The family -- now augmented through my daughters with one ex-girlfriend and another present one -- went to Brittany. Our twentieth anniversary of being there, during which we've missed only four years, Kirsty worked out. We stretched it this year to two weeks and four days.

At 6am, the bars in Bristol airport are full. Surely, no other country has this kind of drinking culture, where "going on holiday" is a licence to ignore any respectability about the hours of drinking. (And if there is one, I'd like to go there). Women are dressed in gym wear, pyjamas, or lingerie. Many men love a chance of some hyper-masculine strutting: tattoos; tight tops with "Athletic Dept" written on them; names of places in America sieved of their consonants, or doing free advertising for "ellesse".

There was an early moment of friction between me and my youngest, and the sea floor. I had run into the sea, but dived too early into shallow waters, and grated my mons pubis against the coarse sand below. I compartmentalised the mild pain, and continued swimming. Later that day, in the perhaps too public setting of the middle of the living room, I pulled my pants away to peer at the damage. I was told off for this (I can't remember her exact words), to which I responded "oh shut up! I've cut myself."

I went to the bathroom to continue my self-examination -- both of my pubic bone and of my lack of a sense of considering others when performing such an inspection -- and, better attired, I apologised to my youngest. She did so too and we had a little hug.

Kirsty is a lot more restless than me -- I remember nights in our bed when her jerking foot only slowed rather than stilled -- but I was glad I signed up to her excursion to Quiberon, a cheery place where some people do work that doesn't involve catering to tourists. My youngest got bus-sick, and fifteen minutes after we arrived, threw up on the promenade.

A French woman in a flat opposite asked her, in English, if she'd like some water. My daughter thanked her and apologised in French (she's currently in Brittany full-time, on the third year of a degree studying it). "Heavy night, eh?" the woman ploughed on.

At this point I took against her. It reminded me of something in Max Egremont's superb history of the decline of East Prussia, (fortunately, there are maps), when he was deflated by a train conductor congratulating him -- in English -- for having very good German. Always that demotion. "I don't mind giving you some water, but we'll keep our language to ourselves, thanks."

Never mind: a crystalline foreign sky and sea air cures all. We clambered over the rocks of the côte sauvage, and the sea rolled in, impatient for high tide, the colours all turned up. There were pools populated by fish and crabs, into which I lowered my feet gently so as not to scare them off from doing their fascinating collective scurrying. I described the five-inch-long pale green fish to Kirsty, but in case things were getting too enjoyable, I said "what a shame we're going to lose it all."

The housing association told me I'd have someone coming round to do a fire risk assessment. So I had a busy morning of tidying up, washing up, making the bed look polite, posing my spider plant in prime position, hiding the Robinson's golliwog and dusting the windowsills, glad to have an external social pressure to induce me to do the tidying and cleaning whose intrinsic value I cannot naturalise.

As he strolled round "my" flat with his clipboard, I noticed that one of the sections on his report was "evidence of alcohol and drug use." The one thing I inexplicably failed to hide was about a third of a pint of cider which I had left out from the previous night. I assume he'll be going back saying that I was on the pop at 10am. Just to help matters, I told him I work on the railway and was going to work in an hour or so.

My latest appointment at the dental hospital lasted three hours. I didn't mind the fillings, the needles, the drilling and scraping; but the chair, after that length of time, was an ache-inducing instrument for my neck, shoulders and back. "Nearly there," she kept saying, which I eventually learned was not to advise me not of the treatment's imminent ending, but its prolongation.

She said (again) that a toothbrush should be the last thing that goes into your mouth at night. I am very glad a saucy rejoinder to that advice neither occurred to me nor was uttered. Still five extractions to come.

After looking at the roundabout at Poynton, I went to Manchester to see my actress daughter, and by default, her girlfriend.

We sat outside a bar near the Central Library. They intercepted a couple of their actor friends walking past. I didn't do well when introduced to "Cassie!" Who was a luxuriantly-haired brunette roughly the same age as my daughter. I rummaged my head but could only stall. "You know, Cassie, from Lancaster." I faked recognition, she faked her acceptance of my recognition. The discs of mozzarella on the pizza were cold, as if the chef had forgotten them, and put them on at the last moment.

My daughter and her girlfriend desisted from their irritating habit of pawing and snogging each other in public, as if to throw down the lesbian gauntlet, in an arena -- central Manchester -- where, one hopes, that's a won battle. (A moment's reflection and I know my impatience is unjustified, because I bet in real life, it isn't.)

It was Love Saves the Day in Bristol the other weekend, and I'd like to thank the person who lost a bag of refreshments in a well-known chain pub behind a large railway station. I came down here to take up a better job, and for a livelier cultural scene. I didn't realise it would come with free coke every few weeks.

I tried sitting under a tree in the park. I had the second volume of David Kynaston's history of post-war Britain and a couple of bottles of cider.

A bra-heightened fortyish woman walked on the footpath in front of me with her shoulders back, hair all shimmering, her lovely tits forward, relaxed. White shirt. She returned my look, smiled at me, and carried on sashaying past.

Alas, an aggressive hay fever drove me home snotting, weeping, phelgming and itching. Mixed excrescences running down my cheeks at the pedestrian crossing; wiping my nose on my sleeve, too stuffed with pollen to care what it looked like.

As I was working the train yesterday, my supervisor rings, asking me if I could go to C--- today to be shown how to use the ramps to get disabled people on to the new trains that are to be Transport That Fails's saviour. And then do my normal shift.

I agreed to this, thinking I was a manful negotiator for asking for three-and-a-half hours overtime, whilst knowing in my head that it was wrong. In my bed last night, I seethed and wriggled, irritated with my weakness in not saying "hang on, it's either the training in C--- or my shift, not both." So as a way of punishing them for their audacity, I rang them at half eight this morning with a story about a collapsed toilet in the flat above me.

A few months ago someone's toilet shifted as he was sat on it, rupturing the flimsy floor on which it was anchored. A solution of his shit and piss dripped into the communal room downstairs for hours until anyone went in there and discovered the leak. I adapted the story for my own purposes, saying that I would have to stay in for the contractor. Everyone knows it's a lie.

Mel is away for a couple of weeks in Greece at a wedding, so armed with Loratidine and something for the journey, I am off to Poynton in Cheshire, to look at a roundabout. It's one of those things that men do when their girlfriends aren't around.

My interest in it arose from a fascinating Lancaster Civic Society talk about it years ago, which explained how the village's main crossroads were in desperate need of something that considered the safety of its inhabitants, above all, its pedestrians. I've always wanted to see the results for myself. The junction could hardly have been any worse before the alterations, as you can see from the opening minute or so of this youtube video about it, made shortly after its completion. I'd like to see how it's faring, a decade later.

And after an afternoon's hard work examining roundabout remodelling developments in Cheshire, I'm up to Manchester for pizza and beer with my middle daughter -- which is a more attractive pair of jobs in one day than the two that my employer was trying to get me to do.

I've now been handed over to the care of a more personable dentist than the unsmiling Brazilian consultant. She has bursting hair which is artfully wound into long weaves. She's African or West Indian, or both, and doesn't mind her breasts being in touch with the back of my head as I lay horizontally agape, knowing that there's nothing sexual in it for either of us.

She injected me several times around my gums. I like the pinning, the silvery, sliding feel of the metal going in. I started laughing when she said "if it feels too sensitive, we've got more" -- a combination of nerves, the overtones of what might feel "sensitive", the druggy suggestion of having more, and the effects of the adrenaline that's part of the serum.

When I left, with dribble dropping uncontrollably onto my trousers, I unbottled the farts that always arise at the dentist's, trumpeting carelessly as I walked up Union Street. "Union", a rousing, imperial word to accompany trumpeting anal noises. I only lacked a proper brass section.

The train in front of us broke down the other day and there was a three-hour-long confusion whilst other people had to sort out what to do with a hundred passengers stuck at Shrewsbury.

Our train was standing on one side of the platform and on the other, a few dozen mainly mid- to late-teenage girls, skirted and bloused, restless.

They noticed me and the guard on the train and waved at us. I waved back. There was an exchange of hand signals, as I made bodily gestures back saying "yes, I know" pointing my hand at my chest then turning my palms upwards towards them and tilting my head to the side, trying to sympathise with them. They were bearing up well, not knowing when their train would leave. They returned with blown kisses and heart shapes with their hands.

After a few minutes, our cross-platform semaphore had to cease as our train eased off, running empty -- just me, the guard, and the driver -- to our depot. The girls started running up the platform with more kisses and hearts. At the end of the platform, I could only wave, as they did back.

The looby-Kirsty clan, being unable to get together at Easter due to the youngest being subject to French term times -- she's in Brittany doing an eight-month long bar survey, with a cover story about doing a French degree -- so we arranged Not Easter for last weekend. At the bus stop in Bristol, I made an innocent remark to a man about the bus times, and he asked me if I was a Jehovah's Witness.

Almost as soon as the train had left Temple Meads, the guard invited me to sit in first class. It's astonishing how some staff remember me despite me leaving that particular train company over ten years ago. On the last leg up, from Manchester to Lancaster, even the excellent locally-brewed beer was free.

I had a boozy afternoon with Wendy, Kitty, Helen, and Wendy's charming, unassuming auntie. I met Wendy by herself the day before. She has lost none of her lustre, and I felt some of the old headiness of being close to her.

She said that there'd been a bit of a diplomatic incident with Helen, who was insisting on bringing this man whose head is an empty as it is big, whom none of us like. "So just be prepared tomorrow." She said that Kitty had done her level best, but Helen can be froward when opposed. He wasn't there, but a work colleague of Kitty's, whom I find a bit intense without much substance behind it, was. We all enjoyed ourselves, although I think us older group of friends collectively realised that the brakes couldn't quite come off.

On Sunday we went en famille to Morecambe. In a charity shop, amidst the notices about homeless cats and dogs, there was a notice, with photographs, advertising "snails looking for homes".

The eldest announced that a friend was coming round to cut her hair. Yet another lesbian. On the way back from a walk to the brewery, some of us went into the local "community" centre, and walked in on Queer Crafts Club. The premises used to house a pub -- i.e., a community centre -- but the dwindling numbers of working class people who live in the area now have been slowly evicted from what was their pub by a combination of refugee language lessons, reiki classes, and speculators only interested in renting to students.

I took myself off to The Old Shipbuilder's Arms, where I could relax into pints of bitter at £2.60, the horseracing on the telly, and bumping into my old school friend -- the hairdresser who once said, when we were alone, that it was a good job her and her husband had to go, "because otherwise I'd have to take you home and fuck you."

I was asked at work if I would like to spend a few hours representing the catering department of Transport that Fails at a reception and naming ceremony of the first of a new set of train which will be running around Wales. The Minister for Transport, Members of the Senedd, and various other high-ups were to be present.

I leapt at the chance -- first because my manager said "it should be over by about half twelve", but also because I imagined being in a posh hotel with some decent food.

Instead, we welcomed our esteemed guests, amongst which was a party of senior engineers from Switzerland who had had a big hand in designing and building the trains, to a windswept station up in the valleys, and stood everyone under a rusting tin roof which was pouring rainwater onto the tracks. Our coffee machine couldn't be plugged in, so our culinary offering consisted of flapjacks, oranges, and water.

As we were leaving, the ticket office supervisor at the station wouldn't let me use the station toilets, "because of the money." Which thwarted my carefully-laid plan to steal a hundred pounds or so from my employer that morning.