Today's new matches, looby

It's half past ten and I'm up at 5am tomorrow to be Presiding Officer at the polling station at the University. Morgane came in an hour ago and told me she'd split up with her boyfriend, and I said that me and Trina had done the same.

I took the ballot box and all the other stuff up to the Uni yesterday. The taxi driver knows Wilma and we were chatting about break-ups. I told him about mine and he said he'd broken up with his. "Fancy a swap?" he said. "She's gorgeous. Sixty but looks about forty-three." "Yeah, Trina's sixty as well." I was on the edge of asking him for an introduction.

We had a pre-booked holiday in St Malo, so agreeing that there was no point in wasting all her that money, we set off to Portsmouth, from where the MV Bretagne made lowing progress across the Celtic Sea. We sat in at cabaret, where an artiste threw three oranges onto his head and they all landed still on top of one another, that kind of thing. An almost extinct, technical, unthinking craft, a relief from pop music's and theatre's seriousness.

A chatty Norwegian woman joined us. She surreptitously passed us a bottle of aquavit at thigh level whilst talking at length about her fuckwit husband -- a story of which there might be another side. The aquavit was delicious; the man balanced two sabres on his chin, connecting them at their points. At the next table a group of three beshorted lads rejected my eye contact and laughing attempts to merge the two tables.

We went to our cabin. Trina started snoring so I went to sleep in the corridor. I'd forgotten to take a pillow so it was very uncomfortable. At some hour a female security guard type person someone came round and roused me, asking me what I was doing there. "Desolé. Elle ronfle -- bruit." "Is OK," and she went off smiling.

We stayed in a ruthlessly modernised flat in a grand 1770's corsaire's building, with plastic wood-effect panelling stapled over the stone. It had a precipitous staircase and only one window in the whole flat, which made the bedroom stiflingly hot. In the middle of the second night Trina came down and demanded that I go upstairs and sleep up there. In the morning she said that she didn't remember how she came to be sleeping in the living room.

We spent most of the time on the beach with our Carrefour haul of cider and wine, thus sustaining the reputation for decorous drinking behaviour in public for which the English are renowned. I was pleased one day to to see the habit spreading to some young people, sitting there with a carry-out of Grimbergen.

Back in England, any implied hope for a reconciliation died as sulphorously as an extinguished match. For example, here's this evening's email exchange.

From: Trina, 1601
Win tickets to the Ashes on [Hardy's, the winemaker's, website]

From: looby, 1637
Brill! Thank you -- any of those matches would beat the last day of today's inevitable draw between Northants and Lancashire that has provided gripping entertainment today!

From: looby, 2019
Ahh... I understand now ... it comes off a bottle of Hardy's :)

From: Trina, 2024
Once a drunk always a drunk.

From: looby, 2029
No doubt unintentionally, you sent that twice :)

From: looby, 2106
But not that bad a one if it means a day at the cricket!

From: Trina, 2112
Actually I get several messages from you twice. The latest was today - "Thank you. It will be a very interesting night" You were probably drunk though anyway.

This refers to a text message I sent this afternoon referring to the election tomorrow. I hadn't had a drink at that point.

From: looby, 2115
Of course I was! For God's sake woman, do you have so little respect for me to think that I would still be sober at 4pm?

From: Trina, 2117
Fed up with word-playing. Good night.

She's nicer than this most of the time, and was generous and kind to the last, leaving me with some Monsoon Malabar coffee before she started clearing out her room. But it's too fraught for me. I am simple and want a quiet life without much drama.