Kitty and Melissa were up for the weekend, Mary-Ann was engaged in strenuous diplomacy with her daughters in order to get up to Lancaster for a few hours on Sunday afternoon, and it was my weekend to have the girls, so much of the weekend involved managing some mild child neglect, which started in the Sun Hotel, where a Little Black Dress Wearers' Society meeting was in attractive progress.

Arriving late at the local theatre's Christmas cabaret, I see a woman tied loosely to a tree as part of the act. It's Karen, another survivor of Bloom and Doom. She's as gorgeous as ever, long black hair, dark grey straight-necked dress just beneath the knee, black boots and tights. She's teaching English now in a college in Penrith. Introducing me to her fiancé, I felt that irrational disappointment that you feel when someone you fancied is betrothed to someone else, and surreptitiously compared myself to him.

In the bar afterwards, Kitty hooked in one of the cabaret artists and tried an understated approach of "You must know, that you're every woman's dream" before pushing forward her best features with her hands. "Fuck it," she said. I'm forty-one. If I find a man attractive I'm telling him." "This is going to be our year", we all suggested. Kitty thought for a minute. "Yeah, I said that last year."

A suggestion to Kirsty that I could leave the girls on their own for three hours or so and take Mary-Ann to bed on Sunday went down very badly, and then on the morning of our tryst, my daughter Fiona was quite ill.

I texted Mary-Ann and said that we'll have to meet in the local cafe where women who have jobs getting people who can't spell into Higher Education meet up with their be-jumpered partners who aren't ashamed about papooses to talk in an adult way, but not that adult way, over camomile tea. But it's close enough to allow for occasional checking up on the invalid. I told the girls I was walking up to someone's house to take them a card: about an hour purchased.

Mary-Ann drove us up an unlit, wooded road between the cemetery and a burnt-down animal by-products rendering plant. There were the usual bra clasp difficulties, and the gearstick wanted to join in. When we went to drive back, we were in reverse.

We said goodbye and I went to check on my daughters. Kirsty arrived, and all was well; I was relieved to hear no complaints of abandonment from the girls. A companionably domestic couple of hours with them all. Then I went to the pub and took my Christmas present from Mary-Ann with me. When I came back from the loo the woman at the next table said "Your book looks very interesting. What's it about?"

"It's a collection of C18th erotic literature." "Oh", she said, interested. I was going to show her the dedication of the first piece but thought better of starting a conversation with a stranger by showing her

[A]s you scorn monopolising your Cunt to a single keeper, but have refused no Man a kindness who desired it, having often been heard to say 'twas not in your nature to deny satisfaction to a standing Prick, and that 'twas not barely thrusting a Prick into a Cunt, but the well-managing of a Fuck that makes the Summum Bonum [...]

I'm in the pub, waiting for Stefan and Csilla, as we're having a get-together before they go off to the Caucasus to have two Christmases, the one celebrating the birth of St Sherry of Marks and Spencer on 25th, and the one in funny writing on 6th January.

Several yards away, sits a good looking Twentysomething woman, black hair in a bob, an overbite. (I love overbites). But I'm mainly preoccupied with having to tell Stefan that we can't afford to have the heating on all night, as he has done the last two nights.

Correct	Incorrect

He already has it on for hours in the day, when any faint shiver of Lancashire cool would be easily defeated with a gaily decorated festive bobble hat. The bill could run into hundreds of pounds, and I've got lustful expenses in Leicestershire to consider before discarding my long johns. Although obviously if Mary-Ann ever makes the long trek up to Lancaster to have me explore her cunt as a person, I will let her have complete control over the knob and let her turn it up as far as it'll go.

Before they arrived I bumped into Eric. I used to work with Eric (and Denise) during my days at Bloom and Doom, before a couple of vulture capitalists arrived, paid themselves 100 and 80K a year respectively to make people redundant, then sold the firm to a more successful one which offers appealingly named bouquets such as the "Sumptuous Bag of Christmas" above.

At the bar, Ms Overbite and her friend were standing with Eric. As I approached they moved off and said they were sitting down. A very quick run through the past four years: he's got a good job in a pathology lab. "Yeah, white coat and everything."

"Are you out with them two?" "Yes." "Blimey, you lucky bugger. That one in the shorts." "Yeah, she works with me. Mental health. And she's a pole dancer. I can get you a referral if you like."

Eric mentioned another former colleage. "Debbie's over there. You should say hello." I saw her, sitting with her back to me. I bid my farewells to Eric. "Yeah, I will, thanks! Nice to bump into you again. Have a good night," I said, raising an eyebrow in the best tradition of English trouser-related farce.

I creep up to Debbie, smiling at the people around me. I approach her from behind and pinch her bum. She looks round. It's not her, and is with a rather large man. I make abject apologies, causing amusement. "No offence taken," she says.

I was an hour late for Mary-Ann due to our creaky railway system. Tannoyed hectoring of an exciting promise of luggage being "destroyed by the security services", who "tour this station, twenty-four hours a day"; late running trains. The train was full of an unpleasant culture of football. I asked the girl standing in front of me (nowhere to sit) if I could borrow her phone to tell Mary-Ann I was running late.

Seeing her before she did me, sitting in a cold tile-plated "cafe" on the station, I felt sorry for making her wait. Given the past few days' turbulence courtesy of Little Miss God of Loughborough, I'd practised something to say to her as my first sentence.

As soon as I saw her disappointed and worried face I wish I hadn't said "Mary-Ann. There is one more big problem." I ploughed on. "Yesterday, with terrible timing, I came out in these cold sores. So we'll have to be inventive." She smiled with flirty relief. She took my arm and said "Where are we going? Rutland Arms?"

The Rutland Arms' stained glass was glintingly Christmassy. Many women there, always an indicator of a good pub. Proper cider, the tannic pucker of apples. "No," she said, as I stroked my hand around the small of her back. You don't move your body. You just move that arm."

"Are you more a visual person or a tactile one?" she said, which is like asking a man "which do you prefer, pornography or me?" By deft deployment of my jacket, I snuggled my hand discreetly against her cunt ("I like having your hand there"). Later I took her hand, formed it into a claw, and scraped her nails along my forearm. "You can do that as hard as you want."

Outside Sheffield station she wrapped her coat around us and took my hands and put them onto her. A group of teenagers spat behind us. "There's something about your silent attention to my tits that I find very erotic," which made me feel as though I had started watching my own pleasure.

I had an hour to wait till my train and I went to the pub on the station and chatted to a 73-year-old ex-miner. "How are your lungs?" "Just these last two years. I can't walk more than a hundred yards." A young woman with gleaming perfect teeth did a performance of laughing. "Tactile," I thought.

A new hazard is threatening me and Mary-Ann. 24 hours before seeing her, I have sprouted three whopping cold sores. I am shovelling on Aciclovir in concentrations that would kill small birds.

You're going start thinking I'm making these up but I have agreed another repayment program with another creditor. The standing order in front of my requires me to pay £5 a month from 30th December 2011, until 30th January 2053.

Someone has sent Mary-Ann this blog, and as a result, she's ended it.