Living Anarchy Today

After I stopped drinking at forty, my university career took off and, after some time, I had enough money to buy twelve acres of land in mid-Wales (all described in One Flew into The Cuckoo's Nest). Before that, I lived off-grid in various forms – including a Ford Cargo 7.5-ton horsebox on a farm near Lancaster, and later a converted Iveco Daily laundry van, which became the FOD Wagon and is still used as my festival vehicle today. I lived in that van in Derby while waiting for the land purchase to complete – a long and stressful process.

Once the land finally came through, I moved on in the horsebox, then brought a static caravan alongside it. I welded a physical bridge between the horsebox and the static, fully cladded and insulated the static, and later interfaced a shepherd's hut onto the back of the horsebox. The result is a single, evolving, self-built living structure.