Treat yourself

I've had a good sweaty afternoon's humping with Ned, the new lodger. We both enjoyed it.

It came from the excellent local freecyling group so cost me nothing apart from £20 for White Van Man to pick it up. While we were driving back with it to my house I saw a rather foxy former colleague of mine from Bloom and Doom. I stuck my head out of the window and wolf-whistled at her. "Do you mind?" said White Van Man. "We've got an image problem."

In the pub with Trina. A tall man orders drinks in an unsually formal way: "I hear that you stock toffee cider. Is that the case? Good, two pints then please." He is with a younger, pretty woman who is smiling. They sit down and start chatting. A few moments later he is leaning over her, pushing her backwards. She seems to be shaking and resisting, turning her head away from him in an expression of fright. I am fearful of what is happening, and am reminded of the response that Bertrand Russell, a pacifist, once gave to someone who challenged him about what he would do if he saw someone being raped. "I would endeavour to interpose my person." I judge it is time for me to interpose my person.

As I stand up, she slumps slowly to the floor, fitting; it is epilepsy, not rape. A very attractive woman in a black and white striped woolen minidress calls an ambulance. After it is all over, she calls us to her table. Clumsily, I say "Well, if I ever have an epileptic fit in a pub I hope I'd wake up and see an attractive woman in a minidress standing over me." We chat for a few minutes and then she starts forward to give me a farewell hug. I lean backwards to compensate for my forwardness earlier, and shake her hand instead.

To Glasgow, for Mahler's Fifth with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, but before the concert, we sidled into the back of a group being shown round the City Halls, pretending not to see the notice saying that the tour was full. We marvelled at and stroked the tallest marble staircase in Europe, which beats the pretender in the Vatican into second place. In the 1880s, the budget was £180,000; it eventually cost £500,000. As we are both aesthetes of tender febrility, we sought balm after such a surfeit of beauty in the Horseshoe Bar.

We met a train driver of my acquaintance and his Nicaraguan girlfriend in Blackfriars. She had acquitted herself poorly last time we met, doing that infantile private whispering to her husband about a headache or something to do with gluten. This time, she's pleasant, in a careful way; someone I can't see lasting long in Drumchapel.

Donald Runnicles, conducting, did his best to confirm the stereotype of the up-himself artiste, jumping up and down on the podium in the loud bits, as if resentful that Mahler and the orchestra were gaining an unfair proportion of the attention. Thomas Hampson sang some of Mahler's songs, which sounded pertly Alpine and made me think of those green hats with little feathers in.

We stay in a cheap hotel, where Trina spills half a pint of beer over the quilt, and I write my card to Kim.