The invasion of Ukraine preys on my mind far more than covid ever did. If only someone could assassinate him, then his support would collapse. At work, there are two Polish women. "Of course I am worried," one of them says, in response to a well-meant but stupid enquiry. "That's why I like coming to work. No news, just concentrate on work."

Down the pub afterwards I am trying to ignore the man at the next table who looks like Jamiroquai who has a knack of following me around in two of my haunts, Castle Park and the budget pub. He's at the next table scribbling away, in between flicking between chat screens and a Wikipedia article about The Evangelical Church in Germany. He does a performance of tics, scratching his hair vigorously and conversing with some computer-based entity. I think it's a strategy to get my attention. He's possibly looking for parity with the nurses I got chatting to at the bar.

A late twenties (?) woman is repeatedly moving her hand down her hip as she stands next to me. I open with "are you trying to find your pocket?" "No, I'm just looking for something....oh, it's OK. I thought I'd lost some money."

"Do you know what," I said. "The other day, I got a letter with a North Wales postmark and I opened it and someone had sent me thirty pounds anonymously. I don't know anyone in Wales. I don't think I know a single Welsh person."

"I'm from North Wales."

"Are you? Well it was wrapped in a letter from Santander."

"I bank with Santander."

"Really?" and I made this woo sound and waved my hands about, hoping to evoke the supernatural. "Do you make a habit of sending money to anonymous strangers?"

"I haven't got it to send."

Her friend came over, and I related the story of my mystery donor to her too. "Anyway, what's the excuse, you all out on a Monday?"

"We're nurses, we all work at Fatspanner Hospital."

"Oh I used to work there. I was a cleaner."

"So what do you do now? Are you retired?"

That's a question I'd never been asked before. But they bought me a pint so they're let off.

My middle daughter returned last night to the stage in Lancaster she first trod when she was eight, this time as a professional actress, as Celia in As You Like It. Trina emails and says she is going with Kirsty and my youngest to see it on Saturday. I'm jealous. I start trying to work out a way up there and back for less than the hundred quid or so that it'd cost on the train, but got tired with all the palaver of split tickets and dodging parts of the journey where you gamble on the conductor not coming round.

One of my New Year's resolutions for 2022 was to work fewer hours, yet I worked fifty-two hours last week over six days.

However, whatever storm we're up to now has blessed me. I do a bit of dinner ladying, and yesterday afternoon, the headmistress sent everyone home. An emissary came into the kitchen to tell us that our week had ended, after a section of the roof, which appeared to have weathered the gusty conditions on Wednesday, fell in. The engineers they called in said that they would have to do a complete structural survey of the whole school, so couldn't guarantee the safety of any part of it. Result!

I was summoned to an interview with the Universal Credit people yesterday. I took my last two weeks' timesheets with me in case they think I am doing what I would prefer to do.

A security guard told me I couldn't bring my scooter into the job centre. I told him that I need it to get to work and that I'm not letting it out of my sight. (I live in an unfashionable suburb of Bristol full of scoundrels.) He said "well put it over there, but you're not allowed to bring it in next time."

In an open plan office, which almost caused nightmarish flashbacks to when I used to be employed by a computer, I sat behind a screen facing a remarkably painted woman. With great precision, she had put pink lipstick on her lips exceeding their physical boundary by a couple of millimetres. Her black eye eyeliner extended in an upward curve either side of her eyes, and she'd painted a matching downward curve starting from the same point, like this.

All that effort in the morning, just to go and sit in a job centre. The artistic merit might be questioned, but for technical execution -- ten out of ten.

"Hello Mr Looby. Erm...I'm just loading up your notes. Oh...it's so slow. This system. So what is it you do?"

"Well, apart from being a man, I'm a dinner lady at La-di-Dah High School, and I also help run the Fatworkers' Staff Canteen in town."

"Oh right, is that on Lard Street?" "Yes, just behind the hospital."

Hmmm...there's nothing really here to tell me why you've been brought in."

"Yeah, me too. I'm a bit bemused as to why I'm here." I showed her my timesheets. "I did fifty-one hours last week and I'll be doing fifty-two this one. But it's a change of scenery, and it's been nice meeting you and having an excuse to stare at your strikingly made-up face."

I felt a presence. The security guard had wandered around to eavesdrop. As I turned my head to him he looked at the floor and scuttled away.

My interview was concluded with another apology, for not knowing what she was supposed to do with me, and I left to call on Mr Khan, purveyor of discounted cider to the quietly alcoholic.

After work one day, I am sitting in the chain pub, close to, and looking out through, its big picture window. Mid-afternoon, it's a warm place of cameraderie and mutually-accepted decay, before the students' loud exhibitionist voices wreck the calm.

Suddenly, a young woman -- late teens? early twenties? -- in baggy trousers and a crop top showing a lovely midriff, starts dancing in front of me on the other side of the glass. I jump down from my seat and and start dancing with her. The man at the next table joins us, but only to point at her and say "aren't you cold?" She misunderstands him, and looks affronted.

"Do you think I'm fat?" she mouths to me. I make a dismissive gesture, and point to her, mouthing back "you..." before making a curving movement with my hands as though I were running them over Nigella Lawson. She, and I start dancing again for a few seconds, and then she leaves abruptly. I sit back down again, full of flirty energy, pleased with myself compared to the fuddy-duddy at the next table. "Fucking hell," I say to him, laughing.

My relationship with Mel continues to put me in a state of puzzlement. Why do I not feel oppressed by this woman? Why, sometimes, like last night, do I ring her saying I'm tired and want a rest, then two hours later ring her wondering if she'd mind me coming round? Why, when stoned and pissed in the pub and in a break from dancing with her, do I say to her friend, "oh Mel, yeah, I'd marry her tomorrow if she asked." Why does she not mind me pushing my stiff cock against her toes while she does the crossword in the morning? Sober, I don't want to marry Mel, but she's the most natural, effortless girlfriend I've had for...

I've been looking through the List of Missing Words, a pdf addendum to the most recent edition of Chambers which I am buying for me and Mel in the interests of non-marital harmony, as it rankles with me that Mel disallowed "abime" and "hap" in a recent game of Scrabble. We use an old Collins dictionary, which includes neither, as our arbiter.

So I can tell you that the trees that line our street have been pollarded by the Council's arboralists wielding averruncators (instruments for cutting off branches of trees); and this morning I told Mel -- who has spent most of her adult life on a Greek island -- that in an ideal world, I would like to aestivate with her this year. That is, "(Zool.) to pass the summer in a state of torpor".

I sent her the word and its definition, and with the domino effect that internet access provokes, we ended up discussing going back to her former island home for a week or two in June. I would love to go. Greek food, wine, sex, swimming. Sitting outside of an evening without a
coat on.

I went out on my scooter for no reason other than to enjoy the sensual pleasure that scootering affords. The fine drizzle was luxuriating. I stopped to turn into the park. A woman was leaning over a child. "You did amazing waiting at the bus stop. You did amazing eating your breakfast. You did amazing putting your coat on." I wanted to go over and tell him that the bar gets a bit higher when you get older.

On another scooter ride, I slowed down as my gaze was caught by a weird mannequin posed in the window of a doctors' surgery. It was of a black nun, or nurse, in an A-line blue head dress and a plastic apron, looking down at a clipboard. I assumed it was some sort of diversity equality and inclusion tick box statue. I was startled to see it move. It was a real nurse.

On a train, a woman and a child, maybe about eight years old, are stood up in the corridor, ready to get off at Bristol Parkway. In the unsettling way that children do, she is staring at me. I want to break the spell.

"Where have you come from?" "Wales,"she replied. "That's a long way." "Yes."

The woman then moved her leg against the girl, pushing her away from me. I smiled and waved at her. I looked up at mum, who immediately turned away from me, almost flinching, seeking the door.

I am constantly poor. All the time. I owe Mel fifty pounds, NatWest four hundred, and Paypal two hundred and eighty. I am sitting on a BA, an MA, and a long-unused teaching certificate. I didn't mind my primary school teaching job in Dagenham many years ago. A pupil's father got stabbed by his neighbour, and there was a case of suspected child abuse going on, but that's deindustrialisation for you. I found London a hard place, devoid of conversation between strangers, a city best suited for individualists. I pined for Lancaster, where people plonk themselves next to you on the bus and tell you about how they've just been to their granddaughter's who said the potatoes in Lidl looked a bit manky so she didn't buy them. I rang a supply agency the other day and they said I'd have to acquire some more recent classroom experience, unpaid, first. Might be an idea.

Me and Mel got the lergy at the same time I think.

Her Aussie friends were over two Saturdays ago. Kev had procured these cannabis sweets which mimic, at least in flavour and appearance, those bittersweet rubbery snakes of English childhood.

I was in a giddy mood soon after we arrived down the Suffolk Arms. At one point I had to correct myself when I started finding Kev's wife attractive: her dry, funny comments, her sandy, untrammelled hair and her slender "figure", to use a word one only ever hears from women and art critics. I wished Kev and Mel could disappear for a minute so that we could have had an inconsequential snog.

The young people behind us seemed to be bemused by these dancing oldies, perhaps wondering what we were on. Me and Mel made a complete hash of trying to use the juke box, poking inconsequentially on illuminated buttons for so long that the machine took the matter into its own hands, playing its own choices.

On the Monday, Mel said she felt a bit rough and had tested positive for the lergy. Just to placate her, I took a test. To my astonishment, it came out positive. Scenting an opportunity to get out of work, as I took a pillow and suffocated the other voice in my head which was asking me about who is going to pay for such indolence, I took another test a few hours later with the same result.

We've spent seven full days with each other at hers, where she's been feeding me delicious food, beating me at Scrabble and Gin Rummy and us watching an incomprehensible State of Play on dvd, the resolution of which I found confusing. I was surprised at how little I resented being holed up with her (although we stretched the meaning of the word "isolation" a little, with walks down the disused railway line and trips to the shop).

To my disappointment, I got my second negative test on Monday so told work I'm out of purdah and went down the pub, had a few pints and did some speed, and had the lovely experience of a swervy, windswept scooter ride home. Some cunt in an Audi came a bit close, irritated perhaps at his imminent loss of dominance as the balance of power shifts away from cars, but also some gracious nods from more considerate drivers letting me go first round an ambiguous roundabout.

I rang Kirsty to share my pleasure that our twice-postponed family holiday in Brittany might go ahead this year following France's decision to let the be-poxed British back in. The conversation meandered into me telling her about a book I'd asked for from my mum for my Christmas present. Never heard of the author, it just got a good review in the LRB. Annie Ernaux's Exteriors.

"Is it intellectual wank?" she said.

To Lancaster for Christmas.

I worked for hours to get the fare down to £33. Coach to Birmingham, dodge the train as far as Stoke-on-Trent, single to Alsager but stay on till Crewe, single to Preston, dodge it from Preston. On the last leg, a masked guard from my railway days, whom I didn't recognise at all, greeted me warmly and chatted away until he suddenly remembered he had to open the doors at Lancaster.

This year we only had two of my own girls and our semi-adoptee. The eldest was away selfishly earning £600 a week with full board in Cambridge. She was "teaching English" in a place tellingly described as a "camp". It's a private school where rich parents can pay for immunity from accusations of child neglect.

On 28th I used another set of half-unpaid-for trains to Middlesbrough. I turned up a wee bit merry to my mum's house, which was stuffed with brothers nieces, nephews, girlfriends. They're all teetotal Christians, so they'll understand.

I'd left all their Christmas presents on the train. I recovered them from Northern Rail's hideout on platform five at Newcastle Central station. The lass handed me my bag full of spangly-wrapped presents, unmolested by chav attention.

Last night I was in a near-deserted Tesco with my scooter. At the till was an unhappy lass, who might consider a move to Wigan, where she'd find the diet more to her liking.

"You're not supposed to bring those things in here." "Am I not?" "No, there's going to be a policy about it." "Oh right. Can't see any notices about it." "Well, there's going to be a policy."

Got a response today from Tesco HQ saying that they "don't have a particular policy [...] However as with most new technology it's common sense at the moment." There was nothing in her email to suggest they're considering formulating a policy towards scooters.

So why do people like Mrs Blobby pretend they're spokespeople for their companies as a cover for inventing policies? She's translating her own response, which I'm guessing might be one of these.

"I can't stand all you scooter riders, having fun and getting about town for pennies a day. You represent a sort of freedom I am secretly envious of, but I'm too fearful of joining in with."

Or, "I'm poorly educated and struggle to adapt to situations with which I am not already familiar. I'm only being unfriendly towards you because I try to limit the number of novel events that I've got to deal with."

Anyway I wasn't in the mood for an argument and bade her goodnight.

In future I'm sticking to the local Pakistani-run shops. More expensive, but better (cricket-related) chat and no fucking arguments about scooters, masks, pay only by card, keep apart, one way systems...

Mr Khan treats me as a person. Mrs Blobby treats me a mud-scraper to temporarily rid herself of her own resentments.