Another few weeks in Amber.

People ask me often if I am beginning to regret this project now that it is getting a bit colder...

I don't.

I am so happy. I am eternally satisfied that i am doing something i have a huge amount of passion in.
I have been doing plenty of interviews for various papers and things... all local, nothing big, and also having a short documentary made about what i am doing by an MA Film group...



I am being probed with questions i hadnt necessarily considered myself concerning the piece... and it is opening new alleyways of critique and concentration about what im doing, what i mean, what i want, what i need, what i am trying to achieve... and that is a very intense wander into my own mind and workings.

I am being challenged at every step, and challenging myself to make sure i am doing everything i can, and everything i wanted to achieve when i set out on this bizarre change of lifestyle.

I am going to start the Free University soon... time to start properly booking in lecturers... People seem to be very into the idea... lots of interest from various groups of people, not only students, which is ace.

Hold (acoustic)...

On request... photo's which illustrate my surroundings a little more...


So this is the Hogsmill River. Hopefully my future power source...Though my proposed water wheel will be placed further up the river where there is less obvious animal habitat.
This sloping part of the bank is directly to the left of Amber; if you were facing her as seen in the photo with the thumbs up in a previous post...

The tree in this photo is where i plan to place my birdbox.

To the right of the above picture, but behind Amber, on the riverbank, is this patch of land:

Which i hope to strim down, rotivate (keeping some of the nettles for food) and turn into an allotment to begin growing in early spring. I have had lots of interest from other people who would like to use some of the space, which is great; i wont be able to eat all the stuff that comes off it singlehandedly, so the more the merrier.

I also hope that this area under the elder canopy will be my outdoor dining area once the weather clears up a bit in the new year...

The Sun Is Shining...AND IT'S FREE.

So. Solar.

Yes.

I snapped up the end of the line panel from MAPLIN of all places... on a whim i figured i needed to learn a little about circuits and sustainable energy... so i went for it.

I thought it might take a little while to charge the battery before i got light. BUT NO. as soon as i plugged it in i was blinded by an almighty blast of white light. fantastic.

I also charge my phone every night on nothing but the power of our closest star.

SO HERE WE ARE...(FOUR TET REMIX...)

Well, here are a few photos of my so far epic journey into the world of van life.



I arrived and settled on the first weekend with a little bit of fear about what i was about to do...
The first few days with unlaid carpet in piles and my belongings spilling out of boxes was mega depressing... sleeping on a bright pink beach lilo (i will put a pic up i promise) which was too short for my body and meant for lounging in pools etc. was a freezing experience and i was forced into my thermals...

Within a week or so i managed to get my first sofabed from a local off freecycle.org and trollied it back triumphantly...

For some time it was sufficient but after a while i realised that my back trouble was directly linked to a rogue wooden beam hiding under the wafer thin mattress and i decided to upgrade.


I recently collected the improved futon - again from freecycle - and a friend happily trundled off with the old one... his brother is sleeping on it now... i hope his back is ok...

I laid my carpet soon enough and am ecstatic with the result. It is probably my favourite thing about Amber at the moment...


I found a wonderful doormatt in town and had to add it to my new home, i figured it would encourage me to wipe my feet too... so that Amber would stay cleaner for longer... I had to hoover all the fluff from laying the carpet with a vacuum borrowed from the janitors of uni... and an extension cord... ITS A WORK IN PROGRESS!! I can borrow power in times of need...


I plan to put this bird box that i made at the freshers fayre in a tree next to the river and try to make my living space some kind of animal friendly place... rather than just an encroachment on their space...

Its only fair...

A moment.

Yes. I am still alive. I have had no camera or means to photograph until recently so expect a few large chunky blog entries in the next few days.

I am in the Surrey Comet this week... page 4... the photo makes me look particularly gangly...

More coming soon concerning; pigeons, solar panels, carpet, living, showers, beds and hangovers.

My Design For Life...

So.

Today I am throwing my life into a van.

I leave tomorrow, and I will be sleeping in Amber for the first time ever tomorrow night.

It wasn't possible to put up the hammock yet, as I was unable to get hold of the welder again before tomorrow - will do it when I get back to Kingston...

Until then I have been given a lilo by my sister. Very pink. But kinda comfy... it will do for the time being...

I have thrown down the carpet for now as well, but that should be laid properly in the next week or so, and I will start to be a very active member of freecycle.org in the immediate future... searching for a decent sofa bed.

If you havn't heard about freecycle.org its basically a free trade site where you can get free stuff and get rid of stuff you cant bear to see thrown away... great for getting things like sofas, fridges, freezers, bikes etc... you should definately check it out and see how big your local community is... in Kingston alone there are over 10000 freecyclers...

http://www.freecycle.org

Anyway, I expect it will be a little while until my next post; fresher's week coming up and all and
I will be settling in to the carpark... But watch this space.

Oh, and how cool is this view to wake up to after a nap...

My insides are changing. A kind of Ambulance Puberty?

Yes. She is blossoming.

Finally.

Soon Amber will be ready... for me to move into her? That kinda takes the analogy too far doesn't it...

Well, whatever, she is nearly entirely painted a lovely shade of blue...

And a trip to a carpet shop provided these beauties for laying in the not too distant future...

So needless to say, I am a little bit excited.

Currently trying to fit my life into a van... packing and all that, so, if you'll excuse me...

...Bug Catcher wants to fight...

Snails. Slugs. Blackfly... Paras. Tangela. Etc...

When they get near your greenhouse... This happens...

Though I did enjoy watching the ants picking up the blackfly and carrying it off to be eaten... go team!

But yes... Devastation in the greenhouse. Bummer.

Invisible Touch...

Wowser.

It's certainly been a while since I updated you all on the progress of Amber.

Well today is your lucky day.

This is the first of 2 updates which will come very close together as i have in fact come a long way since the last entry and i dont want to give you the whole shebang in one lump sum.

So, for starters, I finished priming the floor, then got a bit hunk of wood and marked it all out using the old torn out floor as a guide.

I cut up the new thinner floor (more headroom... less back ache... yes please)...

Next i fitted all the bits of newly cut floor into the Amber to check it was all snug and that my skills as a man were up to scratch.

My skills as a man who does DIY and man stuff are average.

The floor fitted ok. It could have been better. But at least I did it. With no help. Yay.

Next on the agenda was weatherproofing the wood, so that it didn't just start to rot at the first sign of moisture... This was a thrilling process of multiple coats... maximum waiting around... maximum coffee intake.

We also got to play around with the engine... seeing as we had pulled out an old heater when taking out the original floor... we had to re-tube lots of things up in the heating system... and an air pipe for the air suspension that got welded through... but a trip to the engine supply shop down the road and we had all the parts we needed... Rafal once again jumped under Amber and worked his magic... she purred like a charm. I literally got goose bumps from revving the engine...

Ready For The Floor...(Toca Disco Remix durrr!!)

Ok.

A fair bit has happened since the last post - thankyou to all those who confirmed my suspicions that I am in fact an Autistic Dustin Hoffman...

So I've torn out the old floor, it was a piece of crap; too high for me to stand up fully and ruined by long metal trussing for the old seats to be attached to.

I got rid of all that and was left with just the metal chasis of the van; now full of holes from the removal of about a billion bolts that were holding in the old floor.

There was also a heater towards the front end of the floor and so that had to be disconnected, which resulted in a good few litres of blue cooling fluid spilling out... Of course this was caught... In one of mum's new storage boxes. Shhhh, she doesn't have to find out...

Next came the long job. I had to clean up every single hold in the floor before the welder arrived. Now, I am fairly competent with a welder; I've made a few sculptures over the years, but for this I thought I should let a pro handle it.

My dad's good friend and colleague Rafal Miller hopped in the back of the van and with only a cup of coffee and a few cigarettes emerged 4 solid hours later having finished the job.

It rained, it got dark; I am extremely thankful for Rafal's help.

It would have taken me twice as long and would not have been anywhere near as neat as his handywork.

So, now I have primed the floor, patched a few holes in the interior fibre-glass, and also collected a wonderful selection of carpet samples from a shop up the road... But I will save the unveiling of these until a later date. They will blow your head off.

Oh and by the way I had a look at those mushrooms in the field and they are very edible but I caught them a bit late... which is a shame... next time...

I have my wood ready to get installed for the new floor, so I suppose I will see you on the other side!

Amber is the colour of your energy...

Amber; a good name for a vessel. I will be casting her off at the beginning of the 'Living' part of the project by smashing a bottle of Elderflower Champagne (homemade durrr) over her side... Innit. Regal (I mean, I'll invite Her Majesty, but something tells me she will have other plans...).

So yes, Amber The Ambulance.

I understand that the last post was pretty boring, but that's because I had been away and had done no further maintainance, BUT NOW... Ohhhhhh yes. It's happened. The gloves are off. The power tools are out...

Hold onto your loins... This photo is pretty sexy...

POWERTHIRST! That's right, it's me a) pretending I know what manual labour is and b) pretending I'm Iceman from Topgun... or something similar, Patrick Bateman from American Psycho will also work in this situation... What the heck, you decide, I will get a voting system up.

Nice.

Yehhhh, maximum sparks...

And look at how much space it gave me...

However, due to me being over-eager, I broke the cutting disk shortly after the film was taken... and so I have to wait until tomorrow to get a new one to get the last chair out. I am massively excited.

After this, the floor comes out, then I can basically start painting...

By the way, I have been training an apprentice...

His name is Otto. He is WAY harder than I am. But I took a wasp sting for him yesterday, so APPARENTLY he owes me his life.

Also, I went to Oxfam and found 2 more amazing cassettes to add to the collection: albums by Tangerine Dream and Echo and the Bunnymen... classics. Here is a video of my gentle planting skills with Tangerine Dream as a soundtrack.

Enjoy, and I will have more up when the floor is ready to be removed.

Molly and Baaaaaaaaa...

After a week and a bit of being in the greenhouse, everything has started to grow pretty well.

I've started to pot on the seedlings into seperate trays and am realising I might have grown a little too much!! But that is better than too little I suppose...

The sun has been out, I have been slaving away with the delicate job of handling the little plants, and it's actually very satisfying to sit back and look at them all neatly in their rows...

The orchard is starting to look pretty good aswell; apples, pears and plums on the way... I am hoping to get my hands on them before the bugs and the birds...and my parents... and maybe teach myself to be a more competent chef while I have the time...

Believe it or not I have even eaten courgettes and mushrooms and ENJOYED them..!

There are giant field mushrooms growing outside too, and I am considering doing something with them before the sheep trample them into nothing...

Work on the ambulance has slowed down due to needing 2 people to do this bit of the rennovation. But either today or tomorrow the last bits will be out and I should be able to remove the old floor. So watch this space.

In the meantime, here is an idea of my surroundings whilst I work on this project.

To be honest, I'm currently loving it here and not so hot about the prospect of heading back to the busy city...But I'm sure I'll get bored and will be itching to be back...

Gimme Shelter...I Play Mechanic...

Yes, that's right, I've been under a vehicle; I've gotten covered in oil, I've got rust in my hair and I'm generally filthy - but feeling more and more like a man.

There has been a fair amount of progress on the ambulance, including the removal of lots of random things such as: oxygen supply line, soap dispenser, horrid blue hospital blinds, the brackets that hold the stretcher to the wall, a few chairs...

The space inside is looking bigger and better...

On top of this progress in the van, I have also been working in the greenhouse planting my first batch of seeds:

The first shoots on the way through, Rocket is the winner... but others are close behind.

Not an ant in sight. Ha.

But there is still a lot to do on the ambulance; having discovered that the floor is just covered ply wood, I have resolved to remove it (at the moment it is like a hospital floor with runners in it for the chairs... not exactly comfort living...) and replace it with a flatter more homely alternative.

This among other things is the next step of the conversion. And I have found the perfect soundtrack to my work in a box in the garage...

Growing Stuff and Killing Ants...

Seeds...

I figured the best way to reduce costs of food etc. and to be as self sufficient as possible would be to grow my own vegetables.

I dont have anywhere to do this in Kingston at the moment, but I am back home in Stratford-Upon-Avon for the summer and intend to get a head start on growing in time to arrive in Kingston to some kind of plot of land that I intend to find between now and September.

With the guidance of my dad (a professional gardener for the better part of the last half century) I picked out what I wanted, grabbed some pots, compost, etc. and began to clean out my old greenhouse... In which I have grown many many things over the years, with varied success.

In my bag of seeds I have: Cucumbers, Spring Onions, Lettuce, Rocket, Carrots, Leeks, Chili Peppers, Courgettes, Beans, Peas, and a whole host of other things, notably Nasturtiums (which you can eat the flowers of) and Morning Glory, which aswell as having lovely blue/purple flowers, has seeds that when eaten in the correct dosage can give you up to 12 hours of hallucinations...

Cant wait...

After pouring countless kettle-fulls of boiling water on the extremely busy ants next in my greenhouse I resorted to the Ant Powder; as much as I like ants... They really do get annoying when they are crawling up your legs by the hundreds because you have invaded THEIR territory.

After my epic battle avec les fourmis, I rummaged through my book collection and found a few things on eating wild plants in an SAS Survival Guide, and also some stuff about reducing your Carbon Footprint in a back issue of National Geographic...I have plenty of reading to do this summer in preparation for the project... If only I were Johnny 5.

For Your Viewing Pleasure...

After lots of searching online for suitable vehicles and being constantly disappointed with standard vans (no windows, no warmth, no ventilation etc.), we stumbled across this little number... An old private ambulance, with plenty of windows, inside insulation layer, lighting, and it's also a good runner... Needless to say, I jumped at the opportunity and so here I am... About to begin turning an ambulance into my new home.

This is the view through the side sliding door, you can see that it really was an ambulance; it even came with a stretcher... I was promised nobody died in this particular van, but I'm not sure I believe it...

Here is the stretcher in all it's glory...

And here is the back of the van; chairs and safety bars, and a very (to me) derelict wheelchair ramp. As you can see, there is a long way to go before this becomes the homely home I want it to be...

It Begins.

So here we go...

I suppose this project originated from thoughts sparked up by the book 'How To Live Off Grid' by Nick Rosen - a vital read for anyone even vaguely interested in alternative/sustainable lifestyles - which kept me captivated with accounts of how many people lived a) by harnessing the maximal power of nature and b) with little or no rent or bills...

Surely a more sustainable way of life would be extremely suited to the hard up, scrimp'n'save world of a student?

I decided several months ago that I would spend the final year of my Fine Art:Live Art course at Kingston University living in a van; trying my best to use the sun and nearby Hogsmill river for energy and growing or catching as much food as possible.

I brought my plan to the attention of the university who were commendably accomodating and arranged all the neccessary meetings with Health and Safety. These went swimmingly, albeit with a baffled expression as to why I would ever want to go through with such a lengthy and (seemingly) uncomfortable project. The university also were kind enough to offer me a parking space in the art campus carpark - another potential bill sidestepped...

After LONG discussions with many many people concerning 'problem' aspects of the piece that they assumed I had not already considered, I further galvanised in my mind that I would prove them wrong and show that it was more than possible to exist comfortably and sustainably as a student.

Perhaps with some hope that more people would follow my lead... I fully understood i had a long road ahead of me to prove anything to anyone...

Dickon In An Ambulance.

1. As a third year Live Art student at Kingston University I will be residing exclusively in a parked van within the university campus grounds.

2. During this period I will be attempting to depend, mainly, on sustainable resourses and live with as little cost both finacially and environmentally.