The Burger Dream

By Emily

I cried on my 40th birthday. Not because I was turning 40 but because I was convinced my life was never going to get any better. That sounds dramatic now but at the time it felt absolutely real to me.

I was single. Very single. I’d never had a serious relationship and couldn’t get a boyfriend, let alone keep one, even online. Once they saw my face, they weren’t interested. I’m not what you call an oil painting and men don’t take to me.

At the grand age of 40 I was living alone in a one-bedroomed flat in a busy high street, feeling uglier than ever and convinced I was better off staying indoors than doing anything different. I worked from home, had no friends and was bored out of my mind but happier staying in. I was probably bordering on agoraphobic, thinking back.

I wasn’t unhappy all the time. I had an okay job. Good health. Family who care about me. But I just felt my life was dragging on and I felt that feeling of having missed the plane everyone else had managed to catch to an exotic location.

Around that time I was in a supermarket car park and a van pulled in near my car and a lady got out of it. She smiled at me and we walked towards the shop together. She seemed so nice that I found myself wanting to talk to her and asked if she was on holiday. She told me no, she lived in her van and was on the road full time. I was absolutely amazed because I thought people who live in vans were basically depressed homeless tramps but here she was, all done up nice, smelling nice with a big smile. 

She asked if I wanted to get a drink in the supermarket cafe and have a chat because she could see I was a bit low. So I said yes I could use the company and before I knew it I was spilling my heart out and telling her how jealous I was of her life and that I’d love a van although I would hate to actually live in a van. She laughed and said, ‘Well, you could always travel round the UK with a burger van and make your fortune at festivals.’

She lit a fire under me in about 20 minutes. What she seemed to believe, and what I desperately needed to hear, was that we are allowed to create a future that doesn’t look anything like the future we’d planned or that we’d ever have thought we wanted. But one day it just might seem right. 

She honestly changed everything that day. She wrote me her email address and took mine and that night an email came in with a list of festivals to try. She told me to let her know how I go and has messaged me a few times since to see how I’m getting on. She was like my angel looking out for me.

Most people would probably have forgotten about it five minutes later but that idea stayed with me. It took a few months but one afternoon I was supposed to be working and I found myself searching online for food trucks and burger vans. They were way too expensive so I emailed Cookie to ask what she thought.

She told me her and her husband had bought normal vans and converted them on their own and that I could do the same to save money, so I started going round asking local burger vans advice.

It took another year but I didn’t feel ready and so worked part time for a burger van to get experience and then actually got to go to a festival to work. I learned about what licenses you need and qualifications and the kinds of foods people want.

At 40 years old, while everyone else seemed to be climbing corporate ladders or planning retirement funds, I was sitting in my little flat imagining myself serving burgers from a food truck at music festivals.

The more I thought about it, the more excited I became. I imagined travelling to festivals around the country and meeting lots of people and not just looking at four walls.

Cookie told me in the supermarket cafe that we often focus on what we don’t have instead of what we do have and that it can hold us back because we think we’re failures if we haven’t got it all sorted. I don’t have a burger van yet but I do have a savings account called Burger Van Fund. It’s not huge but it’s growing. Every time I transfer money into it, I feel excited and I look at vans every week. I know I’ll get there but I need to work on some fixed timelines.

I haven’t bought the van yet, I haven’t handed in my notice and I haven’t served a single burger yet. But I have something I didn’t have on my fortieth birthday. Hope.

I don’t really care about not having had a proper boyfriend at 40 years old. I’ve got something to work towards now. There are still times when I compare myself to married women and wonder what might have been. But maybe it wasn’t ever going to be for me. Maybe I’ll meet a nice man at a festival one day instead, you never know.

At 40, I thought my life was a closed book. Now I think that book might finally be opening.