ar X iv : h ep - p h / 97 08 37 5 v 1 1 6 A ug 1 99 7

It has been shown that the string-flip potential model reproduces most of the bulk properties of nuclear matter, with the exception of nuclear binding. Furthermore, it was postulated that this model, with the inclusion of the colour-hyperfine interaction , should produce binding. In some recent work a modified version of the string-flip potential model was developed, called the flux-bubble model, which would allow for the addition of perturbative QCD interactions. In attempts to construct a simple q ¯ q nucleon system using the flux-bubble model (which only included colour-Coulomb interactions) difficulties arose with trying to construct a many-body variational wave function that would take into account the locality of the flux-bubble interactions. In this talk we consider a toy system, a mesonic molecule in order to understand these difficulties. En route, a new variational wave function is proposed that may have a significant enough impact on the old string-flip potential model results that the inclusion of perturbative effects may not be needed.