To Leeds for my first PhD supervision.

Managed to dodge my train fare as far as Manchester and pinch a sandwich and a croissant from Sainsbury's. I arrived at my department facing a door. I asked the secretary "How do I get in here?" "Er... just push it." It had a keypad next to it and I thought you had to be taken into a windowless room, covered in honey and buggered with the neck of a lute, before the secret code that grants unlimited access to the School of Music at the University of Leeds would be revealed. I paid the first instalment of my fees (less my Scholarship, it comes to 744 pounds), my fingers anxiously hovering over the keypad as I waited to see if I had that enough credit on my card.

Afterwards I went to The Angel. I love that pub. People come and sit next to you and it's assumed that the conversation is collective rather than private. "This woman wolf-whistled at me the other day." "Was it her rape alarm?" Someone told of a wronged wife throwing a kettle of boiling water over a husband who went with a prossie.

In the station, a chemically painted woman clasped a man to her. I could see her face resting on his shoulder during their embrace. She looked like she was bearing it, watching herself. I started mentally sneering at them for their lack of authenticity before realising that we all do this in the various contexts in which we need to present ourselves.

A young woman on the train back was carrying a folder saying "a toolkit for Arts Award advisers" on its spine. She's a teacher and had come back from York after doing a course, the content of which sounded to me like another chapter in the way that meaningless documentary evidence is substituted for competence or the desire to do something. But at least her eyelashes were natural, unlike the performing girlfriend on Leeds station.

The Hungarians were badly ripped off at the weekend to the tune of 1700 pounds. It's an internet based fraud centred around flats to let, which aren't. It works by someone (the Hungarians) responding to an ad about a beautiful and very cheap flat to rent. If they want to rent it, they have to prove that they have the money by arranging a money transfer to a friend through Moneygram, then sending him a copy of the receipt.

Bela did this, and with the reference number and the other details on the receipt, the fraudster collected 1700 pounds from Bela's account. A blasé and uninterested Moneygram are reluctant to get involved despite the fact that it's at least the fault of their lax security measure. We've been down the police station, making statements, Csilla getting tearful, a foreign country. Last night we had a coal fire and some good cider and talked about misunderstanding foreigners and coming unstuck when you're pretending that you know more than you do of a language.

I told them that they can stay here, I would like them to, until Christmas, or beyond, if necessary. I like seeing their food and jackets and jumpers and shampoo strewn about the place; someone else's life. I like how they've put their toothbrushes in the little metal cup with mine rather than laying them demurely on the side of the sink. I like how we have pig's tongue and cheese and bread for breakfast. I like that they take it for granted that one drinks in the evening.

I emailed Seriouscrush and her boyf (who own this house) saying I'd moved two Hungarians in for three months, and that Csilla's boyfriend would be moving in in a fortnight too. Hoped that was OK, perhaps we could all go for a drink some time. It was, and we will.

Just looking up now from the ktichen table at which I'm typing this, the room is littered with their stuff - cigarettes, vitamin C tablets, mobile adaptors, glasses, a handbag.

We all got up late. We had breakfast and they went flat-hunting on the internet again. I did a stab at work but had to leave it and them at about 2.30 to see to my children. Later, I texted Csilla. She rang back: "We're in Yegats, Y-E-G-A-T. And the music's not so good, it is not a good style, but we've got some drinks here, so maybe you could join us." Yates's.

I joined them at a circular table in one of those pubs that makes you feel like an anthropologist. We chatted about how the women were dressed, and noted a couple of flashes of knicker triangle as dresses rode too high. "I would never never dress like this," said Csilla. "They look like whores." They were effusively grateful to me for letting them stay. In the din of the pub, them talking in a second language, it struck me properly that they've arrived in a foreign country knowing no-one, and I'm as yet their only friend in Lancaster.

Csilla wore a tight white blouse unbuttoned to just above her cleavage. Bela is just as beautiful: dark hair, and whatever the polite way is of saying "lovely tits". We danced to YMCA and Aqua, me knowing that I was with undoubtedly the two best looking, and almost certainly the two most intelligent women, in the place. I met a someonw from where I used to work, strapped into an inadequate harness of straining red viscose. I waved to her so that she could see who I was with.

We staggered arm in arm up the hill. They were very drunk, swaying and saying "No, no, I'm not very drunk." I was going to walk them home then go back to Kirsty's but they said "No no, we can go home." They both offered each cheek to me to kiss. We walked away from one another.

"When we move in to the new flat, we are going to cook you a true Hungarian meal.".

That's "cheers", a word that my Hungarian couchsurfers taught me last night. It doesn't sound anything like it's spelt.

They're two girls who are starting MAs in Psychology at Lancaster and are staying at mine until they find somewhere to live. They arrived yesterday afternoon, fifteen hours after they'd set off from Budapest, lugging huge and heavy suitcases with them: their next two years. They had to go more or less straight to a house viewing. They came back disappointed, saying it was damp and it had a depressed air about it. I vaguely know the people who own the flat and I'm not surprised they found it a bit gloomy. The owners are.

I made a coal fire and put some wine out. They stood up. I did too. They got a bottle of wine out from a suitcase, and plucked some socks out from the top of its cardboard sleeve which they'd put there to help transport it. "Right, OK, we pretend, nothing has changed," said Andrea. "We are very happy you allow us to stay." They presented me with the wine and then reached back to the suitcase for some paprika salami, explaining it was of a type unique to their region. We settled down with the sausage, Felicity's homegrown tomatoes, some red pepper and pitta bread, and the lovely dry Cab Sav.

This afternoon they came back after a day out flathunting and said they'd already been to the pub. We got talking about funny names which sparked off several anecdotes. I told them about when I was working for the Water Board and one of our Chinese customers was called Mr Fuk. They told me about a place name in Hungary which means "panties". "Where are you from? I am from Panties", she mimicked. I told her that the name of the island in the Shetlands called Twatt is funny to an English speaker. They didn't know what "twat" means. "It's a very very rude word for..." I pointed a finger at her. "Vagina." I hope they don't find a flat too soon.

I went to a film tonight with Ingrid. My friend Brian has been going out with her, on and off, for a year or so. One Sunday afternoon a few months ago when me and Brian were a bit the worse for wear, he said "I don't know what it is about her, but I want to fuck her all the time." At the time he was being pursued by this 20something Italian girl who used to wear stockings and suspenders when she came round to see him. But he preferred 50-year-old Ingrid. I know what he means. I like her too.

One night a few weeks ago me, Brian and Ingrid were down the pub and they got into an argument about immigration. It got a bit heated and he stalked off. Ingrid got a bit tearful, then rallied round because two girls from Italy who were staying at my house for a couple of days were arriving soon. Ingrid steered them into the pub on her phone and we all had a mediocre curry in Wetherspoons together, which was unfortunate as the two Italian girls were involved in the Slow Food Movement, the ethos of which hasn't quite got through to senior management in Wetherspoons.

Tonight we went to see L'Illusioniste, an animated French film set in Edinburgh. We went for a drink, then left the pub and started walking up the hill. Remembering Disaster on Platform 14 where I attempted to kiss Kim at Leeds station, I kept saying to myself, "Don't do anything, don't do anything."

We reached the point where we'd go our separate ways. "We should do this more often," I said. "Well, again anyway," she replied. And take it from there."

I walked home repeating over and over again in my head her phrase "...and take it from there", wondering what she meant. What's "it" and where are we taking it? To which the answers are almost certainly "nothing" and "nowhere".