the insider Loitering within tent

Kevin Willis packs up and beds down until the pandemic passes

Whether to choose Amy schumer or Wile E. Coyote is probably the biggest decision I’ll have to make this morning.

Writing this article on so-called Freedom Day (Monday, July 19) it feels very fitting to have my choice of t-shirt be my only real issue. This much anticipated day, with its many push-backs and threats of cancellation, has survived to signal the start of a return to near normality after 18 turbulent months.

Not for me though. For my wife Nicola and myself, our ‘freedom’ day came around a month earlier for, as promised in a previous column, we have finally sold our house, most of the contents and set forth to travel this marvellous island called Great Britain with little more than a tent and a determination to test every friend or family member who ever uttered the words “there is always a bed at ours should you need it”.

Covid-19 has affected everyone one of us in some way or another though thankfully, I haven’t personally lost anyone close due to the virus. What Covid has achieved is something Maggie Thatcher, the wars in Iraq and 9/11 failed to do and that is to render me redundant, and I hate that.

For 22 years we have worked our fingers to the bone to build a relatively successful chauffeur business, and then BOOM! we get completely blindsided when some greedy git decides to eat a deep-fried bat in a Wuhan street market. Other conspiracy theories are available.

Two factors helped shape our decision to cut loose: the first was born from the fact that I have always made my own decisions. I got some right and a hell of a lot wrong, but they were at least my calls. Now I am forced to sit and wait for a virus to stop mutating before it determines our future, so no thanks.

Secondly, in my opinion, all of this “we are in this together” and “be kind” codswallop the banks and mortgage companies have been extolling from behind their fixed smiles and Zoom-call waving will judder to an abrupt end as soon as we are all double vaccinated.

Also (I know this will be the third thing when I claimed two but one of the reasons I drive a car for a living is that I am crap at Maths), Nicola and I had always planned to take six months off to see Britain properly so are simply getting it done earlier than anticipated and while we can still walk unaided and can remember each other’s name.

Sitting in the evening sunshine at Allington Lock, Maidstone on our first night of homelessness we order a bottle of cheap wine and proceed to spend £20,000 in 20 minutes clearing credit cards, car finance and other bills which was a damn sight easier than clearing the house was. The crap we had hoarded is utter madness!

Following two whole weeks of packing, lifting and carrying, my arm muscles tremble as I attempt to raise my glass up to my lips, and with my tired eyes as dark as a weary panda I glance at a party of teenagers at the next table and growl “I was young once, look at me now!”

For the first time in my married life I have no mortgage, utility bills, Sky TV subscription or building insurance, though to prove I haven’t gone totally mad I kept Netflix.

Before getting started on the scenic part of our trip we visited my family in Newcastle, who needed long-overdue help arranging social care for our uncle who is lost to us through severe Alzeimer’s. And we met up with my sister in Southport and Nic’s family in Lytham St Annes. We have celebrated an 80th and a 21st birthday and got royally drunk reminiscing on the good old days of 2019. Now, before you all even contemplate thinking about following in my footsteps you should know that this lifestyle isn’t all a bed of roses. I miss my granddaughters back in Kent a lot and, the other morning, I had to shave while some bloke emptied his bowels of campfire-prepared curry not six feet behind me. Wifi and mobile signal in the countryside is in urgent

need of ‘levelling up’ and I haven’t come close to winning a single game of tent Scrabble as yet. Outside of England’s failure against Italy in the Euros final, the night our airbed sprang a leak and resulted in us from the operator’s trying to sleep on bone hard ground with our feet stuck in point of view... the air riding a stubborn air pocket ranks as one of the low points of the trip. Business does, dare I say it, seem to be making a tentative comeback and I will no doubt be back to what I enjoy doing most… though later, rather than sooner. We actually struggled to cover a job last week because a lot of our usual guys were already busy. That is as encouraging as the Whatsapp groups pinging back into life looking to cover work. My little concern, Chirton Grange Ltd, had over the past few years focussed our business toward the inbound American market with tours of this green and pleasant land, so all I am doing really is a big old recce, as any good chauffeur should. Discovering new places to visit, new eateries to enjoy and fresh experiences to offer travel-hungry clients as and when they are allowed to cross the pond again. Fortunately, I no longer wake up in the early hours worrying on how I am going to manage my outgoings, even if I do wake to a high-pitched hissing sound and a definite sinking feeling. I also accept our choice of lifestyle is great while the sun is shining and will be a whole lot different come the freezing, wet December mornings. Time will tell, but I have always believed that sitting still gets you nowhere. In the early days of my business I would go to the airport with no one to meet knowing I could get chatting to someone about something that might create a job or contact, so who knows what ideas might turn up as we travel around. Why only today, while taking coffee in Kirby Lonsdale, I noticed a snaking line of middle-class cyclist types queuing for ‘Organic Cow-to-Cone Ice Cream’! Instantly my idea leapt to take this concept one step further. Customers put three ice cubes in their mouth, a squirt of caramel (vanilla or chocolate) syrup and then kneel to suck directly from the cows udder as the beast gets oscillated on a vibrating floor. Currently, I am asking £250.000 for a 5% stake in ‘Teat Out to Help Out’ (patent pending). Get in on the ground floor as this lift is going all the way up to the Penthouse! A connected world means we can continue on with the job from our mobile office. I am still too young and not ready to retire, also the equity the house released won’t see me through old age, so we will be back fitter, leaner and hopefully wiser. And I chose Wile E, Coyote. Sorry, Amy. n Kevin Willis runs Chirton Grange, contact@chirtongrange.co.uk