My cold began its work by making some of the wines at last Tuesday's wine club taste odd. The illness tightened its phlegmy and vocabulary-dissolving grip through the week, and on Friday it was some effort to drag myself out of bed at 3.30pm to get a taxi to Kirsty's (a short walk away), as I had the girls for the weekend.

It was a weekend of minimal parenting designed to promote healthy autonomy, as I lay sweating and shivering upstairs. The girls rose to the occasion, foraging for tinned soup and making scrambled eggs. I came down on Saturday and couldn't help but find the stack of burnt saucepans endearing.

At 4am on Sunday morning the infection decided to move to a more convivial home, in my middle ear, where it caused the sudden onset of an earache and tinnitus which drove me to ring the doctor at lunchtime. At the hospital that afternoon I was angling for some analgesics sufficiently strong to be of recreational value. I reported the degree of the pain with forebearing and understated language which I hoped would cause him to impute a greater distress than that which I was experiencing. But he wasn't having it, and sent me home with some penicillin and no painkillers stronger than paracetamol. At Kirsty's I made the girls egg, beans and chips, and finally, on Sunday evening, Kirsty and boyf came home and I could go home to bed.

That night, I was startled to hear a loud noise in my affected ear, like someone squirting the last of a bottle of Fairy Liquid into it. A strange music developed, like some avantgarde work for solo tympanum using extended techniques. After a pause, the next movement consisted of a low buzzing, like a Stylophone stuck on its lowest notes. This was followed by some rapid ear farting and a return of the principle theme--the low buzzing--inverted and in retrograde (with variations it would be tedious to rehearse here), in classic dodecaphonic style.

I lay there giggling with the absurdity of the performance. It's a shame I couldn't have recorded it because I could have passed it off as a new work by the previously unknown Romanian composer Otitis Media, and maybe got it on Radio 3 at midnight, where it would have been heard by a dozen gay men and an amanuensis.

I was not to be allowed to rest for long. At 8am a croaky Kirsty asked me back, as both she and daughter Jenny had caught it. It's Tuesday evening now. I've been here since Thursday (as Kirsty had wanted to see a film) and it's starting to feel a little like that period between Christmas and New Year again: too much family and not enough air.

However, there is an exciting prospect looming on Tuesday. For many years I have wanted to visit "The Kabul of the North", "a depressing post-war New Town consisting of nothing one would wish ever to see again," where "you know things are bad when Asda's the local nightspot."

Using such testimonials I've persuaded Trina to come with me for a day out round Cumbernauld's Brutalist slabbed supermarkets, fag-moated betting shops, and wind-whipped underpasses crackling with the snap of cheap sportswear round fecund ginger-dotted loins. However, as part of my new spirit of reluctant and begrudgingly given compromise, I've agreed to indulge Trina for an hour or so, who has declared more of an interest in Kelvingrove Park and the Botanical Gardens.

I booked in to the little B&B in Blackpool, feeling like a child on my best Sunday School behaviour with the landlady.

I had got a good deal with one of the DJs for mine and Trina's wristbands. He said to meet him when he was DJing. I was politely stopped at the entrance to the Hilton by a tall black man with dreadlocks (the hope is, that suggests "fear") who after my explanation, escorted me to the DJ booth. I paid for two wristbands, then ran out of the hotel to meet John who was staying at the Imperial next door, for our evening meal. At some point outside the entrance I lost Trina's wristband. I retraced my steps, I asked everyone, and eventually gave up and went to meet John.

I didn't know it would work just with John, as we normally go out with Ian as well, but we got on very well, partly because, I suspect, I am the more dominant personality, so benefit more from apparently shared decisions. A beautiful thirtysomething woman with brown hair curved in an angled bob was dancing in front of me in a tight red dress which stopped just above her knees.

Apart from at the British Sociological Association conference at Glasgow in 2010, I don't think I've ever seen such a good-looking collection of women in one room. There's a time to dance and a time to talk intelligently about global localities in postcolonialist discourse. The two aren't incompatible in theory, except that it is a reliable general rule that academics can't dance; their class background and devotion to a disinterested life inhibit it.

Trina was to arrive the next day around lunchtime. From waking up, I was cock-stiff with expecting her, and my attempts not to wank thinking about her failed at about 10am. I regretted it, a selfish waste of desire.

She arrived at midday just as John was wondering where I was. She was wearing a black wrap-around top showing her tits off, black trousers, and this lovely pink scarf tied around her neck. She looked pretty; her beautiful Polish-Welsh black hair. She made herself a cup of coffee and I tried not to hover too much. Please don't say you want a shower or spend fucking ages on your clothes and your hair and your make-up. "We could have a little lay down for a minute, couldn't we?" I said. We had a lovely slow sex. I was quite relieved I could still come despite my actions earlier.

We spent hours and hours on the dancefloor. She flagged at about half past two, saying she wanted to go back. I said I wanted to stay and so I walked her to the hotel then went back to the Hilton. I got back at 6am, was very quiet as I got in, had a shower and crept into bed next to her.

At 8.30 she was stomping around the room, and went to pull the covers off me. I was confused and tired. I got up, only for an unwanted breakfast. "Are you pissed off with me?" I said. "Yes," she said. "You're only staying out that late because of your reputation. You said it would end at 5am and I was really worried. I woke up at 5.30 and you weren't here so I got up and thought you had been attacked and I looked out the window and you weren't there. Why do you have to stay out so late?"

This is where it ends.

"Trina, darling, I didn't realise it was so important to you. Of course if I'd have known it was so important to you I'd have got back at 5. I'd never ever do anything to hurt you deliberately. I'm sorry, I really am. I don't want to upset you."

There was a lot of stroking and kissing and she apologised and said it was because she hadn't had enough sleep. "You bastard, you're charming me out of it now."

OK it's forgotten. But you ever start setting me a schedule and I'll walk away from you. Frozen out, deleted.

We went downstairs for our polite breakfast where we talked amicably about our spat with the landlady. "He only got in at 6," Trina said. "I know," said the landlady, "I saw him when I went to get the papers." "That's the disadvantage of going out with an older bird," I said.

Back on the boat on Monday the candles were glowing and we'd had a bottle of champagne and one of wine each. "So, when are you going to tell me about your drug habit?"

I stopped. "I knew you'd had something. You changed. You came out of the loo and you were like you'd had four, five pints, but you'd only had one. It's just... I'm disappointed that you think I'm so headmistressy that you can't tell me. Why didn't you say 'I'm just going to nip in here for a bit of speed'?"

"But I can't tell you straight away," I said. "I was leading up to it. I've told you some of my friends are into drugs--that was an implication that I am as well--but you can't say things immediately." "It's just the lack of trust. It's that little half-second before you say anything."

The account of the next hour would be tediously repetitious, but honesty turned into lust. "I'd have been OK," she said. "I just wish you could have said at the time." "Do you know what I want to say at this particular time?" as we stood up kissing, with her hand on my cock. "I want to give you a fuck."

We started taking each others' clothes off, bottom half first. I scraped her trousers off with my foot. As she walked in the narrow corridor between the living room and the bedroom, my foot was on the trailing leg of her trousers and she went crashing into the door of the loo. I picked her up, laughing, and dragged her onto the bed. Nearly helpless, she laid laterally on the bed with her bum on its edge. I lay on her and reached back and grasped her heels with my hands.

As she drove us back to Lancaster, she put her hand on my thigh. "We've got through a few things this weekend haven't we?" I put all my washing in the machine and she was laughing at the way I was hanging it out, shaking her head, and rearranging the pegs on my trousers.

---

Edit: because no-one ever knows what Modern Soul is (it is not Northern or Motown), here's a contender for my Track of the Weekender. Dancing to this with a woman I fancy is one of the sexiest things I can imagine doing.

The lodger hands me an envelope. "This came for you."

So they did actually call round. Red ink and bold type used to induce fear, bullying by typography. Once the worry passes, the language and the typefaces are funny. The emphasising of the import of the word "remove", through underlined bold block capitals, is juxtaposed with a lurch into emollient sympathy with the typographically unvolumed "distressing," all ink-weighted elements in an economy of emphasis.

I wrote to the Council with an account of my income and expenditure, reiterating the offer of £20 per month which I made in November. I copied the letter to the bailiffs, sending it by Recorded Delivery, so they can't accuse me of not keeping in touch.

But never mind. It's half past five on Friday, and I doubt whether they're going to come round now, so I can start getting tarted up and pack my clothes for the Blackpool Soul Weekender. John's just rung sounding very poorly and said he'll be there tomorrow instead of tonight. Trina is looking after her Mum tonight and is also arriving tomorrow. The first thing that's going to happen to her when she arrives at the hotel at lunchtime tomorrow, is that she'll get fucked, whether she wants it or not. But she will want it. She loves it as much as I do.

Trina texted me with her New Year's Resolution. What a surprise; I'd never have guessed what a woman's New Year's Resolution would be. "Just don't lose it off your tits," I replied.

It's after 8pm, the time in the code of practice adhered to by most bailiffs beyond which they shouldn't call at your house, so I can stop twitching to attention at any loud talking in the street, stop flinching at any bangs or untoward noises. This morning, mid-breakfast, I instinctively ducked down when someone in the back alley banged a door, hiding myself so that I could pretend to be out and wouldn't have to open the door.

I've had some excellent advice, in two free phone calls to a debt advice centre, and I feel sanguine again, that someone's on my side. Kirsty was mockingly sympathetic, giving me halves on a bottle of plonk that we drank while Strictly was on. "Do you ever regret leaving me?" she said. "Yes, I do. I think you're lovely."

Kim rang, as she does most days, and I told her all about it. She asked me if I'd told Trina. "Of course not," I said. "She'd be alarmed and ask how much it was and then pay it, and then that would conflate the affective and financial elements in our relationship." I used those actual words, having spent a long time at university, paid for on a credit card, part of the debt for which bailiffs are now threatening me. (Most of the expenditure was less noble). It was a relief that she understood how levering affective and sexual attraction into financial assistance would muddy the relationship. Yesterday morning I emailed Trina saying how attractive she is.  I wouldn't want to add "And it was great how you paid 630 quid to the Council to stop the bailiffs coming round."

On New Year's Eve Erica, Vicky, Vicky's new boyfriend and a few others went down the B---- Hotel for the Soul night, and then everyone came back to mine. I didn't take to Vicky's boyfriend. He was one of these men who watch things rather than take part in them, giving the impression that he thinks that enthusiasm in social life a weakness. Erica warned me that he's very anti-drugs. She had come round earlier to help me move some of the furniture out so that we could dance. There was some MDMA and some of this rather rubbish speed that's going around. I made a coal fire and draped the fairy lights round the mantelpiece. Ingrid arrived in the wee hours. Every time I see her the first thing that comes into my head is Brian saying of her "I want to fuck her all the time." Erica and the last guests left at 7am. In bed, I wanted Trina, and emailed her to tell her in what way.

Tidying up on New Years Day, I took a big swig from the pint glass which was sitting there from the party, thinking it was water. Turns out it was vodka. So my first drink of any description in 2013 was vodka. I went round to Tina's (not Trina's) for an afternoon do and got even more plastered than I felt before I arrived, plied with cava and delicious filo pastries made with game and cranberry. To my delight, Much Older But Very Attractive Former Neighbour turned up. She was wearing a tight blue thigh-length dress, black tights and flat black shoes. In my drunken, MDMA'd state, it was an effort to keep my hands off her.

Kitty's card was the best. Inside, her tumbling handwriting. "[...] keep living my dear, instead of existing." She gave me a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson's An Apology for Idlers in one of those editions where the cardboard covers flip out.

I asked my Mum and Dad for Max Egremont's Forgotten Land: Journeys Among the Ghosts of East Prussia about the response of the aristocracy of that land to the onset of the Great Patriotic War, based on an absorbing review in the LRB from Neil Ascherson. I've only read the review, not the book, but I was sympathetic to the bemusement and irritation that the old houses of Prussia felt when the arrivistes barged in, brute force their only argument; and I received from my brother the book I almost bought him.

Christmas dinner went well, and Eldest and I made Heston Blumenthal's Lemon Tart, which requires fourteen eggs and three-quarters of a pint of cream. The pastry, with its five egg yolks, is impossible to handle and I can only press it into the tin like a paste, but it's so rich it's delicious even when it's thicker than it's supposed to be. Fifteen years ago we would have shared it with the Blandys, whom we knew when we lived in Madeira, our summer Sundays spent getting head-splittingly but decorously pissed in their garden, the nosy strelizia wanting to join in, drinking the family's oenological gift to the world. Now I hover in a rented house, nervously alert to any unfamiliar noises, in case it's the bailiffs.

On Boxing Day I went round to Erica's, and was delighted to see Vicky there, who is still, as I described her earlier this year, "A-list, fuckable, Lancaster totty". Loose red top, narrow black trousers ending a few inches above her ankles; black flatties. Her glossy hair, straight and cut in a curve down towards but below her chin. I looked at her lovely neck, and then, following her haircut's line, her beautiful tits and nipples, which were pointing gently out any time she arched her back. Sitting next to her, my hands ached with wanting to feel her nipples flick between every one of my splayed fingers as I passed my hand slowly and repeatedly over her tits.

The red ran out and she put on her coat to go to the offy. I also wanted another bottle and went to give her my card. "Don't do that," said Mr Erica. "That's making her work. Go with her." "Come on," she said. "I won't touch you." "Wish I could say the same," I said, which made people laugh, and got my coat. We went out together under my umbrella. I linked my arm through hers, symbolically giving up flirting with her. I was curious to meet her new boyfriend, having formed a detailed set of prejudices about him, but he never turned up.

Back at Erica's, my gift of a quarter of Complicated Lemon Tart went untouched as they woofed a shop-bought trifle. Vicky told me about the wealthy girl she doesn't know who lives in her village whose cast-offs she buys from the local "dress agency". "You're probably not competing against many girls for clothes like that," I said, a feeling of a clumsy chat-up line coming unstoppably out of my mouth. "There's not many girls who could fit into..." I waved an arm at her legs. "...clothes like that."

I got stoned for the first time in 2012. I don't like marijuana; it can turn my constant consciousness of myself, which I often enjoy and can use to my advantage, into embarrassment. Once it gets a grip in this way, it is impervious to any internal arguments aimed at defeating it. Neither can I tolerate its usual vehicle. But I judged the amount well and had a short phase of talk being loud, shared, and escaped.

---

Down the pub with Wilma and New Business Colleague's friend, the police come over and want to check his identity. No, his name isn't Steve. Wilma got me a drink and started crying, again. A married man has upset her by enlisting her as a player in the familiar male-directed script in which he enjoys the stability of little wifey at home and the excitement of a sexy side dish outside of it. "He couldn't do it anyway, but I didn't mind that. It wasn't all about the sex."

We talked about what she considers her alcoholism. I'm wary about that word--it creates a situation more than it describes it. "Your problem with drink...," I said, "Well, it's not the drink, it's that the more you drink the more you get down to the root causes, which in your case is your feeling of maternal abandonment." I could get paid a hundred quid an hour for talking like this in Islington.

I perked up when I saw Fit Bit sitting alone. I waited a few minutes, lest Large Boyfriend might turn up, and then went over to her. I had a little chat with her, how was your Christmas, concluding with a needlessly prolonged kiss and stroke of her hair. I love flirting with her, heightened by its danger. I went back to our table and I could predict Wilma's challenge. "You're never like that with me." "No. That's because you can't handle your drink." I like Wilma. Anyone who asks you to be honest is willing a closeness that doesn't exist. She never does that; she just is, as I am with her.

---

Tomorrow (well, today now), I am off for a chaste afternoon in the uPvc'd and beige-trousered plains of west Lancashire, to see Trina, at her mother's. Trina's mother has lost a couple of marbles along life's highway, and I've been warned that BBC News 24 will be on constant rotation, and that she'll repeatedly ask me who I am. However, there will be sherry.