High In The Mountains (Part 1: The Beginnings)
‘Afoot and light-hearted I take to the open road, Healthy, free, the world before me, The long brown path before me leading wherever I choose.’ - W.W.
Beginnings don’t always start at the beginning, now and then they take you by surprise.
It was just after new years 2015 and the boiler in my house-share had been broken for over a month. The cold was my alarm clock. Even with three t-shirts and a large knitted Nepalese jumper on, my breath was icy every morning. My room was compact though, it had enough space for me and my most important belongings. All I needed was the books i’d collected over the years, my camera equipment, note books for thoughts, and a computer so I could work from home & keep in contact with friends.
At that time in my life I kept to a strict schedule of solitude. There was always plenty of homemade meals in the freezer that I’d collect from my mum’s house every fortnight. Her cookery skills were amazing so I always ate something nutritious and delicious a few nights a week. Being frugal with the money that did happen to come my way meant I was eating banana and porridge every morning (costing roughly £3 a week)…then usually 5 or 6 coffees spread out across the rest of the day to appease my appetite. Money was tight. I could barely pay the rent anymore. A new habit had formed in my psyche, most days i’d be stealing food from large corporate supermarkets just to keep my health in balance. This was my struggle. Be it nothing in comparison to a lot of people’s struggles, but this was mine and I knew it too well. Life was going so fast but in some ways there were hints that it’d become stagnant. The only thing keeping me sane was my friends and the activism we did together. The irony is that when you fight to make things better, you come across so many atrocities. Friendships included discussion topics of the highest highs of human potential, and also the lowest lows.
“How do you see your career unfolding? Oh you’re self-employed, trying to improve your local community AND make a profit so that you can pay for food & rent? That must be tough!”
I’d been an independent filmmaker for years, a hobby turned job. Last year I’d started my own company with 4 other local professionals who quickly became friends. We all had this uniting desire to combine our skills (film, photography, music, graphic design & building websites) and provide low cost services to local businesses & community organisations. We spent two years getting out there and really making an impact in our town. We helped set up events, got a few paid jobs here and there, and really kept to our vision of improving the local area. We managed to build our own Community Interest Company. I’d applied for social security ‘working tax credits’ three times, but the Government were never satisfied with the proof of the hours I was working. We were doing so well and the only downside of the whole situation was the lack of a supporting income… and all this work was taking up most of my time, so what was wrong? It seemed the people in England who have oversight of distributing ‘the benefits’ are so wrapped up in sets of rules. Unfortunately for many of us, the overriding system here has now become completely out of touch with the realities of being a human in the 21st century.
Online activism was working well locally. There were plenty of people out there who wanted to help for the greater good. Since the Occupy movement began in 2011 Worthing became an active network of groups across the town. We routinely asked people what positive changes they’d like to see locally. We’d stand on street corners, interviewing people and encouraging them to engage with us. We’d take people’s ideas & concerns on to social media to be discussed, and this is how we developed change locally. The big changes we’re going to be grassroots, history shows this.
The good that came out of all our local activism seemed not half as much as the energy that it often saps from you, unfortunately. Maybe that’s just how I feel because I am a perfectionist. I mean, how can you truly create sustainable change when the systems and the people running them are so outdated, inefficient & totally inconsiderate. There were many beginnings for me at this point in my life…
We make change in our worlds with 'direct action’ and empowering ourselves to be better, to face our challenges head-on. Activism can become impersonal when you’re all about the fight, or being behind a camera or computer screen too much; however that happens to be one of the most effective ways to push the conversation forward. Ironic isn’t it?
To be involved in developing changes in people’s lives, such as the role of a parent, biological or not, is to make that choice to support and nurture a child; you are always responsible for guiding and encouraging that child. I would soon come to learn that parenting is an ongoing direct action which has immeasurable meaning.
When moving in with Cori, so much happened, so much changed. We fell in love and became a team. I became a full-time step father to her 3 youngest children, and a friend to her two eldest. Bechan was 16, living with his Dad, and Torreya was 18 and spent her time between our home and her boyfriends. I became accepted, and naturally we became a family. There is such a learning curve when you’re around children, you slowly become more and more responsible for them and most of all you come to adore them. The relationships grew as we began to trust each other and confide in each other.
The two boys are unique, so different from each other. They have the same love/hate relationship that all brothers have, well, that’s the way I remember it being with me & my brother. They both have autism (along with their older brother) so their personalties shine so clearly. I thought their weirdness was awesome, and I kept telling them that. We quickly grew on each other, and everyday we’d walk home from school talking about everything they loved. They have an amazing mother and she knows how to interact with her kids, especially when the behaviours get wild. The boys are colourful and she can recognise the whole spectrum of their troubles & emotions. All I felt like I had to do was support them and encourage them. Cori’s youngest girl Thalia, we became the best of friends. Thalia is beautiful and confident. She is impressionable and she is like my shadow. She is always attached to my back, arm, or on my lap. She just appears there and leaves again when she wants.
(March 2015)
Cori and I were jumping around in bed like lottery winners. We’d won a 17ft motorhome on Ebay for just over 7 grand, and the funniest part was that we had no money to pay for it. This was going to be super spacious, even with the 3 kids, 2 cats, 1 dog and the both of us in the cockpit. It was the Spring Equinox and we had friends travelling to Stonehenge for the celebrations. Our new motorhome was slightly north of where they would be camping, so they agreed to check it out & even drive it back home for us on temporary insurance.
Two days later our friends called to say that they'd viewed the vehicle and it was ‘rusted-to-buggery’. They were too afraid to even test drive it (we emailed the owner and told him we wouldn’t pay as it didn’t ‘appear as advertised’). The next day we took a more sensible approach by asking Cori’s mum for a loan on a 1983 VW Camper van. We’d seen it nestled in the hills of Brighton in the part of town where the houses are all coloured, from one end to the other. The Camper appeared immaculate, a true classic vessel that symbolised adventure. As we started driving home we realised the speedo didn’t work, but we were still just as excited as it was only a small issue. We spent the next 4 months renovating the Camper to our own style. Lyndon (eldest of the three youngest) discovered that the bed in the pop-up roof was so flimsy that when he jumped up to see how comfy it was, the bed frame twisted, causing him to fall 5ft onto the cold solid metal floor below. Smack, right on his side, leaving a colourful bruising across his ribs. We took the bed apart and found that the frame was made of 1x1inch baton, corrugated cardboard in-between, and hardboard nailed on either side. It took a month for Lyndon to want to get back in the Camper, the incident also caused his anxiety related tics to briefly reappear. We had a bonfire and were collecting wood. I got Lyndon to jump up and down on the old bed frame, breaking it and telling it how naughty it was. Then we sacrificially burnt it; only then did he feel the Camper was a safe place again, that justice had been served.
(February 2015)
we were scrolling the internet, looking at different properties in France & Spain. Cori told me that for years she’d daydreamed of a time when she would sell-up and move into a large French barn conversion, or an awesome cave house in the Andalusian mountains. Impulsivity is an attribute that we both share, and I know from experience that any idea can truly ignite and come to fruition when two like-minds come together. You can feel when something is worth throwing all your energy into. The idea of actually owning a house, with someone I love, only began to become real to me when Cori showed me this one property in Southern Spain. ‘Look at the frickin size of it’, I said, as Cori showed me the in’s & out’s of this traditional stone farmhouse. The space was immense, the walls and floors bare, with a rough unlevelled finish of cement. The house was empty, but full of potential. An opportunity was right there in front of us to create something of our own; To us we could see ourselves there, enjoying a few months working on a great project. In reality there was mainly plastering and flooring to be done, the electrics were all wired up and ready for second fix, and the water was set up too, so really, all we were thinking was…how quickly can we get there?
The excitement spins, gaining momentum, hearts both racing together, in sync with the vision of a sustainable future. We clicked over to the EasyJet website and booked tickets for March 11th and arranged to meet the estate agent…we’d call him when we got to Almeria airport and jump on a bus to meet him.
“How are you going to support yourselves?”
“Aren’t you going to make your kids lives more difficult?”
“There’s too much work to be done, too much labour in that Spanish climate”
“What if the relationship doesn’t work? you’ve only been together a few months!”
We landed in Spain and headed to Almeria bus station. It wasn’t long before we were on the bus, fully kitted with air conditioning, heading towards the small village of Oria, nestled comfortably in the mountains at 3362ft. We met the estate agent in a nearby village 20km away as the bus didn’t actually stop at the village. We were driven to Oria where we met with a guy called Keith who was trusted to hold onto the keys as he knew the owner (who had since moved back to England). Being us, we hadn’t arranged anywhere to stay for the weekend. Luckily Keith knew of a couple in the next town who rented us the flat above their house for the next two nights. Small but cosy. We sat in front of the wood burner for hours, hypnotised by it’s flames and it’s scent. The couple bought us a bottle of wine, a pizza, and a 6 pack of beers. We spent the evening drawing out rough sketches of the house by memory of viewing it earlier; we were now dead certain we would one day live in.
The pizza burnt on the base. We sat outside as the sun got lower and changed the shapes of the shadows on our surroundings. Here we were in the desert and feeling completely connected to our surroundings. The pace of life here is calm and focused. They say that time is relative from person to person, and now I think that time is also relative from place to place. Later we floated to bed to lay down our heads. The next morning we headed home knowing that we would soon be telling the children, and our friends & family, that we would definitely be moving to this tranquil part of Spain.
End of part 1.