"The best fucks are the mad ones"

I had a chat on the phone with Denise to find out what Frances had done with my phone after she'd turned it on and trawled through my messages. Turns out she'd sent her a text saying "Fancy a fuck tonight?" then another longer one about what a "lying, two-faced bag of shit" I am. We had a really nice chat and although in all honesty it's the last show I'd choose to go and see, I said I'd come and see her in Jesus Christ Superstar which her church theatre group is putting on next month.

This morning, an envelope containing a handwritten note from Frances appears on the mat. Inside, half of the money she owes me (the rest to follow), and an olive branch which I have no intention of accepting. She says she's not angry any more and hopes we can sit down and talk about it "and laugh at the absurdity of it." There's nothing absurd about it: it's too real for that. Paranoia, envy, suspicion, maybe; not absurdity. She never apologises, even one of those apologies which doesn't quite have your heart behind it but would help the situation and the people involved.

On Sunday I went to the jazz club. She came in an hour after me, with her daughter. I blanked them, training myself not to look at them, to treat them like the strangers sitting in front of me. A few weeks ago I read one of those back page interviews in the glossies, in which Michael Caine was asked whether he hates anyone. He replied no, but on the rare occasions when people mistreat him, he just "freezes them out. It just stops." Good practice, I thought. You simply arrest the relationship. You leave it immobilised, untouched.

I'm 47 tomorrow: I'm going to see the Lancaster undergrads do A Picture of Dorian Gray, then see the girls for a bit, then off out for a few pints. Linda and Seriouscrush will be there. Possibly Gaynor. ManICan'tHelpFancyingAfterAFewPints also. GorgeousAdminWoman said she's coming but she's as reliable as a politician's promises. She has big tits a curvy full figure and long black hair which I imagine spread out on my pillow, and something slightly hard and selfish in her character, which, combined, I find very attractive despite knowing that it can promise only a débâcle of a similar nature to the one from which I'm extricating myself now. But as Vanessa said when I told her some of this, "the best fucks are the mad ones."

And as it's my birthday, I think I will also tell everyone at university that I want to indefinitely suspend working on the PhD. I can't afford the fees, which are now months overdue, but more than that, it's spoiling my enjoyment of reading, and the music itself. When I'm drunk, I talk to myself and say You don't have to do it.

I think I lost most of my local readers when I had to introduce the password, but just in case: George and Dragon, St George's Quay, 9.30ish.