Blog 8

I have started the de-cluttering process. I've been through all my box files and thrown out a bin full of paper. I only did this last Autumn, and I feel clearer again about what I am interested in and what my subject matter is.

I've also written a 'To do' list with short, mid and long term goals. They don't all need to be achieved, but it gives me a frame work to follow. I have still yet to write a brief about what I would actually like to make.

We have even talked about the possibilities for me to rent a studio space for a short while.

I've just finished reading Kevin McCloud's Grand Tour of Europe. We saw the TV series in 2009. Going on a 'Grand Tour' is a familiar phrase. Historically, the original Grand Tour era ran from the mid 16th to the mid 18th centuries, and I was particularly interested in why people took this trip and why we travel today. It seems that the past traveller's aspired to the same desires of today, albeit in a more scholarly manner.

The Grand Tourist wanted enlightenment, 'intellectual independence' (I like that phrase), the opportunity to gain knowledge and first hand experience of a place. It would be a research trip, a kind of training to broaden one's horizon. Grand Tourists wanted to trade as well as study architecture, art, music and antiquities. Often it was a pilgrimage, religious or otherwise; a route to follow myths and legends. A challenge and an adventure to do something different. The Grand Tourist liked to mix with the locals, be part of a different culture, taste new culinary delights (or not) and indulge in sexual activity and drinking.

Stopping in one place for a longer period of time has allowed Shawn and I to make new friends. There is Catherine and Michael, both in their seventies who have been travelling Europe for the last twenty years, often months at a time.

Brian and Mary who we have just met, are both in their seventies. They have been camping all their adult life starting with a tent and now with a mobile home. Brian has always written a diary and recently they retraced an old trip through France. They have no intentions of giving up.

We've also heard about Pam and Gary. A younger couple in their fifties, they have got the simple life down to an art. They live in a small caravan, walk everywhere, buy fresh food each day for their meals and only have two sets of clothes, one for wearing whilst the other is in the wash. I would love to meet them and hear their story.

Gary, the campsite owner has said, one thing he realizes is that this lifestyle keeps you younger, healthier and fitter with a much better outlook on on life and he has seen it time and again with his guests.

Shawn and I briefly spoke yesterday about why we are doing what we are doing. I think it is this sense of a nomadic life. Certainly a life style, we love the freedom of mobility. Even if we end up staying in one place for six months or a year, we can move on without complicated ties.

Certainly in the western world, we have become an individualistic society. Shawn and I are part of that modern individualism, but we depend less on society to support it. I mean things like services - electricity, fuel, wealth and such like.

Its interesting, we are now more stable as a couple living in an unstable environment, than when we lived in a very stable environment, when we were less stable in our relationship.

For both of us it is a life style choice first (which may change as time develops), and location choice is second. For Shawn it is more an external experience and for me more an internal experience. It will be interesting how we develop!

I would like to think I am more tolerable of other people and less stereo-typical critical of those who are different to me. I feel more aware of being an EU citizen, something which I wasn't aware of before I left the UK.