Square dancing

Gerry and I arrived at the pub and I apologised for telling her by text last night that I wanted to ---- my ---- in her ---- while she ---- her ---- ---- ----, something meant for someone else.

It's an unattractive pub, swirly carpets, darkly stained wood, one big room, glaring lights, and a laddish hardness about it with men performing that weird modern handshake involving a thumb grab with your hands at 45 degrees, which I suppose is used to indicate and threaten a physical power underlying the friendship. It's a slight improvement on that offputting fingers-only offer, which instantly makes me mistrust a man.

The comment on the first track set the tone for the night. Issac Hayes's Theme from Shaft had someone wondering if we had "anything different", or "some rock n' roll". Later, the barmaid came up to me and said "Have you got anything you can boogie to?" I was incredulous: I was at that moment playing Heatwave's Boogie Nights.

Gerry rose to the occasion, sending round a sheet of A4 and a pen to ask people to write down two tracks they'd like to hear next time, although we have just found out from the landlady that there won't be a next time.

We got a few dancing though, including Erica and Mr Erica. He said some drunken but very nice things to me which ended in cheek kissing which was honest and heartfelt. Quite surprisingly, Ingrid, looking rather fanciable in a white blouse and dancing straight away, turned up in the company of my old time partner in performance crime.

We were struggling with the equipment a bit--we had knocked this together in a very short time, the amp didn't seem to cope very well with the low output of this computer, and Gerry struggled with the way that Linux sometimes makes simple tasks like playing records difficult. I managed to get away with a couple of my favourite trackss, like Alexander O'Neal's Fake, and Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' The Love I Lost. I thought we did OK, but I'm relieved we haven't been asked back.

Csilla, Stefan and the Girl Who Only Wears Secondhand Clothes came round for tea. Pudding was apple crumble made from windfall I gathered from the canalside. As I was engaged in the apples' somewhat faffy preparation (they're small, so time you've cut the bad bits out and cored them you don't end up with much fruit), the phone rang. The number started 001. America? On my mobile?

To my delight and surprise, it was the Architect. Our first date ("clever, a good drinker, and fit", I thought) was also our last, as she landed a job in New York and despite a few transatlantic phone calls, we drifted out of touch. She missed Hurricane Sandy (although Glasgow in November isn't much of an improvement).

Assiduous readers of this chronicle might recall that another suitor of hers found out her email password and read our emails to each other. Irked by something in them, he contacted me through the dating site where both of us had met her.

She suggested meeting in Glasgow today but I'm broke and can't get up there. Instead I will wonder anew at the kind of person who asks you if you can play something you can dance to, halfway through this.