Changes

 

Ok so it’s been a long time since i’ve posted here and as such a hell of a lot has changed!

 

My travel plans are quite different now and, if anything, have improved greatly.

 

I made a post on a site a while back to see if anyone else was looking to travel and got a response almost immediately. A guy called Josh from Manchester is getting together with his friends from America and they are travelling Europe much like me which is fantastic. He has been a huge help in giving me ideas for travelling and I’ll be doing a lot of my journey with him.

 

The best part is that he put me in touch with this site called workaway.info which is some sort of volunteering site whereby people all over the world ask others to come and help in return for bedding and food. So, for the month of June i’ll be helping out in Wales on an eco project farm with a few other people who are also travelling and then heading over to France to stay at my mum’s place in Bergerac on the 2nd July. From there i’ll be meeting up with Josh and the others and heading east and taking it as we go.

 

Josh really wants to go to Sweden so I started researching further into it and there are literally tonnes of volunteering opportunities all over there so we may be there for some months, really excited.

 

The best part is that in December of this year I may be heading up to Iceland for a minimum of around a year and half to three years to work on wildlife conservation scheme and also to help train huskys. On top of this, in the summer months i’ll be trained in dog sledding and taking tourists on rides around parts of iceland to raise cash for the conservation site and farm. This is huge…. and I’d love the opportunity.

 

Thing is, I told my family I’d be travelling for around a year and my nan basically disowned me and is being very difficult along with a lot of my other family. My mum is really the only one I talk to now and even then we maybe talk once every 3 weeks. So telling them i’ll be gone for possibly 3-4 years worries me. But ahh well, we’ll just have to see.

 

Anyway i’ve still got a lot to do with emptying the house out so posts will continue to be infrequent but i’ll try and update as and when.

 

will go into further detail another time!

2

At the moment only Lucas and Alex are living at the house. Jose up’d and left a few weeks back. He was paying the most out of us so, of course, the finances took an absolute battering when he left. Another defining reason for cutting the house loose. 

 

Tonight I will be going home and telling Lucas he has 30 days. A bit short if i’m honest and I know this is going to be really shitty for him, but it will be for me too. Then again, these things happen.

 

So my plan! Well to be fair there isn’t really anything solid or certain at this point. All I know is that i’m packing up and shipping out. I have a reasonably good amount of money and i’ll be selling quite a lot of expensive bits and bobs so I reckon I should be ok for 6-12 months (I’m a heavy smoker and a heavier drinker so most likely just 6 months). On that note, I think i’ll head up north.. i’ll blend in better, haha. 

 

9th April 2014

I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to give Lucas 30 days. Don’t get me wrong, I did tell him our intentions and that I was making off in about a months time but I could tell the guy was distraught. You see, Lucas has a bit of a grand plan like me. His, however, is far more grounded. Him and his girlfriend are looking to save up for their own place and the fact that we only charge him £75 a week for rent and bills (very little for the area I live in) allows him to save at least enough to realise his dream. If he was to move out in May he could not feasibly afford to move in with his girlfriend this year given that the nearest sort of prices to rent in this area is approximately £600-700 per month. 

 

So I’m standing there telling him this news and you can literally see his face drop. I felt shit. Poor guy. if people read this they may think “well that’s life, tough luck to the guy”. To that I say ” you try telling your mate that his dream of living with his S/O are effectively over as of 30 days time. 

 

The one saving grace is that my mum comes back this tuesday coming and I explained to Lucas we may be able to make some sort of deal. Very unlikely, though. Time will tell.

 

 

The Beginning

(this is typed up from notes written a few days back)

 

As I write this, I am sat in a pub opposite my office in Reigate. It’s the 9th April 2014 and I have just handed in my notice of resignation for my role as compliance officer.

 

I have 30 days to box up 14 years of my life and, most likely, have to sell or get rid of the majority. My mum has met a guy who’s made something of himself and last year retired early to go travelling; Mum followed. As a 19 year old guy with money in his pocket i’m sure you can imagine the joy at being handed a house that was effectively your own. The deal was this: she moves out, I get to stay but I have to find tenants to move in to supplement the bills. Well, I found tenants and my (then) new life began. 

 

There was Jose, the hip-hop-disco-funk Spaniard who also happened to be a precision engineer, Lucas the black metal drummer from Poland. A blood drinking, beer downing, son of a bitch kind of guy that I can say with all honesty I love like a brother. oh and a food importer by day, hur hur. And finally there’s Alex. Another engineer who very much keeps himself to himself. I would go as far to say..he’s normal. I’m sure you can imagine his abject terror when he came home to Lucas and I high off our tits ( I forget what on), half naked and dancing to, if i remember correctly, “does your mother know that you’re out” by Abba. Ouch.

 

Anyway, to bring it back to my point, things have turned a little shitty. If i’m honest I think it boils down to the fact mum and I cannot be bothered to carry on arguing over bills etc. I took the initiative on a phone call yesterday. I told her I’m packing it in. Believe me, I was as surprised to hear myself say it as she was. So now I have to downsize considerably. My life will have to be able to be carried on my back, I couldn’t be happier. Honestly.

 

I’ve got more to type up and i’ll get right to it in a bit.