I am prevented from both dancing and slithering

It was Mardi Gras at the hospital the other day. We had a couple of bariatric patients in.

"Bariatric" (ancient Greek βάρος "weight", first OED citation 1966) is the polite medical term for "absolutely fucking enormous". It took six people to roll one of them over so that her cratering leg ulcers could be looked at.

To London, where I was meeting Trina for a gig. It was meant to be Dexter Wansel, himself but he had to sit this one out in hospital, so it was his long time collaborators and an excellent small orchestra.

In our hotel, we met up with a couple of people I sort of know, a DJ and his friend's desirable wife, who'd flown down from Aberdeen. Mr DJ introduced me to his friends. "This is looby, he comes to Aberdeen and Glasgow sometimes for Downstairs @ 108." Handshakes, conviviality, and I'm cast in a favourable light. It was a pleasing moment of dextrous civilised behaviour on my friend's part.

The gig though -- how flat and disappointing. The southern crowd were rooted to their seats, and even when one of the acts finally got us up by asking us if we were attached to our seats by superglue, we were herded out of the aisles by an officious young woman, the fun policewoman for the evening. I went down the steps as far as the rail (we were in the circle), and started dancing in a position which could not possibly impede an ambulance; but she came after me again. Later I saw her doing the same thing to the people at the front of the stalls. I wish I'd just ignored her now, but you're always an individualist cocking a snook at petty authority in your head the day afterwards.

Our twin room was more a one-child-family room. At the point of getting into the single bed, Trina said "you're not going to sleep there are you?", and so I slid gratefully into the larger bed alongside her. She had on her slinky short red top which, when sex was part of it, I used ask her to keep on, the better to go a-slithering.

My rhubarb wine is at an early stage in the plastic bucket behind me. For several days now the must has been has been making a quiet but penetrating sound, like someone scrunching up a sheet of cellophane. It's stopped now, so tomorrow's job is to strain it and rack the juice into a demijohn, and then see if the sweetened, yeasted, rhubarb could be used in a farty pie.