Living on the fringe of society

Advantage or disadvantage ?

[Lire en français ici]

Nomad life is fantastic. Living anywhere I like, balancing working and travelling on a daily basis. Not being stuck living in one place and doing the same thing every day. Sounds utopic doesn’t it ?

Well, there are aspects of this life that are a little tricky. Living somewhere different every day means not having certain landmarks that you wouldn’t even think about in a sedentary life.

Getting to know a town from the outside

1. The Doctor

In France, at the moment, doctors are a rare commodity as they are all overworked and underpaid, so very few actually take on new patients. Added to that, getting an appointment usually takes several weeks, so you’d better start learning to read your future in your tea leaves…

I’ve been told that local pharmacies and town halls should be able to help in an emergency, or if you’re in a big enough town, a visit to the hospital will do. Failing which, dial 15. For now, I’ve just let the flu and other minor ailments take their course and hoped for the best !

2. Delivery Address

Ordering from an amazing online shop ? sounds easy right ? Takes a bit of planning in my case !

The great thing about France here, is that they use this system of “point relais” which is a network of shops acting as delivery points. You pick up your parcel in a shop instead of having it delivered at home. So I’ll find a town where I’m likely to be on the delivery day or just after, and choose a pick-up point not too far from a place where I can park Gus the Bus.

If the business you ordered from doesn’t use this network, you can also have the item sent to a post office using the Poste Restante function - which used to be common for travellers to get their mail before internet and smartphones took over. I admit I hadn’t used this since travelling around Africa in the late 90s ! I’m glad they still do it. The Post Office charges a fee based on the size of the parcel mind you, so watch out for that.

3. Administration Offices

That’s the tricky bit. In France most of the civil administration is run by the regions and not really centralised. So if you live in a particular département, or town, you’ll answer to the local fiscal and social offices. Luckily for me, France is in the process of dematerialising a lot of its administrative functions and moving everything online.

Through a specialist company, I am domiciled in a small town in Isère, in the east of France. This works for my small one-man voice-over business, both for tax purposes and for receiving my mail, which they receive and send to me electronically. But it can cause confusion when I explain that I can't turn up for appointments because I'm indefinitely on the other side of the country. And also because this address isn’t a domicile in the sense of live-in accommodation. Once I've untangled this knot, I'll let you know if there's a better solution!

4. Social Life

Yeah, that’s a tricky one for a lot of people I imagine. I’ve never been very good at it anyway, so living solo works for me most of the time. But every now and then I do miss those great braais in the garden with family and friends - that’s a barbecue in South Africa, but where the food making fire is very central to the day and not just an accessory on the side for prepping a few spicy sausages.

I’m lucky to have family and old friends scattered all over the country, so I do visit them and it is really good to take a break from the road sometimes.

Living in a bus I could easily approach other travelling people and make new friends but I’m not very good at that either, I need some sort of catalyst otherwise I mostly keep to myself. Maybe with summer coming I’ll be outside more and I will get better at talking to random people.

I really do enjoy meeting new people, especially when I’ve interacted with them online already, I think I’m better at that than keeping in touch with old friends ! So it’s not like I’m on my own ALL of the time. My two best sources of new acquaintances are Facebook groups I belong to - one is of French voice-over artists working from home, who also appreciate the camaraderie - a super by-product of covid - and the other one is the South Africans in France group: it’s always lekker to meet people who speak the same way ! Travelling all over France, I organise to meet up with members of these groups wherever they happen to be based. And I really love these encounters - I’ll be doing a whole post just about that soon.

The world is better with people in it

5. Sport & Exercice

Don’t expect to be joining a football team or regular zumba classes when you live on the road. Obviously. There are national gym chains you can join for a fee if you need the machines for training - and that’s a big nomad thing too, I think mostly in the US, where vanlifers use the gyms in the cities as part of their daily routines like showering. But I stay away from cities mostly, and have never been any good at sticking to gym routines anyway !

Some nomads like to practice yoga on the road, but I just don’t see myself setting up a mat on the grass outside and bending and twisting in weird positions in front of everyone… You could also find local studios to go to, but again that would be more likely in cities. I’m also not disciplined enough for that ! So I walk. A lot. I’m catching up all the years of sitting at a desk, in a car and on a couch. These days, I walk an average of seven kilometres every day.

I would add riding a bicycle too. That’s a great way to get around and exercise! Mine is a bit of a cheat as it has got an electric assistance motor, but I still have to pedal. Except not now. I forgot to charge the battery between two outings and emptied it flat and now it won’t charge anymore. The worst is, I bought the bike online through a big chain, Decathlon, thinking if something ever goes wrong there are branches everywhere. Yeah, well it turns out I bought the bike from a Spanish partner that sells through their online store. No affiliation. So I have to get parts from Spain. I don’t even want to think about it right now. I’ll just bury my head in the sand like an ostrich for a while. I’m good at that.

6. Community Life

If you’re into other kinds of group activities that meet on a regular basis, nomad life is no good for you. I’m not even going to elaborate the obvious.

I live in a different town or village almost every day, so I don’t really get to know any one of them intimately, or form friendships with the inhabitants. Even if I stay longer, several days or several weeks, I still exist on the fringe of these communities. I watch life unfold from the outside, an anonymous observer. It suits me just fine. One day I may decide to experience community life from the inside, and learn the intricacies of human interactions. But not yet. Maybe never, I have no plans.

Home is where the heart lives, and it’s OK to feel alone, as long as you know it’s all just a game. - Ben Bert

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I write this blog because I love writing, and so that my friends and family around the world can follow my adventures. If we've just met on the road or online, go ahead and subscribe so that the next episode lands straight in your mailbox. Also, I write in both English and French, so you can follow both if you want to practice the language, but if you don't, feel free to unsubscribe from either. If you know someone who needs a little inspiration, share one of my articles with them!

Music credit: Ben Bert @benxbert

Graphic Design: Jo Bert @josuppose