The Untold

James 33 and Courtney 28 were fed up of struggling to make ends meet and decided on a radical solution: they swapped their rented house for a bright orange sprinter van which they’ve converted and affectionately christened DeeDee. Instead of working longer hours, they’ve halved their working week and still think they can pay off their debts and save enough for a place of their own.

Producer Sue Mitchell hears what happens as they put their plan into action and set off on the open road. They made their decision just before covid hit and as many people grappled with remote ways of working, James and Courtney were one step ahead. Their life transformation had entailed reducing their work commitments and ensuring that they could do everything online, with DeeDee’s excellent internet capabilities allowing them to work from the most remote locations.

The move to this lifestyle has brought challenges of its own and particularly with their new travel companion, a Spanish rescue dog called Sally Sausage. Their adventures embrace storms, floods, frantic dog searches and costly breakdowns. But throughout it all their goal keeps them going and as covid restrictions lift they find themselves with difficult decisions to reach. The debts have been paid off and they’ve managed to save, so what will they do next?

Courtney says the lifting of their financial woes has given them both a sense of empowerment: “making the decision to get the van was the catalyst for a complete mindset change, seeing the world is the bigger picture. We were both in full time employment earning a lot more and we couldn’t save. Now we are in part time employment we are able to save 1,000 a month.

“We’ve designed our life around it. The life we had before wasn’t for us and I think the decision now isn’t about going back to that life. The idea of having a base to go back to that’s ours that feels like our home, is one we want. At the moment home is wherever we park our van, so I can see us having that base to put down roots and then we won’t have to carry everything with us. There are decisions ahead but we’ve proved that we don’t need lots of stuff to enjoy life.”

The couple are also recording their travels for their You Tube Channel https://youtube.com/c/CourtsMeeks & Instagram Https://instagram.com/courtsandmeeks, Courts and Meeks, with thousands of followers tuning in to share in their adventures.

Alex Trenchard is the founder of Standon Calling, a 17,000-capacity festival that takes place every year in Hertfordshire. The festival brings together thousands of music fans and hundreds of talented workers who together are part of putting on something spectacular. But when festivals disappeared at the start of the pandemic - many of us didn’t realise just how much they meant to us.

Over 85,000 people in the UK are employed by the festival industry, and for many the first few months of 2021 left them in limbo, not knowing whether they were going to have a job come summer. After Alex was forced to cancel the festival in 2020, the festival was left almost bankrupt. Alex faced losing his business and his livelihood. But as the vaccine programme progressed and case numbers for COVID-19 started to fall, it brought hope that the festival might be able to return for 2021. And so Alex started planning.

Our producer Robbie Wojciechowski has been following Alex and some of the voices that make the festival industry happen over the last few months as they fight to go ahead. For bands and artists, festivals this summer will be their first live performances in 18 months. And for Alex, if he manages to run, he'll be one of the first independent festivals to do so. But it’s a mammoth task, as variants of the virus spread, and case numbers continue to rise.

We find out what it took to get the festival industry and live music back on track.

Produced by Robbie Wojciechowski

Andrew is a school refuser. He hasn’t done a full day of school since 2019.

"He will just refuse to get dressed. He will hide under his bed. And if you physically try and get him out of the house, he is not a violent child in any way, but he will hurt you to get away from the situation."

His parents are trying to pursue their careers but, even if they can coax him through the school gates, they often get a call an hour later to pick him up.

Everyone has tried to understand why he won’t go. He has recently been diagnosed with autism which may be a factor. But Andrew can’t tell them. And no-one knows the answer or is suggesting a solution.

Andrew has been blissfully happy in lockdown without the option or pressure of being made to go in. What will happen when restrictions are lifted and schools open again?

Narrator: Grace Dent

A year of lockdowns has made a lot of us re-evaluate our lives and our priorities. For busy people, especially busy people who actually like their work, it can be a challenging thing to slow down. What happens when the thing at the centre of your life – the thing that makes your life make sense – ceases to be there? And what might that make space for, if you let it? Maybe you’d start to notice other things that you had overlooked, because you were so busy all the time…

Grace Dent tells the story of a Leicester secondary school teacher whose life has been radically changed by a year of lockdowns.

Produced by Mair Bosworth in Bristol for BBC Audio

Greg and David are desperate to get on the ladder. They rent a small flat together in Greater Manchester and have spent the last year of lockdowns living on top of each other. The dream is to get somewhere with a bit more space. A place of their own.

It feels beyond their budget until they realise they can afford a new build house under the government’s Help To Buy scheme. The scheme works as an equity loan, where the government loans the buyer 20% of the house price to go toward the deposit. The buyer only needs to contribute 5% from their own savings. Which suddenly makes it doable for Greg and David.

In August last year, their Help To Buy application was approved, and their offer on a house was accepted. It was a dream come true.

The thing is, the house is still not built. Across the country, construction sites face inevitable delays to the new coronavirus measures. And on top of that, the current Help To Buy scheme is soon to close. There’s no way they can afford the house without the scheme. So the question is: will the house be built in time?

Produced in Bristol by Becky Ripley.

Grace Dent follows Cornwall Airport Newquay over the tough pandemic winter.

The Untold has been tracking the fortunes of the airport since March 2020, when the regional airline Flybe collapsed. Since then successive lockdowns and travel restrictions have left the airport close to permanent closure.

The Untold follows the airport’s director and staff over the difficult winter months, as well as speaking to one of the airport’s taxi drivers and the owners of the nearby airport hotel, the Smugglers' Inn.

As winter turns to spring, finally there's some much-needed good news.

Producer: Laurence Grissell

In an unexpected twist of Lockdown 3, sea shanties blew up on social media. Suddenly, everyone was singing ‘Wellerman’, a mid-19th Century whaling song about life on-board a whaling ship. A song of hope and unity which brought people together via the power of the internet.

JD, Dave, Andy and Robbie find themselves at the centre of this shanty storm. They are old friends who together make up The Longest Johns, a sea shanty band from Bristol. Back in 2018, they released a version of Wellerman on their second album, and now - suddenly - it's gone viral.

They’ve been a band for years and they've never exactly been 'mainstream'. But now that 2021 has woken up to shanties, everything is about to change for them...

Produced in Bristol by Becky Ripley.

Young entrepreneur Jack needs to earn big this Christmas if he wants to save his global company.

Jack is only 27, but he's already CEO of his own firm. He left school to start up an online business, establishing a successful international trade in fancy dress costumes...until the pandemic hit. With everything he'd built under threat, he's decided to risk it all on a new venture: BargainFox, an online store selling discounted items.

It's an industry full of big players, with whom he'll have to compete. He's invested a lot and expanded the workforce, including hiring school friends, but needs to see huge returns if they are going to survive.

Grace Dent follows Jack and his team through the autumn and into a make or break Christmas season.

Producer: Sam Peach

In March this year the musical 'City of Angels' was about to open in the West End. Sadie-Jean Shirley was one of the youngest members of the cast. As well as a key role in the ensemble she'd also been chosen as a cover for one of the leads. After years of training and earning her spurs in the business this was a real breakthrough moment for the 24 year old performer. And then lockdown. 'City of Angels' didn't even make it to the first night.

Producer: Tom Alban

24 year old Khady Gueye loves the area of Gloucestershire she lives in but doesn't want her young daughter to grow up facing the same prejudice she has encountered over the years. In June, she and her close friend set out to organise a small event in Lydney, a town in the heart of the Forest of Dean, in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Initially, they were granted the permissions they needed, but as word spread, so did local opposition. We follow Khady through the summer and into the autumn as she tries to make the demonstration happen. Can she manage it, and will it mean anything more long lasting?

Produced by Mair Bosworth