What I've learned so far

It's come to my attention that I've been rather poor at disseminating information about the chaos and madness that is my life. This is for two reasons; firstly my life is chaos and madness and secondly I deleted Facebook. No, I'm not getting it back. Anyway, I'm here to rectify the situation and thought I'd give a brief overview of what has occurred since my last update as well as some of my observations so far (this is an experiment after all).

So I did the very un-freegan thing of travelling to the United States of America in a fuel guzzling machine for the price of £500 in order to celebrate consumerism. This meant a brief respite from tent living for approximately a month divided between houses in Oklahoma and Cardiff, the former involving seeing my wonderful relatives and having what I think was some rather unnecessary surgery on my mouth followed by copious opiate consumption. I attempted to partially offset the environmental impact of the transatlantic journey by undertaking a sleep-deprived hitchhiking adventure all the way from Manchester Airport to Cardiff (essentially door-to-door) to see other people who's friendships I value enormously and to celebrate the new year. New year was also marked by the completion of a friend's eco-home, incidentally; a New Yurt Party really. Party and hangover passed and finally I made my way up to Nottingham and back into a bigger, better, bluer tent for a brief period while I did some exams - they went well, thanks. Oh yeah, had a hitchhiking first that day too - got picked up by a tractor!

Old tent - new tent; green tent -blue tent; 

Itching to get back on the road after exams, I packed up my tent and ran away to North Wales on a snowy day through Snowdonia to Caernarfon where I stayed on a boat for a couple of nights before doing some quite freegan exploration of the country in which I grew up. I couchsurfed, rough camped, hitchhiked, walked and dumpster dived my way back to Nottingham before my longest stint in the tent yet. I even made it to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyndrobollllantysiliogogogoch; an actual place, really. I've since become quite involved with the local music scene in Nottingham, started creative writing (no promises of a story yet) and done some significant damage to my left index finger with a pen knife. Pictures of the latter are available on request. University stuff is coming to a head a wee bit, dissertation is being written and samples are being made and analysed. In a word I'm busy.

Waking up on boats and back to the lab.

So what have I learned from this experience so far? Here's a few things off the top of my head.

1. Layers are key - a couple of times I've overestimated the nights temperature and woken up cold.
2. If you live in a tent in the winter, its insanely easy to make friends. They'll probably all think you're crazy though.
3. I don't know if I fully believe in the freegan ideology, but it's a hell of a lot more fun living in a tent and eating out of bins rather than sitting in front of the telly each night. I get itchy feet and money is boring. 
4. Living in a tent through the British winter is probably the least practical method of attaining free accommodation. I recommend squatting or working directly for accommodation.
5. It's nigh on impossible to be an ideologically purist freegan when you're doing a master's degree in chemistry. I'm okay with being as true to the ideology as I feel I can. 
6. This experience has allowed me more time for pursuing creative activities. Goal achieved! 
7. Cutting large potatoes with a pen knife and no chopping board is an awful idea and will land you in hospital. 

PS. Many of you may have heard of plans for upgrades to a shed. I've had a lot of pitfalls with this and put a lot of time into this idea and not managed to make any progress, it's most likely that I'm going to stay in the tent.

Bonus pic - 30 unopened cans from one dumpster!

I'd also like to say that I'm undyingly grateful to Peter for his continued gracious provision of the grass for my tent to lay on. None of this would be possible without him.