Evidence

The housing association told me I'd have someone coming round to do a fire risk assessment. So I had a busy morning of tidying up, washing up, making the bed look polite, posing my spider plant in prime position, hiding the Robinson's golliwog and dusting the windowsills, glad to have an external social pressure to induce me to do the tidying and cleaning whose intrinsic value I cannot naturalise.

As he strolled round "my" flat with his clipboard, I noticed that one of the sections on his report was "evidence of alcohol and drug use." The one thing I inexplicably failed to hide was about a third of a pint of cider which I had left out from the previous night. I assume he'll be going back saying that I was on the pop at 10am. Just to help matters, I told him I work on the railway and was going to work in an hour or so.

My latest appointment at the dental hospital lasted three hours. I didn't mind the fillings, the needles, the drilling and scraping; but the chair, after that length of time, was an ache-inducing instrument for my neck, shoulders and back. "Nearly there," she kept saying, which I eventually learned was not to advise me not of the treatment's imminent ending, but its prolongation.

She said (again) that a toothbrush should be the last thing that goes into your mouth at night. I am very glad a saucy rejoinder to that advice neither occurred to me nor was uttered. Still five extractions to come.

After looking at the roundabout at Poynton, I went to Manchester to see my actress daughter, and by default, her girlfriend.

We sat outside a bar near the Central Library. They intercepted a couple of their actor friends walking past. I didn't do well when introduced to "Cassie!" Who was a luxuriantly-haired brunette roughly the same age as my daughter. I rummaged my head but could only stall. "You know, Cassie, from Lancaster." I faked recognition, she faked her acceptance of my recognition. The discs of mozzarella on the pizza were cold, as if the chef had forgotten them, and put them on at the last moment.

My daughter and her girlfriend desisted from their irritating habit of pawing and snogging each other in public, as if to throw down the lesbian gauntlet, in an arena -- central Manchester -- where, one hopes, that's a won battle. (A moment's reflection and I know my impatience is unjustified, because I bet in real life, it isn't.)

It was Love Saves the Day in Bristol the other weekend, and I'd like to thank the person who lost a bag of refreshments in a well-known chain pub behind a large railway station. I came down here to take up a better job, and for a livelier cultural scene. I didn't realise it would come with free coke every few weeks.