All ears

It's pouring down with rain, I'm not really ready for Christmas, I had to go to four shops yesterday before I found any parsnips, I'm getting uselssly het up about lazy people twiddling some knobs on a computer to make AI-generated music, and I've been tiring myself out at night by listening to some of the commentary on the Test Match from Adelaide -- not an uplifting experience for an Englishman.

However, last week, I sucessfully transferred this site and all that sails in it, to a new host. Well almost -- I'm cursing myself for not backing up my emails, as I've lost hundreds from some past girlfriends.

A quick trip, with Mel, to Lancaster to have a look at the sheltered housing block in Lancaster I'll be moving into, as soon as someone has the decency to become deceased, or in a way less terminal, vacates a flat.

I tried taking us up a short cut up an alley known locally as the Khyber Pass, next to the railway line. It was pitch black and raining, and someone had flytipped a mattress and a sofa and some bin bags of rubbish, so me and Mel were squelching and bouncing about on this mattress while the brambles were trying to take our eyes out. Not the finest of introductions to the suburb for Mel.

We stayed in the guest flat, which was very warm and will hardly need heating. In The Old Shipbuilder's Arms, we bumped into a friend of mine, a jovial and well-educated man, a joiner who had to give it up after a near-fatal brain injury. He invited himself along to a meal we'd booked in a pub which is installed in a cosy old wine cellar, a suggestion I didn't mind at all. They tucked into hotpot while I had a sea bass / kale / shrimp bricolage which for £27 was a great waste of money, exacerbated by the £5.75 pints, nearly double what you pay in The Old Shipbuilder's Arms.

My friend then wanted us to go to a pub where another mutual friend was doing a gig. Again, I was pleased at his suggestion: it showed Mel that I do actually have friends.

And then, once we were safely bunkered down in our twin beds, there happened one of these inexplicable acts that follow from a night on the pop. Instead of walking the few short steps to the en-suite, I decided, dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of pants, to wander out into the corridor, and out again onto a little garden area outside the guest flat, and piss in a planter.

I went to retrace my steps, but the door had locked fast behind me. I opened the window to the flat and tried to ease myself back in without disturbing Mel, but it wouldn't open more than a few inches, so I only succeeded in getting my head stuck in the gap and had to call for Mel to come to my rescue. But there was no way of opening the window any wider, so I had to pull my head back out again, almost leaving my ears in Lancaster, and wait until Mel could herself parade semi-clothed along a corridor in an old people's block to let me back in.

I got the housekeeping job at the hospital. Not really what I had hoped for at my advanced age, but it'll plug this credit card-shaped hole into which I've fallen lately.