No escape to the country

My move back to Lancaster has fallen through.

I resigned from my job at the hospital, and gave notice on my flat; I booked a removal firm and paid the £160 deposit, and told everyone who matters, before yo-yoing between happy anticipation and practical and emotional worries.

A week later I got two flat tyres whilst near Mel's, and the bike repair man said my punctures would take at least two hours. So we walked to the pub rather than boiling with plastic water outside. We didn't go there to talk about it, but the disinhibiting effects of her pints led to tears. "You've never once asked me how I feel about it," she said. The hard fact is that her being upset about me moving back has no weight in my decision; it's just something to be dealt with as sympathetically as I can.

She recovered, after some eye dabbing and the tissues in packets that women always carry, as the few other customers being tactfully uninterested, before we turned our minds to the racing, at which I won the afternoon's drinking back, on a horse called Kaleidoscope Eyes.

Two days later, I was sitting by myself in a cheap chain pub near hers, watching the theatre of a pub frequented by boozers, contemplating what I'd done through the clarifying darkness of Titanic Plum Porter. I've got under £1500 in savings, so given that the rent is £778 and the removal is £680, I'm cleaned out by just getting to Lancaster, and my last salary payment from the hospital has to sustain me during a job hunt of unknown duration.

That afternoon, I rang Mel and told her I'd decided to abandon the move. The following day, I had to claw back my job and my flat, and cancel the removal firm.

At this point, I composed and sent an email to the manager of the scheme in Lancaster, explaining I couldn't move in. She didn't reply, so I thought she was a bit annoyed with me.

A few days ago, she sent an email saying she was hoping I was looking forward to me moving in today. She hadn't received the email. And neither could I find it, so although I would swear I'd sent it, perhaps it didn't go. What a mess.

We had a good eclipse, thanks. Lovely weather and clear skies, on the rec on Mel's council estate, which is getting polluted, or improved, depends on how you see it, by young couples who talk in RP and are escaping London, who are thoroughly, impeccably, irreproachably, decent as they buy up ex-council stock. Our pinhole cameras were rubbish -- you get a tiny dot on the back of a shoebox -- but someone gave us a spare pair of eclipse glasses, which were much better.

Highlight of the night was a mischievous TEFL teacher who turned up with a group of mainly Vietnamese teenagers. He was holding a colander in front of a sheet of card, and was telling the kids that that the dots on the card were the planets, which you can't normally see because the sun's too bright. After a while they realised that he was taking absolute nonsense.