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.

On the subtitles on the BBC there was a warning of "girls and strong winds" in northern England. Both featured prominently in my weekend.

Ignoring, to my cost, the advice not to attempt to travel north of York, I went to Newcastle for yet another assessment morning and interview for a job. I'm losing count of them now. The plan was to come back to Bristol on Friday afternoon, then on Saturday it was over to Lewes for a family conflab about improving my grandparents' grave.

The storm hit and my options started narrowing. There were no trains on Friday going to anywhere where I knew someone, so I booked back in to the hotel I'd stayed in on Thursday. It turned out to be an enjoyable, but very expensive, unscheduled stay.

On Thursday afternoon I had was nattering to a couple of railwaymen, one from Liverpool, the other from Manchester. The Manc went to the loo and the Scouser said "I'm starting to think he's one of these right-wing working class people. I'm alright Jack." In the evening I ended up sitting with these two women, once of whom was pleasingly touchy-feely; they both kissed me when it was time to go.

The trains started creaking back into action later the following day. I went for a pub breakfast and was delighted to be joined at the adjacent table by this gorgeous group of Geordie lasses dolled up for Burns Night, cleavage and legs all over the place, starting the day with Prosecco at 9.30am.

I managed to get a seat on a very crowded train. There was a man opposite, earbuds plugged in, reading a book subtitled "why you are depressed and how to find hope." Poor lad. The middle classes are so fucked up.

I shared my table with some three young blokes on their way to support Burton Albion at Derby. There was also a young girl and her gran on their way to see a musical in London. There's so much to enjoy about other people if you open yourself to it.

I arrived in Lewes. I'd reserved a table in a pub for the eight of us. I got there to be told that my mum and auntie weren't happy because they said they couldn't hear each other "and it's pizza." The pub had turned off the music in our room and had made sure that my mum and auntie had the seats by the fire. But no, after my brother driving a round trip of six hundred miles to collect my mum, and me being on a train for over six hours, they wanted to go to my auntie's house in Brighton instead.

I had two hours before my train back to Bristol, and had chosen the pub partly because it was a couple of minutes walk from the station. By the time we'd faffed about with arranging to go to a Brighton suburb, I'd have had to set off home again. I thought it was unreasonable of my mum and auntie to start altering the plans after such efforts, especially on the part of my brother. I went to see the landlord to apologise for cancelling the reservation.

I said I couldn't (well, wouldn't) accompany them, made my farewells, then sat feeling very irritated and wound up in a different pub before catching the train home. I got home at half past midnight, feeling the weekend had soured at its end.

I feel very bad about upsetting my mother, and have left a message on her phone this morning, but I also think it was a little selfish of them. If they weren't happy with meeting in the pub the least they could have done was to inform me beforehand. Or they could have just put up with it for an hour-and-a-half.

Yesterday I found out that I had been unsuccessful at the interview. I've asked for any feedback, but they usually simply ignore the email. A couple of hours later, I was informed that I'd also failed the interview back in December for the job in Liverpool.

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.