Lose Weight This Weekend -- Guaranteed!

This feels a bit awkward. I am in the front room with Tom next to me and Ned opposite. I would be upstairs but Trina has gone to bed and I don't want to disturb her. We are all trying to concentrate on our own things at hand. There's some white music of Ned's execrable taste playing on his computer, because we all want to listen to music which is an argument against the existence of God--for surely, a benevolent, omnipotent being would not allow The Cranberries to exist.

There was only one full day clear after the party before Trina and I ironed our groove slacks and packed our vanity cases for the Modern Soul and House Music Weekender in Blackpool. (Anyone who well-meaningly but erroneously mentions Northern or Motown in the comments will be made to listen to the collected works of The Cranberries). It's a regular feature of my diary and is one of the friendliest and most enjoyable weekends of my year. I look forward to it immensely.

We checked into our fleapit hotel on Friday afternoon--we can't afford the deluxe package with accommodation in the venue--and then spent the weekend on the Pizza, Dancing and E Diet. It has yet to make it into Cosmopolitan but guarantees instant results over a mere weekend. I picked up our tickets--pleased with myself in front of Trina for getting them cheaper from a DJ I know--and then danced our way through till breakfast.

Update: I stopped writing downstairs as my toes were curling back onto my foot. I am now on a quiet bit at work, where one of the clients has just borrowed a book with the word "sex" printed in huge red letters on the front cover. You're supposed to ask them to show you the book so you can record the loan, but I'll just look up "sex" on our list of books in a minute.

On Saturday afternoon we budged up on the sofa to accommodate a couple of early 30s girls from Norfolk. The chattier and more attractive one told us that her mate had copped off last night, "so I'm spending my nights alone." Then we understood why. A large black man whose face looked like a relief map of the Lake District arrived at the table with a cold bottle of Taittinger; he generously poured some for me and Trina, producing, with what I thought was charming aplomb, two extra flutes for us. The girl from Norfolk, in turn, produced a vile, lukewarm "Blanc de Blanc" which was barely drinkable. As Leroy Bassenthwaite referred vaguely to a "business" in London, I remembered a more or less identical conversation with him last year, on the very same sofa.

In the foyer I meet two people from Morecambe, and I tell them about turning down a cloak-and-dagger proposal from a mutual friend, who wanted to get in for Saturday night for free. It involved meetings in car parks, scissors and double-sided sellotape. He's broke and he and his "wild Latino hellcat" as he calls her, want to get into the main night of the weekend for nothing. I told them that I wouldn't do that, and would pay for a pass for them both, at the discount rate from my DJ pal.

On Sunday we had to check out at 10am, so after three-and-a-half hours' sleep we were up to pack our things, before we fortified ourselves for one last push with a greasy spoon fry up. We got back to the Hilton and settled down into the dance room we liked the most. Before long the staff came round, turning the lights down and drawing the curtains, and the music got more housey. In a couple of hours Trina was somewhat away with the catnip and interrupted the dancing to tell various women in what ways they looked good, and all that somewhat false female camaraderie.

But then, the girl dancing next to us had helped Trina when the latter had a nosebleed the previous evening; more interesting to me though, was her dress, one of the sexiest in a weekend of sexy dresses. It had one long zip that started at the above-the-knee hem, snaked its way up to her cleavage then turned left to form a large asymmetrical collar. I couldn't help but imagine unzipping it all. She acknowledged Trina's compliment, but was in a similar situation to ourselves, and turned back to dance.

We lasted until 6pm. Trina drove us home through clouds of blinding lorry-rain, complaining about irresponsible drivers going at 80mph while she did 77. Back here, a letter showed that some people don't have much time off over Christmas and the New Year. Everyone was lively and chatty and curious, but I could hardly speak and was glad when they went to bed. Trina and I sat up drinking until 2am, stretching it out until we were fading in and out of sentences. We shouldn't have had three bottles of wine, but fuck it, it's only all the time once a year.

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Since then, Trina has been here now for four days, and I am irritated with her. Her presence is too big; she sits and does a performance of patience if I have to get on with anything--which soon, of course, prevents me doing anything but court her. I want her to go away, for us to enjoy looking back on a fabulous weekend without this resentment in tail.

On Monday I suddenly took ill, and crawled to bed at midday, vomiting. At some point in the evening, Trina lumbered into bed, almost snapping my leg in half, then suffocating her desirable but inagile figure against me, making me groan with nausea as she threw a hand round my stomach, talking and asking me questions, stroking me with her hot, unwelcome hands. After a while she fell asleep and started snoring. I nudged her and told her she was doing so. She histrionically got out of bed, complaining "There's nowhere for me to go." I didn't have the energy to list the many things she could do in my house or out of it during my indisposition. She went off to her narrowboat and I moaned with a mixture of nausea and relief.

Last night I slept badly on the sofa to evade her snoring. I'm hoping she'll be generous enough to offer to sleep there herself tonight.