Communion

I start in the cafe on Monday; these are the last days.

Saturday night, and the pub is very busy. I quickly squat an empty table, much to the displeasure of one of the two men who come back to reclaim their post. I recognise that my main work, in what I expected to be a short evening out, was going to involve placating Angry Man. The Pleasant One was doing the same. Angry Man went out for a fag.

"Is your mate alright?" "He's not my mate; I've only just met him. He says he's just got out of prison." "What for?" "He won't say."

It is about to come to blows between them, so I leave, which is a costly evasion as I've just given The Pleasant One £40 so that we could split a gram of Pepsi.

In the street, The Pleasant One catches up with me. "What a cunt he was. Do you want to come back to mine and I'll get that stuff sorted out?"

We get on a bus and get talking to a sixteen-year-old girl. It's midnight now, and she says she's "just come out for a bit." "Did you meet your friends?" "No, I just came out for a bit."

We sit in The Pleasant One's local for a bit. A thirtysomething man and woman turn up. In what was to be typical of the night, we told each other everything most immediate about our lives. The business done, me and The Pleasant One key up in the loos, then leave and go up to his flat.

Reader, I had a lovely night. Me and The Pleasant One talked openly and freely, me about my alcoholism, he about his addiction to the other thing; about relationships, music, and things I can't remember. At some point in the small hours, his friend came round and we went thirds on another gramme. I walked back, an hour in the rain. I miss walking home at eight in the morning, feeling as though you're behind a big sheet of glass yet imbricated with the fine grain of one's surroundings.

A few hours later: the city centre. I am meeting Middle Daughter.

"You mean, you went home with a complete stranger till 7am? What were you doing all night? Are you OK?" "I'm fine love, honest." "Were you on drugs?" "We had a couple of refreshers, yes." (She's known for a long time.) "I'm a bit tired, that's all. Could do with some coffee."

In the coffee shop, a tall black man in shorts and singlet was sitting bolt upright at the next table, opposite a white mild-mannered lecturer type, both talking in over-loud voices about their jobs, forcing everyone else to raise their voices in an arms race of volume against their declamatory middle class drivel. Nevertheless, we spent three hours in there, cheaply, undisturbed. A woman a bit younger than me was having her first day employed there, and I watched her smiling and awkwardness, and wanted to telepathically tell her that I hoped it was all going OK.

The other Sunday, me and Esther get up in time for an invitation I hadn't expected. She wanted me to come to this happy-clappy church she'd been to for the first time the previous week. Before that, we started on the white wine. "Looby, you know red wine is the blood of Christ? Well, this is his piss."

It's a majority female crowd, a few young Asian people, one black man. After a heteronormative preamble by the pastor (I had images of how he would pale -- literally -- behind some of the great black Pentecostal and Baptist preacher-singers-politicians), the service consisted of a Christian rock-lite group playing long versions of songs I don't know, although they mainly go I-IV-V-I so you can guess the melodic line if you've ever wanted to punch Phil Collins.

People do that one arm raised in the air Songs of Praise style of rapture. We then sat through an interminable sermon about a mustard seed, during which the twentysomething female preacher, who looked like she'd just got out of a washing machine and been ironed, unintentionally radiated ignorance about the world outside her moneyed life, as well as announcing a Christian duty new to me.

"And so here we see in Mark, that we are called to be the very fragrance and aroma of Christ." "Was that Christ in the bed with us this morning Esther, when you farted?"