Fitbit extends an olive branch, with kisses suffixed, suggesting with a lack of sensibility that is almost admirable, a meet up in the week before Christmas, when I'm off.
"No I'm sorry love. We're no longer as much friends as we ever were, but no more being stood up without an explanation and waiting for hours on end in the pub without any news from you. It'll be OK though -- I'm not at all sure we'll bump into each other xx."
What a pleasure there is to be had from being calmly and reasonably assertive.
Life at the new house continues as a daily tip-toe on cat-ice. The second morning I was there, I came down and offered to make everyone coffee, in what I now realise was an over-familiar gesture of housely comradeship.
The landlady -- a woman carrying an obvious early childhood trauma which I expect I will hear about in a prolix sermon that could be visited upon me at any moment -- spoke without preamble. "I'm a bit spiky in the morning. It's nothing personal."
Recognising a draining mental when I see one, I tried to fend off the louring mood. "Oh well," I said, turning to her boyfriend, "we'll just have to talk amongst ourselves."
My attempt at cheer was not appreciated. "Oh.. I can't stand this," she said, perhaps frustrated that the attention was no longer on her, and flounced out. With that English determination not to acknowledge anything awkward, I manufactured a bit of conversation with the boyfriend before fleeing delicately upstairs, only to find her on the stairs with her head in her hands. I had to ask her to shift her traumabulk out of the way so that I could pass.
Then, the other day, it's 11.15am, and I put a podcast from a DJ I like on -- low, I hasten to add; I'm not antisocial with my music.
There's a crashing and banging and slamming of a door. My hope that she's moving some furniture about is ousted by a guess that she's pissed off again. From outside my room, she calls "I was trying to have a birthday lie-in. Never mind, I'm awake now, carry on." Superadded to the financial costs, every house share has those of emotional management.
I'm up in six hours' time, at 5am, for a weekend in Lancaster. Me and Wendy are going to take her dog out, then we're going for our dinner down The Fur Coat and No Knickers Arms, which will be full of chesty men pivoting on their heels as they shout exhibitionist sentences. But we'll shun them in our enclave. I'll be tired, but it's dosing day tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to being with a girl I love -- and whose qualified affection I am slowly coming round to appreciate without self-pity and complaints that it doesn't involve sex.
Then, I'm going round to Kirsty's and staying the night. Kirsty surprised me the other day when she rang me up and suggested we -- me her and our girls -- could all go to the same lovingly remembered holiday venue in France we had for a fortnight every decade, next July. Sometimes I look at Kirsty, in her secondhand clothes and little skirts and listen to her with her pisstaking which never veers over into unkindness, and sit on the settee next to her-- and think to myself, "you fucking idiot."
