It’s been a while since the last blog entry, and as such you might have been thinking that I’d turned into a frozen lollipop or just jacked the whole thing in and taken refuge in a warm flat somewhere. As it happens neither of these eventualities occurred, or at least if I did turn into a lollipop I’ve since thawed out again, and I’ve been staying in Travis throughout.
I’ve been working a lot. Or at least I’ve been in the office a lot which as I’m sure we all know doesn’t necessarily amount to the same thing. I only get paid when I actually do something useful which is more than fair and prevents me from feeling guilty about the other reasons for spending a lot of time there i.e. it’s warm, has a canteen, hot showers and best of all lots of people that I really genuinely like. It’s been great to be back here and to catch up with everyone and all the social activity that goes with it.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve been cold. For about a week in December it was really cold. Temperatures fell to around minus 9C for a couple of nights and even after calling the diesel heater into action to take the edge off of it, by the morning the heat had mostly departed and I could see my breath as I lay in bed fully clothed and wearing a woolly hat. The water in my tap froze until all that came out of it was a lengthy icicle. I needed to scrape ice from the windows, on both the outside and the inside.
But you know what, it was actually kind of fun. Because I’m lucky and privileged and I have work and an income and I have my insulated van with a heater and I’ve since bought myself a hot water bottle and a fluffy dressing gown and I’m all ready for the next cold snap, due anytime now.
Because I’m just playing at this of course. I’m enjoying this survival-lite experience where I can feel more in touch with nature and the seasons and my life is more varied and interesting. It’s interesting and freeing and presents a series of mini challenges which I enjoy accomplishing. But all the time I have a safety blanket. If I ever got too cold I could book into a hotel or stay with a friend. A lot of people don’t have those options. So I don’t feel good about making a drama out of being cold or whatever, because in many ways being a bit closer to the elements yet still in a secure fashion made me more aware of what it must be like for those who live on the streets and don’t have the backup options that I have.
So writing lots of ‘wow, it’s cold’ posts didn’t really sit right with me and hence you didn’t get any. Winter was interesting and quite enjoyable in its own way although of course it’s not a patch on summer for long light days and exploring new places. I spent most of my time at work or with friends and moving Travis between a variety of different locations in the local area. It was so lovely to see everyone and spend a lot of time with them, it’s the longest I’ve spent there since I stopped living in the area full-time six or seven years previously. It was special in a different way from the travelling and I feel very lucky to be able to go off adventuring in the summer and to have such a great place to return to in the colder months.
I’m talking as if winter and the cold weather is all finished with but as I write this snow is forecast, maybe even later today, and I’m planning to make a run for it to the south coast where it rarely snows and I hope I can escape the white stuff. I’ve got mixed feelings about it though, it will look pretty and will make for some nice photos but it makes moving around more difficult and ahhh even as I sit here writing this I’m changing my mind. I’ve never lived in a van in the snow before, it would be a new experience. Now all of a sudden I kind of want it to snow and to see what it’s like.
This is kind of how it is a lot of the time and I love it. I can change my mind all the time. If I want to go somewhere else, do something else, be someone else then I can and I can do it on a whim. So now I’m going to pivot. Instead of heading south let’s head north, accept the dinner invitation for tomorrow that I’d politely declined because I thought I’d be elsewhere and hope it snows. If it does, I’ll try to get some good pictures for the next post. There’ll be more posts again now, because Spring is here (sort of) and the clocks go forward soon and my thoughts will mainly turn to this year’s big summer trip.