I was trying some trousers on in the charity shop the other day; they made me look like Max Wall. On pulling back the curtain, I was suprised to see Gaynor pulling her shirt off over her head. We walked up the hill together, past my house. "Well... yes. Yes. I do love him. I do." When you have to empathise it, there's a qualification coming.
"It's just... he's a smoker, and he drinks too much, and it's so difficult..." It's a reference to his lunatic Colombian wife who for five years now has put every spiteful obstacle in their path.
Had an evening with Kitty and Wendy, up to our knees in Prosecco and speed, trying to shunt the din of Wendy's child and the muzak which Kitty thinks improves an evening.
The day before, Wendy sent me a text. "I want you to sidle up to me on the train and offer me amphetamines." I had to pop back tio my house briefly and she kissed me on the lips outside. We (just me and her) arranged to have a trip in the park on Friday, but I'm at Manchester Crown Court that day as a couple of people I know are being prosecuted for chaining themselves to a barrel at a proposed fracking site.
Popped into the yoghurt-knitters' cafe (too remote to attract the violent nostalgia that has afflicted the Cereal Cafe recently) just to pinch their internet. Three people I know turned up and asked to share the table. Mandy, who sat next to me is gorgeous, a kink-haired clever high currency in the circles of left-wing men who fancy her and the derring-do she might provide.
"Yeah, not too bad," she said, starting on house removation, a safe topic in the conversation of the macrame belt of Lancaster. "I just feel I am spending a lot of money every day before I even put my clothes on." "I wouldn't have thought you'd have to pay for it," I said. I spent some of the night re-running an imagined conversation, in which I mouthed the words "I want to fuck you" at the threshold of her lip-reading perception.
Got to my girls' house. "Just been for a pint with Mandy. She's a foxy..." "Don't even think about it. Her boyfriend's younger, taller and funnier than you," said my youngest. "You're just so sad Dad."
Mid-Gogglebox, my eldest said she wanted to be in the police. "Which sort?" I asked. "The sort that batter down the door." This is a bit of a hardening of attitudes from a daughter who a few months ago was asking what grades you'd need to get into Durham to do Archaeology.
I'm stopping on Trina's narrowboat for a few days because the new lodger moved in a week earlier than I'd thought, so I had to rearrange the lodgers a bit and put the Chinese girl into my room, assuming that a Chinese will have least objection to sleeping on a futon. But that means I'm a bit homeless for a few days.
It's moored at Garstang, a lovely place in which to sleep. I've read every word of today's Guardian, even down to knowing that Brentford have sacked their manager and that squash has failed to be included in the Tokyo Olympic games. After a couple of small sherries last night I slipped and dropped my phone in the canal, as well as banging my arse really hard on the metal canal bank liner effort, which is making me walk around like I've got severe constipation.
I got the bus tonight back to internetted Lancaster, partly to pick up a conversation on the dating site. I told her that I'd like to meet in a pub whose name could have been used by a figure in our culture who evokes the sophistication to which the English can attain at their most refined -- Benny Hill -- and so we're meeting on Monday in The Fighting Cocks.
