10th July: Tears again


            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 family. They might inwardly be cursing me for leaving a pea in the fridge drip-tray and a cobweb in the cupboard under the stairs but they don’t let on. They don’t even curse me when I spill a tin of gloss paint on their drive.  As I try to clear the mess I step in it and leave painterly evidence of my existence in a trail on the pavement.  The day gets worse at the tip. I am in a Sunday afternoon queue of about fifteen vehicles with my engine switched off.  But it won’t restart. I try everything within the realms of my auto-engineering knowledge (applying lipstick in the bonnet’s reflection) but to no avail.   I phone for breakdown recovery, again.  Whilst waiting I walk back and forth with my rubbish to the landfill skips, occasionally leaving a faint white sticky footprint.  A kind stranger at the tip notices my recurrent walk of despair.  “Do you want any help?” he asks.
            “No, no, I’m fine,” I say smiling, but for some damn reason my eyes fill with tears.  Breakdown recovery arrives and diagnoses an issue with the owner’s low cognitive function and grasp on reality, no, the electrics on the van’s immobilizer.  I decide, under guidance, to get rid of it, the immobilizer, not the van or my optimism.  At least it will be one less thing to go wrong.

            Where to sleep tonight?  If I was more emotionally comfortable with the van dwelling existence I might just find a nearby campsite, read a book and enjoy a beer.  But no, not yet.  Instead I drive seventy miles to Kidderminster to visit another brother (I have five, all younger than me), his wife and their three boys, all under four.

            The side gates to the garden are ceremoniously opened, lavender-filled earthenware pots are dragged out of the way and I pull onto the patio.  The children enjoy the new large toy in the garden, especially the working horn.  I’m offered a bed in the house but am quietly advised that I’ll get a much better night’s sleep in the van. I can see the logic.

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