We did not leave the system. We just stopped living in the middle of it.

People talk as if there are two teams. The system, and the people at war with it.

I have never found that a useful map. Wendy and I are still on the same passports. We still draw a state pension. We still buy diesel from the same companies everyone else does. The van has number plates. We are not off-grid saints.

What we did was quieter. We stopped organising the whole of life around a house that needed feeding whether we were in it or not. Council tax, a boiler, a garden that judged you if you went away for three months. A postcode that told every form who you were supposed to be.

Our Dethleffs Just 90 Motorhome is still a product of the system. Built in a factory. Insured. Serviced. But it moves.

Mid December we point it at Spain or Portugal. End of June we wander through France, Germany, Sweden. The calendar is ours more than the mortgage company’s.

I used to think leaving the Matrix meant a fight. Flags. Arguments at Christmas. It turns out the more durable version is just not standing where the machine expects you to stand. You still use the roads. You just do not rent your whole attention to the building beside them.

The conflict people want from you is useful to the system. A man shouting is easy to categorise. A couple making tea in a van on a Tuesday in September somewhere in East Germany is harder to sell a product to, and harder to organise.

That is not heroism. It is a smaller target.