I got through to the final selection for cabin crew on a budget airline. I get off at the nearest station and start walking to the "country hotel". A young Asian woman a few yards ahead of me checks her phone and starts on the same route.

At the hotel, the bulky young receptionist gives me what I interpret as a "what? you?" visual scan as I tell her I'm there for the assessment day. Have you read Boule de Suif by Maupassant? I thought in return.

In the waiting area I am outnumbered: two other men, thirty women, and of them all, I'm the oldest. We get called in for two physical checks: one to see how high you can reach, and The Test That Dare Not Say Its Name, where you click yourself inside a fixed-length seatbelt, which is designed to sift out bodies like that inhabited by the receptionist. The little Asian girl isn't tall enough. I felt for her -- she was the only other one of us I saw walking to the hotel rather than being taken there in nice cars.

We get the company bingo. It's like being part of a family, we'll make proper friends for life and you'll end up trusting your colleagues with it. The last bit at least, might be true. We're put into groups and have to match up parts of a cut-up photograph, then we have to design and pitch an idea for a new type of hotel. Someone suggests the Easter Hotel, so we drew up ideas involving eggs and chocolate. I did my presentation in the form of a radio advert from a chocolate company.

We had a nervous dinner break while we waited to see who'd be called to the final interviews. My name was read out on the list of those escaping the cull. I then had to wait a long time and in the meantime chatted and swapped numbers with a couple of girls as we sat in the static, timeless artificiality of a hotel's huge windows. I was starting to get caught up in it by now and wanted both the job and the money (an experienced hand said you should easily clear two grand a month).

A week later, I received an email that began with those gloomy words, "[T]hank you for attending..."

---

Morecambe drew Chelsea away in the third round of the FA Cup. All three of my daughters, from Lancaster, Dublin and Manchester, converged on Stamford Bridge, and then we were to meet up with one of my old pals from when my daughters spent most of their time in cribs in a one-bed flat on Ruislip High Street.

On the train to London I had the pleasure of being stuck on a table of four with three middle-aged, articulate women who were talking between themselves, mainly about their men and boyfriends and a divorce. I was feigning a lack of interest, looking out of the window, in order to get them talking more, but eventually the facade cracked and we had one of those conversations amongst strangers on a train that people who spend the time plugged in and scrolling away, have never tasted.

A thousand or so of us marched through Chelsea to protest against the ownership situation at our club. It was a delight to see a woman, dressed head to toe in designer gear, being ignored as she beeped at us to let her and her fancy car out of a side street.

At half-time, with Chelsea scoring from a lucky deflection and our goalie having saved a penalty, I thought we were in with a shout, but things unravelled in the second half. The atmosphere was rather flat, perhaps because of all the corporate guests and foreigners that Chelsea attracts, but that just provoked us into singing our heads off.

We met up with my old pan from London, whom I've not met for almost as long as the children are old. We used to attended meet-ups with a group of people united only by their membership of a pre-social media usenet group. They were some of the most drunken nights in my life, and included the only time I've spent a small part of the night in bed with a man and a woman.

We found the coldest Indian restaurant in west London, where, however, the food was delicious. More importantly, everything went well socially with my pal and the girls. Once they'd left he said he envied me having daughters like those. I thought he'd come from somewhere in north London, but he'd actually invested a lot of time and effort schlepping from Suffolk. I was flattered that he thought it worth it.

---

And to return to where I began: I've almost completed another hurdle race and have an assessment day and interview for a buffet steward position based in Newcastle. Freezing cold, but near Kim, and an hour away from my mum, sister and youngest brother. I haven't disclosed any of this to Mel.

Shortly before Christmas, I rather conveniently injured my wrist again -- the same one that I broke on Halloween 2023. Choosing a muddy, sloping shortcut to the pub after work, my little legs started pumping faster and faster in order to keep up with the forward momentum of my body, before I reached tipping point, sliding into the road, with my bag, phone and work paraphernalia scattering around me on the tarmac piste, which ended just outside the queue for a nightclub.

I stood up in that eager way that one does in order to deflect attention, and a large man at whose feet I'd landed said to everyone in general "it wasn't me."

In my bed later, the pain got too much, and at 4.30am I was in A&E at the Infirmary. It was a busy night, including a troupe of ravers looking after one of their party, who'd overdone the disco biscuits perhaps, but who had something wrong with his stomach. I admired them for not abandoning him: out together, back together, even when Josh and Ali have fucking overdone it, again.

Six hours in to my visit, I was assured that I hadn't broken anything, before the doctor said the words that drop from paradise: "you'll have to take a few days off work." I managed to stretch them out until my annual leave for Christmas began.

---

For Christmas we rented a Victorian terraced house in Whitby. It enjoyed a view of the Abbey, whose origins date back to a seventh-century monastical riposte to the publication of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

I was allocated a bed in a room with my youngest in the other single and my eldest and her Spanish girlfriend in the double. I was blessed at being with the non-snorers of the clan, but my daughter provided some entertaining, melodically-varied farting.

On the first night, being in need of the loo in the small hours, and my navigation to that room being handicapped by a lack of light, I heard a strange exclamation as I recoiled from touching human flesh. My daughter removed her leg and helpfully put her phone on to steer me away from the wall which I was about to strike with my entire person.

Whilst I enjoy being with my family, I draw the line at Call The Midwife, so on Christmas Day evening I meandered along narrow alleyways flanked by small houses, many of which had plaques attached, listing a cutesy name from the Cath Kidston School of Holiday Home nomenclature (Snowdrop Cottage, and so on), and the details of how to rent it. I ended up on the clifftop, in the bar of the Royal Hotel, where I had a jolly time chatting to a few Yorkshire folk enjoying an old-fashioned Turkey and Tinsel hotel break.

Two of my daughters managed a quick dip in the sea on Boxing Day. I took a supervisory role, selflessly minding my pint, as broken glass on beaches is indifferently hazardous to all.

---

So only three days late, may I wish all readers and commenters a very Happy New Year. Let's keep this subculture of the internet going in the face of women in gyms and men doing O-mouth shapes on youtube.

I get talking to a copper travelling first class. His field is tracking down child pornographers. "You watch their internet connections, and it's faked to be from some place, London, say, then there's a tiny moment when they disconnect when you see a little flash of their actual location." They have to have plenty of time away from the work: it's so distressing that it can lodge repeated, nightmarish films in even the most hardened detectives' heads.

---

Today is Day Eleven, in capitals.

In one of those rash self-improvement decisions which I now regret, I vowed to have four weeks off the pop, from one pay day to the next. In as far as I'm perfectly capable of boring and offending people whilst sober, I'm not expecting much change, but it's more a financial experiment, to see how it affects the bottom line come December's payday (on 6th). Already I'm aware that the notes in my wallet last much longer; I'm also sleeping better. The main cost is never having the type of spontaneous, unpredictable conversations with strangers that only happen in a good pub; although muttering to oneself whilst looking at one's glass of beer is also a pleasure.

To use the time freed up, I'm doing a French course which promises to take me from my present CEFL Level B1 to B2 (not in four weeks, obviously). I'm enjoying it, even though, and because, it exposes the errors I have accumulated from my largely self-taught method. I want to be good enough to make the locals I meet on our Breton holidays think twice about replying to me in their own language.

Mel is delighted about my decision, because, like all women I've ever been involved with, she has this naive belief in the ability of men to become better moral characters.

---

We had a depressing email come round at work yesterday, warning us to expect short-term changes to our roster now that we are two staff short, yet again showing how little Transport that Fails considers the fact that we might have lives outside work.

They've sacked one person for persistent absences, and, to everyone's relief, not made permanent the contract of a them/they who spent her six months at Transport that Fails writing sniping, complaining emails about everyone for such catastrophic derelictions of duty such as failing to empty the coffee machine's grounds.

The other day, I was on the train with the them/they, and, after struggling with one of those little plastic packets of condiment that are designed to burst all over your hands, I gave it to her, who opened it immediately. Intending a compliment, I said "if you want something doing, give it to a woman."

I received a black look which took me a moment to understand. I pretended not to notice it (neither the look nor the person).

---

At the moment, the state of the escape plan is:

• Trainee Conductor, near my mum up north, applied 8/10/24. "Application under consideration."
• Trainee Guard, somewhat near my home town, applied 30/10/24. Online assessment (a load of mystifying computer games) completed 3/11/24. "Application successfully submitted."
• Customer Service Assistant (i.e., on the barriers), near Trina's, applied 6/11/24. "Shortlisting".

There's also the Bristol trolley dolly job, which would be my first choice by a long stretch. The woman who was appointed (I came second) failed her drugs and alcohol test. I was hoping I might be called up to the position without further ado, but apparently not: "Application pending".

At some point shortly after the last entry I noticed that Firefox was warning me about "dangers" should I proceed to my own website. My SSL Certificate had expired.

I only had the vaguest understanding of what that means; all I know is that the new owners of my hosting company were asking £50 a year to pay for something that used to be free. Fortunately I found some instructions about how to do it yourself, so now loobynet is all badged and stamped.

---

A gay night after work drink in my local. Bouncing Glaswegians were chanting IRA songs after watching the Celtic game. I was moaning about my lack of a roster to a black lad, who said that he was a security guard at the nearby shopping centre and knows what he's doing months ahead. I got a bit bored with him after a while as he kept saying the same thing over and over again, so I turned to the white man on my left.

"I wouldn't change my upbringing for anything," he said, after telling me about going to a nuns' school in Ireland and being rapped hard on the knuckles "for nothing". Somehow the conversation veered into sex. "And I can tell you, he was better at sucking it than she was." He made a bit of a show about having missed his last bus, but I indicated no more to the barmaid and went home. The sex life I could have if I were gay.

---

Me and Mel went to Lille for a few days. A little girl photobombed us.

We went by train all the way, and arrived in an airbnb place so small it depressed me a bit, and I was surreptitiously looking on my phone around for hotel rooms we could stay in, before I resigned myself to it.

Lille's a grand city that feels like a capital. Our tour guide told us that the magnificent church of St Maurice is falling slowly into the high water table (Lille = L'Isle) as the wooden subterranean piles on which it stands are eroded.

The food was a bit of a challenge. I ordered sardines rillettes, which, for €12, was a can of sardines half-opened with the key, with a few splashes of paprika on the plate. In the main square, after failing to find anywhere in the better area still serving at 1.40pm, we had a local speciality called "Welsh", which consists of a beer-soaked hunk of bread buried under a mound of melted cheese. It was heart-strangling and difficult to eat. The story goes that during the Napoleonic Wars a captured Welsh soldier introduced them to rarebit, which they adapted and adopted. After day four, I was longing for something green and raw.

The people were friendly. In a bar, a man mistook me for a waiter, so after explaining that I wasn't what he was looking for, I left him and his group to get settled, then got up and went over to them. "Alors, vous avez choisi?" Unfortunately my French wasn't up to understanding their jokey replies. But... on doit essayer.

Just to get the regular column, Failed Attempts At Finding A New Job, out of the way first: I failed an online assessment to become a signalman. I used to be a signalman.

---

To Aberdeen, where my DJ pal was having his 60th. Over the Forth and Tay Bridges, past sandy beaches and through forests.

I was in first class, sat opposite a well-to-do foursome: the parents and their daughters, softly furnished in expensive fabrics. Mother caught her necklace in some way, and a diamond popped out. We all enthusiastically joined in with the search. Bent double under my seat, I was calculating the chances of being able to hide it from them should I find it. It turned up in one of those glossy shopping bags with string handles that posh clothes shops give out.

I've never been to a city made of granite before, and Aberdeen is a striking, angular city. You can get some precise corners and straight lines in granite. It's a contrast to the constantly eroding limestone of Lancaster, and the only slightly firmer Bath stone of Bristol.

An hour or so before the end of the night, a friend came up to apologise for having to leave early. Unfortunately he'd somehow been discovered in the toilets with some Pepsi; fortunately, not until after we'd shared some between us.

The following day I flew to Dublin. The eldest and her girlfriend were moving out of their shared house to another a couple of streets away. Their tenancy finishes on Friday; their new one starts on Saturday. The landlady is charging them £50 to stay until Saturday morning.

We tottered along in the drizzle carrying precariously balanced piles of boxes round to the new place. The kerbs were troublesome. The girls in the new place are friendly health workers, but it's so unjust that two young teachers can't afford to rent a place to themselves.

My daughter took me to a cracking Irish music pub where I was all agog at hearing the uileann pipes played live for the first time. I mistook the tune the lad was playing for Kitty Got A Clinking Coming from the Fair, but once I mentioned that, we were bezzies.

At one point the concertina player waved away someone who was filming them, a gesture I was pleased to see. It's so depressing that even in (or because it is such) an excellent music pub, many young people raise their phones, making their 360 degree mobile phone panoramas to buff their social media pages.

---

I went to the doctor's to have my Man MOT the other day. They invite you in once you hit sixty. I've got high blood pressure and "very high" cholesterol. The latter surprised me. I don't eat meat, I've never driven a car, walk everywhere, and am on my feet for hours at a time at work. Apart from drinking a lake of alcohol every year, the "lifestyle changes" recommended on a website they sent me to, are ways I've lived for decades.