We (Bela, Csilla, Stefan and me) went round to Seriouscrush's in order to introduce Stefan to them. It went just about OK, but it felt like work. I was aware that we were all trying various conversational gambits, most of which fizzled out. I was conscious that Stefan probably found it a bit awkward. He certainly wasn't the relaxed and confident man that has been living in this house for a week.

Last night we (ditto) went down the pub, a studenty converted church which was quite attractively done out with bulbs in old milk bottles. They turned the music up too loud for me after a while so I stayed for one more then left, which turned out to be good timing as Bela started getting chatted up by a bloke with whom she swapped numbers, so I avoided a bit of a gooseberry incident.

Out of the blue, day before yesterday, Felicity made a filthy suggestion for Saturday afternoon. I was prevaricating a little bit and she was getting fractionally testy. "Tell me what you'd like to do," she texted, as I sat on the bus. "Have a close relationship with someone," I felt like answering. I've got my doubts. She's quite needy and unpredictable: I can never tell when she's going to use me as her social worker. There was the incident with Kitty at the food festival when she was trying to elbow Kitty out of the afternoon. And the truth is, I don't fancy her a great deal.

Ingrid, about whom her ex-boyfriend once said to me "I don't know what is about her, but I just want to fuck her all the time", invited me to a wine tasting. He's right, there is something about her and I'm looking forward to it. I like the element of danger that getting drunk with new people (especially women I am curious about) introduces into the situation.

I'm at Kirsty's while she's away with her boyfriend. I've got the children, plus a friend's daughter, for the weekend.

I haven't got a washing machine so I took Bela and Csilla's washing round to Kirsty's and did it in her washing machine. I asked her about doing this once before and she said it was OK but I didn't ask her this time and I had to do it a bit secretly, wondering whether my eldest, who trails around me all the time except when I'm in the toilet, would notice the unfamiliar clothes. With the exception of one pair of knickers and one pair of those funny little leggy short things, Bela and Csilla hadn't put in any of their underwear. This was in between long phone calls to TalkTalk and warming up supermarket pizza.

I did the washing and dried it in relays: from outside, to the airer, to the radiator; folded it all up and went back to my house tonight to return it to them.

I came back to Kirsty's and started thinking about Sue's email again. "I was just meaning to reply to you. I'm sexting another of my suitors." That is, "you've become a friend to whom I report the things I do with others." I fucking hate this. It happens over and over and over again.

A long overdue day of cleaning and tidying yesterday, before the arrival of Stefan, Csilla's boyfriend. Stefan, to my relief, had a firm handshake and was easy to talk to. I warmed to him when he said "It is normal, no, the go to the pub all the time? Because in Croatia, we do this." The whole night went well, then, drunk (as ever) I went and cocked up my online life slightly by making a stupid remark on an academic email list. Replying to what I thought was an utterly pretentious call for papers, I said that "people who post such things should be obliged to spend a year on the minimum wage working in a chip shop". The list owner told me that I'd be moderated in future and that there "is no place for gratuitous insults". I regret the manner in which I said it but not the substance of the point.

I also sent an email to prod a woman in Dublin I've been chatting to on the internet who hasn't replied for a few weeks. "Come on Sue," I wrote. "You're the most interesting interlocutor I've had for ages." This morning she wrote back saying she was just that moment thinking that she owed me a letter, and also saying that she's been sexting someone else.

I looked at that sentence over and over again. How have me and Sue drifted into anodyne conversation and yet someone else has managed to steer it in a more interesting direction? We had a promising start - she told me more than once that my profile made her laugh and was the best one on the site. Now I've made her see writing to me as an obligation. Why do I constantly do this? How do I do it, and how can I stop it? I suppose a first step might be to avoid using words like "interlocutor", which are probably not going to get most women flicking their hair with anticipation.

Looking a tit in public on an email list; being demoted to friends by an interesting, clever woman: crap start to the day and I feel all wrong.

My new workplace

Eighteen months ago the questions I faced at work were along the lines of why, in near-impossible conditions, I hadn't rung so-and-so back: the accumulation of private wealth glossed as customer service.

Yesterday, in Leeds, my brilliant supervisor looked disparagingly at the beginning of a weak sentence. "But looby, 'It will be argued that...' is a different form of speech act. What are the conditions on which it will be argued?" That's more like the sort of question I want to face. Afterwards I finally completed my registration: I now have a photo that looks like it was taken just before formal charges were laid; and a girl in a white T-shirt outside Leeds University's main building was handing out flyers for a some disco or other, but withdrew the card after glancing at me.

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On the train back a man was reading a paper which contained a phone ad for "30 second yank". Although I think I prefer that to the inane work-based mobile witterings about "seeing how far we can run with this" and the whole carriage knowing that he will "have to talk to Mandy on Tuesday." Why do employers think that their grasp extends to employees' journeys home?

Tonight, I've been hacking away at a block of wood in the back yard to make kindling in order to make a fire for the Hungarians, who have been on a trip to Chester and are coming back any minute. There's some feta, olives, radish, potatoes and pitta bread and a bottle of wine for a labour-unintensive dinner for them. I want everything to be cosy for them when they arrive.

Me and my ex-boss Barry went to Melton Mowbray for the East Midlands Food Festival. As well as havng a pie, I was also looking forward to meeting one of my oldest blogpals. Homer's now discontinued blog, along with Troubled Diva's, were the reasons I got into blogging about six years ago.  Fewer people did it then and you didn't have to draw the curtains all the time before you chatted together. During the Great Seriouscrush Drama of 2007,  I'd have been lost without online friends like Homer.

She was as drily funny and intelligent as she is online - which is a relief as it stops me having to be tactfully polite about meeting her in this report. She broke off to make a phone call. "Sorry," she said. "Just had to give boyf the codeword to tell him you're not an axeman." We managed to get away from the others for a bit and talked in that familiar way that feels like picking up a normal conversation, which is slightly strange at first as you haven't actually ever done it in person before.

Me and Barry went back to his blank, characterless house in a village near Nottingham before setting off to investigate three lovely pubs. Next day we went to the "oldest pub in the world". We sat in a tiny room which used to be a chimney, where some unpleasant men at the very close next table swore a great deal and talked about being quantity surveyors. We found an exhibition of documentary photographs of 50s and 60s America by Diane Arbus (including this one from 1968 of Jorge Luis Borges), me relieved that without any planning, we'd managed to find something we both found interesting to fill in the featureless time that runs on Sunday afternoons. In the evening we went to see Inception. We couldn't find our way out of the underground car park and were running about it in a way that felt filmic, but eventually found the smallest commercially run cinema in the world. It has twenty-one seats and displays its Guinness Book of Records Certificate in the minuscule entrance.

The three hour journey back was an exercise in self-restraint. I moved after about ten minutes to get away from someone's iPod, had one stop's worth of peace, before another social incompetent gave us well over two hours of hi-hat just in case the carriage was getting a bit quiet.

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Last night Seriouscrush and her boyf came round to meet Bela and Csilla (aka The Hungarians). I made the worst fire I've ever built which kept tumbling lumps of coal onto the hearthstone. Socially it went fine; they're exquisitely good in company. Seriouscrush looked utterly sexy and it was a struggle to keep my eyes on her face (as beautiful as her face and hair are). She wore an entirely unbuttoned shirt in a small red check, a black top, the description of which I want to turn slowly over in my mind without sharing it, jeans and flat black shoes. I kept hearing her when we were alone in the pub a few years ago: "I don't mind you looking at my tits sometimes."

We polished off the farm cider I bought at Melton Mowbray, four bottles of wine and some beer. Seriouscrush and boyf left and me, B and C raided the fridge for some more wine and sat up till 3am. We talked about love and marriage and I told them about Seriouscrush. "For sure, she should be with you," said Bela, saying the right thing. "They didn't seem to be together, they're like friends."

Seeing as all our secrets were dominoing out, I mentioned the fact that I like having them around the place and that should they want to stay at chez Looby for the duration of their course rather than just till Christmas as we've agreed, they would be more than welcome. "Thank you. It feels like home," said Csilla.

I sent Seriouscrush a filthy email, and went to bed. [Edit: it was filthy, but that's not really it. I told her that she is beautiful, in a precise way. Of course it was sexual, but there was more to it than that.]

This morning, me and Bela found a companiable silence, me working, she sitting at the opposite side of the table, sewing a button on.