It's just me and landlady Cath in the house. We're a little stoned, and I'm laughing a lot. She's lifting and arching her foot towards pointe. She's undoubtedly attractive.

She tells me that Richard, our housemate, is buying a house with his girlfriend. I'm crestfallen, thinking of the search for a new co-tenant, the anxiety about whether they'll fit in, but Cath asks me what I'd think about her daughter moving back in. This cheers me up.

"So," she says, referring to the time when it looked as though we'd be joining in a Civil Partnership, "we'll be a little family after all." I felt all cosy and a bit wet-eyed.

In a leafy square, a young man coiffured from the Toilet Brush School of Hairdressing has one arm round a girl, while the other rests on a big speaker which loudly dominates the square with an ugly rap music, all braggadocio and misogyny. Me and Hayley are separated on the bench by the deadening presence of her well-meaning boyfriend. Hayley is looking exceptionally sexy. "Are they new tights?" I'd asked her earlier when we were alone. "Yes, do you like them?" "Mmmm."

He's sent back to the house to fetch some keys. She's hard on him, when she wants him to be hard on her. I feel a bit sorry for him. He tries to join in with our ping-pong verbal sparring, always arriving that second too late. I've been him so often, the awkwardly-positioned third party, the laggard gooseberry. She tells me that, really, she likes women. "Basically, men, to me, are business."

"Hello!" A young female voice from behind me. It's someone from the group of people sitting near us outside the pub last weekend when the football landed in my pint. She's on a high from a first date. Hayley doesn't like us talking together, and Davina has to insist on talking to me over her interruptions. "No, I know, it's just I want to talk to looby for a moment."

I engineer an escape to the offy with Davina. She's an underwriter, which is interesting enough, but I want to know about her date. She shows me a picture of the woman concerned. "Phwaor, Davina, she's a fittie!" Has she got a sister? Because my friend's just told me she's mainly gay.

We swap numbers, and later that evening, I text her saying that I want to be her friend and to know how the second date went.

Hayley wants me come with her to her dealer's house. I'm reluctant. "I will, because you've asked me to, but I can't stay long. I've got this interview tomorrow at nine." Hayley talked incessantly, burning up the coke into a stream of consciousness. A man whom everyone else knows walks in and sits down next to me. I try to talk to him but he opens his hands and gestures to Dealer Man, me, and Hayley. "I'm just gettting three conversations here." I stop talking.

On the tail end of three big, free, lines of coke, and as many hours of attempted sleep, I am Zoomed into two people's houses, and interviewed for an admin job with the Department for Naughty Boys. I improvise stories about "situations", "responses" and "outcomes", that never happened.

I am more worried about the loss of my bank card, and more seriously, the erroneously-issued rail pass from which I have had thousands of pounds' worth of free travel. After cancelling the less valuable one with the bank, I find them in the shoes that I was wearing that night. I'd cycled home with them in my shoe.

I cycle to a tree-shaded public square. White people in their twenties are doing yoga. It looks ridiculous and striving, but it's peaceable, and I don't feel frowned upon for drinking beer at 11am. My reading gives me an insulating warrant of harmlessness.

Hayley and Tammy are going to Primark on its reopening. We meet afterwards in Castle Park. Azimuth sun. Hayley likes the speed, and says she'll chip in towards the next lot. "No, no. You'll never pay for yours." They complain about boyfriends and the tactics needed to keep them, and the provider of sexual enjoyment, separate and keen. I'm the honorary girl again, but I like it, being included, and not as a favour. It's a feeling as warm as the sun is upon us.

Harry turns up. Me and Tammy have been advising her to keep him on, despite his sexual failings. The air between them is a lot easier than at the weekend. Hayley's probably had some sleep, because apart from not being able to fuck her, it wasn't ever his fault that I saw.

Tammy, who is affected by the long tail of a stroke, but whose greater impediment at this moment is her narrow dress, levers herself up on her stick to go home. The first attempt doesn't work. "Come on Tammy," I say, "you're looking like an old spaz." It's been an unselfconscious, friendly afternoon. The girls are gorgeous, Hayley especially, who looks a bit like a London raver c.1998: unzipped black jacket pushed open by her tits, bare legs, and trainers.

I walk Hayley home. The men scanning her, a mirror of my own looks. At my house, thrust into respectability, I suddenly feel much more drunk than I did in the park, and betray it during a ham-fisted explanation, involving C18th architecture, of where I've been. I feel like a naughty boy.

Next day, I am up bright and early, put on my costume for work. Not an inkling of any ripples from the day before.

I cycle to the wrong pick-up point. The works van picks me up from my erroneous location. As soon as I climb in, I start feeling sick. I force sociable sentences out. We lurch twelve miles to a village hall, where I can't fake it any more, and someone asks me if I'm OK. They lay me down on the floor with my feet up. I vomit. They call an ambulance. They do tests and stay with me a long time, before I convince them that I'm OK. The nurse in charge has to cancel the session, sending all the donors away.

They put me and my bike in the van to run me home, but a minute in the van and I am vomiting again. The ambulance picks me up and I'm taken to hospital. "How are you feeling now?" says the ambulance man, and I immediately convulse another stream of vomit up. I am put into a draughty back-revealing gown.

The receiving nurse arrives and pulls the curtains round. Instantly, she does magic on me. She checks my details against my wristband, but even before she says anything I know I can tell her. She's stylish and attractive in her concave-waisted black tunic, unbound straight black hair just short of shoulder length, dark eyes, black-rimmed glasses. I wonder if such an ensemble is deliberate.

"Probably about six, seven pints of cider, and several lines of speed. And sitting in the sun for several hours," I add, hoping to encourage the diagnosis of sunstroke which had been floated earlier. "Any water? Or food?" "No." "So, what's the earliest time you would have a drink?" And "do you take other drugs, Mr looby? Recreational drugs?" She knows already.

An older woman arrives to put a cannula in. I'm impressed at her efficiency in seeming to go under my vein and then into it. I'm put on drips of saline solution, vitamins and minerals, and an anti-emetic. "Drugs and alcohol," I hear my black-clad seer say to my venepuncturer.

A few hours later the consultant comes round. "So, have you any idea what that was?" he asks. "Well, possibly sunstroke, in my uneducated guess." We have an amiable chat about his experience of la peste and I am sent home, with a referral to the alcohol and drug services, and an exhortation to drink more water, every day. At home, my housemates' friendly curiosity makes me feel interviewed. I tell them that the session overran a bit and try to look bright.

I tell Hayley all about it first. She sends me solicitous texts, suffixed with kisses. "Come back to mine. Stay here. I want to know you're better." "I'd love to but that'd cause problems here. I can't my love." "Well, [pet name], let me know if I can help. Even in a thunderstorm I'd come and help you xxxxx".

I cycle to a tree-shaded public square. White people in their twenties are doing yoga. It looks ridiculous and striving, but it's peaceable, and I don't feel frowned upon for drinking beer at 11am. My reading gives me an insulating warrant of harmlessness.

Hayley and Tammy are going to Primark on its reopening. We meet afterwards in Castle Park. Azimuth sun. Hayley likes the speed, and says she'll chip in towards the next lot. "No, no. You'll never pay for yours." They complain about boyfriends and the tactics needed to keep them, and the provider of sexual enjoyment, separate and keen. I'm the honorary girl again, but I like it, being included, and not as a favour. It's a feeling as warm as the sun is upon us.

Harry turns up. Me and Tammy have been advising her to keep him on, despite his sexual failings. The air between them is a lot easier than at the weekend, probably connected with the fact that Hayley has taken the untoward step of going to sleep in the interim.

Tammy, who is affected by the long tail of a stroke, but whose greater impediment at this moment is her narrow dress, levers herself up on her stick to go home. The first attempt doesn't work. "Come on Tammy," I say, "you're looking like an old spaz." It's been an unselfconscious, friendly afternoon. The girls are gorgeous, Hayley especially, who looks a bit like a London raver c.1998: unzipped black jacket pushed open by her tits, bare legs, and trainers.

I walk Hayley home. The men's scanning looks at her, a mirror of my own. At my house, thrust into respectability, I suddenly feel much more drunk than I did in the park, and betray it during a ham-fisted explanation, involving C18th architecture, of where I've been. I feel like a naughty boy.

Next day, I am up bright and early, put on my costume for work. Not an inkling of any ripples from the day before.

I cycle to the wrong pick-up point. The works van picks me up from my erroneous location. As soon as I climb in, I start feeling sick. I force sociable sentences out. We lurch twelve miles to a village hall, where I can't fake it any more, and someone asks me if I'm OK. They lay me down on the floor with my feet up. I vomit. They call an ambulance. They do tests and stay with me a long time, before I convince them that I'm OK. The nurse in charge has to cancel the session, sending all the donors away.

They put me and my bike in the van to run me home, but a minute in the van and I am vomiting again. The ambulance picks me up and I'm taken to hospital. "How are you feeling now?" says the ambulance man, and I convulse another stream of vomit up. I am put into a draughty back-revealing gown.

The receiving nurse arrives and pulls the curtains round. Instantly, she does magic on me. She checks my details against my wristband, but even before she says anything I know I can tell her. She's stylish and attractive in her concave-waisted black tunic, unbound straight black hair just short of shoulder length, dark eyes, black-rimmed glasses. I wonder if such an ensemble is deliberate.

"Probably about six, seven pints of cider, and several lines of speed. And sitting in the sun for several hours," I add, hoping to encourage the diagnosis of sunstroke which had been floated earlier. "Any water? Or food?" "No." "So, what's the earliest time you would have a drink?" And "do you take other drugs, Mr looby? Recreational drugs?" She knows already.

An older woman arrives to put a cannula in. I'm impressed at her efficiency in seeming to go under my vein and then into it. I'm put on drips of saline solution, vitamins and minerals, and an anti-emetic. "Drugs and alcohol," I hear my black-clad seer say to the venepuncturer.

A few hours later the consultant comes round. "So, have you any idea what that was?" he asks. "Well, possibly sunstroke, in my uneducated guess." We have an amiable chat about his experience of la peste and I am sent home with a referral to the alcohol and drug services and an exhortation to drink more water, every day. At home, my housemates' friendly curiosity makes me feel interviewed. I tell them that the session overran a bit and try to look bright.

I tell Hayley all about it first. She sends me solicitous texts, suffixed with kisses. "Come back to mine. Stay here. I want to know you're better." "I'd love to but that'd cause problems here. I can't my love." "Well, [pet name], let me know if I can help. Even in a thunderstorm I'd come and help you xxxxx".

Two mornings at the hospital, training sessions under suffocating mouth and nose masks which provoke the very face scratching that we are to avoid. We are issued with gaily coloured lanyards; I wonder when they'll turn black. To my relief, we are told that we won't be involved in inserting the needles into the patients' veins. I stand around as it's explained to me, all meaningless. I mean, having a value. I don't care about it.

We are told the job might not be full time. That might be handy, if I can work out how much I could get on Universal Credit. I don't want to work at all, really.

I ring Hayley, but disturb her as she is going to bed, at half past nine in the morning. Later, she dances up to me in the street, shouldering her tits and switching her miniskirted arse. She hands over the the fifty pounds I lent her a fortnight ago. I stop in surprise. Back at hers, the table is dotted with lumps of crack of varying sizes. Wasn't expecting Harry though. Face control to look pleased to see him.

Harry doesn't last long and goes off to deal with some commerce. Hayley starts on a recitation of some injustice in the division of the drug that will form the chronic leitmotiv of the ensuing hours. She's endlessly generous with me though, pipe after pipe of the grey clouds going gratis into my brain.

There's a phone call which snaps Hayley into action. She has been trying to persuade her dealer to come out to the woods for a "bike ride". She washes and half-dries her hair, changes her miniskirt, applies mascara, and puts her long brown boots on.

He's an amusing, voluble Irishman, who possesses that welcome trait in a drug dealer, of not hanging around. "Love you lots! Ring me!" she says, following him out.

"Do you think he fancies me?" We're suddenly at the school disco, but on crack and speed. I hadn't noticed anything, but I tell her that she's very fit and no man's going to turn her down if she showed an interest in him.

She rakes her hair. One splayed frond curves across her cheek and under her chin, the greater mass a corrugated approximation of a bob. She's back-lit against the window. We swap first time masturbation stories. She says that Harry filmed her masturbating from a tiny camera inside the telly. "You're heading for the loony bin you are."

I don't want to go, but I am aware of Cath's yanking leash, like Flo greeting Andy Capp. "I think we're stuck with each other now, don't you?" I say. "For life," she says.

A green light paints the pavement. A tiny cafe, converted tonight to a party venue. Six people were dancing inside, two more outside. "You're the family I never had," she texts, as I'm at the bus stop. A black man comes to the shelter and stands outside it. I'm a bit nervous, wishing he would sit in the shelter with me.

The following day, we're all down the park, and Hayley is one boring stream of complaints against Harry, who is doing his best, fetching Doritos and cider and reduced price sandwiches from Tesco. "He keeps saying he loves me. Means fuck all. You can love your cat."

I wish he could have stood up then, to give her a good verbal bollocking, followed later by an equally good rodding over the settee, instead of using that reasoning voice of a soft-cocked vicar that she finds so irritating.

A couple of days' work at The Big House. It starts with an hour for breakfast, sitting in a huge bay window, before me and Beryl attempt to iron the king size duvet covers and other bedding, all linen and silk, reluctant to yield their creases. It's a pity Beryl likes the television on all the time; otherwise it would be somnolent work.

Down the park with Hayley and Harry, her friend Tammy, who put her up in her High Gothic art gallery flat for a few weeks when she was homeless, and Tammy's Aussie boyfriend. I'm impatient to see Tammy again. I told Hayley once that I find Tammy very attractive, and she gave me the look that one might give a disloyal boyfriend.

Tammy shows us her new toes, newly straight after an operation and a month being pinned along a metal plate, correcting years of being crammed into high heels. There is much planning about going for a piss, now that the pubs are shut, and we relay to a spot underneath the bridge. It's a chatty, easy afternoon, no-one dominating. I think about Tammy in high heels.

Hayley and Harry separately tell me, with am dram eyebrow raising, of an enterprise they want us to start, both telling me to keep it quiet from the other. We are to set up a coke operation in Bath. It's a risible scheme. Hayley would swindle me and smoke any profits. But I go along with it, not wanting to cloud our sunny mood, nor the in-group air they're enjoying creating for me.

The following day, at hers, her cigarette smoke follows me wherever I stand. She talks about her son, and her friend Faye, with whom Hayley's dealer Nick is smitten.

"You should have seen it. She's never met Nick before, and his fucked-up wife is taking ages getting the rock ready, and she says 'look, it's not like you've not done this before so don't fuck us about. £40 is a lot bigger than that. And get a fucking move on.' She went off in a huff to the front room, but slammed down a massive rock, much more than £40. Nick was open-mouthed, and you could see it -- it was like he fell in love, right there."

"So she's in the front room and Nick goes to the loo. When he gets down he says 'where's L---?'. 'Don't know. In the front room. I don't care, it's nice and quiet without her.' He went into the front room came back with this funny look on his face. She was smacked out on the floor."

"Anyway, he talks about her all the time. So I'm going to milk him a bit, say Faye was wondering if you could sort her out with a couple of g's, and hope he doesn't ask for any money."

Hayley started talking about her night and day with the former Fish Importer, who has now moved out of mackerel and into crack. The posh lunch, the pub where they went dancing, "...and he's a great fuck. Harry can't... get it up." And she looked at the ground, planning; she jumped up and texted our fishy friend.

I walk part of the way back to Harry's with her. When we part, we hug, and kiss, on the lips. There's a moment when I wonder if it'll turn into a proper kiss. We look at each other for a second; the moment passes.

Three afternoons spent on a disembodied group video call, during one of which my computer overheats and can only be persuaded to rejoin the presentation when provided with freezer packs under its arse. We are shown colour-coded phials, and a complicated machine with lots of tubular attachments and plastic bags suspended on in-patient pylons with some fluid of yours. It'll make more sense on Tuesday I suppose, when I start at the hospital proper.