44 Acacia Avenue declares Christmas

It's a credit to the new lodger that I've not had to mention him here. He's in the kitchen at the moment reading the Guardian and peeling a pear. I wonder why, when he has a halfway decent job at the Uni, he's renting a small, chilly room in a house that is more shabby than chic.

He manfully bought another bottle of cava when he walked in after work the other day to see me, together with Trina and the lodgers--I should indicate to Crinklybee that Trina and the Lodgers isn't a little-known Stockport-based indie band of the mid-90s--as we were midway through an early declaration of Christmas which had begun at midday. I haven't got a bed frame and so my mattress rests on the floor directly above his room, so the poor lad had to put up with his boozy housemates carousing beneath him until 5am and then the soundtrack of sex from above shortly afterwards.

Next day I was apologetic. "I'm sorry about the noise last night Tom, it was just that we got slightly pissed and then I got this urge to shower Trina in a volcano of love lava." Or words to that effect.

"No, it's OK, honest. I didn't hear much. And anyway, it's Christmas."

Saturday afternoon was the Christmas party of the organisation for which I work part-time. The nature of what it does leads it to attract intelligent middleaged women in well-cut clothes in good fabrics, and the odd be-jumpered man. I expected it to be a cool affair, all quiche and grant applications.

In fact, there was an acre of food and intoxicating liquor. Once we'd got a few down us it was a conversational bagatelle game, the women pinging around remarks that fluctuated between wit and seriousness. It was an afternoon I don't think men would be good at, as they'd demand more silence and an audience. If you wanted to say something on Saturday afternoon, it had to be clever, relevant and short. I didn't want to leave, but then I saw Dorothy at the door putting on her coat in a way which I thought implied "You've had enough; we're off."

In Dorothy's car I told her about how corroding I had found it being single for so long in my twenties. She told me about her ex-"partner"'s (ugh, I hate that word) brain tumour and infidelity and how she doesn't know to what extent it would be right to causally collapse those two events, and how much simpler it is for its public presentation if she does so.

She was off to Manchester in the evening for a show and said she had an hour to kill in Lancaster before she picked up her friend, our boss. "I would ask you up to mine for a coffee Dorothy, but I've got things to do now with the girls and Christmas--you know." "Oh no, no, that's alright looby," and she told me how she can easily lose an hour playing some game on her phone.

A few minutes later we slowed in a traffic jam on Caton Rd in Lancaster and she yawned. "Oooh, dear," she said. "I could go to bed." "Well, it was more a coffee I was thinking of," I said, and she slapped my knee. "Shut up!" We were silent for a few seconds and then I said "I think it's the sewage works they're doing that's causing this." "What, making your head go funny? "I was just trying to change the subject."

I was heady with the wine and successful flirting and wanted to carry on the mood, so I went into Wetherspoons and ordered a large glass of Shiraz. I sat by myself amidst the shouty men and regretted doing so.