Any port in a storm

There's a little ragged patch of ground in one of Bristol's epicentres of homelessness and drug taking, used as an informal, twenty-four hour outdoor social centre. I met a commercial lawyer, her husband, and two homeless people there the other evening. She bought us all some cider and Buckie. "At last," she said to her husband, "we've met a straight man who's camper than you."

They said they had both had the lergy, a story which is at least compatible with their Twitter feed, and invited me back to theirs. We danced and got more drunk. One rarely meets a poor lawyer, but it was kind of her to keep us in supplies all evening.

They asked me what music to put on and they were politely unmoved by my choice, but were gracious enough to let a fairly long track run its course. Hayley would just switch something off after a minute if she didn't like it.

I had to get home, lest I risk a repeat of my recent disgrace. I was very reluctant to leave. I was hoping I'd made two new friends, and they were arranging getting something that I like, which is out of favour nowadays; people talk about it in the past tense.

On my last day at work, I got stuck in a corridor. Doors both ends, electronically locked. I was lost, looking for the area where I'd been told to work. Agency workers don't get a badge with which to operate the doors. As I was wondering about how to spend the night there, and leaving a puddle of piss, I was rescued by a big black man called Sampson, who released me and escorted me to where I was supposed to be.

Next morning, my boss informed me there is no more work, not even at the hospital. We're in the least lergy-afflicted area in Britain, so they don't need extra people.

I went up to the Common to try to stop worrying about the fact that I won't have my rent this month. I sat under a tree, drinking, feeling a touch self-consciously tramp-like amongst the impeccable middle classes taking their leisure. I rang Kitty, who urged me to overcome my timidity and tell Cath about my situation.

Emboldened by two pints of Romanian lager I came back and explained the situation. She was more understanding than I had any right to expect, telling me I could defer or reduce the rent in the short term.

Bristol offering few opportunities at the moment, I tried thinking of a nearby city, commutable on the train, with a population of fat, smoking, sugar-addicted alcoholics who might be miraculously dying from covid after having had two strokes, lung cancer, pneumonia and decades of the general misery of living in southeast Wales. I've therefore applied for a job on a rubbish tip in Newport.