In which I get caught

I'm on a train to York, the youngest person in first class, on my way to see my mum and sister for a couple of days in the land of the two quid pint. We've just passed something labelled the Crewe Lifestyle Centre. I spent a week in Crewe once on one of those training courses that send you out with not a clue about how to do the job, after which I got the impression that lifestyle in Crewe is meeting in the bus shelter for a spit.

Yesterday, an overdue meet-up with polyglot and organ-grinder kalebuel of this parish, who has been educating, informing and entertaining me - and I hope, many other readers -- from the right hand side of this blog for several years. We wound round a couple of pubs, including a money-drenched place in Lincoln's Inn Fields for men with briefs, where I was served a cheeseboard that looked as though it had been regurgitated.

Then, rather glamorously, I discovered middle daughter was a few minutes' walk away having just left the Adelphi on The Strand. Little ripples of dad pride as we all chatted together easily. In fact, the whole afternoon was effortless.

I left my daughter at Charing Cross as she made her way up to her friend's dad's flat in Holloway, and fell into drunken kleptomania, a thrill, as well as a money saver which has served me well for decades. I went to Sainsbury's, stole some cider, and then, irriated by the theft's easiness, I went back for some wine.

They were up the the challenge. Outside the shop, a man sitting insouciantly on a bench pointed to the bulge under my jacket, and took me back to the shop. I already had another bottle in my bag, so while the store detectives were calling the police, I tried to surreptitiously put that bottle onto a trolley behind me. I missed, and it smashed onto the floor, an archipelago of shards in a red mere.

The police asked me if I was known to them. I told them about my unimpressive criminal record -- a minor drug offence. The manager arrived. One of the policemen muttered a script. "Well, if you're ok with a banning order..." and I felt a sense of relief at getting away with only an adminstrative order, whilst my blood thumped through noisily through my head.

They went away again and came back with a letter, headed "pPrivate [sic] and confidential", addressed to "A Name, Address Line 1, Address Line 2, Address Line 3, Date" saying that I am now banned from Sainsbury's.

Wendy and I met in The Macrame Belt and started with what a degraded Lancaster pub used to call a Southampton -- a large port. Wendy tilted our glasses sceptically, looked port measures up, and went back to the diluted-Asian barmaid, who had sold us singles.

"She's gorgeous," said Wendy. As she came round to collect the glasses, I saw Wendy do a scan I recognise: hair, shoulders, back, then longer on her arse, then her legs.

We took her dog up to the hilltop park. It was a bright December day, and the sky and the low sun were in cahoots with me. We wanged the ball for the dog, sending her scuttling and returning with the best asymmetry of effort.

"It is really lovely to see you," I said, and kissed her on her cheek, something that she would never do to me; and in a moment the mounting togetherness of the morning was smothered; her familar, small stiffening. "It's lovely to see you too," she said, and I cursed myself for pressing her into a formality neither of us wanted.

We bobbed down the long hill to the Fur Coat and No Knickers Arms and had three-quarters of a bottle of Prosecco, the dog's ebullient tail knocking over the rest. Anyway, it's a re-start.