Loose bra, no knickers

Another day, another scooter accident.

The one a few weeks ago was more physically debilitating; this one added an additional injury: to my confidence. I slipped on some cobbles which were slimed with wet leaves. I sat down on the grass to compose myself, and a passing couple gave me some tissues with which to wipe the blood away from just above my eye. With the accompanying damage to my cheek, I looked hard for a week or so.

I got back in the saddle as soon as I could. The security guard in Sainsbury's asked me how fast my scooter could go. "Well, only twenty, but that's enough."

"Well, you don't want to be going too fast at your age."

I was going to argue the point, but my leg, eye, cheek, knee, shin and hip were a little sore.

Trina and I were supposed to have been in Croatia this week, but we decided the testing regime is too worrying a thing to carry with you on holiday, so she invited me up to hers. Mel went a bit quiet when I announced my plans.

At Birmingham New Street, a tramp-like shoplifter offered me a litre of vodka. We settled on £7. On the train back down, the man sitting opposite me offered me some vodka and iced tea, which we sat drinking out of cardboard cups. He was chatty and generous, talking about his twins and his job as a night porter, and repeatedly refilling my cup.

He did his best to include the willowy woman next to us. She was content with her coffee, but we all talked easily. It was a trio which could only be composed on a train, consisting of a retired consultant dermatologist, a Polish pisshead, and an English one.

As he got off, he presented me with a bottle of the stuff we'd been drinking.

Thank you Witold!

It went very well with Trina. I was indulged even before I got there, with help with my train fare, and she was generous with the bill division whilst I was there. The women in my life treat me so well. A good deal of drinking, but had a day in Port Sunlight and the Lady Lever Art gallery there, a pleasure for fans of the reclining Victorian nuddy woman. It also holds Joseph Farquharson's Hallmarked and Clintonised picture of sheep in winter.

She drove us to Middlesbrough to see my mum, my sister, and the latter's debut solo art exhibition. Some good photography: the iron arches of Darlington station; a long, rough stone (sewage?) pipe stretching into the North Sea. Some less good textual pieces which show the influence of Farce Book.

In a cheap chain pub, one of a trio of coarse, tightly-T-shirted men said loudly as I walked past, "gotta be a paedo."

Back at Trina's, the local paper reports, with a relish I am afraid I enjoyed, some details of a fraud case involving a pensioner and a younger Italian woman.