Not a very nice way to talk about someone

To Westmorland General with my daughter for her appointment with a gorgeous opthalmist. The latter was thirtysomething, dressed in straight-leg sea-blue creased trousers and a duck egg blue blouse with white polka dots and a deep collar. I liked the different shades of one colour, and her straggly dark blonde hair. As she leant forward to put a plastic spatula on the tip of her nose and told Melanie to look at it, I checked my unsighted angle behind her elbow: down the open crest of a crease-wrinkle of her shirt, the curve of a dark purple bra.

It was all over in ten minutes. We bid each other a civil goodbye. No wedding ring. Outside I said "Melanie, you've just been through a distressing examination which went on for at least six minutes. I realise you're a bit traumatised, so what we'll do is to have a recuperative dinner in Wetherspoons." We scoffed and drank and played a game on the serviette where you have to draw illustrations of famous book titles and the other person has to guess them. I like being with my daughters individually.

At 11ish that night I dashed down to my local. A rich man, Catholic, who seemed to latch onto me because I said that the last book I read was Brideshead Revisited, who lives in Mexico--something to do with oil--was trying to remind himself of the life he abandoned in favour of money, doing a sort of class tourism, interpellating us as authentic. When he went to the loo, we all shook our heads and I swigged his double whisky. I apologised and bought him another, hoping I made the point: we're not your subjects, however much money you've got.

J invited me back to the Musicians' Co-op (of which I was a founder member and which J now runs). We went upstairs to its recording studio and J put on some Clifford Brown and we smoked a couple of joints. I love Clifford Brown and I had to stand up and dance a bit. J talked about how the Council doesn't like something--the Musicians' Co-op--that is out of their control. I kept nodding, very much agreeing with his political points, but unable not to dance to Brown's visceral trumpet playing.

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Full day tomorrow, as a couple of people are coming round to see the room, so I'm going to have to sellotape some of the drifting wallpaper down before they arrive, and put the heating on for the first time since Csilla and Petar left. One, a young girl who works locally, at 11, then the one I prefer at the moment, a 28-y-o female Naughty Boys Studies postgrad who wants to bring her cat, at 12.30. Straight over to Neil and Kev's for lunch and a run through for the Dickens night, then to Liverpool to meet the Scouse nurse at 5.15.

The Prof has suggested "drinks and tapas" next Wednesday at a place which looks a bit pricey to me. So say, with restraint, three drinks at three quid, plus four tapas at four quid? So that'll be twenty-five quid minimum then. Couldn't we just go down the local boozer?

I'm still wishing Kim hadn't recalled what she said.

I would tell you about the concert, the breakfast that my friend's recently acquired girlfriend from the Dominican Republic cooked for us, chillaquiles or whatever it's called, a delicious hot spicy porridge thing, but the last 72 hours have been filled with Kim. Below is the post that I wrote when I got back from Glasgow, intending to publish it tonight.

I don't want to go into details but a couple of texts I received later in the evening show clearly that she regretted what she said over the last couple of days--she said was drinking vodka at the time--and now it's all off. "I would love to go to bed with you." "I want to share my bed with you." "I hold you in high regard and am rather fond of you." "I do miss you." All revoked.

For one mind-excitingly sex-excitingly weekend I thought I might be Kim's boyfriend. But I won't be, and I am now utterly sad.

I replied "That all sounds reasonable to me, [pet name]. You're a rare bird and I can't help liking you. Onward! x". Which took a lot of effort and a sob of tears to blink away before it could be sent.

Earlier this evening, I was happy, and ready to cancel my arrangements to meet the Prof and the nurse.

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I get back from Glasgow to receive a notification that Nuraddin is looking for a room in Lancaster.

Not much of a goer

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I am sent an article on media education and sexuality to edit.

As funny as it gets in the hilarious world of editing

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But shining brightly over everything, Kim (first date with awkward ending here), lip-bitingly beautiful three days getting utterly drugfucked here).

I'll say more later--I want to jealously keep it to myself for a while--but I had absolutely no idea she would make that move.

Shalamar - Make That Move
(filmed in Lancaster, Oct 1980)

"I want to go home with looby," she said repeatedly, putting her arms (and her tits) round me, in between saying she was an alcoholic and putting on the tears when she didn't get enough attention. "Don't get on a downer Kate," the man from Glasgow says. "It's Sunday. We've all got enough fucking problems in the week, come on."

At the girls' house last night, Fiona, my eldest, laughingly showing how she can cart every member of our family around on her back and then be thrown onto the sofa. Kirsty not sharing her wine, probably annoyed with me for exciting the girls before bedtime.

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An afternoon neglecting a deadline, spent with an impoverished Neil and Kev, carting a pile of books, on a trolly, to Oxfam, and then pooling our very limited funds for drink. Glances to strangers across the pub who are in the same state, glances which signal "Isn't this feeling of togetherness lovely?"

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The Professor of Understanding Ruffians Studies at Black Pudding Polytechnic gets in touch, drawn to something in my list of likes--"Materialist theories of art"--which I didn't think would be much of a girl magnet. Bit goofy-looking in her pictures, economy home haircut which looks like her friend's used a conical lampshade as a guide for the scissors, and teeth which present an argument for the early adoption of braces where they might be considered helpful, but you can't tell: Kim looked a bit ragged online; in real life she's a fitbit.

More immediately pretty is the woman from Birkenhead who sends a short, self-deprecating email and a picture of herself mid-stride on the dancefloor of a low-ceilinged nightclub. We're trying to move the pieces of our childcare arrangements around to get out for a drink.

The Christian has gone silent. Maybe she's found what I hoped was the unambiguous "No God botherers thanks." I hope she's not a member of a guitar-led church who's working herself up to respond "Yes, I would say I'm a Christian, but honestly, I've got absolutely no problems with gay people."

A nurse from the city of steel gets in touch with what is now becoming a wearying enthusiasm for parts of my profile, before helpfully telling me that she's pursuing someone else. This genre of email is comprised of formulations of "Someone else will really like you!"

More interestingly, a witty and kinktastic non-monogamous Glaswegian sends the most inventively funny emails. "I wish I hadn't used a Welsh place name as my safeword." That area of friskiness which involves an ethically-sourced physical deprivation of volition and agency from the woman has always appealed to me.

I'm back to Glasgow at the crack of dawn tomorrow as a train driver pal and I are going to see the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra play Bruckner's 7th, but I'm also going to appropriate that pile of rubble I found the other day in Anderstoun as my own art work. I'm going to put up the naming plaque on the building site, and then go round all the galleries and distribute a little leaflet about it containing my cv, a bit of arty blab, a picture of me in front of it, and a statement saying that although the site is not open, it can easily be viewed from Houldsworth Street.

I've also given Ms Llanfihangel-Yng-Ngwynfa my number and have asked her if she's tied up next week at all.

Not all my own work

The only place apart from Lancaster where I know I could live happily.

In St Enoch's shopping centre, the result of one of the worst acts of civic vandalism in Glasgow in living memory, when in 1977 the Council knocked down some beautiful Gothic Victorian buildings to build an bleak shopping centre drenched in canned music. And "restrooms". What an ugly American word. They're toilets. You don't go there to have a rest.

Glasgow respects women.

Its inhabitants have a strong sense of civic pride and the Council is a keen protector of trees in urban spaces.

This is Kingston Bridge, which carries the M8 over the Clyde. It's the busiest road bridge in the United Kingdom. In an inspection in 1994 the north pier was found to have sunk by twelve inches and the bridge had twisted by six. The only solution was to lift it up, right it, then set it down again. I'd have loved to have seen that operation.

Before.

After. A vast improvement.

Under the bridge near Kelvingrove tube, near the venue where Shelly and me performed Ambush in Wedding. The discarded videos were all pirated Westerns. I was hoping for something a bit more racy.

This unprepossessing pub is great inside. Real fires, boho crowd, young men with beards, girls in secondhand dresses. Average food served by self-loving staff. A vinyl jukebox. It's expensive though and not great for real ale so I gave it a miss this time.

The weavers cottages of Anderstoun have long since disappeared.

St Patrick's Primary School, reduced to rubble, before the site is used for yet another block of flats.

Under the M8, a scar through central Glasgow that that should never have been built.

A lovely pub, but at 3.40 / pint, I only had the one.

There are five other real ales on along the bar.

Not tempted by this one though.

Beware the landlady.

"That's all you're getting. Steak pie, that's all there is now."

My idea of a good afternoon.

But it always goes wrong. This was taken by one of a couple of people who were standing holding those big signs indicating a fish tea for a fiver down an alley off Buchanan St. They I told them it was for my dating site profile, (where it is now), and the man said "If I were a woman, I'd contact you."

I went to see an exhibition at a gallery called Trongate 103. This was in an alley a couple of doors down. What are alice belts?

The Scotia. What a disappointment. They've taken eight of the handpumps out and replaced them with electric lager dispensers. Only beer was a very drab Belhaven Sunset Gold

And at that point my camera battery expired, otherwise I'd have shown you The Blackfriars, (mine and The Architect's pub), where I had a chat with a telecoms engineer who had the rudeness to leave, on the flimsy excuse that the attractive tall blonde Dutch girl who had just walked in was his girlfriend and they were going out to dinner, causing a hot wave of jealousy I could only cope with by ordering another pint; and the inside of the Horseshoe, where a drunk Glaswegian claimed to recognise me, saying I was too pissed to remember it, and where we both started talking at chatting with a Croatian couple; and I got drawn into a heated discussion which seemed to centre around the assertion "Yeh nor meh fecking daa!" It seemed to fizzle out amicably enough. One of the irate interlocutors left most of a pint of Tennent's, so I pinched it.

On the train home, I flaked out. The local bus inspector recognised me and shook me out of sleep just as we were pulling into Lancaster.

The widely-used conventions popularised by Rusbridger (1997) have been adopted in this article.

Cliff on Gillian

Before the date, what were you hoping for?
Overwhelming intellectual and sexual attraction. We leave the drinks unfinished and I try to maintain a straight face at reception as I ask whether they have a room available, now.

First impressions?
She seemed completely relaxed about the situation. A cool hello as she walked in and went round to the other side of the table. I stood up and leant slightly towards her; she sat down without a handshake or a kiss. Good clothes, layers of grey wool. Attractive hair, in an undyed browny-ginger mess. Posh, with a accent derived from class rather than geography.

What did you talk about?
The problems of looking after stroppy adolescent daughters; the prickliness of the teacher on the same acting class we did a couple of years apart; how depressingly unintegrated Blackburn is; her dating disaster with the man who stank and who provoked a faked rescue mobile phone call, and the story someone I met told me about a man who disapeared for a long time, then came back apologising but he "just had to go for a rub."

Any awkward moments?
None that I was aware of.

Good table manners?
It's difficult to go wrong with a blackcurrant and soda and a sparkling water.

Best thing about her?
She's a bullshit-free zone. I didn't feel anything was hidden and she had no trace of that widespread female trait of talking in code.

Would you introduce her to your friends?
No-one I go out with would ever be a secret, but I can't imagine she'd get on with most of them. She'd find them too vulgar, drunken, or reckless.

Could she meet the parents?
It's none of their business.

Did you go on somewhere?
No. She had an acting class and it was coming to a natural conclusion.

And... did you kiss?
No. The lack of anything physical seemed to be tacitly understood early on. We stood a yard apart on the hotel steps and said goodbye.

If you could change one thing about the afternoon, what would it be?
I wish we could have got drunk. You don't know someone until you've done that.

Marks out of 10?
It's not a situation to be assessed quantitively, but it was a pleasant afternoon, and that's not what I'm after.

Would you meet again?
We might run into each other at the theatre.