I have spent the last couple of days in an affronted flurry of political activity. Firstly because the monumentally ruinous shale gas extraction process called fracking has been given the go-ahead in the UK, and uncomfortably close to home, on the Fylde. Despite the evidence presented so well in the film Gasland, which was shown in Lancaster last year, of flammable water, radioactive elements being released into rivers, earthquakes, and the use of a secret list of hundreds of poisonous chemicals in the process, money speaks louder.

So I've joined the local anti-fracking group and I can see a bit of direct action coming on. The last time the Conservatives were in power, I used occasionally to get up at 5am to join a merry coach trip to Burnley colliery where we threw half bricks and bits of pipe at the vans carrying scabs into the mine. Now, having erased the mines, they're after the water table.

Next, almost on my doorstep, a developer has started cutting down an area of woodland that has been used for decades by local people, and had been left to flourish in the ramshackle way that an untouched wood will. The trees are subject to a Tree Preservation Order and so their actions are blatantly illegal, but with the pussy-footing around big corporations that Local Councils are forced into, the Council now has to go through an appeals process. Therefore, along with several dozen other people, I'm attending the appeal against the TPO at the Town Hall on Monday.

There are some sad pictures of the damage that has already been done on our excellent independent media site, Virtual Lancaster and an eloquent post about it on a highly recommended new local blog discovery, Unicycle Emptiness.

A friend--an acquaintance really, since I would never seek her out for any kind of intercourse--asked me to help her pack up to move to her new house. Someone else rang me an hour or so earlier to say that he could give me some money back I'd lent him, so naturally we went down the pub and spent it all.

As we were drinking Removal Lady texted asking asking me if I was vegetarian. "Oh fuck me," I said to him. "We're going to have bloody pasta. I don't want that; I want a couple of pints." I texted her back thanking her for the kind offer and lied, saying I'd already arranged to have tea with the girls.

I found myself teetering on the edge of impatience as I stood around in her loft. It seemed a wasted and impractical two hours of undoing box after box of old files, magazines, kitchen equipment and so on; then re-sellotaping them and sticking labels on the boxes which in most cases duplicated the inscriptions in felt tip which were already on them.

Soon, the penny dropped about why I was up there in her loft. It is with not the slightest attempt at self-aggrandizement that I say that she fancies me. She asked me round for dinner a couple of years ago and for a few long seconds, blocked my way out of the door, tilting her face with a supplicating look that I recognise; I do it occasionally when in Denise's company. It says, please kiss me.

Unfortunately I cannot find a morsel of desire for her. She's in her early 60s--which isn't a problem in the slightest; if anything, an advantage. But her mud-coloured, tired clothes are from that era that falls unattractively between the sufficiently old to be deservedly revived, and the contemporary. But never mind, we could sort out her wardrobe, and her "natural" hair.

The fatal blow is that she's a practicing Christian, and toddles off on Sunday mornings to some local temple of voodoo. I was a fraction sharp with her recently when she wished me a "Happy Christian Easter." "I'll take the Happy bit, Terri, but I'm an atheist so I'll skip the Christian bit if you don't mind."

As I left (with no tilting of faces this time), I saw the pan of pasta and sauce on the cooker and felt a bit sorry for her; banished that feeling, and went home.

My daughter Fiona and I went off to the park and had a painful time gathering nettles for Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's nettle soup recipe. We wore gloves but Lancaster nettles are hard bastards. We came back with over a pound of them rather than the six ounces we required. The resulting soup was earthy and a bit bland. Plenty of it left over to labour through.

This afternoon Fiona, Jenny and I walked up Warton Crag, a beautiful striated limestone outcrop of old, unkempt woods teeming with flitting, plant and unseen life. At the top it was clear enough to see Blackpool Tower--which I know doesn't advertise the place very well.

Below us, Morecambe Bay was spread out in shades of flatness; you could see how close humans have dared or needed to live close to flooding and seawater, and the sands which layer the corpses of humans (and horses), some caught out by the treacherous unseen quicksand channels of the Keer and the Kent, the most dangerous of the Lake District streams which feed into it; some by the tide and staying in the pub too long before setting off; and latterly, people who had never seen the sea before being commanded by Chinese gangmasters to gather cockles.

We came back down into the village and its main pub, The George Washington. George Washington's grandfather, who emigrated to Virginia as a child, was born in Warton. Someone I didn't recognise introduced himself, knowing my name and saying that we used to work together at a restaurant. I pretended I had had the recollection which never came.

The landlord, who was wearing an enamel England flag on his lapel, chimed in univited into our conversation with "It's all a load of rubbish. Don't believe any of it. He emigrated to avoid all the Polish people coming over here." I went back to the children, ashamed that I'd laughed along with it.

I send an email about nettle stings to the French woman, and asked her out for a drink.

"[...]I'm not sure you're quite my 'type' not that I have one. I reckon we would have a right giggle but it wouldn't go further for me I'm afraid."

I assume this means "Based on your pictures, I don't fancy you."I like her honesty, but am a little disappointed that she wouldn't base that assessment on at least one face-to-face meeting.

It's a sunny evening and a barbeque is smoking and I've got the girls and one of their friends, so must be quick. But just checked my email. She instantly leaps into first place.

Context: on her profile, she said she likes dictionaries; COED = Concise Oxford English Dictionary; asked her what her favourite word is. Said mine was "deodand".

Hi Cliff,

I'm not very good at acronyms, what on earth is a COED? My favourite word, well the English one at least, pardon my French... is Cunt.

Because a lot of people find it really really offensive, as if they were going to be struck by lightning or be put on display as Islam's enemy number one on the 9 o'clock Al Jazeera news. Love it. I'm ---, pleased to meet someone who makes an effort.

And she's French.

to talk about. A long telephone chat with The Architect. I went on a date with her in Glasgow once before she got a job in New York. She was on her way to a "movie theatre". Make your mind up. A cinema, in proper English.

She told me a fascinating tale about a man she was sort of seeing when she met me. She borrowed his phone to look at an email, and the crafty bugger didn't log her off. He then read some of my emails to her, and Googled for me. Then he stomped off in a jealous huff. He refuses to admit that he looked through her emails, whilst using information he could only have gleaned from having done so to taunt her.

Feeling pissed chatty afterwards, I rang Kim. I don't know what love is, but she's not having an easy time at all and I felt a physical flowing of affection to her on the phone and yearned to put my arms round her. Is that love? What is love? It seems to mean either, an acceptance of the diminuition of sexual desire as the financial advantages of being able to buy the house you couldn't buy singly increase; or, liking your children and building this into a big thing that has to be rehearsed in the Guardian every Saturday.

But mainly, Vicky. I regret my last sentence though. Sounds a bit matron ooer.

I feel I'm being laughed at, not with, here.

It's Saturday, and our Market Square is sociable. I meet my attractive gay telecoms engineer friend and we talk for a bit about him spending a hundred quid yesterday on the lash. But then my pupils widen with sex at the sight of Denise with her tallness, her long ginger hair, her red lipstick, her tight skirt. "You must excuse me Brian, I've just noticed a good friend of mine who I don't see often and I'd like to have a chat with her, especially as she's not with her boyfriend."

She's with her mother. I go up to her and pinch her bum. She looks round, shocked. It's a delight to so simply fancy someone. "I'm sorry about such a direct approach. I'll try something a bit more subtle in future. Although you do have an irresistibly sexy arse." Mum takes it all well and tells us about the damaged nerves in her fingers arising from a career in hairdressing. Her daughter and I are meeting up in the pub tomorrow.

Saturday night, and it's the Northern Soul night at the B--- Hotel. Erica's there, off her tits, with an attractive woman I can't place. Long pale blue dress, beautiful dark eyes. "Wow, you look nice" my involuntary first words. I'm struggling to remember her. "Yeah, it's Vicky, remember? We were at a party at Erica's and you said I came across as needy and prone to depression."

I'm shocked with a belated awareness of the offence I must have caused her, quickly followed by a sense of having ruined my chances for flirting with her that was stronger than any regret about what I'd said. "Oh... yes. Sorry about that." She replies surprisingly. "Haven't seen you for ages," and pulls me into an embrace.

Later, because it's packed, she indicates her lap as a place to sit. I stroke my arms around her back and across her shoulders, along her waist. When we dance together, I like the feeling of jealousy it creates in the men.

We sit down again in the same arrangement. My hands across her shoulders again. She tilts her head towards me, testing my kissing, which I try to make as slow and hesitant as I can manage. It's lovely, feeling the mutual newness of kissing.

Erica, e'd up, wants a bit more action, so we walk to another place where it's a bit more techno-y. My arm around Vicky's waist. "You're very affectionate," she says, not saying no.

A younger crowd, less convivial, and that flavour of bonhomie that I can read as indicating that no-one's on drugs. Erica invites me to hers, but I'm fairly sober and not on e and I want to go home. Vicky's wandered off somewhere and I don't say goodbye.

It was Frances's 58th birthday yesterday and I write a card for her and hand deliver it, remembering with longing, whilst bracketing out the overtalking that came afterwards, the night she invited me round to see a Chabrol film, fed me on delicious food, then fucked me, keeping on her gorgeous cotton thigh-length green dress with the pretty tie just above her tits; my cock stiff even before she came into the bedroom.

"I'm not sure if you'll like this idea," I wrote in the card, "but I'd be happy to practice my culinary skills on you at some point again," hoping to imply something else. Sealing the envelope and thinking of the mismatch. I can't be the boyfriend she wants, but I can't help fancying her.