Once upon a time in Leicester...

            After a night between Egyptian cotton sheets then a bath and a cooked breakfast Sandy and I drive up to Latitude; she with her camera and me with my notebook.   I decide not to write a diary but to be a roving reporter for two days. Focussing on the over-fifties is our niche angle.             Marilyn Goss, 62 from Kent is at Latitude with a group of friends. A retired palliative care social worker, Marilyn is staying four nights in the Pink Moon Camping area where the tents are already set up and furnished with the added attraction of hot private showers and a hair care pamper parlour.   There are Charity Concierges roaming the campsites each morning to go and get breakfast, bringing it straight back to your tent.              Richard and Barbara, both 72, from North Creake in Norfolk ar...

            Last year Georgie and I spent a couple of weeks in Italy using AirBnB.   I wrote about the experience and it was published in The Leicester Mercury.   I didn’t get paid for the article – what, you want money as well as a holiday, don’t be so deluded - but the nice folk at AirBnB gave me a voucher for a future trip.   And now, my friend Sandy and I are about to use it at Latitude, the festival at Henham Park in Suffolk.   It would be entirely logical to stay in Lauren but it’s not ideal accommodation for two heterosexual unrelated women, especially when there’s the option of a gorgeous free cottage with a bath in Walberswick.   It also means we will just be using the van as a car to get us to and from the festival; this decadence feels almost illegal.               Sandy has driven from Bristol and we rendezvous at Bury St Edmonds...

            It feels a bit weird, but not shameful – I’m too old for shame - wearing the same siren red dress for breakfast that I wore for lunch and dinner, and even weirder when Brexit Bloke called me ‘darling’ and eye-boggling weird when I notice that the only available newspapers are The Daily Mail and The Telegraph.   Is this how the cloistered live?   I wish that one of my soul-mates would march in with a stack of Big Issues.             Brexit walks me back to my van where we kiss, marking the end to an intense second and third date.   Bye, see you soon. Phew, the shagged-out butterfly can retreat to her cocoon. I strip off, pull the curtains and crawl under Georgie’s unicorn and ballet dancer duvet.                         My ninety-fiv...

            I’m woken by horses neighing. I’ve never experienced this before and it feels good.   I even make use of the onsite showers and kettle.   At a row of communal sinks, whilst spitting toothpaste, not lubricant, I speak to a fellow camper, except she was camping for real. She tells me it was her first time and she’s learnt that next time she should pack a lilo.   We are both novices but at least we’re trying.   As I leave I think about leaving a ‘thank you’ card to the nice lady who I met last night; I’ve got one hundred and seventy-eight glossy greetings cards featuring a large hadron collider to get rid of.             Today is my second date with Brexit Bloke and we’ve arranged to meet for lunch at the rather smart George Inn, in Stamford, at one.   I have a red Vivienne Westwood dress hanging up in my twelve-inch wardrobe and somewhe...

            Georgie and I drive back to Leicestershire and have an arm-in-arm walk through Bradgate Park (photo) where we eat butterscotch ice-cream alongside the River Lin, take photographs of prancing deer and read about the history of the park where a former owner had the glorious name of Ulf.   Then it’s an hour in Loughborough library for me, perusing audio books, while Georgie tries on half the stock in Top Shop.   After dropping her back at her dad’s I have a big consideration. Where to sleep tonight?             Can I stay in Bill’s spare room?   He says No.   For the first time since I’ve had no permanent address I feel vulnerable. I drive to The Range in Leicester, buy a domestic life in the form of Tupperware containers, plastic coat-hangers and, to please my mother, a large tub of pepper to use in case of attempted rape.   Sitting in ...

            The calendar shows that I’m doing removals today.   Posh-Boy is moving house so I’ve offered to help.   Six of us, resembling rejects from a misplaced Sherpa clan, form a human conveyor belt as we traipse back and forth, in drizzle, over a grassy quad and up and down four flights of stairs.   Posh-Boy’s packing preparation is immaculate, everything in square boxes that fit like Jenga pieces into Lauren LaVan.   The last item is an unsealed box containing his folded shirts that I swear he’s ironed around a specially prepared piece of hardboard. There are even two dress shirts, their wing-collars sitting upright, neat and proud like meerkats about to embark on a tour to The Dark Side.   My cutlery draw contains dirty knickers and I’m struck by the contrast in our lives.               I’ve not seen Georgie for a few days so in the a...

            I’m woken at six-thirty by a tap on a window. I pull the windscreen curtain back to see my brother holding all three offspring. He’s been keeping the children amused for an hour but now seems a reasonable time for Aunty Jellybean (it’s easier to pronounce than Genevieve) to open her playroom on wheels. I totally agree.   Come in in kids, let’s play trucking!   (Photo).

            Refreshed this morning, after a good night’s sleep in a very comfortable bed, I decide last night’s plan was bollocks.   I will persevere with no partner, no house and no permanent job and prove Ms Joplin wrong.   I’ve stuffed one of mum’s spare bedroom wardrobes with a duvet containing my clothes for an unknown future life and now need to go back to Leicester.   Firstly, I need to deliver the Hadron Collider to Leicester University’s library where it’s going on a five-year loan.   Secondly, with the space freed up from the Collider in the van I need to collect a dozen sacks of rubbish that I’d left on my old drive and take them to the tip.   (photo)             On arrival in Leicester, my ex-landlady and her husband are spring-cleaning my old house ready for the imminent arrival of their new tenants, a Croatian priest and his fam...

            I awake, after my first night with Lauren as my home, under the Daresbury Tower and decide to shower and clean my teeth in the Laboratory rather than learning how to heat, then use, my precious onboard water.   After showering I put toothpaste on my toothbrush, only to discover that the combination of declining eyesight and increasing vaginal dryness means that I’ve squirted my toothbrush with Boots lubricating jelly.    (Picture) I rub my teeth on a paper towel and make a mental note not to give anyone a slippery snog today.   Maybe tomorrow I will swap products and enjoy a fresh and minty, cavity-free, extra white vagina.             The day’s surrealism continues as I spend it explaining how the Large Hadron Collider works.   Or rather, how and why I made a model of one.   I’ve bought with me about fifty quid’s worth of collag...

8 th July The dawn chorus kicks in on Groundhog Day as I declare, once again, that tonight will be my first night sleeping and living in Lauren LaVan.   I pack, clean and fill more bags.   At about seven I carry the first batch down to LOROS on Welford Road; by eight there are twelve bags outside the shop.   It starts to rain. At nine fifteen I deliver two more bags and half a dozen of my art-filled canvases that there’s no point in keeping. I’m met with huffing and puffing by the manager; she points out that two of my donated Marks and Spencer cushions are damp.   If I was less tired I would tartly suggest that I take every single bloody item back and deliver it all to Age Concern; suffocate myself with the cushions if that would make her happy, or at the very least, offer to take back the fucking cushions and dry them with a hairdryer.   I don’t have the fight, initiative or hair-dryer to do any of these.   Instead, I just continue, a yellow-hair...

            I’m supposed to be out of this house by four o’clock, so when a lovely, young friend, Posh Boy, asks me if I need any help I say yes, yes, oh god, yes (because I’m still on heat after yesterday’s recollection).   His godfather is a Conservative Party peer and he’s a born-again Christian, saving the losing of his virginity for his marriage.   Never has there been a more incongruous couple as we dismantle a bed together and make jolly innuendo-filled comments and it’s all over far too quickly.   Just like his wedding night will be.   How can I prolong his life-enriching presence?               “Would you like a ride in Lauren to the Beaumont Leys Parcel Depot?”             “Gen, I’m awfully sorry, but I only understand the word ‘parcel’ in those last four words.” I explain the conce...

              One essential for today is to deliver a letter to Claudio Ranieri, my favourite football manager.   I’ve got the world’s least achievable idea to celebrate Leicester City’s Premiership win by getting supporters to write poems about the players, the team and the city.   The best way to motivate folk to do this is if the players do it first – role models with footballs, pens and notebooks.   I just need to do a poetry workshop for Vardy, Mahrez and the rest of the boys in blue, and before you know it, the whole county’s creative juices will be flowing.   That’s the theory and for the sake of a sheet of A4, an envelope and the sound of another of my daydreams crashing through the stratosphere, it’s worth a try.             It’s about seven in the evening when I drive to the Walkers Stadium and look for a letterbox in the glass fascia t...

            I could do solo art today but Georgie is with me and as I’ll soon be the world’s most embarrassing mum I need to have a bonding day with her. Not a shopping extravaganza or an indulgent spa visit but instead I take her to Court.   Despite the unfortunate outcome she’d found the morning of the driving ban at the Magistrate’s Court last year interesting so I’m now stepping up her social education with a morning at Leicester’s Crown Court. Oh what jolly japes we have when other kids are bored out of their minds at Alton Towers.               The first case involves a father’s continued rape of his daughter from the age of nine. I wasn’t expecting this and I wasn’t expecting to have to explain buggery on a sunny morning in July.   I hope the next case will be cat-burglary or shoplifting.   It’s multiple rape, this time of a sister-in-law. The ...

            House clearance continues.   It’s clear that accumulation of too much stuff plus burying one’s head in the sand leads to a lack of savings, i.e. zilch.    My stuff includes a lot of clothes, books, DVDs and art materials.   I still have a lot of this detritus despite the Amazon and eBay induced one-hundred-and-three trips to the Welford Road Post Office over the last six weeks.   At a conservative guess, at retail price paid, I’ve probably got, or did have, about £15,000 of material possessions.   Some of this is in earrings. I used to buy myself a new pair whenever I went on a date.   This was so that when me and the lucky guy celebrated our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with our three hundred closest friends, six children and eighteen grandchildren, I’d be able to wear them and mention the treasured earrings in my impromptu speech.   T S Elliot’s Prufrock measured out his ...

I awake, warm, smiling and alone, in my wooded corner of the cricket pitch. Sprinkles of sunlight dart between branches and birds want to chat with me.   ‘Good morning blackbirds, thrushes and robins, how are you in your little nests? As cosy as me in mine?’   This campervan life is proving exceedingly productive on both the passion front and on the joy of nature front.    Maybe I could become a roving reporter for Spring Watch, Top Gear, Spring Gear. Back in Leicester, and amidst house clearance and cleaning, I frequently check my phone for a flirtatious message from Brexit-Bloke but there is nothing.   Did I dream the last twenty-four hours? Emptying the house is sometimes emotional.   Can I throw away a life-time of birthday cards from my nana? No.   Can I throw away the thirty-year-old letters written by an ex-part-time boyfriend?   No. Should I sell the book ‘The Beauty of the Husband’ that CP, a Professor of Oncology I dated g...