The Moving Times Of Caroline Proudly

Caroline is 16 when she suddenly decides that her perfectly normal and loving home life is absolutely and completely intolerable. Suddenly moving out of home in 1988 is the beginning of a 13 year journey.

Outside the house where she has rented a room, she is left standing on the pavement clutching a yucca plant and gulping at a lump in her throat, as her father pulls off without so much as a goodbye. Although Caroline’s pride means that she wouldn’t ever admit that her decision to leave home may not have been so wise or well thought out, her naivety about the perceived joys of freedom are very apparent. Her independent life begins with very little money, no job, a room in a horrible house, a lecherous housemate and a very short fling with the landlord.

As the journey continues, the passage of time has no significance. Always with the ability to find the humorous side, each address marks another chapter in Caroline’s life and is the backdrop for the people she meets and the events that occur.

Accommodation varies from unheated rooms and houses with wheel-less cars jacked-up outside to Regency flats and rural cottages. Transportation means vary from a single use bicycle, to Betsa and the faithful Dwanetta. Flatmates vary from a lovely Brummie and a singing nun to a dying dog, a ginger laminator, a 3 nippled geek and an accidental spell with a local drugs baron. Events vary from harbouring boarding schoolgirls, exercising racehorses, the occasional rave, trading in shampoo and marmite on toast to looking for stolen laundry, going undercover and self-defence with a hockey stick.
Jobs vary from not having one to shop work, bartending and au pair through to getting a toe on the corporate ladder. There is infatuation, and love from various sources so there is also disappointment, and breakups by varying means and for various reasons. Education varies from a bit of formal study to a large dollop of the University of Life. The latter being the real reason Caroline left home in the first place – to grow up in her own way through her own experiences with no-one else to blame but herself and the interesting hand that life deals along the way.

Caroline moves home 19 times, only to find that the 20th move takes her to the last place she ever expected to be. Back where she started.

As Caroline pulls up outside her childhood home, this time, there is nowhere else she would rather be. Greeted by her father’s calculation that she must have been driving too fast to have managed to get there in record time meant that the shade of rose starts to fade fast from her ‘tinted glasses’. As he peers into the car and launches into a ranting monologue about the fact that she has more stuff than he has room to store, he may as well rip the glasses from her face and stamp on them.

Things aren’t always as they seem...