by 
Part One: Build Your Own Ad-Van-Ture
When I announced to my parents back in 2016 that I was buying a very large, very empty white van, converting it into a campervan, and moving into it for at least a year of full-time travel, they looked at me with the expression you would quite rightly give your 33 year old daughter with no experience of DIY and questionable parallel parking skills when she makes such an announcement. Bemuseshockment would be the way I’d describe it.
Nevertheless, a few weeks later, I pulled up outside my Dad’s house and proudly stood in front of my most recent purchase: a 2002, Peugeot Boxer, ex-police van, who, due to his history as a team member of the Boys In Blue, I had named Bobby. If ever there was a vehicle more suited to kidnapping, Bobby was it. He was an ex-surveillance van, and had been used to park up outside places, to covertly sit and watch. He was painted entirely black inside—even the lights that come on when you open the door had been painted black—and he had a two-way mirror for looking out of the front windscreen.
But I didn’t see all that. All I saw was potential. No, more than that; I saw myself sitting by the open side door, cup of tea in hand, looking out at a beautiful landscape in Spain, full of potential rock-climbing adventures. I saw myself lying in bed in the morning with the rear doors open, enjoying a brew. I could imagine so clearly the sound of the rain at night as I snuggled inside, all cosy and warm and dry after a day of fun in the Italian mountains, with a nice cuppa on the go. Essentially, most of my imaginings revolved around rock-climbing and tea drinking, because, why not? It’s good to have dreams.
“But you don’t know how to do any of these things,” said the Mother Ship. “These things” being sawing, nailing, joining bits together, filling holes that shouldn’t be there, making holes that should be there, making things move, making things not move …
“Correct!” I said, “But I will learn!” And then with the confidence that comes from two years of saving, and planning, and making numerous Pinterest boards, I asserted,
“Mother, we start off life not knowing how to do anything, but we learn. And then something happens, and we become afraid of learning something new. If I can learn to walk, I can bloody well learn how to build a cupboard.”
It might sound either flippant or radical, depending on your take on it, but it was something I honestly believed both then and now.
And so that summer, in the long bright evenings after work, and every weekend, I was outside on my parent’s driveway, apparently disturbing the neighbours (who weren’t actually disturbed at all; in fact they pitched in with the lending of tools, expertise, storage of equipment, and moral support), putting into practice the latest YouTube video I’d watched, and slowly (very slowly) but surely, constructing a little home on wheels for myself, whilst the horses in the field looked on curiously, and my Dad’s dog looked on, a little condescendingly if I’m honest.
It wasn’t easy. The first official screw I drilled in, I missed the wood. But I didn’t take that as an omen. I took it as a learning experience! There were mistakes, and frustrations, and expletives shouted into the air so loud that they once made the dogs over the road start barking. But I persevered. Things took a lot longer than planned, and bless my parents for putting up with my continued presence on their driveway, and the very occasional carpentry forays on the kitchen floor. And also, sorry for breaking your best scissors.
The process of building Bobby is perhaps one of the greatest achievements of my life. The fact that everything worked and I was able to live in it, and comfortably at that, is amazing. The fact that—aside from installing two roof lights and the electrics—I did it all myself, even more so. I can only thank years of yoga practice which gave me the strength and flexibility to hold in place a giant piece of plywood with my head and knee, whilst simultaneously screwing in a screw at the other end. (Sadly there are no pictures of this). The whole process is and was a testament to my belief that, just because you don’t know how to do something, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go about trying to learn. And I have carried that philosophy on within me, learning to speak German at 34 and learning to ski at 35.
Bobby is also a constant reminder that just because something has always been done in one way, doesn’t mean you have to do it that way too. That could be the big things: being the first in your family to try their hand at campervan production, rather than buying one; investing in a white megalith on wheels rather than a down payment on less mobile property; committing yourself to nature poos for the foreseeable … What you do have to accept though, is that that is not the easiest path. However, and oh so crucially, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.
But the same philosophy also applies to smaller, more manageable things too. Back when I was building Bobby, #vanlife hadn’t exploded the way it has now, particularly not in the UK. There were of course some wide-brimmed hat wearing, sun kissed blondes out there, usually in classic VWs or giant Sprinters, with butler sinks and hammocks on the side of their vans (the hammocks, not the sinks) but the majority of motorhomes I had seen had drab grey interiors. But why?! Not for me thank you, Bobby was going to be pink. And flowery. And indeed he was. Because with the right technique, there is no reason why you can’t use wallpaper in your van. And—as I reminded my father— there is also no reason why you can’t use a large part of your budget on two different wallpapers, to create a “zoning” effect. The result was a van which is known as the “hotel” of the van world amongst my other van-dwelling friends. It is a van which people always come over to visit and have a nosy at when the doors are open (including an actual coachload of tourists when I was parked up in a layby eating lunch in Austria, who were more interested in my van than the beautiful Mondsee below, which they had initially pulled over to gaze at). Bobby is so light and cosy, and so pretty. And I did that! I made that!
At the end of 2016 Bobby was “finished”—as much as these things ever are—and I packed up my belongings and hit the road. I had big plans of places to go, and was envisaging a big chunk of my future living on the road and financing it with my annual summer school teaching job. Oh the things we’d do …
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On a completely unrelated note, if I had to choose my favourite religious-themed joke, it would be, “How do you make God laugh? Tell Her your plans!”
