Is that a normal man?

Ah-ha! Finally worked out how to get the internet on the rather complicated router-clock-intercom-VoIP phone contraption in my new flat.

I moved in on Wednesday. The removal man was called Mr Stent, so I was worried he'd have a heart attack as he struggled with my sofa.

Having been barred by the block's management from using the communal lounge for their weekly raffle and bingo, the residents now come closer in the corridor. Me, Mr Stent and a cheerily helpful resident barged apologetically between them, arresting their dabbers poised over possibly remunerative numbers.

Mel came round and watched me timidly wire up the electric cooker her friend had given me. I poked the on switch and leapt back. A silent elemental red started glowing under the black screen.

Just as everything was in, I got a phone call offering me an almshouse. Whilst the nature of the tenancy here is highly attractive, the neighbourhood -- where vegetables are harder to find than pornography -- is not. This is not the gaily coloured Bristol of the postcards; it's white, working class suburbia, where B&M Bargains is your best bet for a food shop. The almshouse is in the city centre, a bungalow in a quiet street behind one of the oldest churches in Bristol.

The next day I rang the manager to express a concern. I'd heard that some almshouses impose in the Licence a prohibition on overnight guests. She confirmed that this was the case in St Joseph's Close, so I declined the offer, and omitted to say anything about how the poor are always expected to be models of chastity in a way never demanded of people with their own housing.

Besides, the accommodation seems to have a baleful effect on one's health: this is the (uncropped) picture on their website with which they lure potential residents.

Mel came round for the weekend. I was nervous about the volume at which she wanted the music on, and we have very few overlapping areas in our Venn diagrams of likes. Had I not insisted on us improvising our own soundtrack, she'd have had it on whilst we had sex.

She was disappointed by my dinner offering of three-day-old reduced price quiche, cauliflower, sprouts and carrots. I agree that that ensemble might lack a certain seductive allure, but my kitchen armoury until yesterday consisted of two dinner knives and forks, and a saucepan. The carrots, refusing the blunt edge of the knife, turned my worktop into a skid pan. I am also financially wrung out from overlapping rent payments at Cath's and here.

She refused it, and all I could offer instead was scrambled eggs. I usually warm plates, so I poured some boiling water onto hers. Turning into the living room to humour her, aware that I had displeased her, I then returned to the eggs. Forgetting my plate-warming technique, I plonked them down into the hot water.

"I'm a bit disappointed looby. I thought you were going to cook something nice for me. 'Oh, I can make a souffle!' and now it's out-of-date quiche."

"It was in date when I bought it. Anyway it's nicer at room temperature." "Yeah but not three days."

But we're at the sexed-up stage where desire can stifle arguments, and a couple of hours and a bottle of wine later she asked "do you want me to dress up?", a cock-hardening question which I pretended to be reluctant in answering. The sex, now I'm free from Cath's supervision, was the best yet. Selfish, for both of us, many overlapping pleasures. "I like it when you're in all this," I said. "It reduces you to sex."

As I was sitting in the park the other day, a little girl walked past and enquired of her parents, "is that a normal man?"