In which my boyfriend and I are are split up - by a GIRL!

My first job, when I was 17, was publicity assistant at a local theatre. Rachel was the manager and used to take me in her car after work to see her favourite tree. It was awkward, as if I was expected to become part of her consciousness. We bumped into each other the other week at the railway station and arranged to meet up in that slightly obliged way you sometimes feel when you've pushed a conversation further than it should have gone.

In her modern flat, a smoke alarm beeped loudly at irregular intervals. Considering we had 30 years to go through, I found out little and I thought her quite guarded, so I tried to reflect her way of talking back to her: saying nothing more than I'd tell a stranger at a bus stop but making it sound confessional. There wasn't even the consolation of much drink: the bottle I'd bought went unopened while we made laborious progress through two glasses of wine. Afterwards, feeling a bit stifled by propriety, I was glad to find two good friends in the pub. We chatted in a way which Rachel would probably think vacuous.

Infinitely better was the soul weekender in Blackpool. I hadn't been away with these friends before and was slightly nervous as to how it would go. It went swimmingly, once we'd sneaked more people into the hotel room than its advertised capacity. No aggro, no girls being bothered, with everyone very polite, apologising for the slightest even theoretical shortcoming in meeting the highest standards of courtesy, as doors were opened, people waved first and priorities sorted out at the bar.

At lunchtime, about thirty of us sat round and drank and chatted and watched Arsenal v Leeds on the TV, did the crossword in the most popular paper of the weekender, The Independent, or simply sat in a semi-meditative state: companiable company that asks nothing of you. After the footie I went to resume dancing and saw that the DJ had parked a pram next to the decks.

I danced and danced and danced. Danced until my feet were throbbing with the soreness of sock-friction and the ache of my arthritic left big toe. Dancing comes naturally to me. I'm good at it and I don't think I'm ever as happy as I am on a dancefloor: the big rich sound of the music, your clothes, other people's clothes, the momentary blindness that the lights give you, the drugs, the colours, and most of all the myriad connections with people to whom you signal your recognition, very subtlely, kinetically. A girl started talking to me. Kev tactfully ambled off the dancefloor and the girl said "Oh, I'm sorry, have I annoyed your boyfriend?"

I got back on Sunday, everything feeling a bit sad. I had some homemade cheese and onion pie which tasted of metal. I went down the pub, hoping to meet someone to stop thinking about the weekend ending, found no-one, and came back and tried to drink the comedown away.