Bridge!

The move back to the house has, one way or another, resulted in a number of items that need to go to the tip, but which are too big to fit in the car. Plus, the Minx is replacing the miniMinx's bed with a new one from Ikea, so today we hired a van so that we could get those things done.

It all went very well. I had a meeting in The Royal (again!) and then went to see the very nice people at Kirkby Motors to pick up the van. Then it was back to the house where Dean helped me load up items including two wardrobe doors, an old bunkbed, and a rusty, long unused barbecue.

Then it was down to Chorley to pick up the Minx, who'd sorted a permit for the tip, where we enjoyed the liberating feeling of throwing away things that have been cluttering the house, and thence to Ikea, which was mercifully empty. We didn't only buy the bed, of course, but in addition the sundry items we knew we'd end up collecting via that curious magnetism particular to Ikea's market place, I also found a sofa for the room with no name. It was reduced from £379 to £100! Not that I couldn't see why no one had bought it at its full price but it still constituted a bargain.

Once we'd dropped all the Minx's purchases back at her house, and loaded the miniMinx's old bed into the van for me to take home I headed back up the M6. The roadworks around the Lancaster turn off - which the traffic news always unhelpfully refers to as "Caton Road" - cause trouble as soon as there's a significant amount of traffic, so I had to crawl along for two or three miles but at least we were stationary long enough for me to grab an admittedly not great view of the new but not yet open bridge, which, even after a year, I am still excited about.