Good-bye London...
We've finished cleaning the flat after 5 days of packing and scrubbing. We give the keys to Vancha and get help from the painters to hitch the trailer box onto the camper. The trailer is overloaded. The tires are creeking under the weight all our possessions.
We spray holy water from Batchkovo monestry inside the camper, on the dashboard and on the bonnet (although tradition says that it should have been on the ground in front of the vehicle..), light a Japanese incense and light a candle on the dashboard that nearly starts a fire inside.
We turn the key. The engine doesn't start. The battery is dead. Helen turns up just on time to give us some juice. The camper finally starts.
Asda 100 metres from the house. We try to put air in the tires. Not enough air they blow. Too much air they blow. What to do? We pump air but run out of coins so we take off leaving it to fortune.
We're rolling, singing along to the music. It's 2,900 km to Bulgaria, we've got a full tank of diesel, flying at 70km, eating nuts and free and nearly home!
Quote of the day:
"Take your passion and make it happen!" Flashdance.
It seems appropriate to leave London in an old creaking camper dragging an overweight trailer. We are the slowest contraption on the road. After months and years of rat-racing, cramming ever more things into less time we said "fuck-it! Let's move on to enjoy another side of life." The fight is over, we're throwing in the towel. It's pointless. The only winners now would be the spectators: the ruthless squeezing boss, the taxman, the money-snatching MPs and the Queen and her lazy family.
With the load we were pulling down the motorway to Dover we couldn't compete. We were out of the race from the start. Everybody and everything overtook us. The bikes, the cars, the trucks anything on wheels that could muster a greater speed than our old camper Camilia was a winner. I am sure we made a lot of people feel good that day. But we felt great. We were singing, excited at the thought of our new adventure. We had spoken about it so many times that most of our friends didn't believe that we would ever actually leave London. But we did. Freedom from our fears of not having a stable job, a 25 year mortgage, missing the first step on the property ladder, school fees, lunch boxes and sports days. Oops! We dropped our hope of middle-class bliss on the floor and it broke. Ours could never be mended.
For so long in London we lived the illusion of trying to control our lives but in reality had so little of it. Everything had to fit what we wanted. But we were too distracted and confused to know what we really wanted needed as individuals living in the present with eternal links to the universe.
Now that we have stepped out of the ring we actual become in control. Together, all three of us, facing the unknown we take our next steps. Not those decided by an erratic boss who controls our time for his greedy interest. Today we are free to take our time rolling down the motorway to the sea. No more due dates! We have a one-way ticket to seek our destiny.
Dover. We drag the trailer up the ramp into the ferry. We're parked with the HGV trucks. Our caravan is 9 metres long, 6m for the camper and 3 metres for the trailer.
France, Belgium, the motorway a steady 70 km per hour... TomTom shows us the way.
Mariya looks in the side mirror and sees the wheel on fire. It falls off.
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