It was a long, warm autumn day in Spain. I’d been driving for most of it. It was getting late so I started looking for a place to park. By this stage I had already been living in my van for a couple of months, so I knew the drill. I drove to and fro along that same stretch of road at least half a dozen times, searching for the best place off the beaten track to pull over. Eventually I steered the van along a little forest road and parked beside a picnic bench. I’d been so busy surveying side streets for a suitable camp spot, I hadn’t taken much notice of anyone else around. As I sat down to drink a cup of tea, a cyclist I vaguely remembered passing some miles back came peddling furiously over, babbling away excitedly in Spanish.
“You!” he said “I see you go backwards, forwards. And I think there is a girl who knows freedom! How far do you travel?” He was smiling, this beautiful, huge, enthusiastic smile and peering past me into the van. I explained the van is my home, I’ve come from England, I live in it.
His eyes widened, “Woooow” he said beaming “I really want to be like you when I grow up”.
I laughed, he was probably not that much younger than me yet it was the sweetest thing anybody had ever said.
“The trick,” I told him, “is to never grow up”.
My Goodness 