Me and Csilla make it together

I've just closed the door behind Stefan and Csilla for the last time. Yesterday, The Woman Who Only Wears Secondhand came round with her car to move them. As she and Stefan were getting ready to take everything to the new flat, I said "Csilla. Now at last, we will finally have sex."

Csilla and I cooked a big and successful tea, getting through a bottle of wine each even before they got back. Everyone woofed all the food. The Woman Who Only Wears Secondhand sat there chatting and crocheting, which had a hypnotic effect unrelated to the fact that I was now well into my second bottle of wine.

I'll miss seeing Csilla wandering about in her pyjamas in the mornings. The rent always on time, and in cash. I won't miss their smoking -- little by little, the undertaking to smoke only outside was altered as the long Lancashire winters pressed on, and "outside" started meaning "in the porch with the door open" or "in the cellar while he's out". I won't miss the breathtaking heating bills, Stefan throwing my almost empty toothpaste tube away without asking me first, or his opening bills addressed to me. I won't miss their way they never reused their carrier bags, so now I have hundreds under the sink.

It was, for the greater part, a successful way of sharing a house. But next time, genuine non-smokers only, and people who are out of the house more often.

It was the Modern Soul and Jazz-Funk night on Saturday. I had the girls, so I negotiated with a neighbour that I'd put them to bed, then give them her number to ring in case anything happens while I'm out of my tree on a dancefloor in Blackburn.

John arrives to pick me up. "Is Keith not coming?" I ask. John had gone to collect him but his wife had told him "You're not going out dancing tonight - it's Kyle [their son's] birthday." "For God's sake," I said. "Why didn't he sort that out before?" We sensed we hadn't had the whole story. Why would she want him there at 10pm on their eleven-year-old's birthday? "Under the cosh," we both agreed.

"Never mind," said John, "I don't feel like my Dad's looking over my shoulder now, so we can have some of this." We got the mirror and the little knife out. In the car, John had a superb CD of classic Philadelphia songs remixed in a housey style. The mesmerising lights of the motorway, the music, the refreshments, all aspects of an synaesthetic, coloured, skin-stroking, pleasure.

On the way back I talked about Mary-Ann, and how I came to realise that there'd be too much of my life in which she'd never take part. He talked about the days when a bigger group of us (including several girls) used to go in two car loads to Blackburn. It felt like an elegy, a roundabout way of saying that we might not bother going again. John's a bit of a Golden Ager and not very interested in contemporary soul music; I am, very much. I don't simply want to listen over and over again to the same hundred tracks--as good as they are--from ten or twenty years ago.

Alliterative Woman did reply in the end and we're going for a coffee later today. I showed her profile to The Architect, who said "She sounds not too bad. Though I am sensing something slightly missing....can't put my finger on it." I haven't any sense of excitement about it; it feels as significant as nipping out to buy a newspaper. Maybe that's the best way to approach it.

I've had a couple of very pleasant conversations with a couple of other women too. Someone who's finished an MA in Mediaeval Literature and can read Norse. But... she's a Christian. A witty couple of messages from a musician who starts her profile by saying "Some of you don't half write some bolloxy profiles many of which are total fabrication." But she's in London. Another Londoner said "you sound just what a certain type of girl is looking for", which started my day with a little skip. Kathryn (Rhode Island Red) finally writes back, leaving an interval long enough to be eloquently clear, suggesting seeing the latest Werner Herzog film next week.

It always feels like it's just not quite happening though.