A local slattern

Been helping Neil and Kev move into their new flat. Me and Kev alone in the new flat for about ten minutes, me wondering all the time whether I had the courage to just pull him towards me and start kissing him. I feel quite attracted to Kev, without it depending overmuch on his appearance. We just leant side by side over the fridge and talked about the light and which direction the flat faces.

I was on the phone to Kim telling her about the cackhanded way I approached the woman in the jazz club, and she said "Can't you just find a local slattern?" So I added "A local slattern" to my section "What are you looking for in a partner".

Tomorrow I'm going to see a woman about doing some voluntary work at a well-known counselling organisation. And before you say that a man who thrusts his mobile number into the unwilling hands of women in jazz clubs is not the right person for this, I will say that it's only on reception, directing the players in tattered relationships to the right listener. Getting drunk with a good friend and blabbing it all out after the fifth pint works best for me but I understand that sometimes it helps to be able to talk to a disinterested third party.

Most of yesterday I was in the hushed and beautiful, marble, brass and stained glass surroundings of our Town Hall for the appeal by a Bermuda-based landlowner against a Tree Preservation Order made on a piece of woodland near the city centre. I have to say that the Town and Country Planning Acts and their Amendments, the hefty tome of guidance from The Planning Inspectorate about its implementation, ("the Blue Book"), and the inch thick file of years old correspondence which the Council copied and provided for free, have made interesting reading over the last month or so.

The Official Solicitor was dressed in that female legal uniform of tight blackness. Even as a solictor, it's your body that matters. Our side made a couple of representations which occasionally made me wince: someone said that she was concerned about "traumatising the deer"; another called the trees "huggable". It's no good arguing from emotive anthropomorphism; it alerts them more when you can cite a paragraph from The Town and Country Planning (Trees) (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2008.

We were sent into the corridor for a long and boring ninety minutes while the committee made up its mind. Back in the chamber, the air was tense. I was irritated with the elderly committee member who had a tic which made him shuffle his papers compulsively.

Our pencil-skirted arbiter touched her black square glasses, commanding the room into alert attention. With flat calm, she delivered a short judgement in circumlocutory legal language. We had won.

Elated, we went to the pub. Coursing with the adrenaline of the victory of the amateurs against people who knew arboricultural planning law backwards, and for whom, finally, one ended up with a degree of respect, I got more drunk than normal, a bit loud probably. "Listen, with all respect Si, what the fuck are you doing with that woman?" A leaning man told that woman that he thought she was gorgeous. When he was away she said "All they want is for you to suck their cock." "Mmm, it does feel nice though, for a bloke" I said.

Pretty, my age, hair between brown and ginger in a roughly ragged bob which I suspect costs seventy quid a month to look neglected. Wordy. Likes food and drink, and grows much of her own vegetables. She wrote her first sentence in words all beginning with "a" and followed it with a joke about alliteration.

Hi Cliff

Thanks for the interest and I did laugh at your blurb. Am useless at the writing bit so if you'd like to meet up for a drink then pester away. Do you live in Lancaster?

---

Yes and yes. I live in Lancaster. Do you? Would love a drink. Could be free tomorrow, or later in the week. [number] or [email address].

No reply yet, but if she doesn't do so soon she's going to get another nudge on the elbow.