8th July: Quantum travel to the North


8th 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-haired zombie-robot in a house clearance sale.

            At noon I’m very nearly done. I’ve sold a few pieces of furniture to the landlady so it’s weird shutting the door on a house that looks like a spartan and immaculate version of my pre-van self.  The final item I load is a touch surreal: a two-metre square embroidered collage of the CMS at the Large Hadron Collider.  (See Picture 4). It’s made with safety pins, Lego, bra straps, buttons, USB cables and other crap from the back of my recently sold sofa.  Clever people at the Scientific Research Laboratory in Daresbury near Warrington are keen to display it at their Open Day tomorrow.  The two-hundred cards Posh-Boy and I collected yesterday show a photo of it; they cost me thirty pence each to have printed and I’ll be selling them for £2 each.  Is two-hundred excessive?  Hence, at twelve fifteen I set off from Leicester on the one-hundred-mile trip with most of my worldly possessions, including a Large Hadron Collider in Lauren LaVan.  If only quantum physics was more accessible I could arrive in no time.  But no, I put the van into first gear. 

            Four hours later I’m in Daresbury, home to Lewis Caroll, a white rabbit and Schrodinger’s Cat.  I’ve searched the net but all the nearby campsites are full due to a steam engine rally, so I ask a couple of particle physicists if I can sleep in Lauren in their car park. They are fine with this. (photo). After an hour or two I go for a wander and meet the security guards.  They make me a cuppa, we chat and I learn that bliss takes many forms.

Night night world, from a happy, slightly nervous and very tired, white van dweller. xxx

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