Having lived a 'homeless' life in the UK for a time as a new traveller, as my husband had also lived this way before he met me (and loved in an old mobile library when I met him) I always like reading, and watching, stories of people on the road, squatting, or otherwise living in alternative homes. I have quite the stories about it. Van life became trendy and marketable yet people still look down their noses at people forced to live in caravans in encampments around cities in the UK like Bristol. I was holding down a professional job but wouldn't tell anyone we lived in a truck squatting an old bit of disused council land because the stigma was real. Some 'sites' as we called them were full of drugs and booze, some less so. All kinds of people, some people born into the new traveller life, some students, nurses, gardeners, labourers, because rent was expensive and site life gave them instant community. When you live that way community can be the best thing, so that living in a house is suddenly very, very lonely, and the wonder of running water as opposed to 25 l water containers filled up round the back of a church is quite something. A lot of people were forced off sites with various laws - they made it harder and harder to live this life which the government had begun to try to eradicate since they first started as new age travellers in the 1980s. No wonder the new travellers used to mock 'van lifers' who youtubed glamourous conversions when they used to pick up an ancient Bedford and make furniture from materials found in a skip without 20,000 followers to validate them. From counterculture to consumer culture I suppose. Anyway I'm rambling. Too much to condense here. I think I never wanted to watch Nomadland as I felt it would have been too contrived for me and as you say emotionally manipulating. It's always something I was going to get around to.
I order from Amazon all the time and don't think much about the people who pack those boxes.
I think this is more and more automated these days - robots packing in huge factories. Jamie saw Jeff Bezos yacht (or one of?) in real life the other day moored in Qld and it made me want to cancel my Amazon membership. Now there's a disconnect - how the workers earn barely enough to pay rent and Bezos has so many, many bazillions.
I will watch this one day.
I always thought if something happened to Jamie and I lost the house I could happily live in a van. I'd want a brand new Mercedes Sprinter though and not the decrepit things we used to live in. One with a shower and a diesel heater thanks very much. Still, yes, it would be lonely. But you can be lonely in four walls too.
I'm not sure if you can find this anywhere
UNDER COVER - Feature Documentary https://share.google/ZYTCIAruaP7kLmxMC
About homelessness and Australian women. It's a great doco. Homeless women here are far more likely to live in a van - it's safer.
This was our lorry
We had a red Chesterfield sofa and a wood burner.
Oh wow, you were something, weren't you? Where were you when I was setting up house? I had no idea how to be a suburban person, a suburban 'housewife'. Maybe I did know but I didn't care. My mother always did things right. Fine plates, fancy utensils, cut crystal vases. Not me.
My first dinner party--I invited three former colleagues from work. I felt sure they understood who I was. Everyone knew I was 'unconventional'. But no, they were stunned when I put a tablecloth on the floor and served dinner picnic style. We had no furniture at the time. I was stunned that they were stunned. It took a long time for me to put on my proper pretend. I still don't enjoy it. I try never to have guests.
The film really is as genuine as could be, considering there's a camera. A camera changes everything. The people are 'real'. The scenes are definitely real. Nothing contrived there. I think you would enjoy this very much. Just about everyone is down on their luck, and I think the hardship of that does not come home the way it must be living day to day.
Great comment. Thanks. You made my night :)
Every time I shove a heap of clothes in a drawer without folding them, I think of Mum. Luckily she can't see in my drawers. I do tidy up my cutlery drawer when she comes for dinner though, as she often helps tidy up. We make a joke of it - she knows my drawers are chaos though the exterior is harmonious. I do wonder if we reject the fancy and/or expensive because we know it is just show, and we just don't care for such things.
That's wild. I will never forget share houses and chai made in beaten up pans and drunk out of Vegemite glasses or pint glasses stolen from the pub. Your house picnic sounds like my kind of thing. No one I know would have batted an eye.
I'm not good at 'proper pretend' - I cake fake it, but it makes me anxious on the inside. There's always an element of rejection which makes the child in me feel very anxious.
I like my beautiful home and beautiful things, but nothing is expensive and everything curated for MY pleasure and no one else's - hence mismatched mugs and charity shop cutlery (such pretty old cutlery brings me joy!). I find it odd that people care so much about such things.
Our live in vehicles were probably the tidiest and cleanest of everyone's on site though. You can't be raised by two pedantic Virgos and then have a messy dirty truck haha. I'd boil water on the stove to scrub the floors on the weekend and whilst everyone else's truck smelt like dogs and cigarettes, mine was always fresh and tidy haha. Quite a feat in winter in England in a.muddy field haha. No, you can't come in with muddy boots and please smoke outside! Haha.
My dear @riverflows,
Opposite sides of the globe and yet there is resonance.
I sanitize every morning. Bathroom faucets, refrigerator door opening, door knobs, light switches. But, the night before I may have just tossed my clothes on the rack in my bedroom.
I am clean and disorganized--which may be why I lost so many things.
No shoes in the house. I can't see it. My daughter lives downstairs and there shoes are acceptable. Upstairs, they come off. I just can't abide all that outside dirt on my floors.
Without our contradictions we probably wouldn't be very interesting, would we?
I wish I'd be here in years ahead to read about more of your life adventures. I'm sure, with your inclination, there are many that await. I'm not ready to hang up my spurs yet, but I think I'm mostly in the coasting phase :))
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