It's half past ten and I've just got in after work. Hayley has been tugging at me -- six missed calls; texts pleading with me to ring her as soon as I've left work. I've done thirty-two hours shoe-horned into three days, in a works canteen where I serve large dollops of unhealthy food to large unhealthy men. I'm low on resources to spend on others.

Upstairs on the bus with aching feet and a bottle of cider, watching Bristol on a determined Saturday night out. Women whose feet will feel worse than mine by midnight; skirts tightening and riding up. How glad I am to see them.

I ring Hayley, who is on track 1 of side A again, Boyfriend Woes. She wants: me to come round, five pounds for a bottle of wine, and for someone to do her move tomorrow; the implication being, me. She's done nothing about it by herself despite several weeks' notice of the date. "Well, I don't know," she says. "There's Wayne over the road... maybe I could ring the police, they're sometimes nice."

I am not giving up my day with Mel tomorrow to rescue you Hayley.

At home, mid-shower, she rings again. I ring her back, saying that I'll put a fiver in now, exaggerating my tiredness and annoyance. I put seven pounds in her bank account. All is silent.

There is rejoicing in the House of looby. Middle daughter, who, at the age of one, almost ruptured her mother's stomach by bouncing on it at 5am, announcing "I, awake!" -- has landed a proper acting job at a big Northern producing theatre. She announced it from Leeds, where she'd been for her "third recall", which I am guessing means fourth audition.

I am radiant like a heater with joy for her, and a fervid hope that this will be the start of her making a living out of what she's always wanted to do. She's a dogged and constantly optimistic Lancashire lass who's had no advantages at all in a world in which working class candidates are filtered out by endless train fares, unpaid work, and assumptions of money available to pay for every bit of candidacy, which neither me nor her mum can provide.

I don't know how much more inspection my out of date rail pass can withstand, but I want to join the whole looby clan, who will cancel everything to see her when it's put on -- before we're shunted into the pub after the show while she goes off to glitter.

I've got a few days in a works canteen. I'm on my own most of the time and the shifts are up to twelve hours long. I had got to the age of fifty-seven without flipping a burger or cooking bacon.

The pricing seems to be determined by the closeness of the manager's friendships with the individuals, and several people bridled at me charging them the published prices, so I've had to draw up a long list of concessions. I was told this morning that the manager likes me, unfortunately.

In Castle Park after work, the hot sun lit a model of social inclusion so inclusive it could have been staged.

It was great to see some of the familiar denizens again: the man who looks a bit like Jamiroquai was perched on his bit of wall and got talking to the peripatetic habitué of Wethers; the man who's overdone the henna a bit and who is left alone to sleep in between intervals of talking to himself and swinging a small bottle of vodka like a pendulum.

Two Muslim women sat on a bench next to an East European couple who were parking an over-stuffed pushchair, with a baby lost somewhere amongst the Wilko bags. We just lacked the sixtysomething who rides around on an Elvised-up bike with a large speaker belting out stadium rock classics.

Someone saw me struggling to get my cider open on a wee jut of stone, and hailed me. "I'll do it with my lighter," he said, before failing to find his lighter. From another group, a lighter was thrown to him and he took my cider and popped it like champagne. A man in a tight vest swaggered past and... asked to borrow a lighter.

Someone sat down with our shapely protagonist, who said he'd just got out of prison after five years. One or the other was trying to angle it towards drugs. "No, I don't really do that any more, well only you know, occasionally," almost apologising. An irritant -- "I don't really find exams difficult. I've never had an exam in which I've got less than 80%" - buzzed off once his time was up, to fret with Excel in an office.

Once the workers bees return to prison, the atmosphere loosens a bit. There was drum and bass from one quarter, house from another, and there was something else which I couldn't identify. Unfortunately it also loosens the bladder.

Hayley and boyf turned up and started snogging on the grass, because I like being tested for jealousy on a hot afternoon, so to escape the erotic tension I went to have a piss behind the old Bank of England building and laughingly, in cahoots with them, I had to wait for two girls to finish.

Yesterday, the pubs -- outdoor areas only -- were allowed to re-open in England, and with it the chance to dive down to my socio-economic level after a year of pretending I find walking interesting, and half-heartedly trying to identify trees. The weather made it a keen pleasure, but I stayed for three pints.

Every table was taken by half eleven. Couple on the table next to me had been there since half nine. How I've missed earwigging on other people's conversation, and the peculiar pleasure of being on your own with other people.

Man on table 1 to man on table 2: "Fucking 'ell mate, been a year when we can't go out and now you're sat there with your fucking headphones on. Why you doing that?" Another man from table 1: "Cos he"s a cunt."

Three days' work in a school canteen. Young Italian chef who was once told by an Indian hotel manager that he was "doing the pasta wrong". A brigade of middle-aged women, some of the anonymous saints who do the poorly paid work that holds up everyone else's vanity.

They were friendly, funny and foul-mouthed. Their manager is off on long-term sick which they are all hoping will become final; she insists on throwing food away rather than letting the staff have a meal.

"It doesn't matter, we all take the piss out of her behind her back," said Jules, before going into an exaggerated dance where she thrust her hips forward and crossed and uncrossed her arms in front of them, accompanying it with a sforzato "take, that, bitch!"

The sous chef was a cheery Rasta who, seeing a new dog in a pack, had to establish his place in the hierarchy. We got on fine; all I had to do was nod and say "wow, really, did you?" all the time. I felt a bit sorry for him at the end though because out of nine hundred children only two chose a pot noodle thing he made, and it's shit seeing the food you've made getting sluiced.

We walked back to the bus stop together and the unenglish cultural pattern of constant touching came out. I normally welcome any tactile punctuation (Kitty is lovely at it), but there was something a bit challenging about the way he kept putting him arm against mine. I wished it were the women I were walking with.

I'm going up to Lancaster later this afternoon for essential travel reasons, as these Lindt bunnies are going to melt soon if they don't spend four hours on a train. Me and my shit telly and red wine little boos will all be together for the first time since Christmas.

Eldest has landed a TEFL job in the state school system in Russia, middle one is looking for acting jobs (she's a graduate of a well-known drama school down here), and doing FOH in a Manchester theatre as soon as it re-opens, and youngest is doing Chinstroking and French at mine and her mum's alma mater, and playing in two bands. Then there's our semi-adoptee, who's had to stifle a few tears in her young life and is counted as one of us now. I love my little clan of girls.

Last weekend, Mel suggested her coming over and staying for two nights. "We could relax a bit more." I smilingly acceded to the suggestion for as long as she could see my face, then let it unmask into worry in the kitchen. Is it now that the little irritations start? The sexless "tiredness"?

In fact, the weekend didn't seem a moment too long. Mel's spent most of the past thirty years in Greece, so I overcooked us a spanokopitta, which came out rather dry and spongy. She'd said that the oven was fast, so I turned the heat down and left it in longer, but in future I'll just follow the recipe.

It didn't matter at all. Afterwards, she put on the shoes, and my other investments. We turned up the heating, which, handily for lovers, is included in the rent here. She looked down at her tits, bemused. She doesn't find herself as sexy as I do.

Reporting this to Kim after she'd left, Kim said "so, looby, are you going to have your Boring Years now? Stable girlfriend, own flat?"

I went to the bingo and raffle afternoon yesterday and sat with some of the other rezzies in my block. I was nervous about how I'd fit in, and felt scrutinised at first, but as the chicken legs and chocolate rolls kicked in everyone relaxed.

We're not allowed to sit in the communal lounge, so we're all in the right angle of a corridor instead. Six women, two blokes. "Oh!" said Keith. "So you've come for your initiation then?" Carol juggled her tits when 88 came up, and I said "ey up, double trouble". "Don't make me jealous!" said Lena. Brenda farted as I was going to get one of my prizes. "Was that you?" I said. "Don't mistake me for a lady, love." I wondered if we were being secretly filmed by Ken Loach.

They knew all the phrases for the numbers, a folk knowledge that will die out soon, with words like "fat" and "legs" being censored as mechanical numbers-only bingo takes over. I was taught several new ones. like 77, Sunset Strip; 69, Yours and Mine.

I won a tube of hand cream, a tin of baked beans and a packet of cheese straws in the raffle. Brenda asked me afterwards if I'd enjoyed it and I said "no, it were shit." I helped with the tidying up, in order to conceal from the block's management evidence of us associating.

I picked up the post from my old address the other day. If one simply ignores debts, they eventually dwindle and die.

I left work at The Big House last night, and walked along quiet residential streets to get my bus, strongly conscious of my privilege in worrying far less than the women I saw (and quietly tried to avoid), who were engaged in the same blameless activity that was Sarah Everard's last act.

I am sick of it all, and of the 80% male police force who employed her murderer tacitly indicating to women at the demonstration in London, that they shouldn't be in public places, at night.

As I return after sitting in the park with the LRB drinking, the smoking clan is in the doorway. Inside, the weekly bingo party, along with the chicken legs and sausage rolls, is hotting up. I want to join in one day but I have to decline the invite as I'm back at the The Big House later. Not many people in this block work, their main objective being never to let their lungs have a glimpse of clarity.

Mel has also found herself a social housing flat. It's spacious, with a shared garden, in a sixties arboreally-named street. One would think Bristol was teeming with dark fruit. As in my block, it contains preventative fixtures to arm us against the falls we're expected to take.

My flat still has sections of raw particleboard flooring showing, a visual irritation I can't afford to conceal at the moment. Someone on The Instatok said that she sealed hers with clear PVC glue and then painted on it, but the thought of doing anything DIY-ish gives me a shiver of distaste and anticipatory incompetence, an instance of which might be my only completed job on the flat so far -- covering the interrogation-quality fluorescent light in the kitchen with front covers of the LRB, which I heard somewhere is printed in a flame-retardant ink.

The other night, Mr Patel in the corner shop said to me "no, for you sir, two for four-fifty."

I went to put my recycling out the other day, bottles sticking akimbo out of my carrier bag, and one of the other rezzies said "oh! You're going to fit in really well here!"

It takes less than a fortnight to aquire a reputation in a new suburb if one behaves consistently.

Littérateurs: has anyone else struggled a bit with Cafavy? I'm halfway through his collected poems and it sounds like the pub bore cut up into shorter lines. If anyone can give me a key, I'd be grateful.

From Perception, trans. Evangelos Sacherperoglou

The years of my youth, my sensuous life---
how clearly I see their meaning now!

What useless, what futile repentances...

But I couldn't see their meaning then.

From Painted

I'm careful about my work and cherish it.
But today I'm disheartened by the slow pace of composition.
The day has affected me. Its aspect
keeps growing darker. All wind and rain.
I'd rather look at things than speak about them.

Eight-nine pages in, I'd rather he would too.