I am surrounded by lesbians

Good God Looby- just the incident contained in your last two sentences there would be enough for me in any given month, and if I lived your life for a month I suspect I’d be dead at the end of it. You’ve got one hell of a constitution, physically, mentally and psychologically I think.

I actually mean that seriously, not as any kind of back-handed or glib compliment. And with slightly oblique reference to your Emergency Room travails as recounted during the post before this one…you were saying about the chronic drinking and the collision with what sounds like a timely offer of some help or intervention, which I do understand your hesitance about engaging with…. I’m no expert here (other than being something of a drinker myself as you know) but I suspect if you did want to lay the booze to one side for a while then what would make you do it would be something properly fulfilling and meaningful to you to replace it. The writing is a singular gift that you have ( show me a better ten line dissection of a relationship than ’shes hard on him, when she wants him to be hard on her’) and I think some long form version of what you give us in bitesize chunks here could be quite something.

Sorry, I’ll stop now, you’ll be blushing. And I have been drinking (a bit). But I do not make this comment lightly!

Jonathan, you do say the kindest things after a few pints. Long may your drinking continue.

Yes, I just bumble from completely unengaging work to more of the same. My heart’s never in anything – apart from, as you say, the writing.

I must resolve to collate some of the shorter prices and knock them into a narrative, then start flogging them. I could be the next Late Starter, like Penelope Lively.

Thanks Jonathan, comments like that are a good spur to action.

Why don’t you bang together a collection & ask Cath if she’ll read some stuff your ex-landlord wrote?

I’t’s a good idea, but there’s too much giveaway detail to pass it off as my ex-landlord’s work. :)

(Sorry, MM, I completely misread your comment this morning. Bit of a sleep deficit here).

First time coming through. There’s lots of excitement here. Blogging was the best for me when I had zany adventures and uncertainty about what would come next like with what you’re writing about. Good stuff.

Well if you’re going to be surrounded i figure it’s best to be surrounded by lesbians!

and i remember some old Billy Joel song, egads!!! where the chorus was “we’ll all go down together!” might be a good song to be singing whilst surrounded.

Hello Kenneth, delighted to have you comment here. I’ve noticed you elsewhere, so thank you for jumping across the pond. Yes…life here is unpredictable. I like that. Do you have a link to your blog during zany times?

kono – I don’t know, hindsight and all that but it didn’t surprise me at all. Although to be honest I don’t give a shit about the sex who anyone fancies. Hayley has been treated so badly by some men in her past that it’s driven the heterosexual in her almost out.

“We’ll all go down together” :) ha ha, reminds me of an early house track which was a reworking of a Curtis Mayfield track – “If there’s hell below, we’re all gonna go” :)

When i was heavily immersed in the stripper scene i noticed that many of them preferred women to men, men they viewed as a necessary evil and since the strip clubs let the women be the hunters they found the easiest marks and took them for all they could, and i don’t blame them in the least, i’d have done the same thing… of course when you’re the King of North Oakland you are treated a bit differently by the ladies of the strip clubs… but i’ll save those tales for the lounge ;)

Yeah, Hayley sees them coming. I’m not entirely exempt from her gimlet eye for a sucker – there’s a few loans that will never be repaid, which is why I was so startled when she gave me back the 50 quid the other day.

As ever, I look forward to hearing the details of your period on the throne :)