bryonysimcox

[bryonysimcox]

We all need Cultura Segura: Week 44: Spain

I’ve been thinking about what it is that keeps us sane in trying times. The common thread, at least from my experience, is culture, art and creativity. 

The sun sets earlier these days. The waning days leave me more time to think and reflect, something I think a lot of us do as the year draws to a close. This year is a particularly nutty one to reflect on, a year that has thrown us all around and taken us on a journey of isolation, restriction, and even anger and confusion. As I write this blog, at the end of our 44th week since setting off in the van, the sun sets and I start to reflect on what’s been going on.

While there’s been a shed-load of frustration this year, I am actually incredibly grateful. Getting ‘stuck’ in Spain has resulted in a unique opportunity to build our video production business here - to build a client base, gain new skills and work on some really cool projects. In looking at this opportunity, it’s pretty clear to me now that it’s the thing that has kept me sane.

The common thread in my positive memories over the last few months here in Valencia is the presence of creativity and culture. It seems no coincidence then, that in Spain people have championed ‘Cultura Segura’ (safe culture) so passionately.

In the UK we have a strong history of culture and creativity. I’ve often thought it was the bad weather that drove people inside to create, and the hardships that people have faced that have developed our zany sense of humour and self-expression. So much music, cinema, sculpture, comedy, gastronomy and more has been born on the fascinating little island I know of as home.

And yet, when the virus brought the world to a standstill, I was dismayed by the lack of solidarity with the arts in the UK, the lack of support and the lack of acknowledgement that these sectors bring so much value not only financially but emotionally and spiritually too. In contrast, my personal experience here in Spain has been that culture has not been forgotten. Measures have been put in place to allow for performance and celebration. Jobs have not been destroyed or funding cut. Of course, it’s just the perspective of one individual, but from where I stand the UK could learn a little about Cultura Segura. 

Every week, George and I have the pleasure of livestreaming concerts performed to the public at the Marina de Valencia. 

We started livestreaming from the Marina back in July, and have since then sat in the same spot once a week to film and share the sounds of a whole diversity of performers to audiences online. Okay, so not every performance has been ‘our kind’ of music, but then there have been weeks which have blown us away too. And of course that same diversity is one of the most incredible aspects of these concerts; that they appeal to a diversity of people from in and around Valencia. It’s a truly community-spirited event, which firmly says that culture has an important role to play even in a pandemic-stricken city, and perhaps even more so.

As I’ve sat behind my desk mixing three cameras and sending a video output to two platforms (Facebook and YouTube), I’ve wondered if it’s all worth it. The money that has to be invested into something like these concerts - into sound engineers and lighting and seating and hand gel and toilets and cleaners and bar staff and people like George and I. But then, I watch the standing ovations or see that yet another week’s concert has sold out, and I realise that giving people live music is a kind of lifeline that extends beyond simple cost-effectiveness calculations. Live music, even if it has to be enjoyed seated 2 metres apart from your friends and wearing a mask, is as necessary to our wellbeing as food and water. 

I’ve written before about the power of collage in giving me self-expression and a sense of joy. I haven’t collaged much recently, but even consuming the art of others has lifted my spirits.

Even though I haven’t quite found the right mindset, time or space to create new collages, I’ve found that looking at the art of others leaves me similarly enthused. Instagram can be full of rubbish, toxic mindsets and jealousy-inducing images of perfect lives lived elsewhere, but when I come across art on Instagram it’s so encouraging. These platforms have created new routes to discovering ‘undiscovered, normal’ people making art, regardless of who they are or where they live, and it’s one of the reasons I think social media has the potential to be a force for good. 

And while the internet is great at bringing together people and things from across the globe, I think that the pandemic has also encouraged us all to celebrate the things closer to home. At Broaden, we recently started a commission working with the Valencia World Design Capital and it’s been a great chance to celebrate the creators that exist right here. I’ve been embracing the opportunity to get under the skin of one city, to give my time and attention to this one place rather than worry about the fact that our original plan was to have travelled through so many more countries, and therefore cities, by now.

In developing this project with the World Design Capital, I’ve been reminded that there’s always so much more than meets the eye in cities, and that there are creative people making and doing things, just not always in plain sight.

So far as part of the project, we’ve visited and interviewed Fernando Abellanas (furniture designer & maker), Pepe Gimeno (graphic designer & artist) and Angela Montagud (interior & product designer). We would never have had the chance to meet these people and enter their studios, each tucked out of sight in the city’s surrounds, if it wasn’t for the pandemic keeping us here. I’ve been so inspired by the way that each of these creators, in their own personal way, are just chipping away at what they do best while the world around them is changing. Their work requires concentration and patience, and I think I left each of our meetings with them a little more inspired about applying the same qualities to my own work.

While the language barrier can sometimes create a sense of isolation, the common language of creativity has helped me feel so much more connected to this place.

Each day we spend in Spain, I know that my Spanish is getting a little bit better, but it definitely doesn’t always feel like that. Not being able to communicate clearly can be a real frustration and add to the feeling that George and I are quite isolated. I am forever grateful to the people here who we are coming to know as friends who have shown us so much patience when it comes to stringing a sentence together!

But as I said above, creativity can be a common language. We have been able to make videos which navigate English and Spanish, and which explore topics like design and music and food, topics which transcend barriers. I’m hoping that when George and I are in quarantine in the UK over Christmas and we finally get around to editing Broaden’s showreel, we’ll be able to look back on all this creativity and culture in Spain with a smile. 

Just like we all need food and security and a place to call home, we need ways to create and to enjoy creativity. We all need Cultura Segura. 

[bryonysimcox]

Wake-up Somewhere Different Every Day: Week 40, Spain

Autumn has arrived, the pandemic continues to turn plans on their head, and I’m finally back to writing in this blog. This week I reflect on what it’s been like to move back into the van full-time, and the intense highs and lows it brings.

You wake up somewhere different every day. Well not quite every day, as you return to favourite spots and stay two or three nights in a row in one place if you’re particularly settled. But in general, living in a van affords you the experience of a new setting to see each day in, to wake up to. Sounds idyllic, huh? Well it’s that same ever-different aspect of vanlife which also brings with it uncertainty, lack of stability and absolutely no rhythm or routine to ground yourself in. 

(images) Some of the (more picturesque) spots we’ve found to stay at

This intense uncertainty is what I’ve been grappling with since we moved back into the van over six weeks ago. And I think it’s probably also what’s stopped me from getting back into the routine of writing on a frequent basis - which is why this blog post is so long overdue! But I knew that I’d have to start writing again at some point, and that writing would help me express the joys and frustrations of the past few months. As ever, I hope this blog resonates with you and perhaps makes you feel less alone in the frustrating, topsy-turvy year that 2020 has turned out to be.

I think humans aren’t used to things being out of our control. The parallel between the Covid pandemic and living in a van is that they have both taken things out of our control, big time.

It has occurred to me that one of the ‘privileges’ of life in a ‘developed’ Western place is that the future feels like it’s ours for the taking. We can plan to go to university, to travel or to build a career, and we can have our own neatly little packaged-up goals and milestones that we want to achieve. We book weddings years in advance and think nothing will come along and stop them. Heck, we book a table at a restaurant in a week’s time and assume that we’ll be able to walk right in and sit down!

Covid-19, and the measures in place to curb it, have stripped us of that privilege. It has meant cancelled weddings, less eating out and plans changed. Even as I write this we were set to be eating with friends in Valencia City Centre, but measures which came into effect at midnight last night put a halt to that too, as gatherings of more than six people are now prohibited. And whilst this has largely been a painful privilege to lose, I think (and hope) it is at least bringing us more into the present, and less fixated on the future.

(images, left to right) Exploring Valencia’s Old Town, another wild swimming spot (my favourite activity!) and some van pals

As someone who loves to plan and prepare, I think I’ve chosen to live in a van as a way to live more in the ‘now’, and to challenge that desire to predict and control everything.

‘Living in the now’ might sound awfully wholesome, but it’s also been a bloody pain in the arse at times too! Take for example the nights we go to bed planning to do a solid day of work editing videos the next morning, only to wake up to overcast skies. With two laptops running editing software and no sun coming in, our solar power system won’t hold out all day, and we have to bite the bullet and pay for a campsite with power. Or there’s the time I hand-washed some of our clothes and hung them out to dry in the completely-empty forest spot we’d parked up in, only to come back from a run and discover someone had stolen my underwear! And there was the night we were awakened at half three in the morning by a couple who had (rather forcefully) reversed into the van, and smashed our indicator and bumper...

I’m able to laugh about these things now, but at the time I wanted to scream out loud, cry, or a mixture of both. George can vouch for the fact that I’ve said “why can’t we just live a normal life?!” countless times too. It’s things like these that reinforce my inner desire to not rely on factors outside of my control, like the weather and the kindness of humans and the regulations put in place by governments and the mechanical performance of a 25-year-old Japanese van.

But just as things feel like they’re all getting too much, life throws you a reminder to listen to the other voice in your head, the one that tells you to go for it and embrace uncertainty.

Embracing uncertainty has paid off nine times out of ten. It’s my responsibility to put the one rubbish thing into context to the nine good things - the many times we’re able to easily work with our laptops and enjoy the Valencian sun powering our renewable energy system; the days I’ve hung up washing under the van awning against an incredible natural view all for free; the comfortable nights we’ve spent parked up in places without people reversing into us!

Add to that the freedom this lifestyle affords us, and I’m beginning to feel the sense of gratitude melting away my icy bitterness. That very freedom has meant that despite a global pandemic, George and I have had the pleasure of really getting to know the Valencian region. We’ve been down the coast to Alicante, inland to the ancient town of Cuenca, up into Aragon to discover the old town of Albarracin, and spent plenty more time in and around the city of Valencia too. We’ve driven along sketchy roads, swum in reservoirs and rivers, woken up surrounded by wild deer and all the while made a bunch of videos.

(images) Exploring Alicante

(images) Exploring Cuenca

When we started this ‘trip’, the goal was all about driving as far as we could. Now, I’m trying to embrace what living in a van offers me, outside of just helping me drive as far as possible. 

So - I’m embracing uncertainty and I’m embracing gratitude, or at least I’m trying to. Part of the value of writing this stuff down is it serves as a sort of commitment to myself to keep trying. As the ongoing restrictions of the pandemic have ground me down and the isolation of vanlife has left me weary, I’ve needed to find tools to cope, and writing stuff down is one of them. It can all get a bit much when George and I live with each other 24/7 in a 4m2 space and then we rely on each other for emotional support too, so a pen and paper (or keyboard) can be a great alternative counsellor!

There’s been plenty more going on this end that I’d struggle to cram into a blog post. But the long and short of it is that we’re back in the van, and that as with many things in life, it’s not all perfect. But it’s GOOD.

(images) Different days, different views, same feet!

Suzi the Van has been a bit of a handful, and we’ve discovered more teething issues (both in terms of mechanics and interior fit-out) than we’d like. But we’re also asking this van to facilitate a lifestyle we couldn’t have imagined we’d be living, where we’re running a video production company in and around Valencia. This ‘pause’ in the plan of travelling the open  road is sort of turning into a twist in the road instead, where it’s giving us a chance to rethink plans entirely, and even consider the possibility of getting a different van in the future.

In the meantime, this red Toyota HiAce continues to be our home and brings with it some wild and wacky stories. Plus, we get to wake up somewhere different every day, and that’s something.

[bryonysimcox]

Remember to Breathe: Weeks 24, 25 and 26, Spain

Sometimes life runs ahead of you. As three weeks since my last post have elapsed, I remind myself to take stock and breathe.

I started with such good intentions. A blog post a week, documenting our adventures driving East in our van. An intention I kept pretty strong until the past few weeks, which have passed in a daze. I’m not sure if it was lack of time or lack of motivation that stopped me from writing, but I do know that as our travels ground to a halt and I have had less adventures to report on, it has been harder to see the purpose in writing a blog. And yet, it is in truly extraordinary times like these, where we find ourselves all living altered lives amid a global pandemic, that writing has value - not just in exploring the things we’ve done but the things we’ve felt.

It’s been a busy three weeks here in Spain that’s for sure. Suzi the Van has brought us her fair share of dramas, especially when we discovered a burst coolant pipe a few days before we were booked to do a video shoot over an hour’s drive away. In a series of rather fortunate events, we found a Toyota garage and a super friendly mechanic who helped us navigate old Japanese parts diagrams and who wasn’t picky about our mix of Spanglish and hand gestures! He managed to order us in a specific genuine part (which was admittedly pretty pricey for what is effectively just a section of pipe) and George fitted it himself which was brilliant.

Doing our own repairs and maintenance on the van can be incredibly rewarding at times, but also super frustrating when we don’t have the tools or space that we need to do it effectively.

We’ve definitely realised that living minimally and with no fixed address can be a real pain when it comes to needing to do practical things, and we both dream of having a workshop and stash of tools and materials one day! Nevertheless, George’s pipe installation worked a treat and he changed the oil and fuel filter a few days later too - which also wasn’t without its dramas (but that’s another story)…

(images) Repairing the split radiator pipe in the van

Measures to manage the pandemic are still very much in place here in Spain. But they do at least mean that elements of ‘normal life’ can continue in a managed way, and so now that people are allowed out and about, we’ve been able to resume filming. We’ve been working with a small tourism company based in Valencia called Valtournative to help create some promo videos - a job we had originally booked way back in March before Covid-19 had taken a hold of Spain.

Valtournative is run by a bunch of genuinely lovely people including Danny, director and tour guide extraordinaire. He is the kind of business owner who wears his passion on his sleeve and his deep fascination for the Spanish countryside and the stories embedded within places is infectious.

As soon as it was safe to do so, we headed out with them out on some of their tours, firstly to an incredible vineyard and winery called Chozas Corrascal and later to some thermal springs in the town of Montanejos. What Valtournative does best is taking people out of the city and into the incredible natural spots around Valencia, which is of course is an even more appealing type of tourism, for its ability to enjoy yourselves in a safe and spacious environment, given the Covid-19 considerations. For Broaden to be filming amid grapevines, tasting organic wines, exploring small rural villages and swimming in natural springs… well, it’s a bit of a dream really!

(images) Filming at the vineyard and winery of Chozas Carrascal with Valtournative

(images) Filming at the Fuente de los Banos in Montanejos with Valtournative

As commercial work with Broaden grows, it’s not only a way of sustaining ourselves, but a kernel of hope that the future holds activity, exchange and adventure again. That things will get better.

I’ve also been building some exciting projects with AnalogueBryony, my collage-making practice. The wicked Manchester-based rock-pop outfit ‘Glass Caves’ recently released their single ‘Eye to Eye’ which features a collage I made as its artwork, and I’ve finished a few private commissions which I’ve been really pleased with as well. It’s strange to see AnalogueBryony grow as an enterprise considering how long I’ve been just plodding away at making my collages as a project for myself.

Being able to generate some income from my collage-making is huge for me, but I also have to remind myself that it’s first and foremost a creative process I can tap into to care for myself (something I explored in my post from Week 22). It’s probably no surprise that while I’ve been super busy making commissions, I haven’t found the time to make art just for fun! That said, I have at least managed to pop into MiKENGO cafe in Valencia a few times, and seeing my art on their walls in my show ‘Stop Making Sense’ is always a humbling and surreal experience.

(image) The final artwork for Glass Caves’ ‘Eye to Eye’ single, which you can listen to here.

Amid all the doing, there’s feeling too. Whilst these three weeks have been chokka block with stuff, I’ve forgotten to stop and take stock at times.

In many ways, ‘doing’ things all the time is a form of distraction. And after the enforced slowing-down that came with lockdown, I guess I’m not alone in suddenly trying to cram it all into this de-escalation phase - both to distract myself from the reality that life is still not as it was, and to make up for the ‘lost time’ of the months that have just passed. Working on building Broaden, releasing videos such as our new documentary about the town of Portland in New South Wales, making collages, generating work, it’s all a form of ‘being productive’. And I know that sometimes I turn to these things when I don’t want to stop and think too much. 

I guess when I sat down to write this blog post after a bit of a hiatus, I thought to myself ‘what’s the overarching message’? And the message I concluded with, a message to myself, is that I need to remember to breathe.

Breathing means taking stock, looking at what’s come before and what’s ahead, and being kind to yourself. I think it also means being honest, and not fooling yourself into thinking that everything’s okay just because you’ve been busy.

(images, left to right) Moments of breathing: an incredible sunrise on the drive to a video shoot, an evening on the balcony, the deserted town square in Corbera looking blissful.

Sure, it’s an honour to be busy and especially to be occupied with wonderful creative projects, but I’ve got to remember the low points, the spectrum of emotions, the mundane everyday routinesm the frustration of still not being able to see family, the uncertainty about the future, the despair at global powers who seem to have taken climate change completely off the table. Breathing means taking it all in - the good with the bad, the doing with the thinking.

So why am I sharing this with you? It seems, yet again, that a personal insight could in fact be of value to others, that the idea of breathing, and of giving yourself the time and respect to feel all sorts of emotions about this topsy-turvy trainwreck of a year is an idea we could all benefit from.

Just because the initial hype of coronavirus and the full lockdown it triggered has subsided a bit, doesn’t mean it’s not genuinely affecting our lives, our livelihoods and our mental wellbeing. And perhaps that’s another reason I haven’t written for a while, that I haven’t wanted to admit to myself that while George and I are busy, it’s still a struggle to stay positive and keep our heads above the water. But the irony is that in admitting it, in remembering to breathe and in writing this all down, I suddenly feel a whole lot better.

Have a wonderful week of doing, thinking and breathing.

#life in a van #Travel Diaries #Bryony & George #Gratitude #Videography #digital nomads #Reflection #Breathing space

[bryonysimcox]

Fernweh and Heimweh: Week 23, Spain

Straddling the line between Fernweh (wanderlust) and Heimweh (homesickness) as we continue our life in Spain. It’s been another week not (yet) on the road, with life here in Corbera made more delightful by a series of social outings including the launch of my exhibition In Valencia, ‘Stop Making Sense’.

What a funny week we’ve had. This week has certainly seen some big changes, as we finally made it out (three nights in a row) into Valencia to catch up and hang out with people after months of social isolation. It’s also been a week where I’ve been a bit lost in my own mind, thinking about the bizarre situation I find myself in, somewhere between ‘Fernweh’ and ‘Heimweh’.

I first heard these two German words from Charles Landry, an author and speaker who specialises in cities and the topic which his name has almost become synonymous with, ‘Creative Bureaucracy’. I saw Charles speak as part of the States of Change Learning Festival back on the 20th June, in a session about the roles of public imagination versus bureaucratic creativity when it comes to culture change. Because it was an online festival, the beauty of the session was the sense of intimacy you got from seeing Charles and the other speaker, the wonderful Anthea Lee, discussing the topic directly over Zoom, and them answering the questions from the participants directly using Zoom as a conduit.

Charles introduced his own tangled sense of place and identity, and referred to the words Fernweh and Heimweh, which mean ‘wanderlust’ and ‘homesickness’ in German. Charles’ description of this strange kind of yearning struck a chord with me. Having left home to go to uni in Newcastle at 17, moving to Australia at 21 and then returning to the UK at 24 to build a van to try to travel the world in, I have certainly felt a similar tension: a strange kind of desire to be both uprooted and rooted, on-the-move and grounded in one place.

I guess this tension between wanderlust and homesickness is what drives many people to travel a lot while young, before ‘settling down’ in later life.

But the strangest thing about this tension (and something which I’ve observed increasingly in lockdown) is the nonsensical desire that I have to have both at the same time. Of course, that’s completely impossible. You can only be in one place at any given moment, and so that can either be off galavanting and exploring new places, or building roots and a sense of community in the place you call ‘home’.

One of the inadvertent results of coronavirus for George and I however, has been getting ‘grounded’ here in one place not long after we set off from the UK. In this sense, it feels like the worst of both worlds, not getting to travel the open road as we’d planned for so long, and also not getting to live in a community, near friends and family we know and love in a house of our own. 

(images, left to right) Exploring hidden pockets of Corbera, enjoying odd little photo-ops, and yearning for the open road.

Of course, this really is a ‘first world problem’, but it’s also been an emotion I’m keen to explore in myself, as I feel like it’s always been there even before the pandemic struck. What is it about the desire for diversity that drives travellers like George and I out of our comfort zones, away from our dearest friends and into the unknown? And is the pain and sense of disconnection, the lack of financial security and yearning for the roots of community really a worthwhile price to pay? 

When I’ve aired my doubts about our travels to friends, they often reply with “but you can’t do that, you’re living the dream!”. And I’m left thinking, “Am I? Is this the dream?”

I guess these exchanges have made me question what we put on the line for our ‘dreams’: imagined perfect futures which embody the values we want to live by and the lifestyles we want to enjoy. It’s not that I’m not enjoying my life right now (even though it certainly doesn't look anything like what I expected), but it’s that I’ve been genuinely questioning the pay-off between the different dreams that I want, and the pain that has to be endured to get there, which in some ways is the pain of having Fernweh but not Heimweh, or having Heimweh but not Fernweh.

This idea of our ‘dreams’ has been making me think about the future. I’ve always been interested in the study of the Future, not just in terms of predictions and projections but in terms of imagining alternative outcomes and utopias. In fact, I interviewed the wonderful Futures Thinker, Mansi Parikh, a month or two ago for an upcoming video and it’s a topic I continue to get drawn into. All that said, living life amid the pandemic has reaffirmed in me the importance of being present, and finding ways to enjoy the here and the now (something I wrote about back in Week 16’s post). 

It seems that Western culture’s fixation on the future can in many ways lead to unhappiness in the present, despite the irony that the time we only ever experience is right now. 

With that in mind, I’ve been trying to draw my attention to the here and now. I find the only way to curb my sense of isolation from friends or my sense of frustration at not yet being able to resume our travels has been to focus on the small things that make the everyday good. I guess what I’m effectively talking about is gratitude, and realigning awareness to the positive things that we forget to see. Often those small things, even if unplanned, are the things which make life worth living, which can give you a sense of wanderlust or a sense of home too.

So I’ve been noticing the sunshine. The way the heavy air falls around 2pm here and the siesta brings the village to a sleepy lull. I’ve been noticing George. The way he doesn’t get bored of my jokes and (amazingly) still finds things to tell me about despite being with each other 24/7. I’ve been noticing art. Dancing in the kitchen to music on repeat or getting lost in the instagram feed of countless talented illustrators and collage artists. I’ve been noticing friends. I can choose to tell myself I’m far from home or I can celebrate the sense of immediate connection afforded by a quick phone call.

Getting a chance to socialise has also been a real gamechanger. You really don’t take for granted the opportunity to hang out with others after months of not being allowed to!

Apart from seeing a few friends here and there, my exhibition opening night was the first ‘proper’ time we hung out with people face-to-face since March. The show opened on Thursday 25th June, and I was delighted to have it attended by a handful of people we’ve been lucky enough to meet whilst staying in Valencia. What’s more, some people even came who had just found my work through instagram, which was certainly a confidence boost (not least cause ever since I organised this exhibition, the pangs of self doubt had started to kick in).

(images) ‘Stop Making Sense’ collage exhibition

Seeing ten of my collages, made from as far back as 2016 and as recently as a week or two ago here in Spain was a real treat. It was also pretty surreal to see them framed and visible to the public after working in such isolation for so long! I wrote a bit more about my belief in the power of making in my blog last week, as well as the motivation behind my collages. The show has got me inspired to keep up the frequent creating too, so look out on my instagram page for more new work.

The following two evenings we ended up getting invited out again! The simple act of eating and drinking with others felt like a friendly hand pulling us up and out of the misery of lockdown. On Friday, we went to ‘La Pinada Fun’, an informal outdoor space in the heart of a super exciting eco-neighbourhood which is under development. On Saturday, we headed into Cabanal, for a small house party to celebrate Pride, in what is no doubt the most low-key Pride celebration in years.

(images, left to right) Live music at La Pinada Fun, friends at the exhibition and a lovely evening in Cabanal.

I hope for a long while we don’t take for granted the power of communing with others, and we learn to value the hospitality and arts sectors which keep our pubs alive, our restaurants serving food, our social media feed filled with art and our ears filled with live music.

It’s been those things which have made life meaningful, and which made those evenings out this week so enjoyable here in Spain. As the UK also emerges into the next phase of de-escalation, I really hope people there are able to enjoy themselves and celebrate human connection, supported by the government in ensuring that sectors like the music industry stay alive. (On that note, you can support ‘Let the Music Play’, a campaign supporting the UK music industry).

I’m thinking of ways to make this blog more participatory and accessible too, so as ever I’d love to know if you’re reading it and what you think. I guess it’s my own way of making sense of the world, and hopefully inspiring others while I do. As I balance the feelings of Fernweh and Heimweh, I’m sure you’re all balancing other things, like work commitments, boredom and exasperation, bills, lack of creativity or even trying to work out the meaning of the universe!

These struggles are real, but the more we talk about them the easier they get. I’ll raise a glass to that! 

#lifeinlockdown #COVID-19 #fernweh and heimweh #Charles Landry #lifeinavan #traveldiaries #BryonyandGeorge #videography #digitalnomads

[bryonysimcox]

The Art of Making Art: Week 22, Spain

Art is a powerful tool. This last week and a half I’ve been reminded of that, and making collage has served as a creative outlet and a focus for my energy.

We’re now in ‘Phase 3’ of de-escalation here in Spain. Generally, life feels pretty ‘normal’, though it’s hard to judge as George and I weren’t necessarily living particularly conventional lives to begin with. What I do know is we can enjoy walks around the town of Corbera, go to shops and bars, and that those small liberties feel like grand luxuries in the context of the weeks of lockdown we endured earlier this year. I’ve been focussing my time on collage, and have a number of pieces and projects on the go. These include my second-ever solo exhibition, which opens tomorrow night!

Since my last blog post, life has trotted on as usual. We’re still staying in our friend’s apartment which is a comforting foundation when every other part of life feels up in the air. I’d be lying if I said I was perky every day, but as time passes and we come to realise there will be no momentous end to ‘lockdown’, I count my blessings and remain grateful at least for the temporary base we have here near Valencia. We still don’t feel confident living in the van under the current controls, but also have some work scheduled here with Broaden over the coming months which means we wouldn’t be on the road yet anyway.

(images, left to right) Our first morning swim at Cullera beach, our first time into the city centre of Valencia since lockdown, and a rare moment back in our happy place driving the van.

We’ve been watching ‘Grayson Perry’s Art Club’ and it’s fantastic.

For those of you who didn’t catch the show on Channel 4, I highly recommend you watch it. The six-part series follows Grayson and his wife Phillipa in their studio, and features interviews with various celebrity guests as well as art submitted by the British public during lockdown. The show displays the wonderful breadth of mediums and subjects which can serve creativity, and is at once light-hearted, joyous, accessible and insightful.

For me, what made watching this show so special was that it reminded me of the power of making. Grayson draws various conclusions along the way about why we make art and what drives us to create, and at one point he says “the person who gets the most out of art is the person who makes it”. This idea really resonated with me, and is perhaps the reason why I’ve ended up making more collage than I probably ever have before whilst in lockdown.

Collage has taken on new dimensions for me as a way to escape. It’s a means of expression without having to use words or defined thought.

The world can feel like a noisy and overwhelming place right now. I wrote a week and a half ago about the need to address systemic problems like racism and the importance of pushing on in an attempt to make the world a better place. In the knowledge that these challenges will prevail, even in different forms, art offers me a bit of headspace and separation from it all. As my collages are colourful and surreal, they often end up injecting some positivity and humour into my life (a much-needed antidote to taking things too seriously). Perhaps playful art has an important role to play in trying times?

(images, left to right) Mounting collages ready for framing, making my most recent piece, ‘Eat Your Breakfast’, and hanging the framed collages in MiKENGO cafe.

Making art can also build bridges to others.

I’ve generally found the collage community to be a really welcoming one, and have connected with so many other collage artists (mainly through Instagram) each of whom have their own personal style. It’s interesting to see the trends in different places too - there seem to be a lot of collage artists in Central and South America for example, and the artform also seems to attract more women than men (I’m not sure what’s driving that though?).

One fantastic example of the collage community and the power of the internet has been ‘Cut It Out’, an online collage exhibition I’m part of (and was invited to by another collage artist who I met online!). Drawing together artists around the world and with 265 pieces in total which are all up for sale, ‘Cut It Out’ is the brainchild of Kate Hulett. Kate is the owner of the store Kate & Abel (located in Fremantle, Western Australia), and the innovation and drive she had to set up a collective digital show is probably what inspired me to organise my own solo collage show which opens this week (more about that later). It’s been a wonderful experience meeting other collage artists through the show, and a pleasure to have sold a piece through the site too. If you want to take a peek at all the work still up for sale, it runs until the 5th July.

(image) ‘This Is Your Cathedral’ on exhibition and up for sale at ‘Cut It Out’.

Everyone makes art in their own particular way.

Another resounding message from the Grayson Perry show is that there is no ‘right’ way to do art. A refreshing contrast to the stuffy art-talk and sense of exclusion the art world can exude, Grayson showcased so many people each making things in their own particular way.

My particular ‘way’ is that I love working within defined boundaries. Restrictions give me space to innovate in other ways, and I like the idea of pushing one format again and again to see how much it has to offer. If one day it seemed that my collages were no longer saying something ‘new’ to me each time I made a new piece, I’d be ready to move on, perhaps working at a different scale or with different materials. But for now, those boundaries actually give me freedom and give my work a specific ‘look and feel’ too.

Bryony’s collage criteria:

Artworks are square

Artworks are 21 x 21cm (notwithstanding a handful of slightly larger pieces)

Artworks are analogue (i.e. cut by hand, stuck by hand, using physical paper)

No post-production (apart from digital scanning and some colour correcting)

Process is free-flowing and doesn’t start with a pre-determined outcome

Avoid overthinking (especially when naming pieces!)

With these boundaries as my guiding framework, I’ve been busy making collages since Spain entered the ‘Estado del Alarma’. As well as the eight that are in ‘Cut It Out’, I had made various others and it was when I started to look at the collection as a whole that I thought about the idea of doing a solo exhibition.

Inspired by ‘Cut It Out’ and encouraged by the return to normality in Spain, I set the wheels in motion for a small solo exhibition. And now, the show is a reality and it opens tomorrow night!

My mum has always told me to actively search out opportunities and ‘make sh*t happen’ - a mantra I probably had in mind when I approached MiKENGO cafe in Valencia and asked how they’d feel about having my art on their walls! This moment of optimism paid off when the lovely couple who run the cafe said yes and then all of a sudden I was having a show… and that’s how ‘Stop Making Sense’ was born.

Since then, I’ve been somewhat frantically sourcing frames, mounting pieces and working out layouts for the exhibition. Then at the start of this week, I hung the pieces (which would’ve been impossible without George my trusty art assistant). While it’s been a busy few days, it’s also been a welcome change to have an actual physical event to be planning for and looking forward to. The act of not only making art, but exhibiting it has kept me going and now tomorrow is the big night! I never have a clue who’s reading this blog, but if you live in Valencia and fancy an evening out, please do join us at MiKENGO cafe, 6:00pm til 8:0pm on 25th June. For the rest of you, I’ll be live-streaming a small tour of the show at 5:30pm (Spain time, that’s 4:30pm in the UK) over on the Analogue Bryony page and it’d be great to see you there!

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I wanted the show to be an antidote to the gravity of the current world. I’ll be exhibiting a mix of pieces I’ve made from as far back as 2016 when I started making work as ‘Analogue Bryony’ right up to work I’ve made in the last fortnight. Reflecting on the pieces, I realised the common thread was that I was inviting the viewer to suspend reality, even just for a while, and to stop making sense.

While ‘Stop Making Sense’ is really just ten small bits of paper stuck on a wall in a cafe, it’s also a small victory. I hope the least that it does is give others the courage to make and exhibit too.

As Grayson Perry said, “the person who gets the most out of art is the person who makes it”. Being part of ‘Cut It Out’, planning ‘Stop Making Sense’ and making collages for myself or as commissions definitely gives me meaning. Even if no-one else likes them, there is something about the self-expression the collages offer which is unrivalled by any other activity - not even writing this blog (which can actually even be a real headache because it relies on words and literal descriptions!).

(image) The artwork for ‘She’, a commission for Fleur Rouge’s latest single which you can listen to here.

Perhaps my desire is that through lockdown, through programs like Graysons, through seeing my exhibition or through just having a play with some materials at home, other people can start to tap into the incredible power of making art too. Whether it’s for self-expression, making sense of the world or even escaping from it, art will be a crucial tool as we carve a path beyond 2020 and Covid-19.

#estadodelalarma #artinlockdown #selfexpression #graysonperry #handcutcollage #collage art #Covid-19 #exhibition #stop making sense

[bryonysimcox]

Keep On Pushing: Week 20 and a 1/2, Spain

Move on up, and keep on wishing Remember your dream is your only scheme So keep on pushing

In looking for a title for this week (and a half)’s blog, I was reminded of the words of Curtis Mayfield. These words, from one of my all-time favourite songs ‘Move On Up’ are also painted across the walls of my all-time favourite nightclub, World Headquarters in Newcastle.

‘Keep on Pushing’ feels like an appropriate mantra for the last ten days for a variety of reasons. Firstly, the longer life is affected by measures to manage the Covid-19 pandemic (despite us no longer being under strict lockdown), the more I have to push to stay positive. As I’ve mentioned in this blog before, part of that process is making my peace with a new 2020, one in which we travel less in the van, stay put in Spain for longer and innovate to make Broaden, our videography project, stay afloat amid it all.

On that note, the last week and a half has seen George and I make progress on a number of projects. I’m still working on the video about ‘Ecological Economics’ which I’ve been making for a while now, and last Saturday we recorded a voiceover to go with some of the footage of an interview I did with the wonderful economist Simon Mair. It was pretty fun to make a homemade vocal booth (basically a den made with chairs, sheets and cushions) in order to record the sound! I’ll be starting on animated graphics for that video too, so hopefully it’ll be out soon.

I’m really looking forward to starting a conversation about what alternative economic futures might look like post Coronavirus.

In addition to the Ecological Economics video, we’ve wanted to film the beautiful little town of Corbera for a while now. On Sunday we finally got around to doing just that as part of an initiative called ‘Have You Ever Heard Silence’. The project, started by a videography firm in Germany, seeks to bring people from around the world together to capture footage of life throughout the pandemic.

(images, left to right) Filming in the town of Corbera, recording a voiceover, and more shots for the ‘Have You Ever Heard Silence’ project. 

As part of this project, we wanted to capture the essence of the town when it’s still relatively quiet - before the cafes have filled up and the church opens its doors for service. So we headed out early morning, as the first signs of life emerged - people out walking their dogs, cafe owners setting up chairs and tables, and old ladies out in their aprons sweeping their front doorsteps. It was a special experience to capture this place that we’re staying in and have grown to love, and I can’t wait to see the footage as part of the ‘Have You Ever Heard Silence’ documentary.

I’ve started to cut together some of that footage into shorter videos on our instagram too, including one with a quote from writer and thinker Charles Eisenstein. It’s from his recent essay ‘The Coronation’, which is absolutely worth a read and presents an interpretation of this pandemic in a slightly different way than the mainstream save-lives-at-all-costs approach. He says:

“How much of life are we willing to sacrifice at the altar of security?

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(video) Shots from filming in Corbera.

The other reason that ‘Keep On Pushing’ felt an apt title is the ongoing struggle against systemic racism. I discussed some of my initial shock at George Floyd’s murder in last week’s blog post, but this week I have observed a shift both in terms of the messaging from the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement as well as a shift internally. As time unfolds, I push forward to process not only George’s killing, the ensuing protests (and even now, the counter protests from far-right groups), but the underlying issues at play in society and the potential solutions to such a systemic problem.

While the movement against racism is finally receiving mainstream visibility, it doesn’t mean this fight hasn’t been going on for centuries. In the words of Audre Lorde, “Revolution is not a one-time event”. There has been some fantastic archival footage doing the rounds on social media, of the likes of Gil Scott-Heron on racism and change back in the 90s, or of David Bowie calling MTV out for their lack of black representation in 1983. In a way, the more I realise people have been demanding justice, equality and fairness for so many years, fighting the same fight that people today are fighting in the name of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery, the more shocking it is that there is still so much work to be done.

Revolution = Knowledge + Empathy + Action

This is Rachel Cargle’s ‘recipe for revolution’. I’ve found it to be such a clear, logical and empowering approach to changing a systematic problem and knowing where to start. And whilst this recipe is referring to a revolution where people are no longer discriminated based on race, I think this combination of learning plus feeling plus doing is a pretty powerful combination for taking on other issues too, like climate change, sexism and neoliberalism.

For me, part of this learning process has been looking back at my own life and the ways in which I’ve been on the receiving end of an invisible bias - a bias based on the colour of my skin. And time again when I ask myself this question, the most obvious (and also uncomfortable) example of this privilege is my experience of living in Australia (2016-19).

Moving to a country on the other side of the world gave me an insight into the kind of rigorous process migrants face as they try to obtain visas and work permits to get into places like Britain. And while the visa process I experienced as I transitioned my ‘Working Holiday Visa’ onto a ‘Skilled Temporary Worker Visa’ was invasive, expensive and unpleasant, I absolutely know it would be so much harder for people from ‘less favourable’ countries or with more ‘foreign-sounding’ names to go through the same process. On top of that, this kind of entry process discriminates against older people (you can’t get the Working Holiday if you’re over 30) or people whose skills aren’t deemed ‘Skilled’, or who don’t have the money for the process either. In so many ways, my experience in Australia was made easier because I’m white, I’m from the commonwealth and English is my mother tongue.

Beyond observing the ways in which I was treated in Australia, whilst I lived there it quickly became apparent that the country has a long way to go to reconcile its oppressive and colonial past, and the ongoing racism directed towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Beyond the utterly appalling fact that these people weren’t even recognised as human beings until 1967, their subsequent treatment continues to be unjust. It is with sadness, and even shame, that I’m able to reflect so joyfully on my time spent in a country in which its own government treats the very people from that land so poorly. My memories of a beautiful country, a well-paid job and a fantastic circle of friends sit uncomfortably alongside a different reality played out in shocking statistics. First Australians are the most incarcerated race in the world, have some of the highest suicide rates globally, and there have been over 432 Indigenous deaths in custody (since the 1991 Royal Commission into this statistic).

Fuelled by statistics like these, and in light of global ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests, Vanessa Turnbull Roberts recently made an utterly compelling speech. Vanessa is a Bundjalung woman, law & social work student and human rights activist, and she spoke in anticipation of a march planned the following day in Sydney. She spoke about the pain of Aboriginal people in Australia, the need for accountability, and the importance of justice in a way which was deeply, deeply moving. And whilst I highly recommend watching the whole speech, what she specifically said about kinship has really stuck with me:

“Law is what builds the colonial system. But where my sisters and brothers come from, we’re built off lore. L-O-R-E: where we work on kinship and we stand up for one another.”

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(video) Vanessa Turnbull Roberts speaking in Sydney.

There’s been a tendency for people to look at the situation in places like Australia or America and say that racism doesn’t exist in the UK. But the colonial systems which have affected those countries have deep roots tracing back to the UK, and the legacy of colonialism is alive and real there. Artists and activists like George the Poet (whose recent interview with Emily Maitlis on BBC Newsnight is well worth a watch) and Akala have spoken out about race and the UK. The voices of Black people living in Britain like these two inspirational guys have really encouraged me to peel back the layers of the UK’s history and to take a deeper look at the country that I’m from.

All of this has in some ways left me feeling overwhelmed and deflated. This past week, as I’ve balanced an unplanned period living in Spain with enormous systemic issues like racism (a strange dualism which I wrote about in last week’s post), I guess the single thread is that I’ve tried to keep on pushing. And someone who really embodies that impassioned quest for a better world is Tommy Caulker.

Tom Caulker is one of those people that I am honoured to have met. As a DJ, night-club owner, and activist for racial harmony, Tom’s life is his mission, and his mission is to make Newcastle a more tolerant and inclusive place.

(image) A portrait I took of Tom in his home back in 2015 for my blog post.

So I conclude this post with the third reference to ‘Keep on Pushing’, as those same words are painted across the walls of World Headquarters nightclub, the club that Tom Caulker founded. I first came across the club in my time at uni, and fell in love with the place’s unpretentious character, inclusive atmosphere, and the Northern Soul, funk and disco music that was played. It was only after I learnt a bit more about the club’s founder that I became intrigued in its story and its mission, and ultimately asked Tom if I could interview him (believe it or not for a blog post on here almost five years ago!).

In that interview, it became apparent that Tom is a man who lives his mission. He wears his heart on his sleeve, believes in a better world, and takes concrete actions to create that world. In that interview, we spoke about a short film that Channel 4 were in the process of making about him and the club. Five years on, and I’ve stumbled across the finished video and watching it in lockdown has been a real inspiration.

(video) The Channel 4 short documentary about World HQ.

In the video, Tom talks more about his experiences growing up in the UK and being subjected to racism at school, a formative background which influenced his later position at the renowned Trent House pub. In response to overt racism displayed by police, doormen and institutions in the North East in the 80s and 90s, Tom used music to promote inclusion - first at Trent House and later at World Headquarters, which he continues to run and DJs at. Tom describes the place as “a beacon of tolerance”. Far more than just a club, World Headquarters is a place that stands for something, and proudly displays its values on its walls through paintings, posters and slogans, of which include the mural of Curtis Mayfield with his powerful ‘Move On Up’ lyrics.

So as I wrap up another post, reflecting on the pleasure of interviewing Tom and the energy he exudes, I’m left feeling optimistic. There is much work to be done, but we’ve just got to keep on pushing...

#keep on pushing #Curtis Mayfield #Black Lives Matter #World Headquarters #Sydney #Newcastle-Upon-Tyne #lifeinlockdown #journal #growth

[bryonysimcox]

The macro and the micro, the mundane and the monstrous: Week 19, Spain

The world is noisy and confusing. In my 19th week reflecting on our travels, I’m faced with the tensions between the beautifully boring details of my everyday environs and the systemic injustices at play in the world at large.

I don’t think humans are well-equipped to deal with the modern world. We’ve built social networks that stretch beyond the scale of community circles, created technology which bombards us with updates from every place at every time, and value instant gratification and communication over considered reflection.

This week has been undeniably defined by the Black Lives Matter movement, and the widespread anger and unrest catalysed by the murder of George Floyd. For the people at the centre of the movement, his murder is just the tip of the iceberg, and this has just been another week in a painful ongoing battle deeply rooted in colonialism and slavery, characterised by death, violence and injustice. As I was reminded today on a post from Tumblr, today “marks the seventh day of protests held in honor of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. It’s been 634 days since Botham Jean was murdered by a police officer, 233 days since Atatiana Jefferson was fatally shot by a police officer, 2,123 days since Michael Brown was fatally shot by a police officer, and 2,146 days since Eric Garner was choked to death by a police officer.” But for many of us shielded by privilege, the ‘issue’ of racism (which has previously been reduced to our peripheral vision) has come and smacked us in the face.

As I’m sure many others have experienced, my brain, my newsfeed and my heart has been flooded with feelings, imagery, headlines and information. These things have hijacked my attention, reaffirmed my awareness of biases and systemic issues, and honestly, made my brain hurt. And they should do. Wicked systemic problems are big and uncomfortable and we are all entangled in them. 

There is just so much to process.

One of the strangest things I’ve felt this week is the dichotomy of our situation. We’re isolated in a town in Spain, yet better connected than ever before with friends and family across the globe via instant messaging and video communication. I have wandered down quiet Spanish streets and photographed tiny details of beautiful tiled facades and then watched videos online of civilians peacefully protesting outside the White House get dispersed with tear gas and rubber bullets. I’m grappling with the incessant experience of repetitive daily life amid the Covid-19 pandemic, which pales in comparison to the ongoing lived experience of People of Colour who have been systematically oppressed and abused.

The world is full of these tensions and contradictions, but it feels like now more than ever, whilst we are living lives which are at once physically isolated and digitally connected, that those tensions create a sense of unease. 

It would be naive to think that if I suddenly wrote a blog post about white privilege and my own reflections on racism that I would suddenly change a deeply ingrained system of oppression. And yet that doesn’t mean it’s not worth thinking and learning and unlearning and engaging on the topic, spending hours reading and writing and reflecting, building empathy and understanding for people and for building that up into actions and change-making. So I’ve started on that journey, and I’m just not ready to share it here. I hope my active listening is not confused as silence. I stand in solidarity.

The thing about life is that it’s messy and layered. Even if we had to tackle them all, we would never plan to tackle a global pandemic and climate breakdown and political unrest and systemic racism and a breakdown of civic trust and increasing mental health issues among young people and the pressures of a growing global population all at the same time. We have so much work to do to address each and every one of these things! And so for me, if I’m talking about one of those things right now on my blog/Instagram/Facebook, it’s not that I’ve forgotten about all the others. Not sharing doesn’t necessarily mean not doing. In fact, I’m trying to juggle them all, giving them the thought and attention they deserve through diary entries, reading books, looking online, having conversations with people and doing whatever else I can. 

And so in the same vein, I also think it would be reductive to stop sharing moments of joy, or mundane life, or silliness, or personal experiences, and censoring them for fear of seeming insensitive. There can be joy in places of deep pain and we have to recognise that duality.

I hope that each of you reading this have had moments of joy this week. I hope that you have seen a child’s drawing of a rainbow in a window, done some exercise and felt much better for it, had a laugh, walked somewhere, looked at nature, or had a friendly exchange with a shop attendant. I feel pretty blooming blessed that I’ve been able to do all of these things this week, with George by my side. This week has certainly not been full of smiles, but those small moments, which are often micro and mundane give me strength to address the things which are macro and monstrous.

Ultimately, the only perspective I can truly offer is my own.

And right now, that perspective is from a white twenty five year old woman, sitting with her laptop looking out on a small Spanish town. A woman who sits, rather uncomfortably, trying to make sense of the world. Writing in a blog which is undeniably about her highly personal experiences travelling with her boyfriend in a van, exploring topics which are big and uncomfortable and in some ways unrelatable and to which trying to offer empathy could be interpreted as entirely missing the point.

So for now, I’m sitting with the tension. Big hugs from Spain. 

[bryonysimcox]

A Return to Valencia: Week 18, Spain

A new chapter of our journey begins as this week we made our way south to Valencia. Continued lockdown has stirred up a sense of loneliness, but a change of scene and gradual de-escalation is lifting our spirits.

This week we left Catalonia. When the ‘Estado de Alarma’ was first announced, we were mid-way through filming a number of projects in Valencia. You may recall we ended up stranded in a marina car park, and the confines of living in a car park in a van drove us to seek refuge up north. But we’d always felt that we had unfinished business with Valencia - George and I had grown to love the city, and were fired up about the documentary we were making there. So we said that as and when we could, we would return.

Ten weeks later (!!) and we decided it was time to take the plunge and drive down south again. And so, with the generous offer of a friend’s apartment to stay at in the Valencian village of Corbera, we headed down along Spain’s eastern coast.

Driving south was somewhat risky given that crossing regional borders is still closely monitored.

Although armed with all the correct documentation, as we drove further south I was definitely nervous about crossing the border. There aren’t usually official checks between regions in Spain, but I didn’t know what to expect given the current pandemic. Despite the nerves, it was lovely to be in the van once again and have the partial sense of travelling and moving forwards. The sense that we aren’t going anywhere or progressing has been one of the biggest challenges recently, so as we trundled along the (relatively quiet) motorway I got a little hit of that travelling feeling.

(images, left to right) Leaving the vineyards of Palamos, George prepping for the long drive south, and golden hour on the road.

As I followed the blue dot tracing our movement on Google Maps, I could see that we were approaching the border between the two regions: Catalonia and the Comunitat Valenciana. We mounted the crest of the hill, and then spotted a cluster of police cars with police officers stopping and checking vehicles! This got my heart racing, and I could already feel the apprehension of having to explain our movement, not least in a different language. We had proof that we had work in Valencia, our official documents and friends’ phone numbers should they need them, but just the sight of armed officers made me quiver. Guns really are something us Brits forget about.

And yet, as we slowed to a crawl and almost rolled the window down, making clear eye contact with the officers, it became clear that they were only interested in checking traffic in the opposite direction! And so just like that, we continued straight ahead towards Valencia.

That evening was our first night camping in the van in months. And it was delightful!

I’d found a spot to stay that was as secluded as I could find, as I knew that things like camping were still technically not permitted. As with most spots I find on the Park4Night app, I know very little about where we’re headed until we actually arrive. Which made it all the more of a pleasant surprise when we turned off the motorway onto twisting roads, climbing up amid orange groves and little cottages. The evening light made it all the more magical, and it really was a reminder of the kind of moments we were chasing when we first set out to travel in a van.

(images) Our secluded camping spot, where we spent the first night in the van in almost three months.

Relatively hidden from view, we parked up next to the Embalse de Sichar, an enormous reservoir which apparently serves to produce electricity, and also as irrigation for the agriculture in the region. As we pulled up next to the water, I knew I had no more than five minutes before the light completely left and we’d be shrouded in darkness - far away from any town or artificial light. So after a hot and sticky 5 hour drive, I didn’t think twice about plunging into the water.

A 10pm skinny dip felt like the perfect symbol of a new chapter after months of lockdown.

It’s not often that you get to park up in the middle of nowhere right next to a picturesque reservoir. So the next morning, after a somewhat restless night filled with the paranoia of police or park rangers, I actually had another two swims! George thinks it’s hilarious how much I love swimming in nature, and insists that if I was an animal I’d be a labrador. I’ll take that!

(image) Another wild swim in the bag at the Embalse de Sichar.

In order to get the keys to the apartment we’d be staying in, we made our way into the city of Valencia itself, to pick up our friend whose place it is. It was lovely to see him again, and it really made me realise how little I’ve seen of anyone other than George. I’ve been craving social interaction for sure, but having a tiny taste of it once again almost brought about more melancholy than there was before. 

When we arrived with Ramon into the village of Corbera, about 30 minutes outside of the city, it was a welcome sight. Not only was this little town a change of scene, but there were more people out and about than we’d seen before. The Comunitat Valenciana has been hit a little less by coronavirus than Catalonia, so de-escalation had progressed here a bit more, and there were even bars and cafes open.

The sight of things like bars and cafes open once again, places which previously seemed mundane and everyday, has been transformational. It has reaffirmed my need for human interaction, and how much I enjoy not only socialising, but seeing other humans socialise too.

The following days have been a process of acclimatisation. Whilst new surrounds bring variety and hope, they can also bring about a sense of unease, as you adjust to your new home. That feeling has been even more strange because in some ways, the two of us are used to the varied setting of life on the road, but usually with the constant element of living in a van. Now we’re in an apartment, which is a kind of funny mix between temporary and permanent (longer than a holiday, shorter than an official house move). Add to that the fact that we never want to wear the generosity of others thin, and in an ideal world we’d be completely self-sustaining, driving and living in the van (and probably half-way to Asia by now!).

(images, left to right) The van interior with the sofa rotated as a passenger seat, George driving from Valencia to Corbera and my growing collection of books in the van.

Of course, it’s not just George and I who are facing change. Everyone’s plans have changed - from school exams to university graduations, from weddings to funerals and everything in between. Even though the scientists and the climate activists told us that something was going to come along and turn our current way of living on its head, we still couldn’t have imagined what was in store for us and the intensity of its impact.

As well as the terrifying health implications of this pandemic, one of the biggest impacts that most of us who remain healthy have experienced is the social one. And whilst in the early weeks, there was a sense that we were all ‘taking one for the team’ by not seeing family and friends, I have sensed a shift in mood this last week as loneliness and isolation really takes its toll. 

I’ve felt acutely aware of how isolated George and I are, and in talking to others can sense that they are struggling with this too.

There are statistics and theories out there about the different stages of how we collectively deal with challenges like the Covid-19 pandemic and associated lockdown measures. And I’m no expert on the matter, but I’m pretty certain we’re in the “okay this has gotten really rotten now and I just want to hug my friends and go to a cafe and have a beer together and not have to obsessively wash my hands” stage.

Perhaps one of the roughest things about an invisible enemy like this virus is the fact that we as humans can’t fight it in the way we’d like, with a grandiose battle, a clear winner and loser, and a huge victory party. Instead, we face the dreary comedown of ‘de-escalation’, where every social interaction becomes a calculation of risk and everyday experiences are characterised by obsessive sanitation, endless disposable plastic items and the creeping sense of surveillance.

(images) A camera roll filled with selfies is a reminder of my isolation and a documentation of life in Corbera.

One of the ways I’m attempting to tackle this social isolation is to avoid judgement at all costs. It feels like the media wants to pit us against one another, to get us to judge the people who have ‘carelessly’ broken lockdown, the people who are ‘crazy’ for still respecting physical distancing, the people who refuse to send their kids back to school or the people who are desperate for some children to return. I genuinely think (contrary to what the media would have us believe) that most of us are just trying to survive, trying to keep our heads above the water and make conscious decisions with that in mind. Sure, I’m not condoning everyone’s behaviour, but believing that the majority of folk are just people like me, facing this peculiar situation, helps me feel less isolated.

All that said, I’ve heard that people in England are taking much more disregard for the rules. Perhaps my judgement on the matter is skewed because Spain seems to have found the right balance.

Despite the loneliness, we are flooded with things to be grateful for. In fact, that sometimes makes me feel guilty for feeling negative at all! But I try to lean into both emotions: the gratitude and the sadness.

Probably the biggest thing to be grateful for right now is where we’re staying.

I wake up to the sound of chatter at the cafe beneath the flat (only serving people outdoors, with tables set apart from one another but still bustling with life) and spend the sunny days working with the windows flung open and light streaming in. On balmy evenings I walk to the shop to pick up a beer or two and pass the friendly neighbourhood feline corner where at least two or three cats always seem to be lounging around. We’ve found a 5K running route too, which takes us up towards the hills of Les Fontanelles and comes down winding through orange groves with views of the paella rice paddies.

(images, left to right) The cafe downstairs which brings life to the town, sunset over the rooftops and a bunch of old guys having breakfast together, an image which has really stuck with me.

It’s a pretty idyllic place really, and a blessing that we have Broaden to work on as well. I’m building up our portfolio of graphic design and motion graphic work so that we can get more paid work that can be done remotely, whilst finalising a documentary about Portland Cementworks that we began over twelve months ago.

But I’m still conscious that work is a way to escape from this current reality, which although set in the gorgeous town of Corbera, is spent far far away from those that I love. What I would give to be in this same spot with my parents, my university friends, or all the folk we left behind in Australia!

Life in lockdown has certainly cast a new light on the price paid for travelling, and I think these coming weeks will be filled with contemplation as I readjust to this new chapter. Right now, it’s hard to stay fired up about hitting the road again, when that would mean travelling further and further away from the ones we love. But as with the challenges we’ve already faced, I’ll try and lean into it, ready for the lessons I could learn.

#estado de alarma #vanlife #SuziTheVan #BryonyandGeorge #COVID-19 #coronavirus #deescalation #traveldiaries #life in lockdown

[bryonysimcox]

A Glimmer of Freedom: Week 16 & 17, Spain

Tiny glimpses of normal life have emerged here in Spain. George’s 30th Birthday, my first swim in the ocean since lockdown and a new video release have brought some variety to the last fortnight.

I slipped up. When our sixteenth week on the road came and went, the pressure to write this weekly post was building up, and I was increasingly frustrated that I couldn’t find the time (or the energy!) to write it. It got to a point that it made more sense to wait another week and present you with a fortnight’s worth of updates instead!

It does feel like a failure when you break a habit though. Sure, not many people read this blog and no one is shouting at me if I don’t produce a new post on the mark every week. But I still feel accountable both to others and myself to keep this journal as an ongoing reflection of our travels. Since the Covid-19 pandemic gripped the world and turned it upside down, in some ways this journal has even more meaning as a documentation of a life lived under incredibly unusual circumstances.

Alas, I’m here now, on a sunny Thursday in the early afternoon, trying to recall everything that’s happened in the last two weeks and also trying not to beat myself up about breaking my usual writing pattern.

On the 8th May, it was George’s 30th Birthday.

George has never been big on birthdays. For him, they’re just another day, but just one on which your age happens to tick over another year. For me, as an extrovert who loves an excuse to eat cake for breakfast or to throw a party, this mindset seems bonkers! Over the years that we’ve been together though, I realise George just really values the company of others and having a nice, low-key day.

So even though I was downright gutted that we were celebrating his big milestone in lockdown, with just one another’s company in the Spanish countryside, he wasn’t fussed and it turned out to be a really, really nice day.

(images) George’s birthday

I’d pulled together a video from friends and family singing “Happy Birthday”, and this motley crew of singers was such a lovely thing to watch, along to a breakfast of avocado on toast. After a lazy morning and even a bit of editing (yep, George happily worked on his birthday!) we decided to head out for a walk.

De-escalation measures are slowly underway in Spain and by George’s birthday we were finally allowed out for daily exercise or a walk with family members. Taking advantage of this (but sneakily breaking the allocated time windows for the exercise), we took our first walk to somewhere other than the supermarket in almost two months. And boy, was it worth it!

Empty streets, uncomfortable face masks and police tape cordoning off playgrounds don’t necessarily contribute to a pleasant walk, but it was the first taste of freedom we’d had in so long. We enjoyed seeing houses and areas we hadn’t passed by in a while, noticing changes that have taken place fuelled by a new demand for hygiene or physical distancing. And finally, we made it to the ocean: a sight for sore eyes.

Just getting to the ocean on George’s birthday and dipping my toes in the water was such a special moment, and a reminder of how much I value the sea, especially after having been deprived of this natural element for so long.

(images, left to right) Empty streets which still feel bizarre, getting ready for a paddle on George’s birthday, and a birthday walk (complete with face mask).

I’ve said it before on this blog and I’ll say it again: I’m constantly reminded of how ‘good’ we’ve got it. We’ve been treated with kindness and generosity, are able to exchange skills and resources with people, find work, upload videos, have access to the internet and get food in the shops. But all that said, I almost wept when I dipped my toes in the salty water after so long. I believe everyone has a human right to access nature.

Perhaps because George has now entered his thirties, or more likely because lockdown is triggering self-reflection among many of us, George and I have spent a fair few long evenings discussing life and what it means to be human. I’m not professing to have made any ground-breaking discoveries, but have noticed both how therapeutic and how liberating it has been to get a little more philosophical. It’s helped me to focus on life as it is now, and get less hung up about the future. People have asked us about our ongoing plans with the van and I feel more comfortable now telling them I just don’t know when and where we’ll get ‘back on track’. Whilst staying in Spain for an extended period of time wasn’t ever the plan, I still know that good things can come from it if I embrace the unknown and enjoy living here a little longer.

How many moments do we lose out on cause we’re fretting that they’re not what we planned for our lives?

One thing which I certainly didn’t plan for but have been pleasantly surprised by is getting a chance to learn a little more about agriculture. We spent time in the garden in Catalonia preparing for and planting vegetables, an activity that most folk in the Spanish countryside seem to be doing, in anticipation for summer as it comes around the corner. We were working with Pepe, who grows vegetables here as a hobby, and who has had the generosity to show us his approach and let us learn by getting our hands dirty. He is a kind and patient man.

(image) Building cane structures for tomatoes and planting peppers, cucumbers and courgettes.

Talking with Pepe has been great practice for my Spanish too, as I’m forced to use it in the moment. Reading in a foreign language has always been much easier than listening or speaking for me, because I don’t have the time pressure to respond and I can process the information visually. But everyday life relies on speaking and listening, and being in Spain has exposed me to more of that, which is ultimately a good thing. I do also try to read the Spanish news, not only to practice my Spanish but to keep an eye on the political situation here and how the Covid-19 crisis is being dealt with.

The Spanish government is rolling out a phased, place-based de-escalation plan which closely monitors Covid-19 cases.

My perception is that the government here has handled the crisis quite ‘well’ (though there are so many factors I perhaps can’t see) and has put the health of its people first and foremost before the economy. Plenty of things are starting to reappear, but with the overarching sense that there is a sensible, humanist power overseeing it all. Slowly but surely, children play in the streets again, people drink their coffees and chat a metre or two apart, and we learn to smile extra hard so that our eyes share the emotion that our mouth, now-concealed by a mask, can’t.

The next time we made use of our daily exercise allowance, I took the plunge - literally. We headed to the coast and we’d hardly got to the sand before I was in the water. Words escape me when I think of that feeling - of swimming in the sea and feeling completely unburdened by anything. It’s undeniably therapeutic.

Once de-escalation permitted a little more movement, George and I also decided it was time to film Suzi the van. Back when we were in Bordeaux (which believe it or not was our second week on the road!) we filmed a tour of the van with the plan of making a video all about our van build process and the finished result. But more recently when we came to edit all the footage together, we just hadn’t captured enough footage of the van, and especially little details of all the elements like the tyres, engine, furniture and solar panels. 

So with camera in hand, we took Suzi out for a spin. It was nice to be filming again, even if it was just to get details of our dusty HiAce along quiet Spanish backroads. Each and every time we film is a chance for me to get more confident behind the camera too, balancing the composition, lighting and focus, and with the added complication that it’s not just a static image I’m working with.

(images) Filming Suzi the HiAce for our van tour video.

As we carry on filming and developing creative content through Broaden, it is a joy to see other folk making and creating too.

The internet continues to be a hotbet for this creativity. Back in Week 9 I wrote about my brother’s VJ live streaming and daily guided meditations from Gaba podcast, and these last few weeks I’ve continued to turn to the internet for inspiration and entertainment.

Just one example of the art we’ve enjoyed online this fortnight was when my dear friend Rosie Tee shared a line-up with the likes of Jamie Cullum and the Electric Lady Big Band as Cheltenham Jazz Festival took place virtually. More than 600 people tuned in for Rosie’s set online (which can be viewed again here), which is a testament to the potential audience hungry for creative expression. More recently, my brother did another VJ set for the arts and entertainment community ‘Is Dead’, with a live stream that took place in a virtual warehouse! It was pretty mind-boggling to be in this virtual events space with other people from across the world, listening to DJs and watching Dominic’s visuals projected on a virtual screen within this virtual space.

(image) Rosie Tee plays ‘Wax & Wane’ for Cheltenham Jazz Festival and Dominic (VJ XYZ)’s live set in a virtual warehouse.

The internet is an incomparable resource when we leverage it as a platform for sharing and distributing art, and especially when we focus on its ability to be decentralised and accessible.

As people slowly enjoy increasing liberties again, I anticipate the internet will have a newfound role to play. Whilst I’ve now experienced some freedoms to move around and do things which I couldn’t over the last two months, there is no sign of a ‘miracle-cure’ or rapid recovery from this pandemic. Many daily interactions which once seemed normal will long be impeded and the potential effects on our mental health and sense of connection could be profound. This is where the digital world will likely mesh with the physical, providing ways to talk and debate, disseminate news and new ideas, and share acts of creative expression which enrich our lived experiences in the tangible spaces we inhabit.

Last week I went to an online workshop which perfectly exemplified the value of the internet in this way. As part of a series called ‘Building Our Power’, the ‘Economics for Beginners’ workshop I attended via Zoom brought together around 100 participants to hear Sarah Arnold, an analyst from the New Economics Foundation. Sarah presented ideas about the role of the economy, policy tools, and ways in which the government could respond to Covid-19 in a way which would promote a more equitable and healthy society (rather than resort to austerity, which is not good economic policy).

The session was much more than just a presentation though, as the online platform and skilled facilitators allowed for a rich and varied discussion, with questions from the participants for Sarah and opportunities to discuss the topic in detail in future groups. It struck me that in this instance, this digital format was probably even more effective than a real-life scenario would be at disseminating technical information and developing ideas in an engaging and inclusive way.

With our new footage of the van and the on-tap resource of the internet, we also released the van tour video this week.

It was a great feeling to finally bring together footage from as far back as May 2019 right through to the clips we’d shot in Catalonia this fortnight into a complete video. George did a cracking job with the edit, and I helped out making graphics like the intro scene. When it was finally done and dusted, watching it back felt like the end of our van-building chapter and in some ways the start of our adventure (even though we’ve already been ‘on the road’ for more than three months). To finally share it online has been a pleasure.

The comments that we’ve had back about this video have been positive and constructive. Along with the interest we get about The Hundred Miler, the feedback loop of making and creating leaves me determined not to lose faith in the power of creativity and the power of people. Sure, lockdown continues to be confusing and exhausting, but if we can use the internet and acts of mutual aid to compliment the glimmer of freedom we’re starting to experience in the physical world, we can stay connected.

And that connection - to each other, to our thoughts, and to nature is what gives me meaning more than any grand travels or planned-out futures.

#estadodealarma #vanlife #SuziTheVan #BryonyandGeorge #digitalnomads #broaden #traveldiaries #lifeinlockdown #COVID-19 #coronavirus

[bryonysimcox]

Cutting, calling, sticking, sitting, subtitling: Week 15, Spain

With future certainty and concrete plans nowhere in sight, this week’s blog post is in praise of the mundane. Seven days of everyday life.

When prepping for this blog entry, I started panicking. What’s the overarching message? The big-picture mood of the week or the lesson I’ve learnt? Well this week, there isn’t one. It’s been seven days of everyday life and I reckon that’s worth celebrating too.

We’ve been pitching for some exciting work this week.

I can’t talk about the specifics, but it’s heartening to be actually planning and quoting for real-life projects that could bring in real-life money and real-life experience. We pretty much work on Broaden as a full-time venture anyway (regardless of if it makes us money), so when prospective clients reach out to Broaden to ask us to do more of what we love, then that’s a bonus.

I guess that’s the beauty of filmmaking, it’s so broad and its potential is so great that it can be valuable for a whole lot of people. I also think in the coming ‘new normal’ as countries, cities and communities come to adapt life around Covid-19, that the role of video and online streaming will shift, and perhaps become a more central element in our lives.

I’ve also been working away at editing the video we started filming last week about Economics for a more just and equitable world. It’s starting to take shape, though there is a lot of refinement needed (I’ve cut 150 minutes down to 30 minutes but still have a fair way to go!). Working on this video is also bringing about a newfound challenge of how we make videos like this visually stimulating, when they predominantly feature digital interviews and we can’t film footage out and about due to lockdown. It’s forcing us to get more creative with motion graphics, which is no bad thing.

In what is the culmination of a longstanding project, we also interviewed Rich Evans about The Foundations in New South Wales this week.

‘The Foundations’ is a truly extraordinary project/place in Portland, a tiny town about two-hours inland from Sydney. I first discovered the project when I worked in Australia, and the company I worked for, RobertsDay, was involved in a masterplanning process. Portland was established around a cementworks which went on to not only be the driving economic force behind the town, but also the backbone of the community. It was a source of civic pride (cement from Portland famously went to Sydney amid the building boom, coining it the phrase ‘The Town That Built Sydney’), and also helped establish social infrastructure like the swimming pool that is still a celebrated destination in the little town today. Sadly, as the cementworks decreased in scale and eventually closed in the nineties, it had a huge impact on the town.

(images) Scenes from January 2019 when we started filming at The Foundations, Portland NSW.

Back at RobertsDay, I had the pleasure of working on the masterplan and placemaking work for the next chapter of the cementworks, and I immediately fell in love with the place. Not only was it this incredible place of industrial heritage, but the owners actually wanted to transform the site into something really special - a tourist destination, an asset to the community, and a revitalised part of the town. From its current state - fenced-off, closed, and perhaps even an eyesore, the owners wanted to introduce artwork, markets, community gardens, museum collections, fishing and camping, weddings, concerts and a whole host of other things.

It was obvious that there was a story about The Foundations that deserved to be told, and so in January 2019 George and I spent a weekend there, filming local residents, business owners, and the wonderful Rich Evans, ‘Chief Reactivation Officer’ from The Foundations. This was before we’d even launched Broaden, but we were passionate to use filmmaking to document the transformation that was taking place there. However, over the course of 2019, other things took centre stage in our lives and we never got around to editing the final film.

And so, in lockdown here in Spain, we decided it was finally time to close off this story. Just this week,we called Rich over Zoom and asked him all about how things have progressed since we last visited Portland. Rich is a larger-than-life character who had so much good stuff to report (an artist in residence, growing market attendee numbers, new custom-designed public furniture, and the renovation of a central historic building which involved the removal of 1000s of bees!).

In a strange way, I’d originally thought of this hiatus as a weakness for our film, but it now has added another facet to the story: giving Rich a chance to reflect on progress at The Foundations and show viewers how much is possible in the space of a year.

Making collages serves as respite for the mind.

I return to my collage practice as a meditative practice, and a restorative one too. It’s something I do when I want to clear my mind, and use a different part of my brain from the video-editing-zoom-calling-analytical-planning side of my brain.

That said, the last few paper collages I’ve made have felt like a bit of struggle, and I’ve felt rather uninspired. The collages are never meant to be a forced thing, but instead something visceral and playful, but in recent times they’d stopped being that.

Until this week! This week, inspired to make a collage for my mum’s birthday, I started getting my boxes of magazines and compiled sheets out, stuck my ‘Making Collage’ playlist on, and somehow just found my groove. Shapes and forms shouted out to me, and I was more preoccupied with the mood of the pieces than perfection and precision. I was drawn to more ambiguous textures and the way that they could be layered, and what started as one collage ended up being a series of three (the other two of which I’ll later publish this week).

(image) The collage I made for my mum’s birthday, ‘Flirtatious Textures’.

Whilst I’ve feel as though I’ve found my swing with collage-making again (and have been also considering embarking on some critical writing about my creative process using academic texts for reference), this week I had a piece rejected. I’d made it to enter into a competition, and when the rejection email landed in my inbox this week, the usual heart-racing pangs of inadequacy entered my mind. Not only had I lost money on the entry fee, but my work was ‘unwanted’. I’ve spent some time facing those demons these last couple of days and reminding myself that I make my work for ME.

So if that’s the cutting and sticking, and the zoom interviews were the calling, what’s the sitting and subtitling this week’s post refers to?

We’ve been doing a lot of sitting. Sitting and staring, sitting and watching the sun set, sitting and reading books, sitting and checking Instagram, sitting and feeling guilt for sitting, sitting and swatting mosquitoes away (it’s rather hot all of a sudden), sitting and eating crisps, sitting and calling friends, sitting and laughing, smiling, frowning, thinking.

(images, left to right) Everyday scenes from the cottage, cutting and sticking, and a lot of sitting (as demonstrated by George!)

It feels totally bonkers that as we face a global health pandemic, all I’m drawn to do (or able to do) is sit. And George and I have certainly discussed the guilt, lack of motivation, boredom and soul-searching that’s grown (and comes along with sitting!) in recent weeks. I’m not sure if there’s some grand benefit to all this sitting, but it has called for the enjoyment of many a good book, and also a good phonecall.

One of the most joyful moments (spent sitting!) this week was surely the video call I had for my Granny’s 80th birthday, between my mum, my brother, my aunt and my Granny herself. There were laughs and cheers, ridiculous filters used and lots of talk of birthday booze and plentiful cake. But after the call, there were also moments of reflection and of gratitude; that we are able to celebrate together (albeit digitally) for the momentous milestone that is my wonderful Granny’s eightieth birthday, as she sits alone in her house in Scotland, is a blessing. Of course, I would have loved to have seen her in person, but I am so bloody grateful that we can connect to her even if just through the airwaves.

Birthdays in May seem to be a common occurrence in my family, and this week saw my Mum’s birthday too. Again, there was a sense of loss that unsurprisingly, I couldn’t be with her due to coronavirus (a fact made worse by the fact I don’t think I’ve been with my Mum on her birthday for about five years), but we were also able to chat and videocall. And I was also able to go back through my photos, reflecting on wonderful times shared across the years.

(images, left to right) Looking back at memories with mum - as a child in a sling, on our trip to Sri Lanka in 2018, and at the exhibition opening of ‘Talking Sense’ where one of her sculptures was displayed at the Portico Library last year.

Access to computers and the internet, free time to sit and chill, and family who are safe and sound is not a privilege everyone shares. And I am so aware of that.

I continue to think of the inequalities this pandemic is highlighting, and the gaps it is widening. Access to the fundamental elements for a just and equitable life are basic human rights, and yet as BBC newsnight’s Emily Maitlis reminded us, 'The disease is not a great leveller'. If while I’m sitting this week, I can at least read, watch, learn and share ideas about how we can tackle these gaping inequalities, my sitting was perhaps not in vain.

As our fifteenth week on the road drew to a close, and looked ever less like life actually ‘on the road’, I decided to take on the task of subtitling The Hundred Miler.

Initially, the only motivation to create comprehensive subtitles for Broaden’s thirty minute documentary was so that we could enter foreign film fests. And even then, we’d have had it professionally subtitled if we weren’t looking for ways to save money!

And so I naively embarked on what was to become a two-day odyssey involving Artificial Intelligence transcript detection, manually correcting the script, learning about timecodes, downloading .srt files and working to integrate them with YouTube.

The long and short of it is that The Hundred Miler (which also hit a whopping 100,000 views this week) now has complete ‘closed caption’ subtitles which you can use and enjoy on YouTube! But more than that, through conversations with others I realised the importance of subtitles from an accessibility perspective, as a critical tool to help deaf and hard-of-hearing people, as well as those for whom English isn’t their mother tongue. It was a refreshing reminder that we exclude people without meaning to, but that we can also actively include them if we take certain measures.

So that’s it, Week 15 in all its mundane glory. To those of you who are still here, reading my reflections on these strange and tumultuous times, thank you. Maybe this week you’ve been cutting, calling, sticking, sitting and subtitling too, and for that, I salute you. 

#COVID-19 #coronavirus #estadodealarma #lifeinlockdown #hiacevan #toyotahiace #broaden #digitalnomads #vanlife #traveldiaries

[bryonysimcox]

You've Got to Look for the Good Stuff: Week 14, Spain

Like light is to darkness, this week has been an antidote to the last. My mood has lifted and the days have flown by, as lockdown continues and we do too.

Sunshine is a simple remedy. Each day this week has been warm and dry, if not bright and sunny too. It’s allowed us to live more inside-outside, which not only makes life easier but lifts my mood. It’s been a stark contrast to the constant rain and cold which dominated last week’s blog post.

I’ve also loved seeing pictures of children out in the streets and parks again, as Spain slowly lifts its coronavirus measures. It’s almost incomprehensible to imagine what it must be like for all these youngsters, many of whom have been cooped up in city-centre apartments with their siblings and parents for weeks and weeks. Even with the generous garden we have here and our weekly walks to the supermarket I’ve been going borderline insane, so I shudder to think how isolation has affected kids and their mental health.

Gaba Podcast live streams continue to punctuate my week. Adam Martin, whose podcast I mentioned in Week 10’s post, shares breathwork and meditative practices that have really helped me ease my busy mind. One of the things Adam talked about this week was what we consider to be ‘exercise’, in light of zealous Brits moaning that people sitting in the park, standing still in public and seemingly staring into space are breaking government-imposed controls around exercise. Adam argues that we consider sport and movement in open space an essential part to looking after our physical health, whilst ignoring the ‘exercise’ or psychological nurturing that our mental health deserves.

While this pandemic takes lives, we need to keep in mind the impact that social distancing is having on our psyches.

I titled this week’s digital diary entry ‘You’ve Got To Look Out For The Good Stuff’ because I’ve realised that there’s plenty of good stuff around, but quite simply, you’ve got to look for it. That might sound pretty obvious, but in comparing this week to the last, I can see that the main thing that’s changed isn’t my situation, but more so my mindset. Admittedly, the sunshine has made a huge difference, but apart from that, we’re still stuck in lockdown in Spain in the same physical, geographical and financial situation that we were in last week.

What’s caused this shift in mindset? Honestly, I don’t know. I think life in lockdown is making us act in all kinds of strange ways, cycling through an emotional spectrum so extreme we’ve rarely experienced it before and yet now feels like the norm. Tears, laughter, smiles and frowns easily paint my face in a matter of hours. So maybe my mood this week has just been luck. But as my shifted mindset has worked its magic, somehow I’ve seen and experienced little nuggets of ‘good stuff’. I hope that some of you have seen and enjoyed those nuggets too, wherever you are.

After rain left the road to the supermarket blocked, we finally made it to the shops this week, when the water subsided.

Perhaps fearful of another rainfall, this time we piled the trolley high in the local Aldi and returned home to stock up the cupboards. A plentiful fridge has resulted in some more cooking adventures - this week including George’s new specialty, Spanish omelette, and a new fave of mine too, veggie paella.

We picked and podded the final batch of broad beans this week, and helped to dig up the patch where they were growing to make way for the vegetables of the coming season: tomatoes, courgettes, cucumbers and peppers. One of the inadvertent blessings of being ‘marooned’ here in Catalunya has been to see and enjoy the changing of the seasons, and my interest in food growing and land management increases with them. George and I have always said we’d like to live in Spain in a self-built tiny house with a bit of land, and somehow we’ve landed in a situation right now that’s not far off! In addition to the vegetables we can get from the garden, I’ve been buying fresh eggs from the neighbour (often still warm from the coop!) which is a real treat.

(images, left to right) ‘Why simple changes [like growing food] are really profound’ a lovely illustration I discovered from Brenna Quinlan, George prepping the soil for tomatoes, and my new favourite thing to cook, veggie paella.

Food isn’t the only ‘good stuff’ to be grateful for. Since I mentioned Simon Mair’s article in my post from Week 11, I’ve been researching ‘Ecological Economics’ and its potential to lead us towards more just and sustainable ways of living. That research finally came to a head this week, when I had the pleasure of interviewing not only Simon himself but also friend and futures thinker from Mumbai, Mansi Parikh.

Making a video about alternative economic futures which address some of the challenges posed by Covid-19 is turning out to be a bit of a challenge in itself!

The interviews with Simon and Mansi were utterly fascinating, and I was so grateful to be able to talk to two super knowledgeable folk, who like me, are passionate about the future and how we can make it better. They shared their time and their insights, and now I’m left with over 150 minutes of recorded zoom calls to make sense of!

I want to use these interviews to make a video which engages people who perhaps wouldn’t usually be interested in economics, without ‘watering down’ the message or intent of the film. It’s such a hard balance to strike, to create something which is at once accessible and engaging but also rich with ideas. As the week progresses, I’ll start editing the footage and hopefully the narrative of the video will reveal itself.

One of the best things about making a new video is the chance to do loads of research! There have been so many articles which have got my brain buzzing, from ‘no-growth’ economics to deliberative democracies, and I’ve also just started reading ‘Fully Automated Luxury Communism’ which is a manifesto for a post-Capitalist future. Even if this research doesn’t directly inform the video I’m working on, it serves to inspire me. I’ve actually found myself a few times this week almost overwhelmed by how much interesting media there is out there to consume, and often just resort to adding thing to my ‘read later’ list, or quoting my favourite gems on Twitter.

(images, left to right) Recording interviews with Mansi and Simon, and my latest reading project...

The realisation of a project we began in January, ‘Place Portraits: Episode 1’ was finally released this week.

George had the idea a while ago to create a video series exploring cities and places through analogue photography. Whilst it was a super simple idea, we thought these short, laid-back videos would contrast with some of the longer-format stuff or more informative films we’re hoping to upload on the Broaden YouTube channel.

Back at the start of our trip we shot on a roll of Kodak Portra 400 and Fujifilm C200, using the trusty Pentax that was once George’s dad’s camera. We’d had the photos back from the processing lab for a while, but have only just completed the edit and got the film online, which is such a nice feeling. We’ve had some lovely responses to the resulting four-minute video, and I’ve especially valued constructive feedback so we can start to think critically about what Episode 2 might look like.

(video) Place Portraits: Episode 1 - Paris

Since ‘The Hundred Miler’ hit 90K views this week (which in and of itself is pretty nuts), I knew I had to temper my expectations about how many views we’d get with Place Portraits. Even though it’s not far past 200 views, each and every one of those views counts and I’m chuffed to see it finally online. Watching Broaden’s audience slowly grow has also served as great motivation to submit The Hundred Miler into film festivals, a process which we started this week.

There’s probably plenty more good stuff which deserves to be celebrated, but the one which can’t go unmentioned is of course the company of others.

Embracing what has become a routine activity for many of us these days, I’ve spent some cheerful hours on phonecalls and videochats to others across the globe.

This week included a three-way call between Ireland, Australia and Spain with dear friends that George and I used to live with catching up on career plans, cats and newfound hobbies. I also enjoyed a game of movie charades (which involved some impressive commitment from some people!) and even attended an evening of ‘drag queen bingo’. These digital hangouts leave me asking ‘Would I be connecting with friends and family this much if the world wasn’t in a global pandemic?’ and I think the answer would be no.

(images) Just some of the beautiful humans that feed my soul.

I’m grateful that these human connections are now much more of a priority. In being restricted to a simpler and more isolated way of living, we’re certainly reassigning value to the things that matter. That’s something which I’ve found from making the economics video and learning about the idea of value, but also something I’ve felt in a visceral way when a phone call with my parents or a friend leaves me beaming.

There’s so much good stuff out there, you’ve just got to be open to it.

#hiacevan #digitalnomads #COVID19 #coronavirus #lifeinlockdown #quarantinegratitude #goodstuff #BryonyandGeorge #Broaden #PlacePortraits

[bryonysimcox]

The internal battle of forced monotony: Week 13, Spain

The negative emotions associated with isolation have reared their ugly heads this week. Amid tales of homemade ramen, torrential rain and a new film we’re working on, this post also reflects on the less positive moods that lockdown has gifted us.

Life feels more surreal as each week passes. The end of our sixth week in lockdown also marks a quarter of a year since we set off from England in our freshly converted campervan. When I frame it like that, our overland adventure to date both stretches back into eternity and only feels like a couple of days ago. Little did we know that ‘life on the road’ would entail confinement indoors and restrictions on all kinds of activities, like going to a cafe, seeing friends, making videos and driving through Europe.

There’s certainly something deep within me that is inherently optimistic. Even though if I was realistic about it, I knew that the ‘State of Alarm’ here in Spain would likely extend beyond the date of 26th April (which had already been extended twice), I had sort of psyched myself up towards regaining some of our freedom on that date. So when one morning this week, I flicked my phone onto the website for EL Pais (a major Spanish newspaper) and Pedro Sánchez had announced he was set to ask congress for another extension until the 9th May, my heart sank.

If there’s one thing I’ve wanted this weekly blog to be, it’s authentic. I’ve wanted to use it as a record of where I’ve been - not only geographically, but emotionally, and that means reflecting on the lows as well as the highs.

It’s hard putting into words the feeling of being so helpless in your own life - the feeling I’m experiencing now in lockdown. I guess one way that this helplessness has taken effect is in my increased empathy and consideration for people who live much larger parts of their lives facing uncertainty and helplessness - whether that be living under an unstable dictatorship, drought and famine, civil war or poverty. It’s not that I’ve only just started caring about these people, but in experiencing a fraction of the emotions that they must be going through, my sympathy deepens into something much more.

I’m so used to being in control. I trust that I will wake up tomorrow and night will turn to day; that I will put my keys in the ignition and the van will start; that I will be safe from persecution and oppression and that I will be able to access food and water. Even the element of my life which is the most uncertain as we undertake this overland adventure, which is money, is usually tempered by the knowledge that George and I have the skills and resources to find work, even if it has to be something we don’t particularly like. And yet now, life has thrown us a curveball. Coronavirus has left us spinning out of control.

Not feeling in control of my life has sapped my motivation. I still manage to get out of bed, and get various things done for our film channel Broaden or just general life admin, and I still eat well and exercise where possible. But things have lost their shiny glow, and I lose the energy to focus on a task for long.

It’s not like every waking moment I’ve spent has been devoid of positive energy. Back at the start of the week we ventured out to the supermarket on foot which was a welcome change of scene, I sat out in the sun and bleached my hair with lemon juice, and George learnt to eat crisps in a handstand. We laugh, we have fun and we create little activities like this to pass the time. But somehow, even investing in positivity like this can be tiring. You spend one day trying really hard to be grateful for what you’ve got in this time of crisis, and focus on celebrating the silver linings of copious free time, only to wake up the next day with your energy reserves run dry. Is anyone feeling this too? I know I’m not alone. 

(images, left to right) Bleaching my hair with lemon juice, filming snippets for our upcoming ‘Place Portraits’ video and learning to eat crisps in a handstand.

Meanwhile, frontline workers continue to fight for us all. To save our lives.

The juxtaposition of the chilling images we see on the news about Covid-19 against the confines of the little cottage we’re currently staying in is bizarre. Each day I read new statistics about people dying, articles about PPE shortages and quotes from global health authorities telling us the worst is yet to come.The boredom and helplessness I’m feeling shrink in comparison to the intensity of this global pandemic. My emotions seem petty and mundane, perhaps even pathetic. And yet, something tells me these emotions are still legitimate. That all of our emotions are legitimate, as we each attempt to process the situation and what it could mean for the future.

The future is no longer a thing which feels predictable. We have stepped over the cliff edge, and as each day that the pandemic unfolds, we are in new territory. Of course, one of the opportunities presented by such an enormous global event is the chance to reassess how we live on this planet, redefining the new ‘normal’. 

I have always been interested in the study of the future, and using different approaches to imagine how it may play out. And yet whilst there are opportunities amid the crisis, right now, I’m terrified by what I see. Yes, there are clues and behaviour changes that we can use to project future scenarios, but most of what is in front of us is completely unknown. We don’t know how long we have to work from home, furlough our staff, keep our children educated and occupied indoors or talk to loved ones through a screen. We don’t know what horrors tomorrow’s headlines will bring.

It feels like the world is staring into a dark abyss, reaching out for something to hold onto.

From a selfish perspective, not having any control over the future is a huge spanner in the works. Driving across Europe in a van and working as freelance videographers is the least ‘essential activity’ there could be, and we are conscious that governments have much more to focus on than two British travellers running out of money and desperate to continue their adventure. But it’s still so disheartening to be at the whim of something, something bigger and greater than you, particularly in light of the arduous year we spent preparing for this trip. There have certainly been a few tears here this week, and waves of the same emotions I felt when building the van and knowing there was a chance we would have to give up.

The weather really hasn’t helped lift the mood either. This region of Spain faced endless days of torrential rain this week which rendered the garden inundated and the road flooded. We couldn’t even get out to the supermarket and even worse, a leak developed in the roof of our van! It all felt rather doom and gloom.

(images, left to right) Torrential rain turned the road into a river, the point where we had to reverse all the way back home and couldn’t get to the supermarket, and a neighbouring lane which is closed off by Police.

One of the other realisations that brought me crashing down this week was sussing out that we’ll still be in lockdown for George’s thirtieth birthday. He’s not even someone who cares much for birthdays, but it had always been such an important milestone in my head and I was really looking forward to doing something nice together - going to a restaurant or watching live music or mooching around a city. Hilariously, back when we left Sydney we made a plan with our friends to have a reunion for George’s 30th… in Goa, India! It’s actually quite amusing to see how monumentally wrong we were in predicting the future, as we are thousands of miles off India right now.

All that said, George has been a cornerstone. Not just to comfort me about his birthday, but to be there through this all. We sort of balance one another out, ready with a positive mindset and hug when the other one is feeling super low.

If there’s one thing life in lockdown has strengthened, it’s our relationship.

On a lighter note, George embarked on a grand mission to make the best homemade ramen on Sunday. It all started with the broth, inspired by a zany French chef he follows on YouTube, and by mid-morning the cottage was filled with the smell of this incredible broth combining vegetable peelings with burnt garlic, ginger, miso paste and soy. What started as a broth-making test unfolded across the day, and saw him make handmade noodles, a sticky garlic and sesame sauce, soy soaked eggs and grilled tomatoes. Needless to say, watching George’s ramen odyssey was definitely the most entertainment I had all day!

(images, left to right) George’s homemade noodles (as food stocks were running low), the finished ramen, and the delicious oily and fatty broth in progress.

The two of us have also been working on a new video that will be released on the Broaden YouTube this Saturday (25th April). It’s a far cry from ‘The Hundred Miler’, but hopefully will be well-received nonetheless. It’s called ‘Place Portraits’, and we filmed it back in Paris, in the first week on the road back when temperatures lingered around zero degrees. Whilst we haven’t been as excited about making videos as we usually would be, I continue to be grateful to have a creative focus amid the pandemic, and being stuck inside is forcing me to get inventive with ideas for upcoming projects.

I also love seeing things that people have baked, sung, written, built and performed across the world each day online. The internet can be an incredible place.

As I write this, I reflect on a rocky week battling the internal voices and contradictory emotions of lockdown.

It’s a strangely tiring combination: of not knowing what the future looks like and trying to make sense of a world devoid of human contact or normal routines. Each day, let alone this whole week, has been filled with so many highs and lows that by the evening, I’m left feeling exhausted and churned up inside. 

But we made it. We made it another week in lockdown and I’m so glad I have this blog as a place to reflect. I hope it’s also a place where my honesty (and in this week’s post, my negativity) makes you not feel so alone in your emotions.

As if she knew I needed her right now, Mother Nature has finally blessed us with glorious sunshine and I can already feel my mood lifting. Perhaps the pain associated with this period is also signifying something else: growth. As we face this together, and all of the ugly emotions that come along with it, we learn more about ourselves and human nature, and in doing so, we grow. 

p.s. apologies if this week’s post was all doom and gloom! If it was, may I redirect you to last week’s ‘photo essay’ as a soothing antidote.

#traveldiaries #life in lockdown #covid-19 #estado de alarma #coronavirus #BryonyandGeorge #suzithevan #digitalnomads #vanliving

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Looking Back to Look Forward: Week 12, Spain

It’s our twelfth week in mainland Europe and our fifth week in lockdown. And it’s the first week that I’ve finally caved in to breaking my weekly writing routine. So expect something a little different this week: less words, more pictures.

Yes, you guessed it: we’re still under ‘State of Alarm’ here in Spain. While coronavirus cases plateau, extreme lockdown measures are still very much in place and the future remains completely unknown. As this week’s blog post became increasingly overdue, I realised I had little to report from the last seven days here in Catalunya.

So I’ve shifted my focus.

This week, instead of reflecting on what we’ve been up to at this little cottage in Spain (which is mainly going a little lockdown loco), I’ve looked back over the twelve weeks since we left the UK. The following ‘photo essay’ draws together the photos that didn’t quite make the cut the first time: often abstracted glimpses of the experiences we’ve had on the road. Contrary to my usual blogging format, these images aren’t chronological, nor labelled. I hope you enjoy them as fragments and flavours of the journey George and I have forged through France and Spain so far.

In pulling these together, I was reminded of how powerful reflection and gratitude can be. These images have helped me reframe my current situation: moving my focus away from a narrative about an adventure cut short due to a global pandemic to a story of an adventure made wilder and richer due to a temporary pause. An adventure which has been a real delight, and somehow, sometime, will continue.

Thanks for stopping by, everyone. It’s been a pleasure drawing these photographs together and I hope they stirred some up some hope in these tumultuous times. 

In other news, on Saturday our documentary 'The Hundred Miler' live-premiered and we were delighted to have almost 400 people tune in from home to watch it go live for the first time.

Now, less than a week on, and we've hit 25,000 views which is pretty mind-blowing. Whilst we pinch ourselves at those kinda viewing figures, George and I are also reminded that each and every one of those views is another person, and each and every one of those mean a lot. If you haven’t already, you can watch The Hundred Miler on YouTube here.

Here’s to adventure.

#photojournal #traveldiaries #SuziTheVan #hiacevan #estadodealarma #BryonyandGeorge #thehundredmiler #digitalnomads #vanliving #vanlife

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Spring has Sprung and Life Continues: Week 11, Spain

Another week spent in the Catalunyan countryside as coronavirus lockdown continues. Here are my reflections on the arrival of spring, broad beans, ecological economics and the launch of ‘The Hundred Miler’.

This last week has seen the welcome face of April - signalling that spring is certainly here along with the arrival of Easter. It’s a time associated with new life, new starts, sunny days and longer nights. Even though we remain in full lockdown here in Spain, it feels as though we can draw upon the changing season as a source of assurance.

The week started with something rather special. I finally got to drive Suzi!

When we first bought the van in Summer 2019, I was still only 24, and it was really expensive to get me insured on it. There seems to be a transition point for insurers at age 25, so George and I had always agreed that after my birthday at Christmas, we’d get me on the insurance. But we never got around to it, partly because of the additional expense, and partly because it wasn’t a huge priority, until the start of March. And then of course, we were in Valencia and the lockdown hit, so we had nowhere to drive to even once I was insured!

My first drive here in Catalunya was pretty fun, even though it was just a trip to the supermarket. Because we’re in lockdown, the roads are super quiet which has been great, and the roads around the cottage aren’t tarmaced, so I could do some offroading as well. I’ve since driven a couple more times to and from the supermarket, and it’s so nice to be behind the wheel again. I haven’t driven since we owned our last van, Casper, back in Sydney!

(Images, left to right) My first time driving Suzi the HiAce, and a throwback to driving our last van Casper.

On the topic of Sydney, I have been doing some serious reminiscing. It’s almost coming to exactly a year since George and I flew back to the UK from Australia, and anniversaries always tend to bring on waves of nostalgia. It’s mad to think that a year ago, we didn’t own a van, not least have a clue about where we’d be living in the van! And of course, there’s no way I’d have imagined that we would be stuck amid a pandemic-induced global lockdown. Oh, to have the gift of foresight... 

The year that ensued after we left our friends, jobs, and security blanket of Sydney was an absolute rollercoaster. We naively aimed to have the van built and prepped in a matter of months, and when the van-build rolled over towards Christmas 2019, I felt like an absolute failure for not having finished it sooner. And yet now, upon reflection, I guess it’s not such a bad achievement to have managed to buy and build Suzi the HiAce, both of us get jobs in Manchester and move into a flat there, launch our documentary channel ‘Broaden’ and set off for Europe all in a year.

We can all benefit from a bit of self-reflection to put progress into perspective.

(video) Broaden’s latest video; an overview of who we are and what we’re about. It’s helped me to reframe some of the successes of this last year.

I feel like a stuck record, but food is a wonderful experience which punctuates the repetitive days of lockdown. Last week I wrote about calçots, a deliciously sweet spring onion special to this region and eaten with Romesco sauce. This week, it’s all about broad beans. The garden here is full of them, so I’ve been tasked with picking and podding. Most of them are fat enough to be podded, and are even better if you go the extra mile by blanching them and removing their skins. The smaller ones can be eaten as they are, and make for a lovely crunchy stir-fry ingredient too.

Preparing broad beans can be time-consuming, but also a wonderfully cathartic activity. My granny in Scotland used to have plenty of these beans in her garden, and I remember summer days spent picking and podding with my mum. We’ve stored plenty here in the freezer but have also kept some fresh and I am continually finding ways to incorporate them into our meals. A quick call to my well-resourced mum also resulted in her sending pages and pages photographed from Jane Grigson’s vegetable book: not only with plenty of recipes but incredibly detailed descriptions of the vegetable’s history and qualities too.

(images) Beautiful fresh veggies from the market were a highlight of the week, as well as picking these broad beans straight from the garden. The bowl on the right is what was distilled from podding four huge bags’ worth.

The resurgence in cooking and baking whilst in lockdown is inspiring, but I’ve been thinking about how it affects our supply chains as well.

Just this morning on BBC News I saw an article about dairy farmers having to throw away vast amounts of milk as cafes, hotels and restaurants remain shut, and another article about how there’s been an insane increase in demand for flour, as everyone takes to home baking. Many mills are now working around the clock to meet the demand in the UK and I was especially interested to read that even if there’s enough flour that there’s a shortage of packaging, because usually only 4% of flour produced goes into the smaller bags that we see on supermarket shelves.

Coronavirus has triggered so many changes in how we live and how we behave, that it's wreaking havoc on supply chains like this, and of course, the economy. That said, whilst the negative effects are hard to deny, scientists, economists and ecologists alike are suggesting that we should leverage the situation as an opportunity to reflect on how we all live, and how we might return to ‘normal’ life without just returning to business as usual. I agree: this is a unique opportunity to reassess production and consumption, how we assign value to things, and the economic and political models that we use to govern our world.

The connection between global lockdown, coronavirus, climate change and our economy has really got me thinking.

I recently read an incredible article by ecological economist Simon Mair in Singularity Hub which looked at this relationship. The article pulled together disparate strands that have been on my mind for a while, each related to various books which I’ve been reading, and which I can now see are interconnected. Simon suggests that the Covid-19 crisis could be a chance to “expand our economic imagination”. He explains that coronavirus, like climate change, demands a type of downscaling, counter to the ‘wartime economy’ mentality and massive upscaling of production. 

“If we want to be more resilient to pandemics in the future (and to avoid the worst of climate change) we need a system capable of scaling back production in a way that doesn’t mean loss of livelihood”, says Simon.

The article is full of gems, and Simon explores things such as our current addition to economic growth and productivity, the transfer of healthcare and labour goods out of the market and into the hands of the state, and the social forms that could come from an ethic that values care, life, and democracy. It answers some of the questions posed by George Monbiot in ‘How Did We Get Into This Mess?’, echoes some of the radical economic theories proposed by Kate Raworth in ‘Doughnut Economics’, and parallels ideas of democratic market socialism put forward by ‘How to Be an Anti-Capitalist in the 21st Century’ by Erik Olin Wright which I’m currently reading. Simon’s article has really got me so fired up, in fact, that I’m working on an idea for a new video which explores the topic, so watch this space.

(images) Three fantastic books which I highly recommend.

On the subject of videos, Broaden has been one of the only things keeping us sane! I am eternally grateful to have a creative outlet in times like these, and one which involves a collaborative partnership with George too. Whilst we aren’t able to explore places in the van, or capture footage for new films as we’d love to be doing right now, we are at least able to edit from the cottage and work on promoting the content that we are already releasing.

It feels so tricky to get the right tone when releasing videos during a global pandemic.

We are both conscious of remaining sensitive to the severity of the health crisis, whilst balancing that with the reality that life goes on, and that people still want to see pictures, watch videos and read articles that engage with other topics too. As Broaden, George and I obviously made the decision to launch our documentary ‘The Hundred Miler’ during this time, and I hope that people see it as a celebration of running, the natural world, and human resilience, and perhaps even an escape from the daily news of the virus, rather than something insensitive or badly-timed.

(video) Trailer for ‘The Hundred Miler’

‘The Hundred Miler’ comes out this Saturday 11th April, and we have been overwhelmed by the response already. People have really got behind the project, helping to share it on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube and widen its potential reach. George has been making this film for well over three years, so it feels like an immense milestone to finally have it shown to the world. I don’t think I know many people who hold themselves to such high standards as George, and so to have so many positive messages and people planning to tune in for the live premier on Saturday is the best affirmation of all his hard work that I could wish for. It has been a pleasure to see him create this documentary, and also to have been involved in the production and final stages of its creation.

The Hundred Miler is a film about three Australian guys, taking on the biggest race of their lives; UTMB.

‘Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc’ is renowned in the trail-running world, as one of the most challenging and scenic ultra marathons. The Hundred Miler is an attempt to bring this story to the masses, and we hope that it appeals to non-runners and runners alike, for its underlying themes of companionship, commitment and strength. It premiers live on YouTube at 10am in the UK, which is 7pm in Australia on 11.4.20, and after that the video will be available to watch as a normal video. You can find BTS footage and more information about the film on our Instagram here, details of the launch on the Facebook event here, and the link for the video itself here. You can also subscribe to Broaden’s YouTube channel and set a reminder for when the film goes live.

(video) ‘The Hundred Miler’ which goes live on Sat 11th April.

 It goes without saying: I am really missing the open road and living in a van. And I’m not immune to fear of the future either. But as the days and weeks pass, we learn to adapt to changing circumstances and continue to find hope among them. In a way, it helps to know we are all in the same boat, facing a topsy-turvy life full of roadblocks and revelations. Thanks for tuning in to read my weekly ramblings and I hope you’re all keeping as well as you can be. Until next week!

#thehundredmiler #traveldiaries #SuziTheVan #toyotahiace #hiacevan #overlandadventures #BryonyandGeorge #digitalnomads #vanliving #vanlife

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Thoughts on Mindfulness, Onions and Jealousy: Week 10, Spain

It’s hard to fathom that we’ve entered double digits as I count the weeks we’ve been living away from the UK, and even harder to fathom the coronavirus crisis that the world continues to face. This week, I explore mindfulness, barbequed spring onions and the evils of jealousy.

The last week of March has brought both sunshine and rain here in Catalonia. Sunday was glorious, and the warm rays of sun felt like nature’s invitation to take the afternoon off from film editing and staring at screens. Even I, who usually finds it hard to ‘just’ chill out, responded to this invitation and slowed right down, sipping cheap Spanish lager and whiling the day away with a good book. By contrast, there have been numerous days of solid rain here too. Temperatures have dropped and George and I remain huddled inside, wrapped in layers and eternally grateful to have a house to stay in throughout lockdown.

It looks like the weather in the UK has been pretty glorious. It’s sod’s law that after a long winter, when Brits are finally ready to get out and about, everyone is required to stay at home and can only see and admire the sunshine from afar.

This state of lockdown is undoubtedly a reminder of our need to access nature, especially for those who are living in urban areas and apartments.

The flipside to the restrictions, of course, is that reduced travel and activity means reduced carbon emissions and pollutants. Like many others, my heart has been lifted by photos of Venice’s canals which now run clear, satellite imagery and data showing dramatically reduced air pollution in major cities, or sound recordings of magnificent birdsong made audible thanks to minimal traffic. Similarly, whilst I’m not a huge fan of the rain, it’s a real blessing here in Catalonia, a region which is often very dry. The land around us in the cottage is looking more luscious than ever, and the rain is doing wonders for the green beans, olives, herbs and spring onions (or ‘calcots’, but more on them later) which grow here.

(images) Mother nature’s gifts.

I’ve been feeling infinitely more connected to nature while living in lockdown. Not necessarily because we’re staying in the countryside, though that helps, but perhaps because I’m increasingly aware of my dependence on it. The natural world (which we often forget were a part of) provides us with the sustenance we need to survive, and I can’t help but feel like empty supermarket shelves in the UK are a symbol of how disconnected people are to where food actually comes from, and the supply chain which starts with mother nature.

Nature is not only essential as a source of food but as a source of energy from which we nurture our minds.

The alarming spread of coronavirus and its devastating and far-reaching effects threaten to overwhelm me. As I mentioned in last week’s post, I constantly feel at the edge of this overwhelm, ready to be swept under by the noise and chaos of news headlines which just keep getting worse. In an active effort to address these feelings without adopting a ‘keep calm and carry on’ approach of outright avoidance, I have started to practice mindfulness, using breathwork techniques from Gaba Podcast’s daily sessions.

Nature has become a central part of my amateur mindfulness practice, as it provides a constant calming presence in the now on which to focus. Simple things in the natural world have proven incredibly grounding, like the cycle from day to night, the passing of clouds across the sky, the sound of little birds scuffling across the roof of the cottage and the fresh aroma of soil after it’s rained. Of course these elements don’t erase the existence of Covid-19 and the lives it is both threatening and taking, but they provide a counterweight to the noise and anticipatory grief that I’m experiencing.

(images) Stuff can get pretty overwhelming at the moment, so the natural world has become a steadfast element on which to rest my focus.

I have also been thinking about the way in which nature is not just a resource to be taken from, for our wellbeing and our existence, but something to give back to. I’ve been inspired by so many people I follow online, and their mutual apprehension that this could be a pivotal point of change for the world. Their shared thoughts and musings suppose that we might move away from our addiction with consumption and competition, and towards more regenerative cultures. Friend and ex-colleague, Adam Russell, has written a fantastic summary of ten books worth reading if you’re interested in regenerative cultures and living in harmony with the planet. The summary can be found at the Saltbush Projects website, which documents the pretty cool journey that Adam and his family are taking in suburban Australia, of growing food, making things and living more simply. Adam’s project is one of a few which are inspiring George and I to shape up our own dreams for a self-sustaining lifestyle and off-grid house.

Amid panic, paranoia and overwhelm, I am optimistic about a different future in which equality, sustainability and community emerge as the shared values by which we live.

Unlike the accounts of our adventures before lockdown, I don’t have much to report on a day-by-day basis. Back during our time in France and our initial month in Spain it felt as though every day was rammed with new experiences and places that George and I had visited in the van! Now though, the days start to merge into one, and I have lost my usual motivation to spring out of bed and into action. I try not to beat myself up about it, and in fact have leaned into the ‘not-knowing’ of the future and the monotony of the present. I trust that one day, somehow, our travels will continue, and try to reaffirm the motto “I’m exactly where I need to be” even when it can feel super frustrating that all life plans are on hold for the time being.

(images, left to right) Layered up in lockdown as it rains outside, watching a live stream DJ set from England complete with visuals created (live, too) remotely by my brother in Scotland!, and slowing down and soaking up the sun on Sunday.

The monotony of the present has also allowed for me to reflect inwardly. I think a crisis of the magnitude that the world currently faces puts certain things into perspective, and after another week filled with skype calls and catch-ups, I don’t think I’m alone in my increase in philosophical thoughts. The insecurities of weight gain, obsessions with career progression, anticipation for planned holidays, fixations with buying new things and other everyday thoughts shared amongst my friends and I now seem like petty hiccups in the grand scheme of life.

Food, friends, our health and shared prosperity feel like the only things that matter anymore.

On that note, I’ve been thinking about jealousy - a strange and ugly emotion that I have grappled with for years. In last week’s post I talked about my shifting relationship with social media in recent weeks, and the possibility that sharing things like photos and status updates can be perceived as insensitive, and perhaps even trigger jealousy. Whilst it could have seemed that I was referring to jealousy induced by the things that I post, I have also been thinking about my own jealousy, and taking a tiny step back from Instagram and Facebook has been part of that.

As a child, I remember being preoccupied with other people’s looks and achievements. I think at one point I even claimed to my mum that I wanted to be my best friend! That jealous streak is something which has filtered through my life, and it’s probably only in the last five years that I really feel like I’ve faced up to it. Jealousy is horrible for so many reasons, but for me, not only did it make me feel rubbish but it also impeded my ability to be happy for others. Instead of relishing in shared pride for a friend or family member’s success or good fortune, that success would become a cruel tool to devalue myself. It would push my focus away from them, and back onto me, leaving me both as a crap friend and a selfish individual.

(Image) I’ve grappled with jealous over the years, a muddy and confusing emotion that threatens your ability to reflect on yourself and others.

This period of lockdown feels like a closing chapter for me in addressing jealousy, which is perhaps why I’m sharing it even if it seems personal, in the hope that it may be of use to someone else.

When I say ‘closing chapter’, it’s not as though jealousy will never rear its ugly head again, because of course it will. But the common cause of tackling this horrible virus has been a trigger for me to consolidate what I’ve been practicing these last five years: to turn jealousy around into more constructive feelings, like pride and admiration for others, and aspiration or contentment for myself. All that said, it is really hard to find coherent words to explain my relationship with jealousy, and I do not at all profess to be immune to it! I only hope that I can continue to address it head on, rather than suppress it and let it eat away at me.

On the topic of eating, food has become a crucial part of mentally surviving lockdown! George and I have been cherishing the opportunity to take longer to cook, to experiment with new recipes, and even new ingredients (if we can find them in the tightly controlled supermarkets). I know we’re not alone in this, and have heard stories of friends’ first homemade loaf of bread, experiments with pickling and fermentation, making pasta by hand and brewing beer at home. By cooking and eating more slowly, I think we are also showing our appreciation to nature, and re-assigning value to a ritual intrinsic to humanity.

Calçots, as I mentioned at the start, have been a magical little food discovery for the two of us. A type of green onion renowned in Catalonia, calçots are best cooked on an open fire. After letting them crisping up for five minutes, you peel the blackened outer skin off to reveal a sweet and juicy inner, which when dipped in romesco sauce, is absolutely delicious.

(images, left to right) Calçots in the garden, roasting over a fire, and ready for dipping in sauce.

The sauce, known as ‘Salsa de Calçots’, can be made at home with blanched almonds, hot peppers, garlic, tomatoes and olive oil, but we actually picked some up in the supermarket. A few nights this week, we’ve had the pleasure of cooking calçots like this, and not only do they taste incredible, but they’re messy, fun and super simple.

While it could sound ridiculous, small experiences like cooking fresh spring onions on an open fire have transcended into special, almost spiritual moments of communion for me. I believe we need these glimpses of normality and conviviality to survive what is an extreme and scary time.

As it sinks in that we could all be living like this for a while now, let’s not forget to look after ourselves and others. Rather than settle for judgement and jealousy, I am trying to equip myself with kindness and compassion, a choice inspired by the nurses and doctors, farmers and supermarket workers, respirator-makers and scrubs-sewers, soup kitchen volunteers and careworkers, newly-appointed homeschoolers and online mindfulness coaches.

These people give me hope.

#traveldiaries #SuziTheVan #BryonyandGeorge #digitalnomads #lifeinlockdown #covid-19 #coronavirus #estadodealarma #overlandadventures #vanlife #hiacevan #toyotahiace

[bryonysimcox]

The Duality of this Strange Existence: Week 9, Spain

Stuck in Spain for the foreseeable future, it’s easy to feel deflated. And I have been. But I’ve also seen the duality of things, opposing sides of the same situation which now affects us all. As coronavirus continues to grind the world to a halt, I continue writing in an attempt to make sense of life on the road.

This blog post comes a few days late because I honestly couldn’t bring myself to write it. What do I write? Where do I begin? From a micro perspective, my life here has been pretty uneventful, and yet from the macro perspective, so much has happened around the world due to the outbreak of Covid-19 that it feels like we have enough news for a whole year from just one week. And yet, the only perspective I can write from is my own. Armed with the encouraging words of friends and family, I am inspired to push on and get some of the thoughts in my head and experiences from our ninth week ‘on the road’ down onto paper.

One of the ways I’ve started to see our experiences in lockdown is through this idea of duality.

Every situation that I’m in (and no doubt most of us are in) sort of seems to have two sides. I alluded to this in last week’s blog post, and the way in which it’s possible to see great sadness, selfishness and suffering at the moment, but also to be inspired by so many of the positive responses and the potential positive outcomes of this pandemic.

From a chronological perspective, our week has been divided into two clear halves, another duality of sorts. George and I spent the first half of the week in Suzi the Van, in the Marina in València which we’d been staying for a while. Whilst the Marina had all the basic amenities and we were safe there, the confines of a space that small were really taking its toll. On Tuesday, when I was made to return to the van by a security guard after attempting to walk short laps nearby, I broke down into tears. Never before have I valued the outdoors so much, wanted to stretch my legs and take in some fresh air. It was heartbreaking, and scary to lose a liberty I take for granted.

As urban areas seem to be hotspots for the virus, València was under tight control. A simple trip to the supermarket hammered that reality home, when George and I were asked by Police to walk on opposite sides of the street from one another, and a one metre distance was enforced by cashiers and guards in supermarkets. Gloves are mandatory in some supermarkets, and most folk you do see are wearing masks.

(images, left to right) Being made to walk on separate sides of the road in Valencia, tape marking out 1 metre separations in the supermarket, and gloves to be worn by customers.

Extreme measures quickly start to feel normal.

Whilst we tried to make the best of being in Suzi the van, having fun together and finding any possible way to entertain ourselves, the claustrophobia-inducing confines were soon wearing thin. After making arrangements with the family friend whose cottage we had stayed in a few weeks earlier in Catalonia, we quickly made the six-hour journey up north to return to their cottage as a safer lockdown spot. George and I were also conscious that restrictions on driving were only likely to tighten, so we made the escape while we could. That said, we weren’t stopped by Police the whole way up from València to Palamos.

Relying on the generosity of others can be a very humbling thing. I am reminded every day that I wouldn’t be here in Spain, with a safe place to stay during the (now extended) ‘State of Alarm’ if it wasn’t for the kindness of others. In times like these, I think we will see more sharing of resources, and the idea of asking for help becoming more normalised too. If I can help someone else in any way, please do reach out to me.

(images, left to right) Saying goodbye to Suzi’s parking spot at La Marina, silly antics as George refuses to get out of bed in the morning, and making our way north to Catalunya.

Since leaving València, the second half of our week has been rather more comfortable than the first, as we’re now in the countryside and with a house to stay in. That said, I’ve been pretty miserable these past few days, burdened with the knowledge of the global crisis and the impact it’s having on literally everyone I know. Which brings me to another duality -

Whilst those of us in lockdown who aren’t sick with the virus technically have all this unique free time to potentially make and create, the panic and anxiety induced by the situation can be crippling.

Obviously, everyone’s working situation is different: some people are working from home, others have lost their jobs, others are being paid some or all of their wage but don’t have any work to do, and then there are the doctors and nurses, supermarket attendants and maintenance workers who literally risk their lives to go to work and keep the situation afloat. But, looking more generally at the whole population, when else in history have so many people been given a chance to stay at home, with no routine and no commitments? 

When trying to think positively, I have seen this lockdown as an opportunity for making and creating on an unprecedented scale, for people to use the freedom and inspiration as a platform for self-expression, a sentiment echoed countless times online too. And yet, even though I’ve managed to get things done and make things in this last week, it has always been counteracted by another feeling in my head and heart, one which has pushed against the desire to ‘do’ with a desire to… mourn? I’ve heard the anxiety triggered by the unknown of the future termed as ‘anticipatory grief’, and it’s exactly this which can cripple any desire or instinct to create and make. The idea of anticipatory grief is explored in an article which my friend Greg sent to me today, and I found it incredibly useful. You might do too.

Living with an unknown future is forcing a shift towards being more present.

(images) Small things that I am trying to grateful for, like fresh houmous, strawberries blooming and an open fire.

You don’t realise how much you base your life around an assumed future until that future crumbles into the unknown. I assumed that I would be able to fly home for a doctor’s appointment in April, I assumed that Las Fallas festival would take place in València and George and I would finish our commercial work linked to it, I assumed that we would catch a ferry to Italy and drive south-east through Slovakia and Croatia and that we would see our friends later in Greece as planned.

Obviously a big outcome of all those future things now being cancelled or uncertain causes anxiety and the ‘anticipatory grief’ that I mentioned. But it has also triggered a return to the present. I wonder if other, more mindful, cultures are generally more present-focussed because they don’t have the luxury of the certainty of the future - places where death is more frequent and disasters more likely to happen, unsheltered by the insurance and capital we are so ‘lucky’ to have in the Western world. For me, I am trying ever so hard to embrace the present. It is an uncomfortable feeling, to be okay and connected to the now rather than to what is to come, but it also feels like a very valuable mindset to nurture.

A focus on the present is perhaps why so many of us have suddenly connected with friends and family digitally. Of course, some of these calls are intended to replace what would usually be a face-to-face catch up, but for George and I, we wouldn’t be set to see a lot of people for a while as we’re overseas anyway. And so all these phone conversations, WhatsApp catch-ups, Zoom calls and Skype videos have been a direct action to bring those people that mean something to us closer. People are reaching out to each other, in the present, and are showing the gratitude, connection and care they have for each other through just saying hi. Perhaps we all forgot quite how important these people were to us because we were always thinking in the future?

(images, left to right) Connecting with friends in Australia, George going a little bit insane, and my first attempt at making oat milk (which I would rate a totally mediocre 5/10) which was a good short-term distraction from the overwhelming global crisis and a good starting point to make improved versions!

I’ve also been reminded that the internet can serve to connect and inform, but it also has the potential to alienate and divide people.

I honestly can’t imagine experiencing lockdown without access to the internet. This week alone, I’ve probably read tens if not hundreds of useful, mind-expanding, informative news articles, in addition to opinion pieces and videos related and linked to coronavirus. I’ve been able to watch (along with 80 or so others) our friend Dan live-stream a spirit-lifting musical performance from his bedroom as part of the ‘Solo En Casa’ festival, and I’ve taken part in a genre-defying guided meditation by the wonderful Adam Martin from Gaba Podcast. My mum did her first online yoga class, my Dad has been playing virtual Scrabble with his friends, and that’s all on top of the phone calls and video calls that ping around between us all every day.

Yet whilst I sing its praises, the internet also has darker qualities in times like these. There are no ‘ground rules’ for the internet, and social media can start to become a bit of a Wild West where opinions get flung around and judgement passed. Lockdown restrictions seem to change everyday, and you see plenty of neighbourhood vigilantes who take it upon themselves to report and criticise other people for the rules that they break, people in government for the rules that they make, shoppers for the food that they take. I find myself engaging in this circle of judgement too, and yet it goes against the principles of community and solidarity that are needed now more than ever.

Not only does the internet make space for judgement, but for jealousy as well. In presenting selected elements of our lives we can create idealised images of what our lives are really like, and in sharing certain things we can highlight what others don’t have. Sharing photos and stories is a great way of connecting with others, but the flipside of this digital culture addicted to sharing is that we sometimes lose sight of what we have. This week, I’ve taken a bit of a step back from Instagram and Facebook both to focus on my present situation and the immediate world around me, and not to incite jealousy or comparison. I’m interested to see how I find this change.

Unrelated to the current pandemic, we’re incredibly excited to finally have a launch date for Broaden’s upcoming documentary, ‘The Hundred Miler’.

Announcing the release date was in part triggered because we realised that this is a time when people will be at home, available to watch an independent documentary about ultra running. But announcing the launch of The Hundred Miler also highlights another duality: that while there is a global crisis going on which involves a terrifying, easy-to-transmit illness causing an influx of deaths, the ‘normality’ of everyday life is running in parallel. People are still doing homework with their kids, others are watching Netflix before they go to bed and walking their dogs, and George and I are still trying to edit videos and launch Broaden.

And so, now seemed as good a time as any to finally get our first big film out into the world. We’ve created a facebook event to promote the launch on the 11th April, and throughout the runup in the coming three weeks we’ll be releasing snippets of the film too. I’d love for as many of you to join the facebook event and catch the video when it’s out.

Having a creative project like this documentary throughout lockdown has been a lifesaver, as it’s pushed me to move towards the positive side of the dualities presented by coronavirus: trying to ‘do stuff’ rather than getting bored, trying to make something rather than being crippled by anxiety, trying to make the most of the space we have rather than feel trapped in our surroundings, trying to be present rather than fretting about the future.

All that considered, the critical word in the statement above is trying. I’m trying, and not always succeeding, to see the positive side of things. I think one of the reasons it took me a while to finally write this blog post is because I wanted it to come from an authentic place, and at first it felt like a failure that I didn’t have only good things to report. But in processing how I’ve been feeling these past seven days, the most authentic message is that I haven’t been purely positive, and things have been rough, and that that’s okay too.

The duality of life is what gives it character, and I think some of the dualistic qualities of this period of lockdown are what’s making it such a strange thing for us to all grapple with too.

Does any of this make sense? I hope so. I hope I’m not alone in these feelings and I hope that in some way this blog brings us closer together. These are strange and scary times, folks.

Stay safe and stay sane. x

#BryonyandGeorge #SuziTheVan #vanliving #hiacevan #toyotahiace

[bryonysimcox]

Life in Lockdown: Week 8, Spain

It’s been seven of the weirdest days of our life: where the freedom of vanlife turned into quarantine in a 4m2 space. I look back on our documentary progress and life in València under lockdown.

The week started with the announcement that the biggest event in the Valèncian calendar, Las Fallas, was cancelled. This came as a real shock to us (just as I was wrapping up last week’s blog post) and at the time, almost felt like a bit of an over-reaction. Of course, those closely following the development of Coronavirus around the world, and particularly in nearby Italy, would understand the motivation behind such a big decision.

On Tuesday morning I attended a free event about Innovation and Design in cities, hosted by a group called ‘Designscapes’ who are conducting research on the topic in the hope of developing public policy. I’d been invited by Ramon Marrades who we’ve been working with at La Marina, and I quite enjoyed attending an academic event after being outside of the urban design industry for a while. I wrote an overview of some of the key takeaways from the event here, which included speakers from the International Centre for Design and Research, Aalborg University and The Tavistock Institute. Unfortunately, the event was considerably impacted by Coronavirus, and not only was attendance greatly reduced but many of the speakers were also unavailable to be present.

Attending the Designscapes Policy Forum was certainly a wake-up call about how seriously Covid-19 might begin to affect public gatherings, but I would still not believe the situation we’d be in just one week later!

While the cancellation of Las Fallas had affected some of our commercial work, the next few days felt as though most other things were unaffected. Plans for the documentary that our channel Broaden are making about La Marina charged ahead.

On Tuesday afternoon, we met up with Ramon to discuss people we’d like to interview about La Marina, València’s seriously impressive waterfront precinct. He took us inside ‘La Base’, the old headquarters for the Swiss Alinghi sailing team, a relic from when València hosted the America’s Cup back in 2007. La Marina now uses the building for events and offices, and while it’s not yet used as often as it could, it has so much potential and is one of many cool assets in the marina.

(images, left to right) Attending the Designscapes forum on innovation in cities, enjoying the sunset on the marina blissfully unaware of the lockdown that would soon be in place, and moody scenes from inside ‘La Base’, a building full of potential.

Filming for the documentary began on Wednesday morning, when we interviewed Manoel, a charming guy who has worked at La Marina for over a decade. Starting out as a deck hand, Manoel is now a senior staff member managing the nautical side of the marina, with its hundreds of moorings and associated facilities. It was fascinating to learn more about the operational side of running a place like this, and we were even treated to a guided boat ride around the marina which offered such a different perspective on this place we’ve both been documenting and staying in for over a week.

The following afternoon, we filmed our second interview, this time with with Julia Pineda, a socially-oriented architect from the co-operative practice ‘Crearqcio’ who has worked closely with La Marina. I was especially interested in the community engagement she had done, and the participatory processes with local residents and other stakeholders to explore names for new streets and decide on future uses for buildings there.

As George and I continue to work together as a videography duo, we’re refining the process of interviewing people, arranging shoots, preparing equipment and getting the perfect footage.

(images, left to right) Taking a boat ride around La Marina, speaking to Julia in Crearqcio’s office, and interviewing Manoel on a gloriously sunny day for the documentary.

Friday the 13th did indeed turn out to be pretty unlucky, as that’s when the situation in Spain relating to Coronavirus really escalated. We managed to squeeze in another interview with a member of La Marina’s team, the third of five interviews we had planned. Barbara was really accommodating and positive on camera, but even just the general vibe in the office while we were filming communicated that things were about to dramatically change.

By early evening, we were informed that some of our other commercial work would have to be completely cancelled, as all operations in Spain were starting to completely shut down. 

It was Friday evening when warning came of the state of alarm which Spain was about to enter.

The declaration was made on Saturday: to ameliorate the spread of coronavirus, everyone in Spain is to stay at home, leaving the house only to buy groceries or medicine. All bars, restaurants, museums, cafes, and any other establishments that carry out public activity are to be closed and no one is to use public spaces. As the week continued, further measures have been put in place, such as the closure of the country’s land borders.

And that is pretty much when the predictability of my and George’s lives ended. Just like that: an extreme measure is brought into place which affects every aspect of your life - your income, your freedom to move, your travel plans, your activities and your family. Of course, that extreme measure has been brought into place because of an extreme situation, but if only I could warn Bryony from a week ago, perhaps I would have told her to prepare in some way. What might I have said? To stock up on food essentials, to buy a couple more books, to have more money saved up and most critically, to brace herself for the physical and emotional challenge of being confined to living exclusively inside Suzi the Van.

(images, left to right) Powering through confinement in a van by writing letters and eating icecream, George going a teeny tiny bit crazy in our mini house, and sitting just outside the van on my virtual ‘balcony’.

We have left the van once since Friday, to go out and buy some food. I’m someone who likes to get out and about, so this level of confinement is pretty intense.

Aside from the supermarket run (to Lidl, which was surprisingly well-stocked), George and I have ‘stayed at home’, here in Suzi at La Marina. I’ve been really keen to go and find a camping spot out in the countryside, where there might be more possibility of getting some fresh air and a walk, but we’re conscious that where we are right now has all the amenities we could need: flushing toilets, hot showers, a laundry, rubbish bins, water, drain, and even electricity (which we’ve resorted to using today amid stormy overcast weather). Plus, if the last week has taught us anything, it’s that you can’t be sure of how the next week may play out. The safest option is likely to stay put.

As people have reiterated online, a period of isolation is a pretty unique opportunity for many of us to indulge in activities we don’t get around to. Whilst I’m privileged to have already incorporated diary and blog writing as well as a lot of book-reading into my routine in the van, these last few days have seen me do that more than ever. I also made another collage, and even got around to editing together a collection of images I took back when I was working in Sydney. This short stop-motion animation (below) had me thinking about seeing something inspirational in the same repetitive scene.

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A post shared by Bryony Simcox (@bryonysimcox) on Mar 16, 2020 at 9:42am PDT

Might isolation do wonders for society’s increasingly short attention span and need for variety?

The current situation is a bizarre mix of feeling very isolated and very connected all at the same time. George and I use our phones a lot, and get constant updates both from formal news outlets and from friends and family. Anecdotes from Sydney and the UK, where measures aren’t quite as extreme yet, contrast with the sobering sentiments of scientists on podcasts or videos of Italians and Chinese who have been dealing with a total lockdown far longer than we have.

At times, I’ve even turned my phone off to try and tune out of the noise. Now that George and I are in lockdown, we aren’t able to contract Covid-19 nor spread it. So to a certain extent I feel as though keeping up-to-date as the crisis unfolds only makes me feel increasingly miserable and helpless.

(images, left to right) The deserted walkway next to our van, empty offices at La Marina, and the beach as viewed from the closed gate which confines the part of the marina that we’re parked in.

If you let your mind project the implications of this virus in the future, it’s not too hard to find yourself in a dark place. Already, I see the failings of an economic system addicted to growth, the selfish panic-buying and disregard of facts by large swathes of people and the unfair advantage of exploitative multinational corporations. Take for example the fact that the aviation industry (led by millionaires, might I add) have banded together to ask for government payouts while young people, creatives, self-employed and zero-hour contract employees face a future of complete financial uncertainty.

I’m left asking questions like “how will people pay their rent?”, “where will this leave already vulnerable members of our society?” and “how will we even begin to rebuild life if and when this virus is tackled?”.

Of course, there are so many positive sides to be seen during this time too, and some of which offer answers to that last question. Already, we are seeing signs of generosity and kindness from health workers, neighbours, friends and strangers. We are seeing the emergence of an informal economy built on reciprocity and trust, where not just economic capital has value. We are seeing innovation on a massive scale, as people seek new ways of keeping their businesses alive, of cooking food with what’s left in their cupboards, of keeping the virus at bay and managing its spread, of boosting morale and of pooling resources.

(images) I’m trying to see beauty in things and keep positive-minded, even if that means snapping these colourful scenes from the desolate streets on our walk to the supermarket.

In some ways, perhaps we needed an event of this magnitude to shake up the entire way in which we exist, and to rethink our systems of living.

The irony is that we already have another event which threatens humanity in this way, but which we have been largely ignoring. This is, of course, climate change and the terrifying rate at which the earth is warming up. Mother Nature has been shouting about the catastrophe we are charging towards for some time now, and yet it has taken direct deaths on home soil and a tangible ‘thing’ like Covid-19 for us to react in a collective and decisive way. It also goes without saying, that my heart breaks for all of the victims of this terrible virus to date, and I would never wish that it would take fatalities to call us to action.

This blog is usually a very personal reflection on a very personal journey: where my partner George and I attempt to cross the world in an old Japanese campervan, making videos along the way. But the arrival of this virus and its direct impact on our journey has triggered a different type of reflection. Perhaps in the coming weeks, during which I presume we will remain in lockdown, I will continue to write and reflect on what I think it is to be human in a difficult time, and to assess the situation which we are now all in, together as humanity.

I hope that my writing brings us together in some way, across oceans, balconies and phone screens. Whilst I’m pretty sure that George and I will still be parked up in a marina on the Spanish coast this time next week, who knows where we’ll be, collectively? 

#traveldiaries #SuziTheVan #toyotahiace #overlandadventures #digitalnomads #BryonyandGeorge #vanlife #coronavirus #covid19 #stateofalarm #estadodealarma #vanliving