I like girls who are into drugs

After I thought Trina and I split up, I went trawling again and was contacted by Donna, the pharmaceutical marketing manager, (ha ha -- the irony) and we arranged to meet up in Glasgow in a couple of weeks' time.

Then on Thursday, she said she had a weekend free and asked if I had any plans. I said I was going to the soul festival at Morecambe, and she said she'd drive up. Fine. Trina's away birdwatching with a friend. Oops. Morals? Over there...

About 12ish Saturday, Erica rang and asked me what I was doing and I said I was meeting this friend from down south. Donna turned up five minutes later so after a decent enough interval, I suggested we go down to meet Erica and sit outside in the loveliest pub garden in Lancaster. I'm not really interested in this intense coquetry à deux, over a meal I can't afford, trying to artificially cook up one's emotions.

Straight away, Erica started an amusing but provoking response towards Donna, who had said that she lives in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere. "Sounds shit to me. God, I wouldn't like that." Donna worked a very slow way through two halves of cider; the unbridgeable gap between regular and occasional drinkers was silently laid bare.

"Yes," said Erica. "Italian Looking Woman was asking me if you were single." Please, Erica, no. "I did toy with the idea of saying that you were single but thought I'd better not." I tried to laugh it off, before changing the subject.

We went back to my house. She is an exciting kisser, quite aggressive, forcing my mouth wide open, which drew out my own tendencies in that direction. Out of bed though, she's pleasant. Family, tennis, work trips abroad, her sons, who are doing well at University, and how the house is a conversion from an old maltings.

As quickly as I could, I ushered us to Morecambe where there was a soul festival on. A great many people I knew were there, coming and going at our table. I felt at home and confident. My friend's gorgeous ex -- aka Latino Hellcat -- turned up and embraced me, rubbing some of her status off on me. I made some hints to Donna about ways of banishing any tiredness she might be feeling but she didn't take me up on it, nor was she interested in the poppers we were sharing. But we danced for hours, and we didn't leave early. I sometimes attract these middle class women who want fucking but don't give me the excitement that would make me want to do that.

Back home I surreptitiously texted Kim, who had asked how it was going. "Went out dancing till 3 with a big gang of us. Great kisser. Bit dull otherwise. Overall... BIG FUCKING MISTAKE."

Next afternoon we sat in the sun drinking Prosecco and listening to the DJs, with Erica and a couple of her friends and her husband, and Kirsty and her boyf, while my daughters sunbathed or played with a ball. Donna left, checking that we were still going to Glasgow, and I went for a pint and to phone Kim, before the final session, which featured some fine semi-nude Scottish DJ action.

This evening, Erica rang. "I'm just ringing to apologise for putting you on the spot a bit in the pub. I should have twigged you were up to something with Donna, so sorry about that."

"Looby, she's not for you. She's really nice and while you were away [buying more Prosecco] she opened up quite a lot -- a bit too much in fact, about her divorce and her surgery and everything, which is a bit much when you're spannered -- and she said she's never had a first date like this and she's rung her friend and told her fab it was, and how she never does things like this with her friends. But I'd be careful if I were you. She seems to be investing a lot in it."

Erica suggested I tell her -- before we go to Glasgow -- that I'm not interested in a long-distance relationship. Which is true. I don't want hours and hours on a train, endless fiddling with diaries, investing too much in every meeting and not being able to cancel with hours to go if you went out till silly o'clock the night before. "Tell her there's nothing to stop her coming over for dancey nights, but that it won't work as a relationship with her living so far away. Then at least you've told her early on. But don't keep her in the dark for too long."

Kim's advice: Throw your cards in with Trina. You're having a great time with her for the time being. There's no chance of it lasting for ever, seeing as eventually, the gap in feelings will emerge again. But until then, enjoy what you're doing with her.

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I'm working at the European elections this week. It's fucking knackering, it really is, spread over four or five days, but it goes a long way towards my ring-fenced contribution to me and Kirsty and the girls' holiday in France.

You're only supposed to have my job if you've got a car but I've always roped people in to help me. This afternoon, we had to pick up the polling booth, ballot boxes, and the several kilos of election paraphernalia from the Town Hall. Erica's mum, who usually does this for me, couldn't make it because she was taking her friend to radiotherapy in Blackpool, so I rang Francesca. Francesca is a top girl. I must think of a way of thanking her.

She turned up with an aged mother trying her best to be polite in the front, and a menagerie in the back. She'd just taken her mother to a death postponement appointment at the Royal Lancaster Infirmary. What a fine spectacle we must have created for the Town Hall staff, who watched us drive off with Francesca and her demented mother in the front, and a budgie, two dachshunds, a polling booth, and me, in the back.

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In other news, the rectangular black glasses, brunette, belted khaki mac, flatties, tight jeans -- Italian nurse, hasn't got back to me about the room. I don't understand women. Why would a woman like that not want to live in a kicked-in house with a grubby bath and no shower with two men old enough to be her father?