You don't understand me

I went to have a haircut before meeting Karen. The hairdresser said she was from Bradford and had taught herself a bit of Urdu.

"Why did you learn Urdu?" "Well," -- the hesitation on the pivot of concealment and honesty -- "I had to." She told me of the pleasure it gave, listening to a headful of abuse from the local Pakistanis before sending them off with a rejoinder in a tongue they'd thought opaque.

Halfway through my inconsequential drink with Karen, I went to the bar and met a couple of the barmaids who work in the same pub as she used to. "How's it going?" "Naah, friendzone. And some bloke has plonked himself next to us and is going on and on and on about his fucking split-up." "Well, it's a bit of a stupid place to bring her, isn't it? Anyway, serves you right for being such a slag."

Karen's "friend" was wearing a repellent T-shirt, four images of women's arses (just their arses) in different knickers. He misses his ex-wife so much that after I left he started asking Karen to snog him. She told me that a few years ago he was acquitted of rape.

The landlady came round to clear the glasses. "How's it going -- Slag?"

After three hours, I was drunkenly paddling in a level of self-disclosure I didn't want to yield, so made up an excuse about the girls. "You off?, said one of the girls at the bar. "You know, you can do better than Karen." "Can I? Who with?"

Wendy came round to help me sort my house out a bit. My front room has been a depressing sight for a week or so since my book club friend dropped most of my furniture off, none of which I could move by myself.

Our efforts to move the awkward, tall bookcase looked like something out of Laurel and Hardy, but we managed it all. Kitty turned up to help, which she did by twiddling a glass of Riesling. I'd made them a bit of dinner, a simple potato and bean bake effort and a Non-Specific Levantine Salad, and was surprised at how much they enjoyed it. We sat outside in the sun with more wine, Wendy's gorgeous blue dress almost a character in itself. "Nope," she said. "Children and dogs now, and that's it."

Looking round the room afterwards, I felt rejuvenated (rescued?) somatically and mentally; whilst even at the time twinging with wondering if this new-found feeling would be sufficiently robust to withstand my nightly extended remix of mutterings of abandonment, of being unloved, the same sentences addressed to Wendy over and over again.

But in the meantime, I have a front room which has Wendy all over it, and is bordering on the pretty, and because of this, I've got right back into reading, for not reading itself is a form of unhealth. From the quotations that precede Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, John Bunyan writes in Augustinian mood.

...gladly would I have been in the condition of the dog or the horse, for I knew they had no soul to perish under the everlasting weight of Hell or Sin, as mine was like to do... [A]nd though I saw this, felt this, and was broken to pieces with it, yet that which added to my sorrow was, that I could not find with all my soul that I did desire deliverance."

Deliverance. What a pregnant word.

As she was arranging my books, Wendy showed an interest in a collection of A L Kennedy's short stories but forgot to take it with her. I inscribed it. To Wendy, with a houseful of love X. I put it in an envelope, wrote her name in the form that her ex is now copying, and cycled round to deliver it -- something which required tactics from 'Allo 'Allo! I parked my bike a few yards away, crouched down close to the pavement, slowly and as noiselessly as possible pushed it through the letterbox, then eased the letterbox's flap back shut. A low voice from inside.

I ran back to my bike and cycled round the back alley to avoid being seen. I ran into her washing stretched across the back alley, her blue dress interfering with my face, her ex's voice unmistakable now.

A-level results day. I should be happy, stars and distinctions shining everywhere. But I'm going to lose you. Middle daughter, who goes went to a posh comp in Preston, said that after they'd all opened their determining envelopes, they'd had Buck's Fizz and strawberries and cream. Eldest, who goes up the road to a school sometimes described as "mixed", said that they'd had Tesco Value chocolate bites and tap water.

To Morecambe.

In the pub, I stroke every toilet roll holder for coke, but it's not rush hour. I'm here because I had a ticket to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak, but I didn't receive the email informing us of the top secret venue.

In the charity shop, a man is haggling over the price of two black corsets. "Hope it bloody fits her," he says. "Do you want a bag? Or do you want to walk round Morecambe with two corsets?" "Don't give a shit really. We're getting divorced. Last bloody present she ever gets."