Dreams, Disasters and Joy

By Sheila Snowball

This is a book written on a spur of the moment and under unique circumstances which led to a totally out-of-character plan to travel the world on a shoe-string budget. This book recounts the triumphs and travails of this two-year idea becoming a reality. Their extravagant plan was entirely out of the ordinary for a teacher and a probation officer, as neither had been particularly adventurous beforehand. But sometimes dreams can be a powerful driving force, and one which led these two on one of the most fantastic, and chaotic, journeys that they could ever have imagined.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Jan 5, 2024
• ISBN: 9781035802081

Sheila Snowball

Meet Sheila, the author of this book, who is an extraordinary woman with a life full of adventures. Her work experience is as varied as it is fascinating, having owned bars and nightclubs, worked as a hairdressing teacher, taxi driver, translator, and delivery driver. She even rebuilt a ruin into a spacious and comfortable home in Spain, where she has lived with horses, dogs, and cats. But that's not all. Sheila is a mother of three, a grandmother of nine, and a great-grandmother of twenty! Her journey hasn't been without its ups and downs, including four partners: the first was too young and disastrous, the second was not a good work partner, the third was perfect but sadly passed away, and the fourth is ongoing.

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About the Author

Meet Sheila, the author of this book, who is an extraordinary woman with a life full of adventures. Her work experience is as varied as it is fascinating, having owned bars and nightclubs, worked as a hairdressing teacher, taxi driver, translator, and delivery driver. She even rebuilt a ruin into a spacious and comfortable home in Spain, where she has lived with horses, dogs, and cats.

But that’s not all. Sheila is a mother of three, a grandmother of nine, and a great-grandmother of twenty! Her journey hasn’t been without its ups and downs, including four partners: the first was too young and disastrous, the second was not a good work partner, the third was perfect but sadly passed away, and the fourth is ongoing.

Dedication

To my beloved Pete who gave me the most happy and fantastic 17 years of my life. Journey to happiness.

Copyright Information ©

Sheila Snowball 2024

The right of Sheila Snowball to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of the author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781035802074 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781035802081 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.co.uk

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd®

1 Canada Square

Canary Wharf

London

E14 5AA

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Donella and Mirzella, who read my scribbling of our journey and kept asking me to get it printed. They saw something I couldn’t. Thanks.

Chapter 1

Why did we ever start this idea? It was really a joke in the beginning. We never really expected to be turned down for Australia; after all we had so much to offer didn’t we?

I suppose I better tell you a little about ourselves, then you can judge for yourselves. I am mid-forties, 5'4" approx. (well almost) 10 stone give or take a few pounds, reasonably fit.

I used to long distance ride, and after the tragic death of my beloved horse, Piute Gold, had taken up breaking horses as a hobby. I am a teacher and I like music, painting, and water sports. I study languages for fun, but lack the motivation and time to take them properly.

My husband is in his mid-forties, 6'1, 12 stone approx. and since his heart operation in ’87 he has also been competing long distance so I would say he is also reasonably fit. He is a probation officer and is studying for a BA in psychology. He likes music, painting, any arts and I crafts" and woodwork.

We had not been married for very long, meeting just before I was 40, in my pub shortly after Pete came down here to start his new job in the probation service in Preston. We had many things in common, became good friends, and he helped me with my father when he was dying, later our friendship developed into a deep and abiding love, two halves of the same coin.

We did not see ourselves as old; we felt we were in the prime of our lives, so it came as a real system shock when we failed the independent point system to go to Australia – basically because of our ages!

We had both obtained jobs in Australia, this in itself had been something of a nightmare – literally, having to stay up to the early hours of the morning to make phone calls, then having to get up to go to work – AFTER having seen to the horses and the dogs! I had been in touch with a college in Toowoomba near Brisbane and Pete had got a job offer with the Brisbane office of correction, but, because they were both government jobs, they could not sponsor us so, as we had no relatives down there, we had to go for the independent points system. This takes your age, job experience, qualifications – even your hobbies, and. the area you want to go to, into consideration.

Having to value the house and contents to tell the Australian authorities how much we were worth – so they could see we were not going to be a drain on the system – had given us a shock, because we had not realised how much the house had appreciated in value.

Then a win £100,000 or £14,000 a year for life game had started ‘the ball’ rolling in the what if? Just as a game, so the planning of the trip started:

Take early retirement

Sell the house – it was worth such a lot at the time £90,000 – we would have £70,000 left and at the rate of interest we would have something like £600 a month with nothing to pay out except the site fees, gas, diesel and food. It seemed a fortune; after all, there would be no mortgage, rates, poll tax, gas, electric, etc. The car and caravan would be paid for. There would of course be the insurance, site fees, etc. well we had to pay for that anyway and we would be enjoying ourselves all week instead of working ourselves silly and being too tired or broke with spiralling living costs to do anything. Then there was the weather – lovely warm sunny weather most of the time – follow the sun! Well, we had done our bit – nursing sick parents, (all dead now,) bringing up the children – all grown up now.

We had only ourselves to consider, and after Pete’s heart operation five years ago, and my arthritis playing up, who could say we would either live long enough, or be fit enough to enjoy our retirement – bit by bit we were talking ourselves into turning the dream into a reality. After all we were brought up with the work ethic well drummed in you work until retirement age etc…

Having got the bee in the bonnet we started looking at vehicles.

Campervans looked good, only a bit cramped for a long period of time, plus no transport when parked, or a big cumbersome thing to drive in small towns; everything would need to be lashed down every time we wanted to go off site. No, this didn’t sound a very good idea. OK, a car, something sturdy, yes, well, it appeared that Pete had always wanted a Land Rover, not something I personally would have chosen, but after talking to a mechanic who thought that it was a good choice as they could be repaired anywhere in the world, HA! this is what we looked for. Ouch! they were expensive.

With the guidance of the mechanic, we picked up a scrapper, £500. He then proceeded to strip it down to the chassis, inviting us to come along anytime to see the progress. Frightening, there was nothing left of the original except the shell, and of that the roof was exchanged for a tropical double skinned one, even the chassis was changed because of a fault that would make it unsafe for what we planned to do. Eventually, as I was to find out on the trip, one of Pete’s favourite words, it was ready.

Did we want to re-register it, as we were entitled to because of the new chassis? Surely a Q reg. would be much more attractive to a thief? No, we would leave her as an R after all she would just look like a well-maintained old lady. The day dawned that we were to pick her up.

Problem No.1: In all our discussions we had forgotten VAT! This put an extra £1,500 on the price, this was overcome, with some difficulty, well, we still had good value for our money or so we thought! Within a couple of weeks, the first problems arose, and she went back in for repairs, only a minor problem, just teething trouble, bound to happen, not to worry etc.

I wasn’t not then, but a couple of weeks later another not so minor problem arose, then a not so minor part of the clutch, then a couple of minor ones again: then another part of the clutch, by this time I had got to the point, (unlike my husband, whose touching, faith in what I referred to as that bl… dy thing!) where I didn’t feel safe to go round the block never mind set off round the world! I think part of my annoyance was caused by the fact that it was my beloved Volvo that had been sold to pay for everything, and I was the idiot driving it. It was not practical for Pete as he had to go into the centre Preston with all the parking problems etc. whereas I had car parks at the college.

Every month at least once the D…thing broke down, so much so that I started to make a note of it and say things like it will have to be careful or it may break its record; it’s almost the end of the month.!

If you are wondering why I am talking about months passing and this TRIP had not yet commenced, there is a very simple explanation, a very small explanation, one that stands approximately two feet tall in its stocking feet namely a small boy of – at the time 18 months – my grandson to be precise, who was deposited on my doorstep some ten days after the LR arrived. This small child was to totally disrupt our plans and our lives!

On the day the LR was collected we had made an appointment to see the retirement pension’s officer. We needed to see what would happen to the pension. How much, when, if etc. we would get it. The first lot of bad news, was, if we took retirement at that time we would lose very badly because in eight months’ time Pete would have his pension enhanced – this meant it nearly doubled, well, no-one in their right mind would go before then, would they? Besides there would be a lot of planning to do, so we rationalised it and decided to wait, and wait and wait!

Under the circumstances this turned out to be exceedingly fortunate. We took possession of the LR at the beginning of December and, as I said, at Christmas my present arrived, one small 18-month-old little boy, namely my John, obviously this needs some explanation, but as the tale is rather long and, like the rest of my life rather complex, I will try to be brief, (well that could be a first!).

John is one of my son’s children, he is one of twins. Unfortunately, my son and his wife had split up shortly after the twins’ birth. John turned out to be the trying one of the twins, a most discontented child, who refused to be pacified. My daughter in law was having trouble coping with all of them, (she had a girl of four