We are fed up with spending all of our income on rent and bills, shredding envelopes only as fast as bills shoot through the letterbox and making excuses to lull in solitude instead of being outside in beautiful nature. We are fed up with living this ordinary life which has been dictated to us by our elders and betters and which everybody seems to be striving for: sleep, work, eat, mong out in front of the television and then start again. We are fed up with the monotony of 'the great indoors' and are looking for a simpler, more natural existence.

And so we have bought a van. A big one which-it turns out-I am unable to drive as I passed my test after 1995 and it’s just too big. Luckily my husband can drive it because it looks like we will have to be moving on a pretty regular basis: people who live in vans may be more in numbers in Brighton than in other parts of the country but they (we) are still seen as adversaries of normal folk and reactions tend to be fairly negative.

In our optimistic innocence we thought that people would be happy for us, but reactions have ranged from: “You’ll be gypsies and gypsies are disrespectful of public land and they dump their rubbish on private property” (my parents) to dumb-founded questioning:”why do you want to live in a van?” (various friends). But our answers are simple: Maybe we don’t want to live in a van. We have never tried it so maybe we’ll hate it. But at least we have to give it a go. Think of the money we can save. Even better, think of the money we’ll never have to earn. We can lead simpler lives and meet interesting people. At least, that’s the plan.