The Local Elections and the AV referendum were tiring, interesting work. To the Polling Station for 6.15, then 27 hours’ work over two days. This being my first time as Presiding Officer, I was nervous, thinking that I might be shamed in at least regional media as the man who sabotaged this year’s elections to Lancaster City Council with a fatal clerical oversight.

Sixteen hours is a long time to spend in the company of someone you’re not getting on with, and I was relieved to have been allocated as Poll Clerks two bright, sensible, pretty, twentysomething women, a civil servant and a livelier and more bohemian Art History MA student. Healthy, moneyed, country girls, chatting to each other about whether the skiing is better in France or Austria. Annabel wore one of those dark blue padded gilets, the incidence of which increases in proportion to the distance from a conurbation; both of them with their blonde hair piled up attractively, held in place by a womanly arrangement of hairclips.

The following morning I was at the count, a bit delerious from lack of sleep, talking volubly to a retired Geography teacher sitting next to me. I was fortunate to be allocated to a team supervised by a twentysomething archaeology graduate, who, I found out, got an Elections Assistant job I applied for two years ago, and who dealt with a demanding administrative and supervisory task with relaxed good humour. I was glad I avoided the team at the next table. They were controlled, suppressed, and quietened by one of those fat, unhappy, tattooed women in leggings who gravitate in such numbers to the Civil Service.

At our breeze-blocked “leisure” centre, about a hundred tellers sat on the inside of a large square of desks, while the local politicians and interested parties could sit and watch us count from the other side. The LibDems were comfortably-off middleaged men in dark jackets, beige trousers, and interview shoes. Green Party men simply cannot dress, overlong magnolia trousers crumpling sadly onto thick-soled boots; the women, willowy types in linen trousers and short grey jackets looking as though they might have a crush on Joan Bakewell. Labour had the highest heels, and a striking woman with dyed pale blonde hair wearing a black and white polka dot dress and wedges. I watched an older female candidate scan her from head to arse as she walked past, and smile. Our useless Conservative MP was surrounded by Toryboys from the University trying subtlely to get noticed by the potentate. The Morecambe Bay Independents have a fearsome looking Councillor who looks like a boxing trainer. Dark and tall, big head, stubble, and pocked skin like a bowl of soggy Weetabix, a man to whom you’d be reluctant to openly deny your vote if you encountered him at your front door.

The LibDems lost all their five seats on the Council, including that of their leader, who gave an ungracious and finger-jabbing valedictory speech which lived up to his soon to be discontinued email address. Someone started heckling, and I was hoping it would degenerate into an unseemly punch-up, yellow ties being used as throttles round Tory necks and a couple of men from the Green Party who always wear cycle helmets ineffectually trying to separate the writhing belligerents, before Weetabix Face waded in with a violent and misdirected blow to the head of a passing Council official, thus sparking a secondary ruckus involving the Deputy Head of Legal Services. Sadly for spectator value, it didn’t get further than some jeering.

But mainly we were counting, tallying, box-ticking and chatting, for hour after hour. Despite much revisiting of the ballot papers, we came to a dead heat in our Ward, so it was given to another team for a re-count. They got the same result. The candidates asked for a third count, on which the Tory got in by one vote. Then the AV Referendum started, a dull exercise to confirm a known conclusion. We were supposed to begin by collating the votes into batches of twenty-five. I twice had to stop myself as I drifted over thirty, lulled into inattention by lack of sleep and the narcotic repetitiveness of the task, thinking instead about what the Director of Flipcharts might look like in white underwear.

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Saturday was a hedonistic relief: a couple of drinks in the afternoon led to some Colombian refreshments and meeting someone we’ll call Siobhan. We got on immediately and I enjoyed talking to her. She was well dressed, everything in different shades of grey: jacket, shirt, silk-ish scarf, and a loose shin-length skirt. She told me about her difficulties in effecting a complete break from someone she has decided to leave in that open way that is often easy with people you’re meeting for the first time.

In the evening there was a Northern Soul night in a local pub. I was quite glad I was slightly out of it. Some of the older suburban pubgoers found the sight of men dancing rather discomfiting, but there was a good feeling of it being our culture in these relativistic times.

Girls watching Doctor Who. An hour to get this blog post done.

Kirsty and I took the girls to Ingleton Falls. The pleasures of the countryside are occasionally lost on me - I can feel myself suppressing the question "Are we nearly there yet?" after about half an hour, but it was a beautiful walk, along the steep-sided slate-bottomed River Twiss, onto the open striated limestone uplands where farmers don't bother with fences, and down again to the village alongside the River Doe. We lay on our stomachs and drank the water and tried a paddle. The water was delicious to taste and freezing, impossible to keep your feet in for more than a few seconds. I neither mentioned to the children that I'd noticed how much sheep poo there was higher up, nor speculated about what sort of diseases you can get from drinking diluted ovine waste.

The following day we went to Wray for the Scarecrow Festival. The village is beautiful, more or less one late 17th and 18th century street leading down to a meadow and river to which the local parents dispatch their children unsupervised. I would say the day was quintessentially English, but would mean that the publicity is illiterate and the food is terrible, when it was neither. It's a shame hardly any of the pictures came out from Kirsty's clapped out camera; I can't bring you the fine execution scene which was accompanied by a notice saying "Come the Wrayvolution!" The scarecrow in the picture danced, animated by a windscreen wiper mechanism. .

The Post Office, a freehold concern with a 2/3 bed maisonette above, is for sale. In one of those silly property-based fantasies, I had a look at the price: "offers are invited around £440,000."

When we got back to the mean and dirty streets of Lancaster, the local newsstand headline was "Local Teens Meet up On Web for Care Home Booze-Up."

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Helen was over from Norway for a couple of days. We went out on Thursday and Friday with her partnered friend Katerina. She's got a successful jewellery business. Curvily good-looking, easy to talk to. A good line in three-quarter sleeves offwhite jackets.

We went down Crows, a bar in Lancaster, where the barman said "When you say Sauvignon Blanc, do you mean red or white?" He gave me my beer in a glass meant for Jacques cider.

Helen said "I've given Katerina the password for your blog." I was slightly taken aback but said "Good job I didn't publish the post last night then." "Why?," said Katerina. "Well, I was going to say that, in a parallel universe that doesn't exist, you're my physical type, and you're very well-dressed." Cards on table. The advice "always flirt first" is a lesson I wish I'd learnt years ago, thus avoiding a sexless decade spent twiddling my thumbs and being "a nice man", who women would "really like as a friend". She laughed and we talked about how great it would be if people were socially able to pay each other compliments as you walked through town.

We went to the Yorkshire House where the best one minute of the whole night happened. At some point, half-watching the band, Katerina put her arm round my waist and we had a conversation the words of which I do not remember. I do remember standing very close, feeling her close against me, her tits against my chest, pulling her very gently towards me, her lovely waist.

I found a flight to Knock in September for 35 pounds. There's only an airport in the middle of rural Co Mayo because of a misunderstanding involving too much poitín and a policeman's lantern in 1879, following which the village has cornered a good portion of Ireland's considerable offerings in delusional tourism. But it's a hitchable 50 miles to Galway, and last night Linda, a Galwegian, serendipitously texted for a post-work drink, so I sat in the Water Witch with the best (and the best-looking) tourist guide money can't buy, trying to subliminally inculcate in her a desire to spend the first week in September on holiday with a sozzled male friend she doesn't fancy.

Then to my book group. I spent several minutes banging on the door at wall-shaking volume, causing a well-mannered commotion in the heart of the macrame belt of Lancaster. I gave up and started striding homewards in a bad temper, mentally composing a pissed-off email to Harry suggesting he might invest a few quid in a bell. After a few yards a complete stranger, whom I later found out was Harry's wife, calmly pointed at another house and said "It's that one."

We discussed Treasure Island. The novel as a commentary on the C18th British class system came up quite a lot; and everyone was keen on the language, a point slightly lost on me. Apart from the nautical argot and one or two dialect passages, I didn't find the language particularly rich.

Never mind: that was the least of the evening. The conversation somehow came round to a project of mine that has been languishing untended for some years now: my stage adaptation of Yuri Andrukhovych's novel Recreations. Andrukhoych is little known outside his native Ukraine, but writes in a demotic, hyperreal style reminiscent of Flann O'Brien or Rabelais. In a solicitor's safe room in Lancaster is a document signed by Andrukhovych, Marko Pavlyshyn (the translator), the solicitor, and me, assigning me worldwide rights to the play in perpetuity. A grand sounding and utterly useless document for as long as the play's sitting here on the shelf unperformed.

One of the members of the book group is a theatre director and actor who was, for many years, in The Archers. He suggested we could organise a read through. What an opportunity. The cash cow that is postmodern Ukrainian literature is once again in my sights.

Hi again looby!!!

But I still do not have any reply from you. Did you get my first letter at all??? We met on the dating site if you forgot. You have given your e-mail address from there so I have contact with you.

OK I am trying for write more info about me which I did not write in my first letter to you. First of all I must inform to you that I do not have any computer at home therefore I use Internet Cafe service. This is paid service of granting of work on the computer and grantings of using of a network the Internet. Therefore sometimes I would not be able to write to you everyday. Please sorry for it.

Few thing what I like. I love sports very much: tennis, swimming, volleyball, ski. I love to see sport on TV such as hockey, football, racing, even boxing sometimes. Also I love to see some extreme kinds of sports such as windserfing, skateboard, motorbikes shows. I also love winter kinds of sports: ski, skate, snowboards. Winters in Russia are long so most people likes winter kinds of sports. Do you like sport? Do you like to see or enjoy youself? And what kinds of sports you like?

I do not smoke at all but if someone smoke around me I am OK. Every man choose life and health. I will not ask you do you smoke or not, because really it is not important for me at all. As for drinks sometimes I drink wine, champane and some light alcohol cocktails... What drinks do you like?

I like to cook. I love Russian food, but it demands very big efforts. I think that preparation of Russian dish this present art. Some dishes demand very long operating time above them, but then the dish turns out very tasty and appetizing. Also I like Italian and some Europe food. And what kind of food do you like??? Ask me anything you want. I will try to answer everything you are interesting.

Here is my past pic. May be you did not get it and therefore did not write to me for this reason... Also I added few new pics for you. I will wait for your next letter plus pic would be pleasant for me also.

Lisabeta

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Hello Lisabeta

Thank you for very pleasant letter and your pictures. I appreciate them a great deal.

I have to tell you a few things. First, I am 47. Second, I have no money at all. I do not own a house. I am poor. I am a student. Third, I do not want to get married. Fourth, I only want to meet women I can meet easily. Russia is a long way away and I can't come to Russia to meet you.

Given these things, I am afraid that it will not be possible to start any relationship. I hope you can meet someone more suitable for you and I wish you the very best of luck on the site.

looby

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Oops, that was a bit harsh, putting her in a stereotyped position of the East European goldigger. She might have just wanted a pen pal, or to practice her English. And you never know, a weekend being shown round Moscow and sharing a couple of "light alcohol cocktails" with a good looking young Ruskie, if I had the money one day...

Photograph used by kind permission of Lancaster University. Reproduction prohibited.

A lovely afternoon on Thursday was spent unveiling a plaque at the birthplace of the Lancaster-born philosopher J L Austin. It was an initiative of Brian Garvey, of the University's Department of Politics, Philosophy and Religion, who instigated the whole thing, contacting the owner of the house, the Civic Society and the City Council, and ordering the plaque from the company which makes them. A conference in his Department pulled off the considerable coup of getting John Searle, from the UCLA at Berkeley, as one of the keynote speakers.

Hillside, where he was born, is a very pretty cul-de-sac, a cobbled private road, laid out in its present form in the 1860's. Me and Helen, who was covering the event for the University, arrived to see a small table outside the front door: on it, bottles of champagne and sparkling flutes; about thirty people from the conference the University had arranged around it, and Austin's family. As the Priory church clock above us struck twelve, Austin's sister (in the pink raincoat), now in her nineties, unveiled the plaque to our applause.

Disinhibited by midday champagne, I couldn't resist, after the toast, adding "To perlocutionary acts!" Austin's daughter (on the far left in the picture) coruscatingly came straight back with a good in-joke. "And what are we to infer from that?"

The owner of the house next door took us on an informal guided tour of the shared gardens, passing a little stone trough where flowers are tended to mark the site to which the Grammar School was relocated in 1472. It was convivial, an unspoken sense of privilege in the air. By various means, we'd manoeuvred ourselves into a position in life where we could stand around in the sun on a weekday lunchtime drinking champagne and talking about architecture.

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I've been appointed Presiding Officer at the University for the Local Elections and AV Referendum that will be taking place on 5th May. I've worked at every election for many years, but this is my first time as Presiding Officer. 234 pounds for a day's work, which will conveniently provide my spending money for France.

I said in my application that I have my own transport but I don't think a bike counts. Sitting in the hot sun yesterday in a beer garden with Erica and her mum, I was worrying out loud about my lack of transport. Erica's mum immediately offered to do the ferrying about of the ballot boxes and other election paraphernalia on the night. We then moved on to the Pendle Witch, where we sat with three of the strangest looking doll-like young women, friends of Erica's, their entire bodies and faces a veneer.