What the

A noisy and what felt like a largely sleepless night: the taxi driver who lives opposite snapping me into wakefulness with his car starting at 4.30. Someone locked out, banging a letterbox. Students coming noisily home.

Today we held the auditions for our--mainly Neil's--Dickens night. I was pacing my room at lunchtime, nervous about how it would go.

Me to Trina:

Bit nervous about it to be honest--do you ever get that knot in your stomach when you're about to do something for which you're not competent? We've got to present a professional face and I (I'm not sure about the others) certainly haven't auditioned anyone before. But I suppose the thing is to *appear* as though you know what you're doing.

I went round to Neil and Kev's house to await the arrival of an academic who's taking part. She arrived in black heels, a slender thick-fabricked grey V-necked shift dress, her curving wave of blonde hair swept aside from a far-displaced parting. It was impossible not to flirt with her. She referred to her husband as "the current Mr T". "'Current Mr T'? Why, do you get through them a bit?" I asked.

Neil struck an excessively formal note. "Thank you for coming, Dr T----," he said. "You've introduced a civilised note into the proceedings." I looked at Dr T. "Why, are you particularly debauched?" she asked. "Yes, you'll have to excuse me," I said, "if I start chopping a couple of lines up on the table halfway through. I get a bit tired in the afternoons."

We sat in the gallery of the Dukes Theatre and auditioned a grand total of the one person who turned up. Dr T dealt with it with aplomb. She bought me a coffee, a solecism I had to swallow, lacking any money at all. Neil, understandably pleased to have a Dickens scholar captive, spent tiring time on metatalk about background and context and editors and editions; but, I thought, not nearly enough about the details of the performance. It'll be alright on the night, but I've worked with people like this before: auteurs who are enamoured of their own idea at the expense of the practicalities of its realisation.

The girl who came round the other day to look at the house texts, saying she'd like the double room. I lie in response, saying it's already gone. She was too tense and guarded. She'd be better off living in a household of overweight young men with straggly ponytails and big black T-shirts who are doing Maths or Computer Science, who don't cook much but take their computers down Wetherspoons to talk subjunctively in RP in a style which sounds like a commentary on the conversation they could be having.

The Enviromental Science graduate and future teacher I met the other day, a much more welcome candidate, sends an email asking when he could come round and sort out "the deposit and keys and stuff." Thank fuck for that. I'm seeing him tomorrow evening. I hope it's cash.

Trina is off out this evening with some of her fellow librarians. I like it that it's not all-consuming. But the thought of her is a frequent one, and I want to talk to her, or better, say nothing, in bed. If I had a bed.