FROM SCHOOL BUS TO DREAM HOME

Josie Rose, 33, put her practical skills to the test to create a cosy cottage on wheels

- FRANCES LEATE

Dabbing paint onto the wall in careful strokes, I watched in awe as my mum Mandy, then 42, created an amazing Batman mural for my brother Jake, then 10, on his bedroom wall. She’d been sawing and smoothing down wood all morning to make a Batmobile-shaped headboard for his bed to match. ‘It’s spectacular!’ I cried when it was finally ready. I was 14, and I really admired Mum’s creativity. She had raised us on her own, yet went out of her way to make our little home fun and exciting, and always on a budget.

Over the years, her practical, can-do attitude rubbed off on me. Dyslexic, I struggled at school, but Mum taught me how to decorate and fix things.

After leaving school, I went to a performance college and got a job as a dancer, performing on stage in the Moulin Rouge in Paris and on tours with Dua Lipa. By my late 20s, I was still officially living at home, but staying in hotels most weeks while I performed in Magic Mike in London.

I was desperate for a place of my own, but although I’d been saving for a house deposit for years, I was single and house prices were high, so it just seemed impossible. ‘Maybe I’ll travel instead,’ I confided in Mum one night in spring 2018. ‘You could do both?’ she suggested, telling me about how she once bought an old camper van and drove around Australia. As she talked about watching the stars from the van roof at night, her face flushed with excitement, and a plan started to take shape in my mind.

That week, I told Mum that I wanted to buy a van and turn it into a home. ‘And I’m going to do everything myself,’ I insisted.