My house, whilst simple, is better than a Travelodge for a woman from Durham

Danni replied to my email telling her I don't want to carry on chatting any more with good grace, saying that she regretted that we missed each other by a few days in Brussels when she was working there and I was cavorting artistically at the Belgian State's expense. She also said she's had a couple of big family problems lately which has left her with no desire for "chit-chat".

A nitpicking person might ask why, in that case, she didn't just tell me about them, and then we could have suspended diplomatic relations for a while until things were better for her, but I'm just pleased we've managed to conclude it with decorum.

This evening I bumped into my literate and witty gay friends Keith and Neil in the pub. There were several parents and offspring floating around, looking a bit lost, like foreigners. We deduced that it must be undergraduate open day tomorrow at Lancaster. There was this head-turningly attractive woman there. I moved my position at the bar to be next to her. She was ordering some food in a northeastern accent that was as gorgeous as she looked, with her black hair and a lovely green top pulled together with a thin cord tie just above her tits. I can't remember how I started talking to her but it was something to do with her accent. "Is it so obvious I'm not from here?" she asked. "Yes, it's the colour of your eyes," which I thought was quite a good line. I was trying to see if she had a wedding ring on.

"Do you fancy one more in the Roebuck?" said Keith. "You go ahead," I said. "I'm going to engineer another conversation with that woman." I found her and her son and we had a few minutes' conversation about the relative merits of Lancaster and Aston to do his Business Studies degree. No wedding ring. I bid them a good evening and I hoped that in the tenth of a second in which I looked at her as I left I conveyed how attractive I found her. Nothing came of it but it was good flirting practice.

But the quest for a bird in the hand - or better, two in the bush - continues. Hazel is an architect currently living in Edinburgh who has just finished a postgraduate degree there. In a most welcome reversal of the usual pattern, she asked me if I would like to come up for a drink. As she's not familiar with Glasgow, we're meeting there next Tuesday. She might not want to talk shop, and part of me is hoping that she'll say "No thanks looby I'd rather get shitfaced in some dodgy boozer", but I'm going to ask her if she's been round Alexander "The Greek" Thomson's villa in Pollokshields, with its peculiar mixture of Italianate and cod-Egyptian.

She's taking up a job in New York in October, so if something stirs in us as we wander around one of the architectural highlights of suburban Glasgow, we're going to have to pack a lot in in a few weeks.