. I knew I was in good company when I spotted that he was wearing a Hendrix shirt whilst banging away in his workshop and we started to talk about the merits of US vs UK psychedelic rock and types of wood best suited to stove use. It turns out he is needing some work done to his website and is greeted by a barrage of tuts and um's everytime he seeks professional advice. I had a quick look at his website and he was very pleased to hear that I thought it would be a doddle to fix him up with a system he could easily manage himself. We have in principle agreed to do a skill swop, I will teach him to manage his website, and he will teach me to weld and to make my own fire bowl. No tax, no inflation, just good honest trading and sharing of resources. I very much look forward to starting my apprenticeship.

TLB looks like she may have found a job, which is excellent, but I am a little scared it may bring my tent oddessey to a premature end as it seems to be bundled with a free house but all of these details are to be ironed out in the new year but that is enough for now, I shall post a couple more entries in the next few days between the Christmas barrage of champagne cocktail parties and canapes.

Coldness ensues.

2008-12-04T20:39:00.003Z

The dog is a very weird creature, he loves nothing more than chomping through a bowl of ice cubes. We have been known to sacrifice perfectly good G&T destined ice cubes to satiate his habit but the recent cold snap now means that he now has the monopoly on what is a very scarce resource. With glee he will toy with his newly frozen water bowl, taunting it with his nose as the dawn light emerges, daring it resist his attentions.

TLB and I of course have very few options when it comes to ice, we can buy it in bags only to see it dwindle away into slush or we could in theory leave a tray of water out overnight to freeze in the arctic cold that has befallen us. Sadly we are not that organised, though even if we were it would have melted away by the time the sun has passed the yard arm and we were actually allowed to have a booze. So it remains that the dog, each morning will wake up and check his bowl for ice, carefully removing it and then settling down to crunch his way through the cold morsels.

We have not yet gotten to the point where his bowl will freeze inside the tent which is most fortunate as I am not sure I would like my night time drooling to freeze on the pillow and rouse me from my sleep with a jump when I find it breaching the borders of my ear. We have employed a gas heater to subsidise the heat from the stove, not because it is vital but because it is nice to be able to relax without having to huddle too close to the fire.

The quality of wood has become of increasing importance, where before we could get away with slow burning wood, the variance in the combustibility of wood from local wood suppliers has become too hit and miss to risk so I have ordered a quarter of a ton of compressed sawdust blocks from a company on the internet, which should see us through the next couple of months in the utmost comfort. For £150 I am expecting to take delivery of 240kg of consistent, dry, highly flammable bricks which, whilst not having the charming personality of their tree based opposition will guarantee rapid cooking and heating.

Despite the cold TLB and I are very much enjoying freedom from the rigmarole of daily life in a rented house. I hear people at work complaining on a daily basis about the cold and it would seem that us tent dwellers are far from the worst off. Our only real priorities are to ensure we have enough wood and food to survive. Aside from that a small amount of money for our monthly rent and fuel for the car is all that is required to keep us capable of meeting our external responsibilities and thriving. I am currently sat in the tent wearing only a t-shirt and it is perfectly warm, the smell of fajitas cooking on the stove is making me hungry, the celebratory wine I am drinking tastes fantastic and the bed looks very cosy from here.

Bedding has also become a little more of an issue now that winter is upon us proper, the most satisfactory solution we have found is to use a large double sleeping bag (thankyou Mother) and then put my sumptuous goose down duvet inside. We have on occasion found ourselves over heating and had to fold back the top layer of sleeping bag but our feet are never exposed to the cold night air and we can zip ourselves in should we find that things are getting too chilly. Failing that, TLB has remarked that I make an excellent hot water bottle on the coldest of nights and I am very pleased to be of service.

I have made a few investments this month to ensure our continuing comfort. Aside from the gas fire (which was very kindly contributed by a friend) I must confess that I have been getting a slightly bad back from all the crouching and kneeling so I have bought a therma-rest camp chair to ensure that we can both sit in comfort when we need to. It is a bit of a comfort revelation and renders the cushions that we have used to prop ourselves up so far somewhat redundant. It also means that we have a spare bed for when visitors drop in to stay the night which I am sure will be most appreciated. Who'd have thought it, we have a sofa-bed!

For anyone who doubts that it is possible to be warm enough in a tent during the winter, I can very happily inform you that with a little preparation it is perfectly possible to be too hot, despite the limitations of our dwelling. To be honest I am rather looking forward to a decent dusting of snow, it would be the closest thing to curtains we will get and will no doubt provide a superb lie in.

Security

2008-12-01T20:20:00.005Z

I got home from work today to find TLB suffering from a headache because she had spent the day fretting about security. A couple of weeks ago her phone disappeared at about the same time as the charger vanished. This morning I decided to leave my phone for her to use so she could call me if she needed me to bring anything home from my travels.

When I got home she fixed me with a serious gaze and confessed that she had not got me my phone. It also seemed that the internet dongle was no where to be seen, which was a mixed blessing as I had been cursing her name for taking it away for the weekend and leaving me disconnected from the world. So, two phones, 1 charger and internet dongle down we were starting to realise that there has been a thief in our tent, not once, but 3 times.

She also reported that the other day while she was sitting in the tent, the dog had started to go nuts, barking and raising hackles and carrying on like he was some sort of Baskervelian hound. She decided to go and see what was going on and she saw a young guy running across the field away from the tent. The dog dashed off across the field in hot pursuit and apparently caught him, said hello and then decided to go and have a snuffle about in the wood pile. The dog is losing serious credibility with every week.

At this point I started to contemplate strategies for dealing with our unwelcome visitor, scowling and plotting the disposal of my car, dog and lover so I could sit in the tent and wait, for as long as necessary, until the scallywag in question came calling and I could use my fire extinguisher as a burglar suppository.

TLB was most relieved to hear that when I had put on my trousers this morning I had, by habit, picked up my phone and taken it with me to work without even noticing. I was still however rather worried that her phone and charger had simultaneously gone walkies and that the internet dongle was nowhere to be seen. She had been asked by the farmer to give him a lift to a local planning meeting this evening as he does not drive and Mrs Farmer was otherwise engaged so while she was out I started to tear apart the tent to see if things really were as bad as we thought.

Within 5 minutes I had managed to find her phone charger in one of the tuff crates and the internet dongle in her bag. Somewhat relieved that the only missing thing was her phone and that in all probability she had just lost it, I started to calm down. My violent mental tirade started to abate and the red mist cleared, reasoning that there are several emminently stealable items in the tent if you had time to rummage and they were all present and correct. Much better to have a scatterbrained girlfriend than a regular robber.

We have however had a chance to consider the worst and tommorow I will be buying a padlock to secure the tent door. At least that way if someone wants to break in they will have to cut the tent and we will be in no doubt that we are attracting unwanted attention. Meanwhile all is well in tentsville and I have a fab smelling sausage stew to eat. mmm.

If only...

2008-11-26T09:36:00.005Z

Dear Mr Brown,

It is with regret that I now find myself unable to continue my role as a citizen of this country and have decided to redeem my contractual obligations to the country and go it alone.

The reasons for my decision are various, I find the prospect of imprisonment should I continue to work and not pay tax rather disturbing, and quite bizarre when I consider that should I stop working, you would then give me money. I am no scrounger so I do not find this at all satisfactory, nor do I consider your efforts to make the world a safer place by engaging in wars around the globe to be very convincing. We are surrounded by allies and sea and think that we are in all probability quite safe.

I understand that you very much wanted to be prime minister, we all have to have ambitions, but I think you may better serve this country in a more community based role where you can do a little less damage, maybe as a lollipop man or a town crier. If you did this then maybe people would be pleased to see you, and I mean real people, not the political classes or your friends at the golf club. I suspect that if the real people formed a queue to put a cream pie in your face, we would all be busy for a very long time.

Your persistent disregard of the advisers that I have so very kindly paid for does very little to convince me that you are prime minister material. To be honest I do not really think that anyone is so you shouldn't blame yourself. I would think my friend Chris very arrogant were he to assume that he knew what was best for me and he knows what sort of pork pies I prefer and how I like to cut my hair. I like to think I know best too and am always finding myself dispensing advice where it is not really wanted but I am sure that I should not be given the power to imprison people if they don't take it. That is not just arrogance, that is lunacy!

Sorry if I am rambling on but I think I have paid enough of your salary to be allowed to bend your ear a little. If you would like me to attend an exit interview before I leave I would be very happy to give some full and frank feedback, though considering your treatment of the various committees on detention without trial, ID cards, the economy, drug classification and tax bands, I am not holding my breath. I guess for some people it is much easier to be able to blame you and settle back into slavery and reality television, I however have bought a tent and a trailer and am going to try my hand at some archery and subsistence farming.

With regards to the settling of outstanding matters, I would be very pleased if you would forward details of all monies paid to yourselves over the years so that we can start to negotiate a mutually beneficial settlement. My uses of your services thus far constitute:

1 poor education.

1 effective treatment for a twisted bollock, which may I add has been the high point of my interaction with your government.

I know you have racked up rather a lot of debts over the years in our name but I do not feel I am really to be held accountable for them, after all, I have paid my taxes and done what was asked of me, so I shall consider that policing, waste disposal, road provision and the like were actually covered by the cash I paid up front like council and road tax.

I do not expect to make use of my pension so I am expecting that quite a serious amount of money has accrued in my account which I am sure can be used to offset the costs incurred above. Any money still owed to me can be paid in gold, index linked to the date of our final settlement. I am afraid that I can no longer accept sterling as a form of remuneration as I suspect that it will simply not be worth the paper it is printed on before long.

I have attached a document detailing my national insurance, bank accounts etc to ease administration at your end and I very much look forward to receiving the relevant forms.

Yours Sincerely

*** ****

Tea and cake.

2008-11-23T18:37:00.003Z

We have just returned from what was supposed to be tea and cakes with our favourite farmers. We got rather more than we bargained for, with a delicious soup to start made from the pigs that we shared a field with. Excellent I thought, racking up mere food metres for a delicious feast. Then came the scary bit. Mrs Farmer emerged from the kitchen with a chopping board on which there was a strange looking sausage.

It was about a 14 inches long, sheathed in plastic and about the thickness of my arm, tied at each end with string. It, we learned was something called Brawn. When the pigs were slaughtered, 7 pigs worth of meat was returned from the abattoir, including heads, hearts, livers and all. Mrs Farmer has been diligently making pate, brawn, sausages and a huge variety of other pig based products, nothing from head to trotter was wasted.

We got to sample the head, which had been boiled until all of the meat emerged from the lips, cheeks and heaven knows where else. After establishing that there was no brain or tongue within this daunting looking parcel, we were instructed to put our allotted slice onto a bit of bread, smother it in raw onions and vinegar and then chomp away. TLB was not entirely enamoured by the idea and was looking quite green by the end. I actually quite enjoyed it, remarking that it was not unlike a multi textured pork pie. I was quite disappointed that there was no brain to sample, purely because I could have decided once and for all whether I preferred brains over brawn. I'll get my coat.

We talked about straw bale buildings and shower blocks and the farmer seems pretty keen to go and have a nose about at the Sustainability Centre so I reckon we may be onto something, I shall keep you posted on the result. The farmers do seem to be very forward thinking about the use of their land. They already have a sizeable wind turbine and though most of their farming activities are barely beyond subsistence, they could quite happily survive on veg and pig heads were the revolution to turn up unannounced.

We have asked about extending our stay here beyond the initially stated duration and were very warmly invited to stay for as long as we wanted which is really good to know. I have already bagsied a Turkey from amongst our neighbours and now all we need to do is work out how to roast the bugger in a tent. How exciting. It would appear that Christmas in the tent is a goer.

Scheming

2008-11-23T16:23:00.001Z

In the latter half of my weeks holiday I have been scheming. TLB and I went to visit the Sustainability Centre (home of Ben Law's publishers, Permanent Publications) in East Meon yesterday to walk the dog and see what sort of projects they currently have going on.

Our friendly farmer popped in just before we left to ask if we could pick up any literature about reed bed filtration systems whilst we were there and this got me thinking. It turns out that they are planning to build a new shower block for campers next year and they would like to do it with an environmentally sustainable twist. At the moment they are thinking about turf roofed semi subterranean buildings and are starting to think about planning permission and the best technologies to do this.

To my surprise, when we arrived at the sustainability centre they were in the process of building a shower block to service their own campers. There are a few yurts on site with hard standings and a few other projects in various stages of completion. A large pile of solar water heating units were stacked up next to the shower block ready for installation and one of the managers of the on site hostel informed me that they had the instruction manual and a little expertise and were going to wing it and see how they got on. Admirable.

The construction of the shower block was from straw bales with a south facing slanted roof, a design which I thought would be perfect for our farmer. The merits of building with straw bales are many but the main benefits to my mind are that they are very cheap and very quick to construct. With a little know how and a lot of effort it would be possible to knock up a straw bale house (or shower block) in no time.

I do not have the know how to be able to design and build such a thing but they sound like really useful skills to have so my plan is this: I intend to find a suitable teacher to run a course on straw bale construction. The course will be a week or so, or maybe split over a few weekends (to be honest I have no idea yet). The course would be spent building the shower block with eager volunteer aspirants like myself doing a lot of the hard work and learning how it is done in the process. The farmer would pay for materials and enough money to make it worthwhile for the expert, skivvies like me would earn knowledge in exchange for our labours and everyone is a winner. Not forgetting that TLB and I would get a newly souped up ecotastic shower block to make our lives a little easier.

The first stage in the process will of course be to persuade the farmer of what a groovy idea this is and my initial pitch to Mrs farmer was met with enthusiasm, we are in fact going round for tea and cake shortly.

Holiday

2008-11-19T20:47:00.000Z

The last couple of weeks have been very stressful, work has been the main issue with a very high pressure project but it didn't help that I was ill for the last week, which combined with the pressures of living in a tent made life feel hard.

This week is holiday. Hooray, finally I can spend my time with TLB and the dog, walking, camping, drinking and generally relaxing. Or not, as the case seems to be. TLB has also been under the weather so we had long weekend of snivelling, sleeping and hiding from the elements. The foul weather and the maladies ailing us both have gladly abated in the last 48 hours and in a bid to treat ourselves we decided to go to the local spa.

On arrival at the place we could tell it was not going to be the decadent indulgence that would have been ideal but the merits of a building full of warm water are not lost on two people who have lived under canvas for approaching 11 weeks. Having bought ourselves some swimming costumes we trundled in and made the most of the sauna, steam room, pools and relaxation lounge (3 loungers surrounded by very bad murals of lurid tropical fish). Languishing with your lover in a jacuzzi for an hour with not another soul about is heaven.

Sadly I was naive enough to make conversation with a man in the sauna. He turned out to be a fellow computer programmer and was all too eager to continue a conversation about SIP and TR/87 protocols in the jacuzzi. From now on, I will ensure that I maintain a gruff exterior when at the public baths in order to avoid that pernicious and predictable question, 'so, are you two, erm, together?' Sling yer hook pal, she's taken and now you have effectively announced your intentions toward my lover while we are all taking a nice friendly bath. Now I have to kill you, creepy man. And no I will not see you in the cafe, oddball.

We then preyed once again on the hospitality of my poetic friend who fed us G&Ts and popular media. Life would be a great deal more difficult without his assistance, his home is our favourite port in a storm. I keep asking him when he will purchase his tent, he retorts with 'If I did that where would you put all your stuff?'

The rest of the holiday, in accordance with my frugality drive will be spent walking and relaxing, with a day trip to the seaside somewhere on the cards. The frugality drive is hard. I have managed to pay off about £500 worth of debt and save a few hundred quid which is all good but once again, I am not awash in the surpluses of my efforts. If I am to be debt free and saving for some land, I will have to up the ante financially to make this all worthwhile, I do not want to be living in a tent in 5 years time.

Hard work

2008-11-12T20:44:00.003Z

TLB has left me, I am ill, I have a huge deadline for Friday and the tent has blown down.

I know that the only reason that anyone reads this blog is to find out whether or not I develop some ghastly wood smoke based respiratory disease or get mauled by badgers in the night. Well, I am glad to say that today is not that day. TLB has gone back to stay with her father for a few days to catch up on some social engagements which has left me lots of time for clearing up snot and complaining. The huge deadline has been quite stressful but it was only the toilet tent that blew down. I thought a bit of drama might not go amiss as this blog does seem to be a bit mild most of the time.

I often wonder what my colleagues must make of me. Whilst TLB is away, I have been taking the dog into work with me. He spends the day in the car, though I hasten to add that he has three good length walks and half a dozen fag breaks today, before the animal rights crowd arrive and start ruining things. At work I always look like I am about to set off on an expedition but have thus far managed to resist the urge to rush back from the shower to my desk in a towel to retrieve the pants that I have stashed in my desk.

Some are genuinely interested and I know of at least a couple who may be reading (Hello!) but the comedy opportunities are not lost on a few. I sometimes hear people complain of the smell of firewood (which I rather like) and I am known as swampy in some departments, which in fairness I think completely misses the point but hey, it is with affection.

The new MD for the company turned up not long after I did and I had not once had reason to speak to him before a few weeks ago when he sidled up to my desk and asked how I was doing. I introduced myself and told him about the progress on the project, we chatted for a few minutes and then he said, 'So, tell me about your new digs.'

He is a Canadian man and seems very personable, though I am a little nonplussed that he doesn't look that much older than me and is in charge. Knowing that the Canadians are largely a pretty outdoorsy bunch I showed him a couple of the photos on this 'ere blog and let him know of my motives regarding saving and the like. He seemed to approve, which is good as I am sure he was trying to find out if I was a threat to the project.

As a computer programmer I am almost expected to be scruffy and have no taste in clothes, which is very handy when you live in a tent and have no taste in clothes. It is generally assumed by those in the know, the less a person appears to think about their hair, the more time they have to consider technical matters. So, with a sense of slight anarchy, I am throwing myself into my work and learning loads, tufts and all. For the last couple of months work has played far heavier on my mind than anything the mild British autumn could throw at us and I desperately hope that the terrible and inevitable crash of the world creditocracy won't put me out of a job.

Housemates

2008-11-05T22:03:00.004Z

A few weeks ago we had bestowed upon us a box filled with all sorts of pan related goodies. They were packed in paper to offer some protection and the box was discarded in a quiet corner for later disposal. It must be hard to believe but we do actually have a few quiet hinterlands within the tent, areas infrequently visited and it was into one of these that the box sat untouched for a couple of weeks. The weekend just passed was tent relocation time, we had an extra week on the last spot because it was wazzing it down all last weekend and we couldn't face moving.

During the move I grabbed the box and started to take it outside. The box started making scrabbling noises and I saw beasts scampering about within, to my shame I made a sound like a shocked girl. TLB found this most amusing. I took it outside and deposited it on the grass. Gingerly I peeled back the lid of the box and peered in. Nothing.

At this point my money was squarely on a mouse, but I had considered the possibility of a shrew or a vole or, horror of horrors, a rat. Please not a rat, I would certainly have to kill it with a hammer and would have to show no mercy when I eat it to strike fear into the hearts of its evil besnouted comrades. Hammer primed, safety glasses on, I lifted up the top layer of paper from the box. A tail darted about in the shredded paper that was clearly their home. Then came a bulging set of eyes. It is a mouse dammit, thank god. It was a field mouse I think, it froze and locked onto my gaze. There was a glint in his eye telling me to make my move, daring me to cross the line. I thought he was rather cute and resolved not to eat him.

It turned out it had a spouse as well, also cowering in the box and they had not yet worked out that they could jump free from the box so they sat there, staring at us. It was at this point that the dog bowled in wondering what all the fuss was about. The mice, previously inert were now fighting for survival. One of them burrowed into the paper and the other made a break for it.

It was at this point I knew that it did in fact have to die, because the little bastard was running back to the tent. I was there holding back the dog to ensure the little free loaders survival and he makes a dash for my food box. In a last minute save by TLB she managed to scare him away from the door so he burrowed under the tent and hid from the dog whom I had given up restraining. Meanwhile TLB managed to herd the other mouse into the hedge away from the attention of our somewhat over zealous amateur hunter-prancer.

The little swine must have been in paradise. There was quinoa and cous cous, rice and pasta. Vegetables and of course, cheese. What disappoints me most is the dog. When I bought him it was on the understanding that he would be excellent at killing small cute things and insects. It would appear that he can quite happily co-habit with whole families of furry fiends for weeks at a time without so much as raising a hackle. He has been in disgrace ever since.

It does raise the question of what I can do about vermin, or gorgeous little furballs as TLB would have it. It has become very apparent that we need to keep the food box closed and clean up spills quickly but what can I do about dog food? It gets put in his bowl each day and sometimes he saves it. I have never met a dog that saves its food before but Sometimes I can give him a sausage and he will squirrel it away for later use. He can't exactly stash his worldly morsels in Tupperware and would be stuffed with a zip lock bag. He can't even work a knife, let alone scissors, which has the fortunate upside of making him very easy to trap in a tent. So we have to accept that we may get the odd nocturnal visitor. The quiet backwaters of the tent are to be made useful so as to provide the maximum disruption to the nesting instincts of the neighbors and the dog will be required to meet strict targets on rodent rendition.

My mum

2008-11-03T20:11:00.002Z

My mum has a camper van that she calls Bridget, the first vehicle she has ever named she hastens to add. She arrives with cakes and casseroles, dips and delights amid a flurry of furry jumpers and warm approval. A combination of motherly concern and camping zeal have bought her in our direction a few times since we arrived and it is always a joy to see her. Bridget represents my mothers freedom and her individuality. I have never seen her happier than when at the helm of her mobile domicile. I am dead proud.

The future

2008-11-03T09:14:00.001Z

Sunday morning has turned out to be very mild which is lovely as I can open the door and lie in bed almost in the open air. There is a very light rain but the stove is burning away and the radio is helping me with my morning worship. Everything is in fact rather lovely. It makes me wonder why more people haven't made the jump into a tent to weather their financial storms. For a thousand quid you can equip yourself with home and hearth and live a very comfortable life.

I have been considering my options about the future. the prospect of saving up for a house just so that I can live in a home owned by a bank is far from the ideal resolution to this whole caper. I am starting to wonder if I can retain this feeling of freedom beyond the intended duration of our camping spree. Living largely off the grid is very satisfying, maintaining my usual scruffy work persona seems to have been no problem and TLB still seems to relish the romanticism of open fires and starry nights, I have no reason to want this adventure to end.

What I want to do is buy some woodland. I want to buy some woodland and then build us a house to live in. Legally it could get complicated but I believe that if I can build a sufficiently low impact dwelling as to arouse minimal opposition, we can easily make life very comfortable and maybe end up with our dream home for as little as £50k. These are only the seeds of a developing plan and the winter may bring to bear some degree of realism that I currently lack, but I reckon with determination we can pull it off.

One of my all time heroes is a chap called Ben Law, I stayed with him quite a few years ago whilst I was working for an environmental magazine as a boy and the recognition of what he stood for has stayed with me vividly ever since. He was the broker of a land deal in West Sussex and into the bargain he managed to wangle himself a few acres of chestnut wood for £10. When I went to visit he he had built a log cabin which was used as kitchen and living room and had a yurt in which he, his wife and his child slept. He manufactured charcoal and walking sticks from the chestnut coppice that he was cultivating and he ran woodland management workshops to teams of eager Good Lifer's.

Ben spent many years in perpetual legal wranglings with various authorities after a complaint from a local busy-body drew attention to him but after a great deal of stress he eventually won the right to build himself a house. The terms of the planning permission are that he can never sell the house, he can only pass it on to his children or spouse and should he wish to leave it, the land must be left as it was found.

I have only seen the finished house on Grand Designs but have resolved to go and visit him in the near future to find out more about both planning permission and the practicalities of establishing a life in the woods. It would also make the whole thing a lot more tangible for TLB and maybe give us some inspiration. Ben Law is a trailblazer and he has many lessons to teach the world in these times of impending environmental crisis. Lessons about self sufficiency, community, harmony with nature and resistance to authority. Who could ask for a better hero?

Cold

2008-10-29T09:21:00.002Z

Last night was cold. Really cold. Outside the tent that is, not inside. Inside we were snug as could be, though I must confess we both slept in sleeping bags underneath a duvet with a fire going. The few other hardy souls who are camping at the moment were dusted with snow when I went out to turn on the heater in the car and there was ice on the dogs bowl.

The dog is not a cunning creature. Before bed last night TLB and I swaddled him in several layers of fleece blankets as we knew it was going to be cold. He has a good layer of fur but I am sure that is not sufficient to keep the little blighter warm in these most unseasonal conditions. In the middle of the night he decided to do a quick patrol of the inside of the tent and shed his insulation and was upon us in no time, shivering and asking to be re-swaddled. I have always thought that people who buy coats for their dogs are the worst sort of people but I am coming around to their way of thinking.

I think I have taken the fun out of these cold mornings for my colleagues in the office, they come in complaining about the cold and then see me, bright and breezy at my desk, realise that they have nothing to complain about and then get their heads down after enquiring as to whether I was ready to gracefully retire from my quest. They seem quite disappointed when I tell them that I was shedding blankets half way through the night to prevent perspiration. I think they now realise that I am quite serious about seeing this through till next summer.

The lowest recorded temperature in the area I am living in was a shade below -33C, but that was some 30 years ago. It is a little scary to consider that we have had no snow in October since 1976 so time will tell how cold it will actually get. I may be deeply unlucky and have starting my camping escapades just around the dawn of a mini ice age but I know that we can very comfortably cope with -4C.

It remains to be seen how much colder it will get. In a perverse way I am quite keen to find out at what temperature things start to get unbearable, though I am sure that TLB does not share my enthusiasm for extremes of temperature. Luckily the local Woolworths are selling big thick fleece blankets for £8 a pop so I think I may be making an investment, despite my pledge of frugality. Needs must.

Genius

2008-10-22T13:21:00.006+01:00

In both spirit and function this is one of the best inventions I have seen in years. Last night was exceedingly cold and I am looking for ways to make the tent more habitable so I am going to buy one on pay day and will report back on it's effectiveness. It is powered by the stove and requires no external inputs, just pop it on top of the stove and it will blow the warm air rising from the stove around the tent very efficiently and it looks cool to boot. Click for more info.

Things I have learned

2008-10-21T20:01:00.003+01:00

Acclimatising to living in a tent on a farm has been a learning process. So far I have learned:

Dogs and chickens will never be friends.
Petrol is very dangerous (to be fair I knew this before but it is at the front of my mind these days)
Chopping wood with a small axe is all in the hips.
Plastic bags should not be left where they can blow onto a hot stove.
I need to write a blog entry on cooking very soon.
Thursday is Radio 4's best night.
Always know where your head-torch is.
Boot fairs are full of junk that is not worth selling on ebay.
Toilet tents are rubbish.
Always shit at work. It is the ultimate expression of ones capitalist instincts and is warmer than a farm.
Cushions are brilliant.
Rivers are very cold in England, no matter how sunny you may think it is.
You can never buy enough tea lights.
There are a infinite uses for a log.
TLB is one of the most fantastic women in the world.
Owls compensate for their lack of serenading talent with enthusiasm.
Even the most minor burns can take over a week to heal.
The pleasure of a bath should never be underestimated.

Light relief

2008-10-17T11:58:00.001+01:00

We had a competition in the office to come up with the best enviro-measures to combat the wastefulness of the office, here was my entry. I didn't win.

Phil,

I managed to miss the last email from Tony so here are some ways that I have thought up to decrease our carbon footprint…

Sign up to http://www.good-energy.co.uk/ to meet our power needs – 100% carbon free!
Join this group to enable us to recycle our toners more environmentally efficiently: http://www.actionaidrecycling.org.uk/
When disposing of old items we could start to use http://www.freecycle.org/
Perform a full Environmental Impact Assessment on the company to establish our key areas of waste and environmental inefficiency (http://www.carbonfootprint.com/companiescalc.html).
Install a reed bed filtration system to process all of the companies grey water waste back into usable water
Install energy monitors to enable facilities staff to better monitor the usage of energy in the workplace (http://www.reuk.co.uk/Eco-Eye-Energy-Monitor.htm)
Install wind turbines and solar panels on site to supplement grid supplied energy (from our sustainable source of course).
We should create small piles of wood and ponds around the office and site to encourage habitats for key environmental indicators like Toads and Newts.
Encourage the use of remote workers via VPN where possible to minimize the use of cars to and from work.
Start a cycle to work scheme like this one: http://www.cyclescheme.co.uk/ to encourage people to reduce car usage
Allow people to have smaller cars (like say a Lotus Elise) so that emissions are reduced. If this is not acceptable, encourage the use of diesel vehicles and hybrids.
We should start to look into green burial options (http://www.globalideasbank.org/greenburial.html) for employees that expire on the job.
Install compost toilets throughout the premises (making sure to separate fluids and solids!) to enable the grounds to be fertilized by home grown waste!
Instead of pointless pot plants we should have small fruit trees dotted about the office to encourage people to live healthier lifestyles.
Under the new European Carbon Trading scheme we could start to offset our carbon footprint by buying CO2 from small 3^rd world countries that don’t use them!
In much the same way as Canopy Capital (http://www.canopycapital.co.uk/) we could try to leverage the high availability of Rainforest for profit, social enterprise and environmental benefit.
Turf the roof of Innovation House to encourage wild flowers and wildlife habitats
Timed lights in the toilets that turn off after a period to ensure that lights are not left on.
Start to employ the principles of Permaculture in the design and implementation of new company projects. It is a design methodology that helps to develop systems that mimic the structure and interrelationship found in natural ecologies

These are just a few suggestions, if you need any more I am sure that I can find many more. I also know that were I to win the mountain bike, it would get well used by my very environmentally sound girlfriend.

Regards,

Your Environmentally Suped-Up Technical Programmer

A new dawn of frugality

2008-10-15T19:35:00.004+01:00

The routine is pretty apparent these days, we get home, chop some wood, make a fire, cook some grub, listen to the radio a bit and then go to sleep. The rain is pretty insistent this evening so the dog only got a casual amble around the field and TLB is out so I have the place to myself.

This was the month in which all was supposed to be well financially but things are turning out to be a bit of a struggle, after bills and £800 of debt paid off, I am grasping at the overdraft and feeling a bit miserable about it. I think I may be in some way incapable of being sensible with money, I certainly have no capacity to budget which means pretty much all financial transactions are a guess coloured by varying degrees of fear.

It seems to be very hard to live in the modern world but I can't blame that for my situation. Tax bothers me. 20% income tax rising to 40% over £35k, 17.5% vat, council tax, car tax and of course the fun taxes, petrol, fags, booze and gambling. Oh yeah, inheritance, insurance, air passenger, capital gains and farting taxes not forgetting national insurance and stamp duty. I don't earn a bean until after lunch.

Tax is not my biggest foe though, it is at least consistent. My worst enemy is temptation, luring me into dinner based traps or snaring me with convenience. I couldn't be further from my former house based lifestyle but still the expense of the modern world keeps abreast of my ability to out earn it. I think next month will be different, obtaining jumper and waterproof shoes and the like was vital this month and my only bills will be tent based next month.

I am resolved to sustain a degree of frugality hitherto unknown throughout November. No shopping or dinners of celebration, just head down to sort out some bulk wood and dog food acquisition. I hereby vow to keep the mpg on the car above 35 and will eat only in the subsidised canteen at work during the days. It will be hard not to buy jelly beans from the forecourt but I will try. Redemption will be mine.

IT and massacres

2008-10-13T20:27:00.004+01:00

Firstly, thank you to Anonymous who pointed me in the direction of practical advice on how to resurrect the lantern which is now glowing away in the background. Sharply turning it off and then back on again seemed to fix it, presumably unblocking some internal nozzle or other. I am quite ashamed that as an IT person, I didn't consider turning it off and then on again, no matter how sharply.

So, we have moved the tent again, leaving a second huge but not quite as smelly, circle of dying grass. I made a small effort to persuade the farmer that if I was to leave the tent in one place for the duration of our stay, it would mean that their field would suffer only one pock mark rather than a series of them, depicting the antics of some alien craft in it's initial forays into drunken crop circling. I reckon that when the weather gets grim he will be much happier to let us stay in one spot as the grass will recover more slowly. We shall see.

One factor that has provided quite some considerable mirth has been the varying inclines that we have camped on. Our first spot was almost perfectly level, the second resulted in us sleeping with our feet a couple of inches above our heads and on our third location we are finding it rather hard to stay in bed at all. The stove door swings open where before it swung shut and it feels like a small climb to get further into the tent.

The reason we chose this orientation was to ensure that the flue from the stove was in the lee of the tent, hoping to avoid the belches of smoke that the wind can be forced inwards. It seems to have worked, and should we fear suffocation then we can just let go of whatever we are clinging onto and fall to safety through the door and into the valley below. Okay, it is not really that bad but the difference is noticeable. We are quickly amassing a set of criteria that need to be met to qualify as camp site material.

Sleeping out in a tent every night gives you a much better idea of what happens at night out in the darkness of the countryside down the singletrack lanes. Every night we are sung to by owls, most of whom are not very tuneful. If the cows are unhappy we can endure an evening of loud dissatisfied mooing but this is far from the most disconcerting of our evening serenades.

The thing that disturbs us most is the constant pitched battle between the various competing species of the valley. We have had a great variety of different death throes echoing through the camp. It is impossible to identify which animals make which noises but I reckon between cats, foxes, badgers and rabbits, it is a massacre out there. I think they all retire for a bit of a time out at about bed time, or maybe I am just asleep when the action really hots up.

Everything breaks.

2008-10-11T12:16:00.000+01:00

The lantern has packed up, I get the impression most camping gear is designed to be used once and then put at the back of a garage. The fuel supply seems to have stopped flowing so I need to take it apart and find out what is going on within. I suspect a blockage of some sort and now I have daylight hours, I can set about fixing it.

We have survived using candles for the week and it is quite amazing how much light you can get out of half a dozen strategically placed tea lights. Moreso when the dog catches fire. It has all been rather romantic really, candlelit dinners and open fires every night, radio 4 bumbling away in the background keeping us posted on the continuing financial catastrophe.

I have been considering the impact of the forthcoming reccesion on TLB and I and trying to decipher what the hell is going on. The way I see it the financial system is like a horribly complicated engine. Money is like the oil that keeps all of the parts working together and a healthy flow of it is required to ensure that I can work well with other economic entities in this great big wheezing, farting machine. I get paid, I buy chocolate with it but I never actually see it, it is like this intangible thing that at best, I can get tokens that represent it.

Some people have worked out how to syphon the oil out of the system into reserves that are of no use to anyone in the real economy as we now have to call it. Eventually too much gets removed and the engine seizes up. The big question for me is can we repair the engine or will we need a whole spangling new one? Personally, I like new cars. Even if the old one isn't fully broken I quite like an upgrade. I think I will avoid the Icelandic range though.

Loo update

2008-10-06T20:07:00.001+01:00

The toilet tent is on it's knees, unusable and decrepit, kept upright only by tenacious guy ropes clinging on stubbornly in the face of certain futility. Part of me wants to burn it down, it is completely unfit for purpose and an eyesore but I have resolved to keep it until I get around to getting a boat for it to propel, for it's true destiny must surely be to serve as a sail. Another victory for the Ministry of Silly Design.

I now have to think about my options in this department, should I replace it with something equally likely to fail or some other option. TLB and I did even consider placing the porta loo bit of it inside the main tent but I can see that it would be a nightmare of both privacy and hygiene. I am on the hunt for an awning of some sort under which I can place a somewhat sturdier protector of dignity. In the meantime TLB may get a chance to get to know the she-pee I got her at a festival some months ago. Okay, okay, I shall start looking right now.

Wood

2008-10-06T19:23:00.004+01:00

The quest to find the ultimate combination of materials to incinerate to ensure a constant supply of heat continues apace. The logs sold by the farmers here are largely unseasoned pine which I have learned is very prone to the creation of creosote in the flue. This can build up and will eventually catch fire with undoubtedly disastrous effects. Being the lazy man that I am I have resolved to avoid the pine in a bid to avoid both fires and regular, grizzly chimney cleaning antics.

Since this discovery I have been working my way through the various types of British countryside, setting fire with glee to as many different varieties of the Earth's lungs as possible. When we want to cook we have to get it up to temperature as quickly as possible and compressed sawdust fire blocks are perfect, but they are expensive at about £7 for 10kg. They are easy to light and form very hot embers but they do burn a bit quickly for use all the time.

Having cooked we tend to move onto sturdier logs that burn less ferociously but last a lot longer. Oak logs are very good but I cannot imagine that they are too sustainable as the trees grow pretty slowly. There are various bags of miscellaneous hardwood logs available in the garages and hardware stores of the world and all seem to be quite long burning but we have to be careful not to buy logs that are too long. A brief experiment proved that it takes a while and a not inconsiderable amount of sawdust to split a log across the grain.

I have found a bulk source of fire bricks but would require space to store them and I do not really think I can do it. I am investigating the cheapest local source and have found out about a local sawmill that makes them and is likely to much cheaper than a forecourt. I shall investigate when I get time. The farm shop over the road sells good sized bags of appropriately cut hardwood at 5 bags for £15 which is excellent value, though we will have to be a bit organised to ensure we do not run out. Our supply lines are assured.

A rainy day in the tent.

2008-10-04T17:22:00.003+01:00

Today has turned out to be quite interesting so far. We awoke to find the first frost of the Autumn had landed which was quite reassuring as we were very cosy in bed despite the freeze. The group of Duke of Edinburgh goblins that arrived last night were leaving gratifyingly early, grumbling and regretting staying up, screaming and scampering about the place until 3 this morning. I am kind of looking forward to the winter in that we will have far fewer neighbours each weekend.

We then resolved to go to a trendy camping shop and equip ourselves with fleeces, waterproof shoes, head torches and extremely sturdy tent pegs. Why would we purchase hardcore tent pegs I hear you ask. Well, the toilet tent decided it was feeling a bit tied down by the whole arrangement and made a bid for freedom, tearing free of its puny anchors and making a dash for the hedge. It is the perfect combination of low footprint and high wind resistance to make it deeply untrustworthy and almost guaranteed to fail.

A small fortune later, TLB and I are newly shod and looking like we are sponsored by North Face. They also had gloves and shoes and hats that I really like but they are all plastered with the flinking logo so I didn't buy them. Maybe I could get them to sponsor me, I might feel like less of a fan boy if they were paying me. Damn these companies and their highly functional logo spattered garb. TLB was almost completely free of any clothing adapted to her new lifestyle and we had to put that to rights.

We got home and while the stove was cold, we decided to clear the flue of the chimney and fit the new flashing, the unmelted one that is. I also spent 10 minutes attatching the guy ropes that hold it solid as it looks like the wind is picking up and may be here to stay. The tent feels very solid in the wind, occasionally there is a small eddy in the vicinity which will force air down the chimney and blow smoke into the tent.

There have been a few problems with the stove, I am not sure if it is my unreasonably high expectations but the quality of the flue has not been as good as I expected. Aside from the melting of the flashing, I am a little bothered by the seeming flimsiness of it, having already seen it glow cherry red once whilst we were cooking. I have been considering a few strips of fire proof blanket to lag the pipe and insulate it from contact points but I am going to have to find out if it would burn us down or not.

It is a learning process and I am sure we can overcome all niggles, the stove is a very good source of heat and I think we would be utterly miserable without it, in fact we are very cosy. Later on today, we have been invited by our benevloent landlords to a night of skittles at the local village hall with BYO booze and a barbecue. We are both a little concerned about being asked where we live. At the moment our location and status is a closely guarded secret, we have various degrees of cover story depending on whom we are speaking to.

Any casual camper can see that we are pretty well bedded in, when asked by them we tend to tell them that we are staying for a couple of weeks whilst I am working locally. As far as the farmers are concerned I am on a three month contract working in Reading and everyone else gets told nothing. I visit the garage around the corner frequently and engage in casual counter chat with the chap who works there. I dread the day that he asks me where I have moved in as I will lie.

The reason for this secrecy is pretty obvious. We have effectively no security and depend on everything we have which means that we cannot afford a break in, or rather an unzipping. There are also a lot of small minded people about who would complain if they knew that we are holed up here semi permanently, and that would almost certainly threaten our ability to stay here. Technically the farmers are breaking the rules by letting us camp here so I am keen to avoid attracting and attention to him or us. Time will tell how easy this is.

In the meantime I am going to save my insights into the best wood to burn and the relative merits of tent pegs for another day as my battery is running out and I have to put on the lamp as it is getting dark.

The [Financial] cost of camping

2008-09-30T09:37:00.002+01:00

Having now been camped out for nearly a month I can start to estimate how much money I am going to be able to save. In terms of the relative cost of living in a tent versus living in a house it is undeniably cheaper. The main comparative costs are rent, heat, the ability to cook and illumination. I say illumination but I am sat here writing this by candlelight with a head torchstrapped to my bonce so I can see the keyboard. This is mainly because TLB is away for the evening and I can't be bothered to refill the lantern, but there has certainly been a drop in the standard of provision of the basic utilities on which I rely.

When living in a house it is easy to just turn on the hob and cook on 4 rings, an oven and a microwave all at the same time. Now I have to get the stove up to heat, it holds a maximum of 2 pans and can heat a few pints of water at the same time. I then have to keep the stove up to heat for the duration of my cooking. The savings are considerable but I would certainly not pay the sums I was before for such a diminished service. It takes about 3 or 4 decent sized logs to keep the stove burning for the evening and I get about 15 logs in a bag. A bag costs roughly a fiver but I am buying from the farmer here or from hardware stores and forecourts. At the weekends we tend to have a good sized fire outside which can easily eat through 2 bags of wood so I reckon all in all we probably spend about £15 per week on wood.

This has been lower this week though as I managed to forage a load of fly tipped wood that had been deposited near my workplace. As I parked up and started loading the boot with the planks that had been abandoned, one of my colleagues drove past and gave me a very peculiar look as if I was some sort of scavenger, which I suppose I am.

£15 per week, or £60 per month, to provide me with both warmth and heat on which to cook is, quite frankly, a bargain compared to the combined gas and electricity bills of about £150 per month. I also get to make fires which is a considerable bonus as I am, like most overgrown children, endlessly hypnotised by a flickering fire.

At the moment we have no form of electricity but it has not really inconvenienced us, we both have laptops with batteries and a very good lantern that more than capably illuminates the tent (when I can be bothered to top it up!). The lantern takes 600ml of fuel and lasts for about four days, running for maybe 3 or 4 hours per day. This will obviously go up as the nights draw in so I can assume that I will need to refill it every couple of days but this will still only set me back about £5 per week or £20 per month.

I no longer pay council tax, a land line telephone or water and sewerage bills which between them account for another £250 extra per month and rent which cost me £750 per month. Added to the electricity and gas that totals roughly £1150 per month, reduced to about £250 per month on bills. Result. This is of course a simplistic analysis as I am spending a bit more on fuel for the car but we are spending less on food as we are cooking more, the cost of dog sitting has not started yet as TLB has been here a great deal of the time whilst looking for work. All in all, I am confident that I can hit my unofficial target of saving a £1000 per month and tomorrow is pay day which will be a huge relief as I have been struggling a bit this month having had to cough up about £1600 at the start of the month on trailers, stoves and the like.

The physical cost of camping is also beginning to show, not in any major way but I have various splinters and burns that I am sure I would not have were I still holed up in a house. anyway, I have rambled enough, I am now going to tend the fire and await TLB's return from the capital where she has been living it up and dining in actual buildings.

The Cost of Camping

2008-09-28T22:10:00.003+01:00

Today has been a mad day and TLB and I are very pleased to see the end of it. Some friends have been to visit which led to predictable festivities last night, helping to ensure that waking up this morning to a chorus of moos less than pleasant. With a stinking head I emerged from the tent to find a sea of chaos, booze bottles, barbecuing equipment, children's toys and fireside detritus. The day proceeded to get more interesting.

We have now been camped for just shy of 3 weeks and in accordance with the wishes of our landlords, we had to move the tent. Once the weekenders had made their regular Sunday exodus from the site we set about moving the tent. With pulsating head we evacuated the contents, dropped the tent, and found that the ground underneath us has started to go bad. I knew from my upbringing in Somerset what silage smells like, having regularly been submerged in a fug of it for days on end. The underside of the tent smelled of silage and the smell has lingered, maliciously, for the duration of our move.

It did occcur once we had felled the tent and were sitting amid our worldly possesions in the middle of a field that we are now homeless. An hour later we were little less homeless having re-pitched the tent but I had considerable fears about the reaction of our farmers to the highly conspicuous 5 metre circle of freshly mulched campsite.

Mrs farmer came trotting over a little while later, and I feared the worst expecting a reappraisal of our agreement. To my utter horror the dog bolted across the field in hot pursuit of one of the various idiot chickens that risk their lives by taunting him. Luckily a playful dog is not as a quick as a hen that is running for it's life and by the time I caught up with him, he knew he was in trouble. I managed to catch him, scold him and then tethered him in the middle of the field. Back to Mrs farmer. She duly informed me that a doggy deposit had appeared in her garden that it was of a scale that assured her that it was not her own flirty bitch. I apologised profusely for the scarred land, the chicken chasing and the poo and she brushed it off like an everyday occurence. Thank god for the forgiving, pragmatic people of the world. Then came the rub.

Mr farmer is currently spending a lot of time in hospital attending to their sick daughter and in the absence of any farmer flavoured manpower I spent the next hour assisting with a pressing chore. The task for which I was required was to seperate her pigs into boys and girls. All of the pigs are siblings and are untampered with which means that they are likely to breed amongst themselves with very undesirable results. TLB was on standby at the switch to the electric fence whilst the two of us stalked through the undergrowth trying to divide the swine.

The pigs are clearly very loving creatures and had formed pairs which they most reluctant to de-couple. I am told that pigs are capable of having a 30 minute orgasm so I can kind of understand why, but nevertheless, the next 40 or so minutes were dedicated to overcoming the will of the amourous hogs. I have never had to rugby tackle a pig before and the things I landed in were less than lovely but we got the job done and it gave me a chance to sweat off my hangover at the same time. On our mark, TLB reactivated the electric fence and I was finally free to clean myself and continue with my persecution of the evil hound.

All in all it has been a long day but I think we have secured ourselves as invaluable farm hands during the hard times that the farm owners are going through. We have been assured that our small silage installation and the mischievious dog are not a problem and can now think about sleeping once again in our field, with a new vista and a few weeks before we have to think about relocating to a different spot. This entry was supposed to be about my new insights into how much it is going to cost to maintain our new lifestyle but I think I will leave the title as it is as it seems somewhat pertinent.

2 weeks later...

2008-09-22T20:30:00.002+01:00

We have now been camped out for two weeks, and it has been a doddle. Life is cheap, I eat much more healthily than I have in ages, visitors seem to be very forthcoming and I get to make fires all the time. I think I even managed to impress TLB with my wood cutting skills.

It turns up that when the chimney is very hot, it can melt through the plastic protector that is supposed to shield the flue from the canvas. There is no major damage yet but it is a bit of a concern. I bet the stove people will be really glad to hear from me again.

It has just started raining and I can hear the rain building up it's tempo on the canvas, the drops getting gradually bigger until we have to turn the radio up. Radio 4 has become like audio wallpaper, constantly reminding us how completely screwed the world is so occasionally we take shelter in Radio 2. It appears that the entire financial system is finally getting it's comeuppance, and the left are back in force. Bush seems to be doing his best to avoid the economy going down on his watch by selling out the public and it wouldn't surprise me if our government do the same. I reckon soon there will be loads of people living in tents.

The dog has fallen madly in love with the farm dog here, a girly little Jack Russell with whom he seems content to chase and flirt with for hours. He has a lot more freedom here than I was expecting which is excellent. There are chickens and turkeys and a variety of other fowl in a couple of pens on on side of the field. There are also a few pigs. Silas's initial reaction was to try and chase things. The chickens got him very soundly scolded but the pig situation seemed to resolve itself. As he crept gradually closer to the pig in it's pen he gained a very valuable lesson about electric fences and ran away whelping. I suspect he won't make that mistake again.

Today is the equinox and I think I now need to start reckoning with the realities of weeknights of exclusive darkness. The lantern I bought is fantastic and should make life a lot easier but chopping wood, making it out of bed and a loads of other things will be constantly challenged by the lack of light. Headtorches all round, including the dog.

Some pictures

2008-09-20T11:11:00.002+01:00

The current installation of the tent for your perusal...

Some stove...

and the flue, reaching for the skies.

Glee

2008-09-18T22:46:00.003+01:00

The stove is finally here. I installed it last night and have gleefully been stoking and fuelling and gazing into it ever since, aside from a brief and very distracting bout of work. Slow cooking is apparently all the rage at the moment which is good for morale as TLB and I both require a little practice getting the thing hot enough to rapidly heat things up, but once we were up to cooking temperature there was no stopping us.

It is just an object, a few bits of metal organised to perform a function but in only 24 hours it already feels like the heart of the tent. It exudes heat and charm in equal measure and with a little practice will smoulder away in perpetuity, providing for our most basic needs. As you can probably tell, I am a bit rapt with the romanticism of it all.

We now have everything we need and more, why anyone would doubt that this is the perfect way to live completely escapes me. I had a guest last night as TLB had gone to see her father and when he arrived I was most gratified to hear him exclaim 'wow, I thought we were going to be roughing it'. The landlords have also been showing a keen interest in our progress, considering us something of a novelty, and were eager to rush over and see the stove in action when they were on their turkey and pig feeding rounds this evening. I also noticed that the latest round of split logs from this evening were cut much smaller than usual and I suspect that this was because they know that the larger logs will not fit in the stove. I think that we may have to cook them dinner.

We have some guests, including my mother, coming to camp out with us on Saturday which should be lovely. Mum has been dying to make some excursions in her new camper van, Bridget, so we will be able to make the most of chairs and tables and the like but I have a feeling we will all gravitate back in the direction of the stove, to bask in it's glow. I am sure that all of this gushing happiness is rather annoying so I promise to find some proper hardships to endure over the coming days.

In the meantime I am going to put a good sized log on the fire, set the stove to a slow burn and crawl into a nice clean, parentally laundered bed. Nunnight.

Waste and Winter

2008-09-16T21:52:00.002+01:00

The floor of the tent is now our kitchen. At the moment all of the cooking is done on a Trangia which is a compact little unit or on the barbecue but it is very easy to cover the entire floor with pans and bags of food and chopping boards and dirty cutlery. It requires a level of organisation that I am hitherto completely unfamiliar with. I have a bin the size of a thimble which can be filled up with the waste from a single meal which has been making me think a lot about waste.

Today I popped into a supermarket on the way home from work and grabbed the things I needed to make a spaghetti bolognaise which resulted in yet another full carrier bag of rubbish to add to the pile whereas the same ingredients bought from the farm shop would be minimal. No plastic trays, no tins, no plastic bags, just nice burnable paper bags. It is only when you have to walk to the camp site bin on a daily basis that I have started to realise how much mess I actually make.

It is quite a novelty to have to dispose of my own personal waste as well, if you know what I mean. The facilities provided by houses are eminently convenient but I am not missing them as much as I thought I might. Bumbling across the field and decanting my weird blue loo mix into the porta-loo is a small price to pay for avoiding a chilly midnight walk across a field to the toilet when caught short. Come the winter I may be slightly less chipper about the whole affair though.

As I languish in this rural idyll my thoughts are turning to winter. TLB reported yesterday that she was frustrated when she dropped her towel whilst taking a shower in the shower block. I am sure she would have been considerably more distraught if it has frozen to the floor on impact and it is these little things that will determine our quality of life. Damp clothes can make for a very miserable morning, especially when you can see your breath.

I have been shrugging off peoples accusations of hardship with flippant remarks about the mildness of the British winter and insisting that it will be a breeze but I have no doubt that I will value these months of gentle practise when the going gets tougher. The nights are already drawing in and within a few weeks it will be dark by the time I return from work. Whilst I can survive in a t-shirt at the moment, I have a feeling we will be purchasing some new jumpers before long in a bid to stave off the inevitable chilliness of the winter. Long live micro-fleece.

On the whole though I do feel very optimistic, there is no reason that we cannot be very cosy in our little home with a little discipline and now that I have paid for (if not received) all of the major items that we will will require, the savings we will be able to make should serve to motivate during the autumnal decline. In the meantime we will make hay while the sun shines, or rather, make barbecues whilst the sun sets.

Stove Update

2008-09-16T09:23:00.003+01:00

I have just had a call from the stove people and they have apologised and informed me it will definitely be here tomorrow. I live in hope.

1 week on...

2008-09-15T21:26:00.003+01:00

Tonight will be the seventh night that we have spent under canvas away from the confines of the back garden and life is very peaceful and enjoyable. The weather has been pretty good to us though the weekend was a bit of an eye opener. The camp site is an ocean of calm during the week, a single other tent sits at the far side of the camp site and it's occupants seem quite content to exchange the odd wave and enjoy the surroundings in private peace.

The weekend however was quite different. I got home on Friday to find about 30 other tents had cropped up like mushrooms across the field. A gaggle of 15 year old girls were celebrating a birthday and were kind enough to serenade us late into the night with a medley of Abba and Spice Girls classics. On the upside there was an endless supply of children to play with the dog and we got home from some shopping on Sunday to find that our former neighbours had left us a couple of bottles of wine that they had not used to fuel their guitar playing antics the night before.

We have found a fantastic farm shop just up the road which has been keeping us in chutney, cheese and vegetables, an organic butcher and a pet shop. Our eggs are coming from the farm we are staying on and we can get firewood, charcoal and most of the other things locally. We even have a blacksmith up the road from whom I am going to get a decent fire bowl and some other bits and bobs.

My wood burning stove has still not turned up and I am getting increasingly aggravated about it. Despite calling them a couple of times a day they still have not provided me with any sort of commitment as to when it will arrive. I think they have failed to appreciate that I am actually living in my tent and I do know that each one is hand made by some chap up north so I shall allow them a couple of days to redeem themselves.

Other than that gripe though, life in the tent is turning out to be very good indeed and is providing a nice gentle run in before the weather starts to cool and Autumn kicks in proper. Then I am sure I will provide much more interesting reading!

Day 1

2008-09-11T09:17:00.001+01:00

The hard part is over and the tent is in its new home. TLB and I are now living in a glorious valley. We have just had a lovely barbecue over an open fire whilst watching the sun set and are now settling down to relax and enjoy our new surroundings and scribe an update for the blog to post in the morning when I get to work.

The move from the house was very stressful indeed and I have more vengeance to visit upon my former letting agents after they misinformed me regarding the checkout process and then refused to honour their promise. I suppose it was my fault for naively not recording every phone interaction with the slippery swine’s. Ah well, we are now free of the evils of estate agencies and I am very happy to leave them all behind for the time being.

My new landlords, a very friendly farmer and his wife seem to be very relaxed and welcoming and I have already managed to score some points by offering to fix his computer. They also volunteered information about a young chap who they let live on the farm for some months when he was kicked out by his mum, which bodes very well. Not for him of course but just in terms of the potential longevity of our stay.

It is simply idyllic here and we feel very comfortable and safe. We shared a moment of utter joy over dinner, bathing in the aftermath of a very stressful few days and knowing that a somewhat simpler life starts here. Wine always tastes better by the flickering light of an open fire.

The lantern I bought is superb and provides more than enough light and quite a bit of warmth which will keep us going till the wood burner turns up. The lantern runs on unleaded and has these weird little bags that burn fuel which is sprayed into them. All in all, an invaluable purchase. TLB and I are both very excited about the arrival of the wood burner and are fully expecting to have the best weekend in years, pottering about, exploring and cooking on open fires. Let the good times roll.

Penultimate night

2008-09-09T02:59:00.002+01:00

I have a trailer.

I still do not have a wood burner.

I will not have internet for a few days whilst my account is activated.

Have to sleep now after days of carting things about.

See you in a few days.

X

Scarily close to C-Day

2008-09-07T20:09:00.003+01:00

The party was a roaring success and the hardcore were bedding down as the sun came up. It was most amusing to note that at one point there were 20 people and a dog in the tent and not a soul in the house. The beloved Haley Glennie-Smith serenaded the party with her soulful tones and eventually most of the guests slept in their own tents which were pitched throughout the house. I also found willing helpers for the mammoth task of sorting out the garden and a lot of the house, thank you so much to those who helped, I could not have done it without you.

The house is de-partied and the tent is down and packed up in a large pile in the living room. It is only now that all of the bits are in one place that I can see how big a pile of stuff I have accrued to live on. The idea of this whole adventure was to downscale and downscale I have but there is still a huge pile of stuff. There is a tent and a toilet and dozen or so camp friendly bags filled with chairs and spare tents and air beds and the like. A few tuff-crates and a wicker pig top off the pile nicely making me very pleased that I now have a tow bar, all I need now is a trailer. TLB's car will mean we can make it there on day one without a trailer but it will be a squeeze and a trailer is very high on the list of things to obtain.

I have tomorrow evening to clean the kitchen and then a van on Tuesday to deliver the last of things to people and to the storage depot. I am finding as I dig though things there are various things that I cannot decide what to do. I really like my tennis racket, but do I really want to cart it about when realistically I only play tennis half a dozen times a year? Well, we are less than 48 hours from C-day and all of these questions will be answered very soon.

I am also pretty concerned that my wood burning stove has not turned up yet, hopefully it will come tomorrow or Tuesday or I am going to be a bit stuffed. I have an option to borrow a gas heater for a few days so I shall survive but you can't cook on it, and I can only survive on a trangia for so long before my taste buds try some sort of industrial action around the use of methylated spirits in the workplace. There will be trying times ahead but if I can get over the hump of the next week then I am in the clear and can just get on with the business of living. Happy days.

Fire

2008-09-04T23:07:00.003+01:00

At some point somewhere, once in the distant prehistoric past a man was the very first man to actually make fire. Sure, the other cavemen had witnessed forest fires, lightning and maybe even volcanoes but at some point one clever soul found a way to create fire, from scratch, with his hands and some bits of tree. Imagine the satisfaction, I doubt it was some great scientific endeavour as we have these days, standing on the shoulders of giants, rather it was a moment of inspiration. An epiphany that results in the arrival of my wood burning stove tomorrow.

Fire is already starting to become part of the routine, putting on 6 candles when I get in, 5 for the tables and 1 for the lantern. Soon there will be a fire to consider on a pretty much full time basis. I have been recommended an excellent lantern which I have ordered but on the heat and cooking front fire will remain supreme. Come the revolution, wood burning stoves will be huge. It is possible I now know to light a fire on a quarter of a firelighter. Soon I am going to promote myself to kindling and then who knows, I may be rubbing sticks together before long, although the convenience of lighters is pretty undeniable.

The house is not yet cleared and people start arriving tomorrow, so the foolish early comers will be put to work clearing the house whilst I dash about in a van. Need sleep now, huge couple of days ahead.

Toilet Humour

2008-09-02T21:08:00.002+01:00

Today I got a message from TLB informing me that my new toilet has turned up. This is the first toilet that I have ever actually owned in my life, finally I will be able to relieve myself into a receptacle of my very own. Finally, that most grounding of moments when I finally own the means to dispose of my own waste is upon me. I have been elevated from the prolootariat to the bourgeWC and I have been saving up for it all day.

First I erected the toilet tent in the living room, it came with a free set of shelves on which I placed my expectant toilet roll. I spent quite a frustrating few moments working out how to detach the top tank (including bowl and 2 piece seat) of the toilet from the lower tank (which holds the waste). I then fill up the lower section with the right mix of chemicals and water, fill up the top section with clean water, plonk it down in the toilet tent, which is erected amongst the mayhem of the living room, reverse in and admire the fittings.

The interior of the toilet tent has a set of very utterly useless shelves, an attachment on the ceiling for a shower head, a very well ventilated roof and a toilet roll holder. They were even nice enough to include a vacant/busy sign. The actual loo itself is about 2cm lower than a normal toilet but that is barely perceptible and the sturdy moulded plastic seat provides ample width without making you feel scarily in danger of plunging down onto your latest creations below.

I can imagine that in a good gale one may feel slightly vulnerable in the dangerously high centre of gravity environment that is a cubicle tent. The prospect of the tent disappearing randomly during an afternoon trip to the throne to find oneself compromised by a gust is not a good one. A decision has been made to find industrial strength tent pegs to nail it down with.

I am counting the minutes until the wood burning stove gets here on Friday and I have a very practical friend on standby to ensure that I measure twice and cut once in my glee. Then I am set to leave the confines of the garden and venture out into the world.

Slings and Arrows

2008-09-01T20:43:00.004+01:00

On Saturday during what seemed like an endless torrent of rain, there was a lone thunderclap in the distance. It then occurred that I am now living in a tent whose main structural feature is a 3.5m metal pole. A decision has been made to try and find a nice wooden pole.

On Saturday I had a van booked and an appointment with Greg at the storage centre to deposit a few items I wish to keep. When I called the storage centre I couldn't help but laugh when they told me about the procedure to grant me a locking mechanism. I queried, suggesting "what, I have to buy a padlock?", and he replied in exactly the style of the guy in the Big Lebowski who is trying to flog an urn, "All of our our locking mechanisms are very reasonably priced."

8:45 Saturday and the phone goes off, I stagger around the tent looking for the phone to be greeted by the van company duly informing me that the largest van that they have is the size of a ford fiesta, despite me having pre-booked a long wheelbase transit sized job. Rubbish. I ask when they will have a bigger one and he tells me that there should be one coming in around 11:30. So I sit and I wait and when I call at 12:00 no one answers till the time when they close at 13:00. I bet someone died in it and he couldn't be bothered to clean it. I then call up Greg and tell him that I am not going to be coming to see him today because some work shy swine had denied me transport and he now thinks I am madder than he did before.

This Saturday the house is scheduled to be the venue for quite a good knees up at which many will erect tents through the house and stay up till morning. This may prove slightly awkward in light of the amount of mayhem in the living room. The evil car (which broke down the other day) should be equipped with a tow bar on Thursday, which means that if I can sort out a trailer on Friday then I will be able to move stuff Saturday morning. If not then back to the van hire companies, but certainly not bastard Europcar.

They have royally stitched me up with their stupid antics and I intend to seek revenge of some sort when my priorities settle down. Meanwhile I have to get on with the very serious and time consuming business of getting rid of all my stuff and throwing a wild party.

To summarise...

2008-08-29T11:53:00.004+01:00

I am now 10 days from moving out of my house. I have bought a tent, I have filled it with fabric based furnishings and I have learned a great deal about starting fires, sewing and kilowatt hours. My wood burning stove is due to arrive shortly, the camp site has confirmed my booking and the dog is now tent trained.

It may seem a trifle odd to some that a successful 30 year old man would want to move from his comfy accommodation with its pocket sprung bed, power shower and huge high definition television to go and live in a tent. You wouldn't be the first person to call me a fool for wanting to endure the British winter under canvas, but I have my reasons and most people have been quite easy to persuade of the merits of the idea.

The foremost of these merits is that I want to rid myself of all debt. I owe about ten thousand pounds and I feel it like a stone around my neck. I wear the yoke of idiotic consumerism and it is dragging me down. I shall not go into the where's and why for's of how I came by this rotten burden, suffice to say it is the result of living fractionally beyond my means for years. I know that I could sit tight for a couple more years and keep making the repayments but I am an impatient man, which is probably why I am in the situation I am in. By moving into a tent, I can accelerate the process of redemption and maybe even save some money to buy a house.

Debt is not my only reason though, the whole idea has other incidental benefits. One major part of moving into a tent has been disposing of my many useless possessions. I have been able to free myself of a huge amount of actual and emotional baggage just by letting it all go. Goodbye toaster. I promise to miss you occasionally. By reducing the amount of space I have and having to cart all my garb about often, it will be hard to accumulate dross without having to sacrifice something useful.

My carbon footprint will turn from a stomp to a tiptoe overnight and I will be free to travel where I choose. I will be able to take in a variety of vistas from a front door that I have permission to decorate and if I don't like the neighbours I can just move. The freedom, the savings and the communing with nature that will inevitably accompany this adventure will make even the lowest, dampest times a bit more bearable.

Hopefully though, with a little ingenuity and resourcefulness this whole caper can be a comfortable one. The tent is now very cosy and will soon offer most of the creature comforts I am used to, I will get wetter more often but I spend half my time shambling about in the drizzle with the dog anyway. I reckon I can be debt free by spring and the summer will be a joy of light evenings and barbecues. In the land of real people I am but a man living in a tent but when festival season comes, I will be king.

Update

2008-08-26T12:59:00.008+01:00

I thought I would post a few pictures just to give you an idea of where I am now living (in the garden).

The sleeping area, very comfy now, you can also see the edge of my wardrobe, my wash bag and various other odds and sods. The fan heater is temporary until my wood burner turns up later this week.

This is the seating area, I have been sawing the legs off of all my tables to provide suitable flat surfaces for the storing of G&T and candles.

This is the arse end of the dog, set against a backdrop of dappled leaves on canvas and the boudoir.

I will give a full guided tour when the interior is finalised which should be sometime this week, about which I am very excited.

I have now crammed the entire house worth of stuff into the living room of the house so that I can start cleaning all of the rooms, which effectively renders the house unusable, so I am now pretty much permanently installed in the garden.

I will be sure to furnish you all with more information and pictures as it comes, it is now 2 weeks to the day until I will be moving to my new location and I am very excited.

Mum and Politics

2008-08-23T22:55:00.000+01:00

I was called by my Mother a couple of days ago and she had clearly been dedicating some time and thought to my current antics. She was kind enough to share with me a couple of her insights and to my enormous surprise she suggested that it was actually a very sensible idea to be moving into my tent at the start of the winter. Somewhat puzzled, I asked her why?

She pointed out that for the first few months of my camping exploits I would be enchanted by the whole adventure and that the novelty of it may go a great distance towards making the discomfort of winter more bearable. By the time the winter starts to subside I will probably be pretty bored of getting home to a damp tent in the dark and the spring will be just around the corner.

I had not considered this so far but was happy to accept mums accusation of wisdom whilst pretending that this had been an integral part of my scheme from the outset. The other nugget of insight that she had to offer was that my blog has been becoming a bit ranty. I read back through the last few posts and realised she was quite correct but I am not so sure this is a bad thing.

I have spent the last few days in Zurich on business and have discovered that I am possibly the worst imaginable ambassador for our country. I spent a very pleasant evening in the company of one of the members of the naturalisation committee for the country who was very happy to indulge my interest in his country's government and people.

From the moment I set foot on Swiss soil I realised that they are streets ahead of us. They have electric trams that hurtle about the city and whilst the abundance of electric cables overhead and the noise are not the most discreet they are powered by the nations considerable Hydroelectric installations. Also admirable is the way that throughout the day they sell their hydroelectric power to their neighbours at peak prices and then during the night they buy power from the very same people and use it pump water back to the tops of their reservoirs, providing them with enough juice to be able to unleash the flood gates come morning and start selling it back. Now that I thought was cunning.

I also asked if the Swiss economy was prey to the dangers of the Global credit crunch and the response I got was very interesting. It seems that only about 30% of the Swiss actually own their homes, housing associations are king. For those that do own their homes, the vast majority are very committed to using them as actual homes, as tax is paid on housing at the point of sale and not the point of purchase. The longer you have owned your home, the less tax you pay on it, which makes speculating on the property market a far harder prospect. This both increases social mobility as less people buy homes but also serves to resist the temptation to commoditise the housing market.

Here in the UK most noteworthy manufacturing has dwindled to the production of call centre staff and home grown marijuana and we have become increasingly dependent on our housing market to provide the primary economic activity of the country. It wouldn't surprise me at all if we were all compelled by new legislation to play musical houses with our friends in order to keep up the momentum of our insane property market but the Swiss seem to have it pretty well under control.

Oh, and the swiss are largely governed by referendum. Shuh, like that is possible. Actually, it is. An old saying goes, Governments do not gain power by taking our freedoms but by assuming our responsibilities and all of the Swiss that I talked to in my very limited visit seemed aware of their country and their responsibilities. As one chap said to me, "we have very little violence here, but then everyone knows that everyone else has a gun at home."

They pay less tax but have greater social responsibility, they have cleaner streets, less obesity, smokers, binge drinkers... I could go on and on. But that may upset my rantaphobic mother. So I won't. Suffice to say, I am going to be buying a Teach-Yourself-German CD and put it in the car, just in case.

An open letter to the Residents Association

2008-08-20T18:48:00.004+01:00

Dear Residents Association,

A couple of months ago I got a knock on the door from a distressed woman asking me if I had anything to do with a letter that she was brandishing. It contained a legal threat from your good selves regarding her daughter. The lady in question was from the next road along from our little haven and was most upset that her daughter was being banned from playing on our green.

It stated that she was a menace to the area, that she was putting cars at risk with her improvised go carts, that as the child of people who do not live in the road, they were not insured in the event that she managed to injure herself and that local residents were intimidated by her presence. This 12 year old girl represented a sufficient threat to the neighbourhood that legal advice had been sought and the letter in front of me was the culmination of these consultations.

The upshot of this is that the girl is no longer allowed to play with her friends who live on our precious avenue, her family feel alienated from the community because a small clique of self appointed representatives have chosen to mount a massively disproportionate campaign to achieve their own small minded ends. Frankly, I could not be more ashamed to count myself among the people who live on this road.

I personally apologised to the tearful lady on my doorstep and assured her that I had no objection to her daughter playing on the green outside my house. It brings me considerable pleasure to see children playing outside, reminding of those carefree days when my greatest concern was whether or not I would be allowed to play after dinner.

In the time that I have lived here I have witnessed heated debates erupt outside my house between members of the RA and parents whose children were playing on the wrong part of the green. I have seen police style cordons put in place to ensure that children do not play on parts of the green that are being reseeded, assuring that the birds eating the seeds remain undisturbed. I have received minutes from meetings to which I have never been invited because I merely rent a house here and am thus not considered to be a valuable enough member of the community.

The horrible hypocrisy of the matter is that I suspect that the complaining members of the residents association are the very same type of Daily Mail reading authoritarian who routinely berate the council for not providing enough facilities for children. Instead of taking this as a chance to effect positive change for the local kids, helping to resolve your differences with this family through discussion and tolerance, you deferred your responsibility to act as a community to the authorities, hiding behind the law to ensure your petty agenda is met.

I am leaving this road shortly and will remember it as a road full of very kind families whose desires are in no way reflected by the group of small minded, fearful middle Englanders that have appointed themselves to represent them. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Yours Sincerely

etc etc

Tow Bar Envy

2008-08-18T19:55:00.006+01:00

One of the challenges of this whole caper is going to be transporting my stuff about when I want to relocate so I have been looking into trailers, not literally you understand, people may take offence at me ogling their stuff.

Very shortly after I started considering what sort of trailer to get I began to notice them everywhere. I put this down to the fact that I was now looking for them and that they have been in abundance all along. I approached the fleet manager of the company about getting a tow bar fitted to the car and he said it was fine. He also said that mine was the fourth request he has had this month for tow bars. To my mind either these people are so inspired by the beautiful simplicity of my plan that they are following suit with their own nomadic lifestyle ideas or (much less likely) more people are starting to invest in their own ability to holiday in England and are shunning the usual summer migration to sunnier climes for a week of grockling.

I called Lexus to find out about getting the tow bar affixed to the car and they said it was a swift procedure and for the utterly insane sum of £860 I would be fully kitted out. Once I had picked myself up from the floor and dusted myself off I politely declined before reminding them what a bunch of robbing pirates they are and hanging up. An alternative plan is clearly required. The car has to be returned to the lease company in the same shape it was delivered which means no tow bar. A contact of the fleet manager gave me a quote for about £400 but this would require him to cut through the bumper. This would solve the problem in the short term but would probably require me to part exchange my soul with Lexus for a new bumper in a year or two which is a price I am very reluctant to pay. So back to the drawing board.

I called up a few companies who informed me that there are kits which can be installed without having to perforate the platinum posterior of the car but they are more expensive. Things were not looking too jolly when I was then approached by the fleet manager who had been doing a little homework on the matter and had found a kit that would effectively cover the hole in the bumper and it would cost about £30. He did insist that he wouldn't sort it out if I kept kissing him so I resumed my work, happy in the knowledge that lexus would not be getting any of my money and a tow bar will be mine within a matter of weeks. Next stop, Trailerworld...

Getting our ducks in a row

2008-08-17T14:29:00.005+01:00

In a bid to talk about something other than my tent, I have been waffling with TLB about the merits or otherwise of management speak. A couple of days ago I overheard some suited monkey in a pub announce announce to his fellow primates that they needed to 'touch base regarding the leveraging of our new product'. I think what he was trying to say was that he and his colleagues should have a meeting about marketing but I cannot be sure.

Anyone who works in an office will have been subjected to similarly inane drivel and for some reason most people seem to object to the profusion of meaningless waffle within managerial circles. I personally think it is a good thing and wholeheartedly encourage anyone who wishes to adopt this bizarre vernacular to do so.

Nearly all professions have their own vocabulary. In the IT industry I am particularly exposed to the extremes of highly specialised language, entire conversations can be conducted in acronyms and industry relevant terms that to the outsider can sound like gobbledegook. I heard myself say the other day that we need to 'UAT the API of the CMS'. I am not going to even try to explain, suffice to say, some people out there will understand and I would not deign to bore those of you who don't. It is not just specific to IT though, all professions have their own acronyms, abbreviations and specialised lexicon. A Surrey flange may sound like something you could find staggering the streets of Guildford in a miniskirt but a plumber would know otherwise.

The problem with management is that when it comes down to it there are only so many ways you can talk about people and tasks. In order to avoid sounding boring one must talk instead of peopleware and meta priorities. There seems to be an overwhelmingly positive correlation between the lack of actual skills at a managers disposal and the amount of obfuscation required to distract everyone from the fact. It is for this reason that I believe management speak is a good thing, for it allows us to spot the frauds. In a room full of technical people, you can have absolute confidence in the fact that the person who is talking about strategic content and blue sky thinking is the one whose thinking should be completely disregarded.

I often like to counter with some unintelligible nonsense myself, like announcing that our creative soufflé is collapsing and that we should stop opening the oven, not solely to ridicule the management apes but also to ensure that we are all singing from the same hymn sheet.

Everything must go

2008-08-13T18:45:00.003+01:00

This morning I put out an email to all staff detailing the things that I wish to sell. The response was pretty immense and I spent a large amout of the morning fielding questions and apologising to the management for abusing their email system. I have managed to rid myself of my TV, the Playstation, a large coffee table, 1 sofa, 1 comfy chair and a pair of very dangerous stilts. There are a few other things which people have shown interest in and most have agreed to collect the bulkier items. There are still bookshelves, 2 beds , a chest of drawers and various other detritus to sift through.

My uncle was kind enough to send me a list of things which he feared I have forgotten about so to allay the fears of those of you who think I may going into this whole endeavor woefully unprepared I have a list of things that I intend to purchase in advance of my departure. These include:

a wood burning stove
a couple of sealed plastic boxes for food storage.
some Tupperware
a portable barbecue
1 low folding table
a 10 litre collapsible water container
2 camping saucepans and a frying pan
a good thick mattress topper
2 large cushions
a pair of sheepskins
a pair of large fleece throws
2 packs of 5 plastic floor tiles for door entrance and stepping stones to the toilet
a Coleman portable toilet
enviro-chemicals for the aforementioned receptacle
a toilet tent
1 big rechargeable caravan battery
2 lanterns (not decided on LED or oil yet)
a tow bar for my car
a trailer and probably some bungees.

Of these items the trailer/tow bar and the wood burning stove will be the expensive ones but I can easily cover those costs with the proceeds of the items I have sold today. I will also get a months wages with no rent to pay and the deposit from the house so I should not struggle when it comes to getting set up. There are now only 28 days to go and it is all getting quite exciting.

Result

2008-08-09T18:44:00.005+01:00

This morning in the wind and the rain TLB and I set off to have a look at some local camp-sites, a reconnaissance mission designed to help me gauge the likelihood of finding somewhere nice to live in my tent. It took us about half an hour to find the first one tucked away down a tiny road. The wending stream cut through a verdant valley and a packhorse bridge separates the 2 camping fields that are on the site.

For a fiver a day the dog and I can sleep on their land and when asked if I could extend my tenure with them after their 28 day limit, the lovely lady said that all I would have to do is leave for a day and then I could come back. Result. Joy. My main fear was allayed on the first site we went to, they have farm foul, rustic cottages and 2 different camp-sites on their land which appears to be massive and the lady I spoke to seemed very nice to boot. Happy days.

The second site we visited was somewhat less idyllic. On arrival it became painfully obvious that it was in fact a trailer park with a small field next to it for campers. Not just a touring park but an actual trailer park, with static caravans, dirty children and incredibly white plastic picket fences. We didn't even get out of the car. Mercifully it wasn't the first place we visited or my spirits may have taken a downturn.

The third place we visited was the pub and the second camp-site was quickly forgotten. This beautiful little discovery in the valley means that my rent and bills are about to drop from about £1300 per month to £150 which is fantastic. The extra fuel to get to work will add a few quid to my monthly budget but that is an acceptable loss. At that price it will be hard to leave though I am sure at some point I will feel compelled to go elsewhere, after all, that is beauty of living in a tent.

Home sweet home.

2008-08-08T17:16:00.001+01:00

and from the inside...

Damp

2008-08-08T10:40:00.002+01:00

TLB and I spent a third night sleeping in the garden last night and much to my horror, when I woke up I was slightly damp. As we chatted and prepared food in the tent yesterday evening, the rain started lashing down upon my new home for the very first time. It held up well and did not leak, which I was informed it may well do during the first downpour. The theory goes that the tent will shrink the first time it gets wet which will seal any slight imperfections in the canvas and the seams and afer that, it should be splendidly weatherproof. I am hoping so.

I think one mistake we made was closing all of the windows before actually hitting the sack, this meant that there was no where for any condensation to go and it lingered in the air. I am also not yet equipped with a wood burner so there was no heat source to deter the damp and it was this combination of factors which gave me my first insights into the potential for misery that lies ahead. I am not discouraged though, people have lived comfortably in tents for generations and I am sure that with a little experience and cunning I can assure my comfort and moisturelessness.

Having now had a few days of living in the garden I am enthused. The circular space is very 'soothing to the soul' as TLB put it and the thick Afghan rugs on the floor make it very comfortable to lounge about. I have now robbed cushions from the sofa, dismembered a variety of tables to make them a more suitable height for life in a tent, reappropriated the speakers from my computer and a small bin as I was starting to need somewhere to put waste.

Last nights dinner of vegetable and Haloumi skewers marinaded in our own home made peanut butter and sweet chilli satay sauce was eaten in the style of a Roman banquet with my poet friend, TLB and I sprawled decadently across the floor, picking and guzzling as we saw fit. I could definitely get used to it which is rather good as it looks like I am going to have to.

mmmm, lovely tents

2008-08-04T20:23:00.006+01:00

I have been at the Big Chill this weekend having a generally splendid time. While I was there I came across the the good people from www.belltent.co.uk who were full of practical advice and had loads of display models for me to check out. I managed to bore the pants from my various friends with my enthusiasm for the canvas creations and by sporadically dragging them in to sit in one of the various different models of tent.

I have ordered a 5 metre* tent with a fixed heavy duty groundsheet, just like the one you can see here. The extra metre in diameter above that of the 4 metre tent is very noticable with a huge increase in headroom and floor space. As my only living space I know that I will come to appreciate the extra space. The fixed groundsheet should protect me from all but the most severe flooding and is thick enough to take quite a lot of abuse.

It was well ventilated with 4 large semicircular flaps that can be unzipped to reveal a mosquito netted windows about a foot from the floor. They seem to work very well, it was a very hot day and it was perfectly comfortable inside. The whole tent stands 3.5 metres high which is a pretty damn big space, I may get my geometry out at some point and calculate the internal volume of the shape when I am suitably bored.

He also had a couple of stoves which I have become unreasonably excited about but I will get some pictures and do a post in due course. Seeing the tents in the flesh has really enthused me and I can see that with a bit of cunning and discipline I will be able to live very happily in one. This weekend I intend to go on recon missions to a few campsites and make some casual enquiries under the cover story of a contract worker coming to the are for a few months and see how I get on, I may even take my new tent if it arrives before the weekend.

* Metres are best. Anyone who insists on clinging to the arcane witchcraft that is the imperial system should be denied computers and given pencils. How many yards are there in a mile? 1760. What on earth does that number have to do with anything? How many yards in 13 miles? Eh? Eh? It is a system so arbritrary that 16 ounces make 1 pound, 14 pounds make a stone, 2240 stones make a ton and you have to start doing fractions if you want to measure anything smaller than a yappy dog. We have ten fingers and all of our day to day mathematics are decimal so please, government signage people, quoters of fuel efficiency stats, watchers of weight, just let it go. I know that 202kg is a bigger number than 32stone but it doesn't make a difference to the size of your ass. Really, it's true, I promise. Come with us, join the advanced computer using people of the 21st century and gaze upon our transparent matrices of numbers, all perfectly lined up with flashy lights whizzing along them and the elegant, logical nomenclature. Welcome to the future luddites.

Scale

2008-07-29T14:25:00.004+01:00

Throughout my life I have always tried to have attainable goals. There is no point setting yourself extraordinary tasks that you are unlikely to complete and I am not much one for setting myself up for a fall. When I think about it, it seems the only sensible path through life. Any ambitions I have had have been tempered by what I thought was possible and achievable.

When I formulated my tent plan I realised it was pretty ambitious, there will be considerable hardships along the way but the rewards dramatically outweigh them. In many ways, the scale and silliness of the plan serves to increase the likelihood of success.

For a start, I doubt that the land is reaching tent saturation point. Farmers and camp-sites, to my knowledge,don't have to worry about constantly fighting off requests for medium term pitches from people in tents. I will be a novelty and I hope this will increase the chance of success.

Secondly, I will have sold nearly all of my worldly possessions. It would be most embarrassing to have to come home with my tail between my legs and start from scratch. That would be a failure I am not prepared to accept whereas if I put all of my stuff in storage I will have considerably less to lose. It could even be argued that very sensibly storing my worldly stuff would diminish my chances of success

I am starting to realise that the plans most destined for success are the big ones. There are problems with sensible planning and achievable aims that are not immediately clear but upon scrutiny reveal themselves to be blindingly obvious. When your ambitions are tempered, they are not as important and are thus more likely to fail. Big plans usually have larger rewards to ensure continued motivation and there is much less competition for occupancy of the niche into which only the very ambitious and the slightly barking venture.

Bargains for All

2008-07-28T19:10:00.005+01:00

I now have lists for things to keep, store, sell, give away, throw away, return to rightful owners, buy, do and remember. The longest of these lists is things to sell. So, for your viewing pleasure and opening to all enquiries here is the list...

1 Blue comfy chair - Would suit old lady with low standards. - £30
1 Small Bookshelf - Hardwood, 3 shelves, 4". - £30
1 Coffee table - Tough enough to do the nasty on. - £30
1 Crap mattress - Brand new. - Free
1 Djembe Drum - Barely played, much coveted. Someone please put it to good use. - £100
1 Film collection - Loads of good. Hardly any dross. About 400 thereof. - £3 each
1 Freezer - It's cool. - £50
1 HiFi - Nad amp paired to very capable pair of Hitatchi speakers. - £100
1 Large Bookshelf - 200cm*160cm*60cm, stained pine. Damn heavy. - £50
1 HP Laser Printer - mostly used for complaining. - £50
Snorkelling equipment - 2 of everything in a bag. - £50
1 Sofa - 3 seater in red. Very experienced. - Free
1 Padded Chest - Gross green colour, bought for re-upholstering (as if). - £30
1 Sharks Jaw - I killed it myself. - £5
1 Airsoft Gun - Not for sale to minors or Tim Boorman. - £20
1 Wall mounted cork screw - doesn't work, never has, chic rustique. - £400
1 Alarm Clock - plays CD's to a fashion. - Free
1 40" Sony Bravia LCDTV - Awesome. - £500
1 Playstation3 + 5 Games - *sobs gently* - £250
1 Set of Jumping Stilts - Insanely dangerous. - £100
1 19" LCD Xerox Glassfront Monitor - Big and shiny. - £100

I shall add more things as they come up which I am sure they will. If you think you may want any of this stuff let me know or it'll be on ebay next week. I can send photos and am happy to haggle.

Sorry...

2008-07-24T10:29:00.003+01:00

I would just like to apologise to the bean counters whose judgement I maligned. They have managed to secure me an internal transfer to a horribly technical role which will keep me very much on my toes. It would appear that finding employment is one less challenge I have to face and this does somewhat assure an easy transition into my tent. This has really made my day so I will keep this short as I still have lots of celebratory dancing to do.

Woo hoo.

Jobhunting

2008-07-23T09:22:00.002+01:00

As a salve to my job problems, I was angling for an internal transfer. That now seems to be unlikely because the bean counters can't be trusted with anything but beans. I have spent some time hunting for jobs and have lined up a few interviews. It would seem that the likelihood of starting work on the 4th August is dwindling and in some ways this could be a very good thing. In some ways it could be considered very bad.

I now have the option of spending a bit of August sorting out my house to ensure that I get my deposit returned, will be on hand to deal with ebay enquiries and can gradually wind down my house based existence. At the end of the month, I shall up sticks and move into the tent. Worst case: I could run out of money pretty sharpish if I do not find work. Ah well, I am sure it will all come out in the wash.

How others have done it...

2008-07-21T16:41:00.002+01:00

Type 'living in a tent' into google. The top responses are here, here, here, and here. I think we may have a little social stigma to overcome along the way...

Priorities

2008-07-21T13:11:00.006+01:00

It looks like a lot of people are going to have to give up driving before long. It is already reported that fuel sales have dropped by 20% following a doubling in crude prices in the last year. On the other hand, a budget holiday company reported growth this year, despite the inclement economic weather.

What would you be prepared to give up first when the budget gets too tight? Holidays? Fuel? Luxury food? Smoking? Your house? I was reading about the Darwin family whose 'canoeing' father did a runner to avoid £250k of debt. At what point does it become more favourable to tell your children that their dad is dead than to deal with your debts? I could give up expensive food, try to drive less or fake my own death but these attempts to economise would pale into comparison next to the saving that could be made by abandoning my house and setting up within tent.

Quitting smoking would pay health dividends I am sure but would save me a meagre £50 per month. A holiday habit may cost you as little as £85 per month but a car, with servicing, insurance, fuel and maintenance can cost £400 per month easily. My house currently costs me at least £1300 per month. It should be far more effective to make a massive change and reward myself with a nice holiday and a pack of fags.

I remember as a child hearing a grown up remarking on the number of cheap houses with satellite dishes and the crazy priorities of their inhabitants. I remember being amazed by the statistics that show that the poorest elements (god forbid we actually talk about people!) of society are more likely to smoke and play the lottery, even though they have the least amount of money to waste. Could it be that in the face of the economic hard times, we find ourselves more inclined to flick on the TV and eat crisps rather than sell the TV and start peeling spuds?

I have done so for a long time but no more, I am actually going to sell the TV.

Monday progress...

2008-07-21T12:03:00.002+01:00

I have had a second interview for a technical role within the group I am already working for, they seem to like me. The problem is that they have no recruitment currently under way. I am sat in one corner of the building with not very much to do and another team has a desperate need for more programmers not 100 metres away. It costs as much as £15k to recruit a new programmer and they are quibbling over head counts and internal transfers.

This happened to me once before, my department was closed at a former employer and I ended up getting made redundant because the management would not authorise a move to a parallel department. I am hoping that I have managed to highlight the madness to the powers that be and that I will be the beneficiary of a seamless and hassle free transfer, I know I have a few allies in the human resources dept so all I can do is sit tight and wait. I would very much like to stay where I am but I have an offer for another job that I do not wish to take. There is only so long I can hedge my bets and I am hoping to have this all resolved within the next few hours.

Once I know my fate, I will be able to start planning where I am going to stay.

The most daunting task on my horizon still remains the disposal of all of my worldly goods, the vast majority of which I have now resolved to sell. So, if you know anyone who wants a 40" TV, a playstation3, a drum, a huge collection of cables and computer peripherals, a freezer, a collection of snorkelling gear or any number of other very nice but effectively useless items, please drop me a line.

Location Location Location

2008-07-17T11:44:00.004+01:00

It would appear that my first priority is to find a new job. Once I have found a new job, I can then start to think about where I will be based and make moves to ingratiate myself with the locals. I do not want to go too far from TLB so I will be looking in the Surrey/Berkshire area.

To my mind there are 2 types of places I can stay, camp-sites and private land. My preference is private land though it will be a mixed blessing if I find such a place. Camp-sites have obvious advantages: showers, toilets, electricity, access etc. The main problem with them is that they usually have maximum staying periods and they often close during the low season. This will mean that I am going to have to stay on my toes and always be on the lookout for my next pitch.

I have considered going in with a cover story, telling camp-site owners that I am in the area on a short term programming contract and the most economical way to live for the duration would be in a tent and can I stay for 3 months? This may let me negotiate a discount for medium term booking and maybe even score a plum spot on the camp-site, I think that will all come down to the geniality of the owners and the popularity of the site. Time will tell, though if I can only get a maximum of 21 days out of each site there should be at least 100 days worth of camp-sites within easy reach of my current workplace. There are however no guarantees that I will be working here which is why this is all rather theoretical.

Camp-sites, hopefully, will only ever be a short term solution to my medium term problems of somewhere stable to exist. The infinitely preferable option would be to live on some private land with the permission of the owner, in exchange for money, labour or some other form of remuneration. I would obviously have to generate my own power and access to water may become more of an issue but these are problems I should be able to overcome.

The big question is... how on earth do I find land owners of this ilk? I can appreciate that most landowners, when confronted with a scruffy man and a dog will be doing everything possible to get them off the land, not inviting them in with open arms and suggesting good spots to pitch a tent. I think that this particular challenge may well be the one that ends up defining my adventure. I have a few ideas of how to get in with the local landowners...

I have links into the horsey community through a dog walking friend and may be able to find an equestrian based property with which I could come to some sort of agreement.
I could try advertising in the likes of Surrey Life and Country Life and as many posh local journals as I can find in a bid to secure the attentions of some right thinking landed local person who could find a use for having a strapping young lad on site, if only for peace of mind.
I could try and get in with some local hippies and pitch on a corner of their rainbow land collective, not that I think Surrey is exactly brimming with such places.
Local classified advertisements, hoping for the sympathy of some likeminded local.
I could just try cold calling farmers from the phone book.

None of these ideas really inspire me with huge confidence, but I have a feeling that these are the sorts of things that will find me by word of mouth and I know I have a few allies out there who will be keeping an ear to the ground. There is of course a third option - camping rough.

Finding myself a quiet spot in some country park carries with it a number of issues. All of the facilities that I will require to live will need to be provided but there is also the very high possibility of discovery, abuse and/or arrest. It is almost inevitable that people would find me, this is a dinky little island and I am pretty sure that no part of southern England remains undisturbed by dog walkers or local kids for very long. I have rough camped out on Dartmoor, having walked for a day to what I consider to be the most remote, inhospitable spots and still when I wake up I will be greeted by someone in a Barbour and wellies on their morning dog walk past the entrance to my tent.

I am pretty sure that without further qualifications as a Ninja, the rough camping option will be reserved for only the most dire circumstances. Circumstances which may I add, I am loathe to consider now. As it stands my plan at the moment is to book myself into one of the local camp-sites, negotiate as long a period of stay as possible and use that time to find a permanent place to stay, as well as equip myself for that very eventuality.

Okay, so it is not the most water tight plan but I knew there would be some risks involved. Once I know where I will be working I can start to target my efforts towards finding somewhere lovely, preferably near water, woods and a nice cosy pub.

TLB

2008-07-15T13:30:00.003+01:00

Possibly the biggest consideration in my adventures has to be my lovely Girlfriend. We have been together for about 6 months and have thus far been having a lovely time doing all the usual couply things. She has bought a ray of sunshine into my life and it is of the highest order of priority that I keep her happy.

Is what I am doing worthwhile? Insofar as I trying to save some money, it will benefit us both in the long term but will the short term discomfort be too much? I intend to do everything in my power to ensure that it is not.

Firstly, I know that ladies are usually a little more sensitive about toilet facilities than us boys. With this in mind I have been looking to find a suitable solution to our ablutionary needs. I have found a coleman portable toilet that is pretty cheap and would look to do the job very well. I have consulted a few friends and they report that they are a universe away from the usual festival chemical toilet affairs, they are hygenic, reasonably odourless and easy to maintain and transport. I have also found a source of organic, enviro-friendly toilet chemicals so will have to try them out.

Privacy is also a consideration, I cannot imagine the lovely lady wanting to spend a penny in front of guests (or indeed the guests wishing to relieve themselves in front fo me) so I have also managed to track down a 1 player tent specifically for the purpose of housing a porta-loo. Okay, so what we have here is not the most decadent enthronement but it will provide privacy, hygeine, and hopefully will avoid lengthy walks to toilet blocks or squatting in bushes.

Showering is another problem that will take a little more thinking about. Being the lady that she is I know that she will appreciate the ability to properly freshen up. She may even want to use it herself on occasion! The two options I can discern are solar showers and powered showers. Personally I may consider opting for the solar shower as I am likely to have showers at work (not forgetting that I am 'ard) but I think for the sake of ease and considering that it will not get used that often, a gas powered shower will do the trick nicely and if I am crafty, I can integrate it into the toilet tent for a one stop ablutionary solution to meet all our needs (can you tell I have been writing tender documents this morning?).

Washing up, minor ablutions and general cleaning can all be done out of a washing up bowl and could provide an excellent catalyst to water fights, romantic pair-preening and dog soaking. Ahhh, the romanticism.

So, we have toilet, shower and privacy. The only other real considerations are day to day warmth and comfort which are as applicable to myself as to my beloved so need not be considered here.

My lover has the power to make or break this adventure and I would not consider it without her support. I can not thank her enough for focussing on the romanticism and independence rather than the weather and impracticality. Lady, if you are reading this, there is a big kiss awaiting you in the tent of love.

Back to Work

2008-07-14T09:31:00.002+01:00

It is Monday morning and after a couple of days of being ill last week, I am now back in the office. One of my colleagues has nicknamed me Swampy which is most endearing. On the whole they are supportive but think I am a bit mad. I have also managed to get the HR Manager for the group to be sympathetic to my cause so an internal transfer is looking quite likely.

The reactions I have been getting from people fall broadly into two categories, there are those who insist I must have lost some element of my grip on reality and there are those who appreciate my creative approach to solving the problems that reality presents. I have been pretty universally branded as a hippy, a point I have no problem countering as I extol the virtues of the free market and the liberty it affords me. It has been a purely economic decision, admittedly there are incidental benefits that will score me points with the hippies and the dog lovers and the land reformists but they are not my primary concern. My primary concern is ridding myself of debt.

I have also been trying to make some sort of case in my mind as to why my debt could be the fault of society. Sadly it is not, it is entirely my own fault and the buck does rather seem to stop here. There seems to be a deluge of media attention regarding the levels of consumer debt, the crashing housing market (which I hope to exploit in a couple of years), the sub-prime credit market, the list goes on. There seems to be a thousand reasons to excuse people from the responsibility of their own financial inadequacy.

Were I to believe what I am told by my television, the most effective way to manage any debts I have is to take out a 'consolidation' loan. The small print at the bottom details that a consolidator is likely to extend the period of their repayments and increase the total payable amount. These however are mere details when there is a big red 'get-a-loan-in-one-minute' button to distract what has been proved to be an impulsive and financially risky bunch.

It is very easy to feel like a statistic, the knowledge that 6 million families in the UK are getting bogged down with debt actually makes me quite happy, I can afford repayments, I can get more credit with ease if I choose. Loads of people can't, does that mean that I am alright after all? No, sadly not. My debts amount to less that 20% of my current annual wage, a comparatively mild peonage. Nonetheless I am seeing that my best option is to move into a tent. God knows how many people do not have this option and are genuinely trapped by their debt bondage. It is by doing something now that I can ensure that I will not become one of them.

The government seem to spend a lot of time tackling very personal problems like debt, obesity and smoking on one hand, yet with the other hand are encouraging the industries that perpetuate these problems. Given the chance to run amok, the marketing people will sell you a diet plan in one advert and then assure you that you deserve to treat yourself with a cream pie in the next. The insane thing is that all of us, every day, vote for this sort of world with the money we spend, filling up our cars and buying dirty burgers. Capitalism is blamed for a great many of the worlds ills, but the responsibility for it lies with each and every one of us, because we do in a very real sense, vote for the world that we want with the money that we spend. It certainly has a hell of a lot more effect than which well shod ape we think should represent us in Parliament.

So are we then a helpless group of automatons? Why do we seem to act outside of our own long term self interest so often in favour of a war fuelled fast food economy? These are not questions I have the answer to, I am as much of a victim of the advertising jingle and the must-have-new-thing as the next person which is why I am in the situation I am in now. But I do intend to do something about it, before I have gone so far down the road of blithely letting every penny of my income get syphoned off before I even get to see it.

Damn the direct debits, damn the landlords and the interest hungry banks, damn the £6.99 monthly payment to some credit checking agency to alert me that I am still a valid member of society. I am going to use my not inconsiderable vote to endorse tents, dogs and cheap cars. I am going to vote for the freedom to choose where you want to live and how you want to do it.

It is the only real protest I have and ultimately I am not protesting to or about anyone but myself. Let's just hope it works.

The Dog

2008-07-13T16:02:00.001+01:00

My dog is a very happy creature, incredibly popular everywhere I go, last night in the pub 4 separate people came over and said hello and we were only there for a pint. I think he could be a considerable asset in my quest to find places to camp, though he will also present some considerable logistical problems.

On the plus side, he is charming and friendly to all he meets and he looks like a teddy bear. People seem to instantly fall in love with him and I am sure he could melt the heart of even the sourest equestrian spinster. He is also a huge fan of camping as it means he gets to sleep in the same room as the boss and he spends loads of time outside. When it comes to territory though he makes a great guard dog and is plenty big enough to eat any ne'er do wells that happen upon us.

On the down side, I am not going to be able to leave him in the tent during the day. This means I either need to find work which will accommodate the little swine, or I need to find somewhere for him to go during the daytimes. I have a dog walking friend who would be very grateful of an extra £100 per month but it could result in a lot of travelling about and potentially increase any commute I do enormously. I reckon I am going to have to find some strategy for finding new dog sitters fairly regularly all the while I am flitting from place to place in search of a semi-permanent home.

All in all, I reckon this whole caper will make the dog ecstatic on a pretty much constant basis, he will spend his days with other dogs and his evenings in a tent. I often wish I could be the dog for a bit and him do all the organising, though we would probably end up living on the lawn of a lady whose Vizla he has recently fallen for.

Motherly Love

2008-07-12T21:36:00.001+01:00

I got a message from my Mum this morning. I hit the listen button and was greeted by a very concerned sounding mother describing the horror with which she had watched the heavens open over her all day. She said she had been thinking about my plan to move into a tent and that she was not sure it was such a good idea. She couldn't bear the thought of me being wet and cold and alone in a tent and asked me to consider very carefully what I was doing.

I duly spent some hours evaluating my desires and ambitions. I realised that she may well be right regarding the discomfort I may have to endure. I am not sure I would like my offspring (when they eventually materialise) to expose themselves to the weather, the inevitable pitfalls of doing something so unconventional, the cruel critics, the damp.

I am not sure I would like to think of my first born son as of no fixed abode and living in a tent, prey to the vicissitudes of fate and foul weather and it is for these reasons that I have come to a decision. I have decided that I should delete my mothers answer machine message and forget I ever heard it.

Problem solved.

My new abode

2008-07-09T10:24:00.001+01:00

It is now 3 days since I had my epiphany, it is absolutely bucketing down outside but it will not dampen my spirits. It is making me more mindful of waterproofing. I have been looking about for tents and have pretty much settled on a bell tent design. They are easy to transport (unlike a yurt or a tipi) but are plenty big enough to stand up in and generally inhabit.

I will be able to have a little wood burning stove and plenty of room for sleeping quarters, cooking space, general living space and storage. I will not have very much stuff so should be quite spacious though I once had exactly the same thought about a 4 bed house, which is now crammed to the gills with pointless guff.

The bell tents come in two designs, a fixed groundsheet and a separate groundsheet model. I think I am going to hedge my bets and get a fixed groundsheet as it will be eminently more weatherproof but it will mean that I cannot roll up the sides when it gets hot. The same company also supply groovy little wood burners so I intend to get one at the same time, will cost me about £550 for Tent, burner and flue. This is considerably less than a months rent and should see me right. I have a few Afghan rugs at home, an inflatable bed, some cushions and a variety of conventional camping gear. Aside from the tent and burner, I think I should have everything I need at the outset, I am sure in a little while that I will be wanting some tarps and some extra weatherproofing measures but for the time being I reckon I should be alright.

The amount of stuff that I can carry is limited by the amount of stuff I can get in my car. I have a medium sized saloon car at the moment though suspect I will need to trade it in for an estate car before long. For the time being though I have a roof rack which should allow me to cart enough stuff about to live pretty damn comfortably. I shall be back later, in the meantime I have an interview for a new job...

Refining the Plan..

2008-07-08T17:47:00.002+01:00

In a slightly rash move I have quit my job. I had no work to do and was employed by a CCTV company so I am going to try my hand at one of the other jobs that seems to come my way quite often. I should have no trouble getting a new job, and will need to do so by 3rd August. It will however slightly complicate my plans. Never mind, no one said it was going to be easy and if I can change several bad elements of my life in one go then brilliant.

I have to give 2 months notice on my house so I did that this morning. That means that I will be sleeping under canvas for the first night on the 10th of September, before which time I need to do the following things:

Buy a suitable tent
Get a job
Find somewhere to stay in aforementioned tent
Get all of the things that I will need to survive in said tent
Dispose of a large house full of assorted stuff and settle all outstanding bills
Get my car back on the road (company Lexus goes back!)
Sort out mobile broadband and a laptop (if one does not come with new job)
Redirect all my post to an as yet unknown destination
Find a dog sitting type person to look after the alien during the daytimes

I think that is it, I am sure more stuff will come up and I know that many of those can be divided into many sub-tasks but it will do for the time being. It would seem I have my work cut out.

The tasks can be broadly grouped into two, sorting out a new living arrangement and disposing of the old one. The latter task will prove to be by far the more challenging. I have to take all of my possessions and split them out into things I wish to throw away, things I wish to keep but not take and things I wish to take with me.

I have to find somewhere to store all of the items that I do not want to get rid of, which brings up a couple of interesting questions for me. For example, regarding my TV, should I sell it or should I store it? If this project is a success and I do survive for a year or so, it will be better off sold, but then should I hedge my bets and sell it a few months down the line when I have a better idea as to my fate? Would that show a lack of commitment that my readers would use to sow the seeds of doubt in my sincerity?

I am not doing this as a dare or to prove some lofty point, I am doing this to see if I can. If it is too much hassle then so be it, but it would have to be quite a lot of hassle to make me prefer to stagnate in suburbia where there is exactly no adventure. You'll be the first to know. Either way, I am homeless and jobless inside of 60 days so I am going to have to do something. Game on.

The Plan

2008-07-07T11:16:00.001+01:00

I am a computer programmer, living in a big house in Surrey with my Lexus and my gigantic wide-screen TV. I have a lovely dog, a lovely girlfriend, great prospects, not a care in the world, or so the theory goes. To most, I must appear to have a fantastic life, all of the worldly hallmarks of success are mine, I eat in good restaurants, get paid well, get to go on holidays abroad, can buy what I want, all is good in the world.

So why have I decided that I want to go and live in a tent? Well, funny you should ask, here are my reasons...

I am tired of constantly having to fight just to keep my head above water financially.
I intend to pay off all debts (about £10k) in as short an amount of time as possible.
I am tired of living in picket fenced suburbia.
I am tired of having a fixed environmental overhead that I can do nothing about.
I am tired of paying council tax when they can't even get community recycling sorted out.
I love the great outdoors.
It would make my dog very happy.
I went to Glastonbury festival... again.

This blog is intended to be a journal of my progress from a wasteful suburban existence to a low impact nomadic one. I intend to keep my job and my dog and my girlfriend, I just plan to shun the convention of living in a house. When all my debts are paid, I will reconsider how I want to live, but until then, I am committed to some self imposed penance.

Right, that sets out basically what I want to do, the details will all get thrashed out in the terrible dawning of reality that awaits me, for the time being, I must ride this wave of enthusiasm long enough to make it happen.

Wish me luck.