A mess of cablesCongratulations, you have bought your first food van and are well on the way to making your food-based fortune. All you need to do now is pop it on a street corner somewhere, cock the flap and watch as the masses swarm to your hatch and purchase food like the apocalypse is nigh.

Before you get too carried away though you will need to sort out the wiring, so buckle on your man-work hats and fire up those screwdrivers, we’re going in!

Notice as we clamber aboard that at first glance it all seems very organised and well maintained. This is great! Cling desperately on to that thought, and you can work on making it a reality one day. If you pop your head inside the wiring box you will see enough cables to put the Blackpool Illuminations to shame, but don’t worry, that can all come out!

The wiring box in the van. Its to the left at the far end inside the Jabberwocky.You may have noticed that over the last few months the lighting has been on the blink. This is normal, it’s just your food truck’s way of telling you it needs some care and attention. If copper salad isn’t for you, and goodness knows that’s all you have in the fuse box these days, your best bet is to drag it all out and quit hoping it will magically spring back to life.

There, doesn’t that feel better? With all that extra space you might even be able to squeeze in a new fridge, so get out there and start enjoying the freedom of new wiring that actually works!

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I admit that I didn’t do a whole lot of tearing, but since we accepted that the wiring, however much it was pretending to resemble a functioning system, was actually just a relic from a bygone era where everything could be fixed with masking tape and the van was a fetching shade of yellow it has become much easier to remove. We discovered, among other non-functioning artefacts, the fossilised remains of the following, which hint at a past that now lies forgotten: reversing cameras, radios, a full lighting system, a kill switch, high beams and of course, the mystical blue lights underneath.

None of this has worked since we took on the Beast, although the lights have teased us occasionally with brief periods of functionality. But with Barefoot just on the horizon and trading-after-dark now duly scheduled, we really needed an alternative to Barny taking out the high powered LED lights with his head every time he got close.
Lottie the Labrador wearing a pair of fluffy pink bunny ears Instead Barny and my most excellent brother stripped out all the wiring, and added 1 car battery to power the hand wash sink while the rest of us played with the dog and generally had a lovely afternoon putting in some new flower baskets and baking cakes. Alternative lights for the Beast have been ordered off the web and will be powered with AA batteries. The Beast has gained lot more room where the wiring box used to be, we both had a lovely weekend with the finest of family as we scrubbed away some of the last few traces of what the Beast once was.

All except the wiring to the mysterious blue lights. They’re still not working, but we couldn’t get rid of them because well, we just couldn’t. One Day.