For some reason, I couldn't rustle up any interest amongst my friends for a dark, visceral Belgian film, Bullhead, about a man who is violently sexually assaulted in his childhood, who then spends many years planning a revenge attack, whilst becoming addicted to steroids as a physical and psychological compensation. It ends with no redemption or justice.

It was screened the day after I ran the Belgian Beer Tasting, and it bolstered my attraction to Belgian culture. When I was being paid --paid!-- by that country's State to do my artistic cavorting in Brussels, I met a Belgian at a party and he said that he liked some forms of English conversation because we are ruthlessly aggressive in the humour we have only with very close friends. I understood what he was saying.

After that, it was jolly to hear the frivolous tinkle of the bells on the Lindt Easter bunnies' chokers (such an unfortunate name for such an attractive item of female adornment) that I had bought for my daughters, as they jogged along in my eco academic conference bag.

On the way to deliver them at Kirsty's, I bumped into her boyfriend on the street. We walked up together. "Ooh-ooh", I cooed, as we walked in. "It's your present and former boyfriends here." We're dead modern up here.

---

This evening, I am having a little snoozle when I hear the door. "Ah-ha," I think, "this is the wanderering lodger returning." I am not pleased with Bill, for two reasons. One, the rent is late, as it has been every single week bar one for a year. Two, I recently had to clean a fat-drenched roasting tin which he had left in the kitchen for several days before I could make the roast potatoes to accompany the sextastic Gruyère, ricotta and red pepper quiche I made for Trina and I.

Preparing to approach these issues, I nip to the loo, and I see that a beautiful long, tilting dress mirror that Trina went all the way to fucking Thirsk to buy for me after I'd expressed an interest in owning one, which I have installed in the bathroom--is turned round to face the wall and is hanging off its somewhat temperamental hinge. WTF has he done that for?

I go into the kitchen to wait for him. He clomps downstairs. I say "Three requests Bill..." and outline 1) the rent to be paid on time; 2) dirty pans to be washed up; and 3) don't touch that fucking lovely mirror!

As ever, he is apologetic and polite; he makes a bit of a show of washing the dirty pan up. I realise now why people sometimes specify women in their ads for spare rooms. A woman would never turn a mirror to face the wall or leave a dirty pan out for days. I dislike having to make things that should be taken for granted explicit. I stay in the kitchen, pretending to work on the computer, to make him feel awkward as his punishment.

---

Kim and I have been planning a weekend away. By away, I mean, away out of our heads, although in a bourgeois sense of imperialist cartographic localisation, we will be in Co. Durham. She was on the phone the other night talking about painting her toenails before she went out and I found it a bit of a turn-on and I stroked her into more detail about the shade of the nail varnish and the brush and how she had her foot as she was doing it.

In the middle of the night I was imagining her getting dressed and undressed, over and over again, easing her arse and long legs into a short skirt she said she might wear. Kim is the person I could rely on to help me if things went wrong, without panicking or gushing with useless sympathy. She's also sexy as fuck.

I got a "final notice" several weeks ago. Can't take them seriously now.

Well send me to fucking prison then. I would welcome it. I'd be OK in prison.

Most people I know can only talk to their own class. I can both talk common, and laughingly tinkle my glass with PhDers, academics, writers, engineers, because I belong to both cultures. Common people are much better at talking to educated people than the other way round. My family are dirt poor, never owned any property, but my Mum's really bright, and I am daily glad of my genetic and social inheritance. I've been in jail before and it's nothing to be feared.

In town today I was going around the charity shops looking for trousers, but the only thing I could find was a lovely old Penguin of The Canterbury Tales. It's funny, drunken, hedonistic, anti-clerical.

My Belgian Beer Tasting went well. The upstairs room at the Pizza Margherita: fairy lights snaking up plants, tall lamps in purple shades. We even turned a small profit, although I'm not doing it to make money.

Trina was efficiently helpful. She stood at the back behind a wee counter, pouring the beer out and washing the glasses and presenting me with a bit of what we were drinking while I intoduced the beers wth a bit of historical background and the odd anecdote of my own time in Belgium. Not a lot though. No-one wants to hear your own story.

We had a long chat on the phone today saying how helpful it'd be if her 92-y-o mother could have a heart attack and just die and stop asking her daughter to look after her half the week. If I could get away with it, I'd kill her. Her mother goes on and on and on about how she hates being old. Well kill yourself then if it's that onerous.

Fuck off. Chase me for it when I die. "Should". No---

It's been a Belgian time.

Chaka Khan was sixty on Saturday, and I turned forty-nine.

Trina gave me a bottle of cider and a long-desired book. Kirsty's card was of a photograph of a presumably American place name called Ponce. It came with a badge with an arrow pointing to the left beneath the word "ponce". My brother gave me a horn for my bike. It's very loud and Trina is angling for a similar one for her narrowboat, as there are several blind corners on the canal.

I cocked up the birthday plans. Several weeks ago I said I'd found a Modern Soul All-Dayer happening on my birthday, so after depillation and polishing ourselves, we set off to Accrington. We got to the hotel at about 5pm. We wandered around a garish, tightly-skirted, morning-suited wedding party, the guests' sartorial sophistication matching that of the corporate decor, listening for anything that might sound like Modern Soul music.

Eventually we gave up and asked the receptionist. "It starts at 8.30," she said. Oops. Trina took it well, but said "What the fuck do we do now for three hours in Accrington? Shall we go home?" As we left, we saw a sign indicating that it was Northern and Motown, and I was relieved that she had scrapped the plan, as five hours of Northern Soul is four hours and fifty-five minutes too much.

Back at mine, we put a fire in, opened some wine, then went upstairs for a euphemism. The back of my hand brushed against her silver earrings, which she hadn't taken off, and in the ever unexpected way that sex works, I found the sensation of the small metal pieces against my hand exciting and erotic. I was going to say something to her about it but sometimes sensations are diminished by being described.

Following evening, in the pub, Trina was telling Wilma about how we had been talking about moving in together. Having an argument about it and falling out over it, I'd have phrased it. It's a bit of a fault line between us. I think living together would ruin the relationship, and also make me unhappy.

Trina's just sent me an email.

Subject: I just want

To be with you all the time.

I don't. Fuck that--I like being by myself.

I think in the long run this'll be the cause of us splitting up. I wish I could meet someone like Kim, who likes dancing, is a druggie and a drinker, who fucks more than one bloke at the same time (literally, at the same time), but who sleeps in the same bed as me when she's here. Very difficult when you're 48 and live in a city where the women are generally boring, can't drink, married, career, car, timid, dull, and can't/won't dress because that's a vulgar debasement, an unseemly attention to a shallowness.

This post has been brought to you by Rosie's Perfect Pear Perry, from Dafarn Dywyrch, Llandegla (7.5%). Me and Trina will stay together and get over it, probably, for a bit.