Fortnight. Mary-Ann.

I'm a participant in an art project called Fortnight. Every day we receive text messages telling us to go somewhere to do something. We wear felt badges to signal ourselves to others and in which are contained little microchips which set off the machinery which is often a catalyst to the activity to which we are called.

Today, we were invited to go the old Port Commissioners' Office on the Quay, and look for a record player. Tapping my badge on the record player produced a recording of Freddie Mercury and Monserrat Caballet or whatever she's called, singing histrionically.

As it was playing I got a text message telling me to go through the door on the right. In the room was a table, a chair, and a selection of postcards. Old Penguin covers, much-repeated artwork, that sort of thing. We were invited to put on some headphones and listen to some music on an iPod whilst writing a postcard to "someone you are thinking of today". I think of Mary-Ann all the time.

I don't think I've ever held an iPod in my hand. All I ever get from them is that someone stops the conversation for five minutes while its owner searches for a photo, before they finally say they can't find it, and then they look at me to crank up the conversational engine once more. But only until the next distracting spark of never to be fulfilled illustrative promise stamps on talk once more. I pressed several buttons and it implied that it was playing some sort of Arabic music; but I only heard silence.

I had a couple of drinks afterwards - an amiable nuclear engineer who was about to go to play football. Working and middle class, a foot in both camps, like me. Really though. All middle class people say they're working class and you can suss the fakers out in ten seconds.

On my way home I texted Fortnight.

Today's thing at the Quay has contributed to an incipient, I was going to say love but let's more realistically say lust affair with someone. There are other thanks I could give you but to give me an unexpected way of giving a little tap to the spinning top of our relationship was the most important one of them all.

Their response was flattening and, over-reacting a bit, I found it very irritating.

Did Fortnight (almost) get you laid looby?...TELL!x"

I looked at the phone, downturned.

Oh no, it's not about "getting laid", it's not about striving to have sex with someone, "Wow, thanks Fortnight, I got fucked, in 7 different equally satisfying positions! Bit like porn! Wow! I must Facebook it to make it real!" No no no no, it's about mutual wanting, it's about becoming closer, and about having a fortuitous chance to express this. And for that, thanks.

Lots of other things to talk about, about our ridiculous council controlling Guy Fawkes Night, but in my head, Mary-Ann, Mary-Ann, Mary-Ann. I've suggested Sheffield: woody parks, good pubs. I will book a return ticket for the same day as an insurance policy, as an antidote for any reckless suggestions that her adverb-twisting, desire-inspiring wrenching of our native language might provoke.