I have two main problems in my life.

1) working out how to cope with a loving girlfriend when I want to be with Trina. Mel has accepted that I don't feel sexually attracted to her any more, but is gamely going along with it, accepting what she's given. She throws her arms around me on the settee and when we're out. We have good times. We laugh and go out on day trips and we both like food and cooking. We never quarrel.

2) My job. It coats me with gloom. However, there may be progress. I had an online meeting on Thursday with my supervisor and some bloke from HR, about my application to go down to two days a week.

He asked me to set out my case. Well... I'm too old for all this. I'm creaking. I can't stand up for seven hours a day. (I often come home knackered and pissed off, muttering complaints against my employer); my aged mother lives in Middlesbrough and all the work looking after her is falling on my sister's overwrought shoulders; I can't cope with the roster being issued ten days or a fortnight in advance, not being able to plan anything.

I didn't mention wanting to spend more time with Trina, with Kitty and Wendy, and Kirsty and our girls, my ain folk, the Lancaster gang, where I'm from. You should be able to say that you just want to fuck work off and spend time with the people who are part of you.

Me and Mel went for a day out in Gloucester.

In a pub, it was bugging me that the man a few yards away looked familiar. As we were leaving, I went over to him. "Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt, but could I just ask -- have you got any connection with Lancashire?" "Yes." "Lancaster?" "Yes." Did you used to go down the John O'Gaunt?" "Yes. Do I owe you any money?"

The cathedral was overrun with children and their reasonable parents, all crayons and the considered argumentation of middle-class parenting. We gave five pounds to get in, but you had to pay another fiver for a guide, so we walked round having a gormlessly impressionistic visit; it was a bit shallow.

The Pelican pub afterwards was the best part of the day. We had to shift up as people snuggled into places near to us. You had to talk, not that I need any encouragement to do that. They had Dunkerton's organic cider on, which they had to fetch from downstairs. I would like to tell you about some of the conversations we had, but I can't recall them. It's a cracking pub.

About a month ago, my friend Helen, who had lived in Norway for many years, succumbed to the pancreatic cancer with which she was diagnosed last year. I went to Lancaster to see Kitty and Wendy, who knew her before I did, to raise a glass or two in Helen's memory.

Memory: they recalled adventures we'd had together in much greater detail than I could remember, or could remember at all. I was shown a photograph of me and Helen in a strangely contorted drunken pose in a London hotel room, the circumstances of which I recall nothing.

Wendy surprised me by referring to the years when she imposed belittling conditions on meeting me. It had to be done secretly, and I had to leave her house before her estranged boyfriend, who lived with his parents, arrived to do something connected with the childcare. I was made to leave by the back door, in case he turned up early and saw me. Quite why I was subject to such draconian invisibility is still a mystery to me.

"I should have stood up for you a bit more," she said. I said nothing, but was thinking "you fucking well should have! Making me skirt round another man's insecurity? Thanks!" It was a relief, years later, to have her recognise how unfair that was on me.

From Lancaster, I went an hour or so on the train to where Trina lives. We went out dancing at an annual soul and house music do which has finally re-emerged after The Interruption. After the first, rather irritating rounds of being herded together for other people's social media, it developed into a good night. Quite flirty. By doing nothing at all, just dancing, I attracted the attention of a good-looking woman in a purple thigh-length dress, who inched closer tune by tune, at least during the times Trina wasn't on the dancefloor.

But the real attraction was Trina. I have two central difficulties with her. One is, I find her attractive, both in an everyday way, but also in a way that can slide into a physical attraction given the right amount to drink circumstances. Second, she's witty, without any of the strained, intellectual taint that often comes with people who are good with words. She makes me laugh, and we all know what that can lead to.

So how do I handle this, given that I've a girlfriend down here? I lie. I told Trina that Mel and I have drifted into friendship, that it's been mutually accepted and that we're being sensible adults about it.

Although there are signs that that state of affairs might be the case in the future, and it's true that I've lost interest in our sporadic sex, we still carry on like boyfriend and girlfriend. It's a selfish way of managing two women, but recognising that I'm doing something morally wrong is rarely enough to make me stop doing it.

Work grinds relentlessly on, like a white noise you can't switch off. I'm in the middle of eight days straight now. It's been five weeks now since I applied to go down to two days a week. On Thursday I was promised a meeting to discuss it "shortly." What's there to discuss? Either they agree to it or they don't.

Me and Mel went for a holiday in Funchal, where me and Kirsty went as English teachers thirty years ago. The air was just as warm and balmy as I remember it, but there were far more tourists than then, most of whom, like us, were contributing to making long-term rentals difficult to obtain for the locals.

One of our chosen bars had this jack the lad waiter, whose performance on the street in trying to get people into his place was an entertainment. One afternoon, a group of young women in bridesmaid's hair and clothes walked past. "Oh la la, I've gone to heaven," he said, with sweeping, appreciative gestures of his arms and eyes. I also liked him because he congratulated me on my Portuguese when I asked him for a spoon so that Mel could fish out the fruit from her sangria. "Fala muito bem Português," he said, and I felt all radiant and manly in front of Mel.

We took a bus tour over the mountains, to a village on the north coast where there are some extant examples of the traditional A-shaped houses that were once common on Madeira. At Pico do Arreiro, 1800m up, there's a souvenir shop and a toilet policed by a black man who has the unenviable job of standing outside one of the coldest and windiest toilets on the island to collect a Euro from anyone who needed them. We had the best seats in the minibus, at the front. The driver delivered the tour in German and English in a calming, slow voice.

Our flat had this loud whirring, humming noise which started at 10am and didn't go off until 11pm. I texted the landlord about it. He said it was the ventilation shaft from the restaurant next door. "There's nothing I can do." Apart from not tell anyone about it in advance, I suppose.

By day four it was driving me nuts, and I booked us in to a new place for two days' respite before we went back for the last day. When we arrived there, it was a bleak ex-hotel turned into an airbnb without the promised kitchenette. After assuring Mel there are little bars everywhere in Funchal, I realised I'd chosen the single suburb in which are none. We went to the shop and got a bottle of wine. There was no corkscrew in our room, and I snapped the front door key off while using the key as a substitute.

"We haven't had sex once," she said, when we got back. "Do you still fancy me?" I hid behind my drink, laughing it off.

For over two years now, it has been the custom of every gateline assistant and every train guard I have met in the course of my working day, to allow me through the barriers at my station, and travel free on the train, so that I can go to work.

Arriving back at the station after a day's work, the barrier assistant, as ever, greeted me and allowed me though the gate. I was shocked when a few seconds later, I was apprehended by two revenue protection officers, one of whom trained her body camera and voice recorder on me.

"Excuse me. Did you have a ticket for your journey today?" "No." "Why not?"

I explained that it has always been the custom for the barrier staff to allow me travel on the railway so that I can go to my job on the railway. This didn't impress them, and they proceeded with the police-style warning about anything I may say may be used in evidence, and how it may harm my defence if I remain silent. All this taking place in public, on the concourse of a busy station at 4pm, curious passengers and staff gawping at me.

She asked me several more questions, about how many times this has happened, the purpose of my journey, its origin and destination, and so on. The most startling part of the grilling was when she said "it's looby, isn't it? I remember you from when you worked with us." That was seven years ago.

Eventually I was released with a little card, having given my assurances that I will deal with any forthcoming correspondence promptly. It rattled me, but I felt worse for the barrier staff, who I might have inadvertently got into trouble. I was compelled to visit the pub outside the station in order to recover my composure.

At Mel's that night, I slept in fits and starts, before getting up at 3am to ring in sick.

Three days later I went to face the music. As usual, a "good morning" from the barrier staff, and the gates were opened for me. "Actually, I've had a bit of a ticking off from Maeve," I said. "What about?" "About just going through the barriers. I've got to get tickets now." "Oh," he said.

That was twelve days ago. Since then, the old practices have resumed, except that I have started buying a £1.50 ticket to and from the next station just in case I am challenged again. It was a thoroughly unpleasant experience, and I only wish they'd hurry up and tell me how many lashes I am to receive. It's sad that the railway hosts these young outliers like Maeve, who, ignoring established, if uncodified, custom of seeing us all as fellow colleagues in a common endeavour, relish acting as zealots, interpreting the corporate creed in its most conservative interpretation. These women who have their hair cut in a ski-slope from their ears down to just below the napes of their necks are always trouble.

And then a big silver lining appeared. For reasons I dont quite understand, I've been awarded housing benefit, which will cover all but £4.63 of my rent. About a month ago I speculatively applied for HB and a reduction in my Council Tax, assembling a sheaf of documents -- bank statements, Universal Credit award letters, and my tenancy agreement (they wanted all seventeen pages of it) -- for inspection by the council.

I was astonished when, last week, I received a "Notification of Housing Benefit Award". I scrutinised it again and again over the following days, looking for a way I might have misinterpreted the decision; but even raked with the finest-toothed comb, it contained only the liberating news that I am to pay nothing more than the price of a pint a month to live in this flat.

Whilst Mel was abroad for a week I had a long weekend with Trina. I told Mel I was going to Lancaster to see Kirsty and my youngest. Once you start lying like this, it indicates a sense of guilty, but not of sufficient an intensity to stop me doing what I'm feeling guilty about.

We had a hedonistic weekend of eating and drinking. In a Spanish restaurant, I asked her why there was a sprout in her negroni, thinking that perhaps this was some sort of Ibero-Anglo avant-garde fusion cuisine innovation that had passed me by. It was the olive.

In the cathedral, we queued up to get in but baulked at the "suggested voluntary donation" of £5 to get in, with a cash desk it would have taken quite a bit of chutzpah to walk past. Why not just say it's £5 to get in?

However, I wasn't put off by the cost of the most expensive beer I've ever purchased: £11.75 for 33cl. But it was for a gueuze, (made only using naturally-occurring airborne yeast) and you rarely see them outside of their Belgian home. Trina said it tasted like lemon juice. We got chatting to these jolly middle-aged men who asked to share our table, who were off to see a band with the unappealing name of The Viagra Boys.

Midnight, and I'm walking home from the station after work. A thirtysomething woman trailing a small suitcase, stops me and asks me the way to the supermarket. "Well, er... it's a bit late, obviously that one down there is closed. There's the 24-hour one up there..." and as I turned to point the way, I saw a tall man on the corner quickly look away, feigning interest in the eaves of a block of flats. Perhaps he was an architectural critic who could only do his research at night, but I doubt it; finally the penny dropped.

"Oh, I see. Are you OK, would you like me to walk with you for a bit?" She said yes and, giving what I hoped would be understood as a "got you sussed pal" look at our student of seventies architecture, I walked with her back towards the station. She said that she was staying in a nearby hotel, but that she wouldn't have the money till half past twelve. I did wonder whether it was now a scam, but we got to the foyer of the hotel, and as I chatted to the Somali security guard ("is she drunk?"), I saw her check in and the receptionist tell her that she could sit in the foyer for a while. I bade her goodnight and wished her a good stay in Bristol.

It's repellent that a woman can't be left alone to walk at night to her hotel. Women as prey. I was glad to have helped her, but angry and very saddened that I had to.

A car tries to slalom its way through one of those half-hearted single lane level crossings near Ludlow. Flips over, blocks the tracks; all trains stopped at Shrewsbury.

I can get home via Birmingham. Taking my repose in the pub in New Street as I wait for the train, this arrestingly attractive South Asian woman walks up to the bar. Late thirties? Black blouse, short-ish straight black skirt, black calf-length boots, and the luxuriant, flowing black hair with which the Pakistanis and Indians are often blessed. The man the other side of me offers to help her take her drinks to her table. A second too late for me. You fucking idiot. Instead of craftily scanning her, why didn't you offer to help?

He comes back. "Are you with that woman?" "No, I just gave her a hand." "She's gorgeous isn't she?" but I don't think he wanted to collude.

I was incapable of letting the matter rest. I went up to them, making it clear that I was only stopping as I was leaving, and said "you look absolutely gorgeous." "She does, doesn't she?" said her friend, and I felt a bit bad about not having considered her friend's feelings.

"Well, thank you!" she said, and that was that. Just for once, I got the timing, the tone and the duration right.