South Lakes Cow

Not a very nice way to talk about someone

To Westmorland General with my daughter for her appointment with a gorgeous opthalmist. The latter was thirtysomething, dressed in straight-leg sea-blue creased trousers and a duck egg blue blouse with white polka dots and a deep collar. I liked the different shades of one colour, and her straggly dark blonde hair. As she leant forward to put a plastic spatula on the tip of her nose and told Melanie to look at it, I checked my unsighted angle behind her elbow: down the open crest of a crease-wrinkle of her shirt, the curve of a dark purple bra.

It was all over in ten minutes. We bid each other a civil goodbye. No wedding ring. Outside I said "Melanie, you've just been through a distressing examination which went on for at least six minutes. I realise you're a bit traumatised, so what we'll do is to have a recuperative dinner in Wetherspoons." We scoffed and drank and played a game on the serviette where you have to draw illustrations of famous book titles and the other person has to guess them. I like being with my daughters individually.

At 11ish that night I dashed down to my local. A rich man, Catholic, who seemed to latch onto me because I said that the last book I read was Brideshead Revisited, who lives in Mexico--something to do with oil--was trying to remind himself of the life he abandoned in favour of money, doing a sort of class tourism, interpellating us as authentic. When he went to the loo, we all shook our heads and I swigged his double whisky. I apologised and bought him another, hoping I made the point: we're not your subjects, however much money you've got.

J invited me back to the Musicians' Co-op (of which I was a founder member and which J now runs). We went upstairs to its recording studio and J put on some Clifford Brown and we smoked a couple of joints. I love Clifford Brown and I had to stand up and dance a bit. J talked about how the Council doesn't like something--the Musicians' Co-op--that is out of their control. I kept nodding, very much agreeing with his political points, but unable not to dance to Brown's visceral trumpet playing.

Full day tomorrow, as a couple of people are coming round to see the room, so I'm going to have to sellotape some of the drifting wallpaper down before they arrive, and put the heating on for the first time since Csilla and Petar left. One, a young girl who works locally, at 11, then the one I prefer at the moment, a 28-y-o female Naughty Boys Studies postgrad who wants to bring her cat, at 12.30. Straight over to Neil and Kev's for lunch and a run through for the Dickens night, then to Liverpool to meet the Scouse nurse at 5.15.

The Prof has suggested "drinks and tapas" next Wednesday at a place which looks a bit pricey to me. So say, with restraint, three drinks at three quid, plus four tapas at four quid? So that'll be twenty-five quid minimum then. Couldn't we just go down the local boozer?

I'm still wishing Kim hadn't recalled what she said.