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.