Up at 5am, walking an hour to work, in the rain, without a coat, in shoes that leak, to work at the dishwasher for eight hours, with a soggy sock blotting my foot. A man prone to self-pity would be inclined to broadcast these facts in a public forum.

I stood entirely on my own for fifty minutes in a huge kitchen. I didn't know how to turn the dishwasher on, despite caressing it gently on its undercarriage and murmuring all kinds of cajoling words.

I started doing some washing-up by hand, muttering "I don't know how to turn it on" repeatedly; and Hayley filling my mind, a sour jealousy amplified in the hard, utilitarian steel of the kitchen which seemed to mock me for having emotions.

In such situations pressing random buttons sometimes helps (and it is difficult for a new person to know which buttons to press, after all). Its green eye started blinking, and a stentorian sound of rushing liquid rumbled from its innards.

My fellow KP came in at 8am, a calming Nigerian man. Good KPs are unflappable in the face of yards of washing up. We chatted about the bar he runs in Lagos. He has to go back every now and again to check up on it, "because all Nigerians are thieves. It's the way we are."

One of the chefs "asked" me to help him for a moment. "Can you clear the burn?"

For one lovely moment I hoped that my Wertherian longing for Hayley was about to be transposed, and we were away northwards to drain a stream in Scotland. What faced me was hideous: a six-feet-long, two-feet-deep bath of glossy, festering lumps of flesh. To my relief, my Nigerian senior jumped in to do it. Later, I had to lay out some trays of chicken bones. They were more chicken parts, un-neutered throats and stomachs and trailing entrails.

Half an hour before my shift was to end, I was the recipient of a welcome criticism. "There won't be enough work for me this afternoon. Work slower."

I met Hayley briefly yesterday morning. Her miniskirt, a polyestered faux-bouclé halfway between purple and cerise, stretching almost as sexily over her legs as the black vest which she lifted up for me -- once -- did over her tits. She had asked to stay with me for a couple of days, to which I agreed, but I was relieved to be told that a work colleague of hers has a spare room for a week or so.

I'm preoccupied with what will happen should my references for my new room come back as a warning to future landlords. Hayley can be a demanding presence, and I am often weakened with a mixture of imagined sex, and a generosity towards her, to go along with proposals of hers which can come with an opportunity cost to myself. I have to work; find somewhere to live; and help my daughter - who is barely surviving as the poorest member of her acting course.

But not this weekend. In another stage in the rapprochement between me and Trina, I've been invited to a joint sixtieth in Manchester with people around that age and who -- young people should sit down now, and steady themselves with a plastic jug of coloured alcohol -- like dancing to house music.

Apologies for the site being down for a week or so; this was a fault at my hosting company.

Roll on getting out of this place. I was shouted at by Unhinged Landlady -- through the door, whilst I was talking on the phone call at 9.40am yesterday.

That doesn't include all bills: I was reminded yesterday that it's my turn to buy the toilet rolls, because despite having given her several thousands of pounds over the past year or so, she's still short of a couple of quid for some bog roll.

I finished the call and noticed a text asking me to take phonecalls downstairs. With Unhinged Landlady it's either shouting, or texting. The middle ground -- the practice known as "talking" -- seems a difficult register for her.

I went to see a couple of rooms last week. Found one in the suburb named for me -- Totterdown. The estate agent was a young woman in an occupationally-demanded tight skirt, which she repeatedly smoothed as she went up the stairs, thus drawing more attention to the area of her body from which she wished to deflect it.

Single bed, lots of light, recently refurbished, quiet street, ten minutes walk to Temple Meads. I said I was interested, and she took my details. In her first phone call after my viewing she used the word "congratulations" three times, as if agreeing to make a landlord richer than he already is is a success in life. Her harassing texts and phone calls were urging me to get on with it and I felt bludgeoned into cancelling two appointments at other places for the next day.

I rang Kim, who advised me to go for the bird in the hand rather than the one in the bush. How I would love to have a bird in the bush now. It's been a while.

I had to fill in a form detailing my probity. I've had to invent a current landlord, complete with fake email, as Unhinged Landlady would take pleasure in depriving me of a future tenancy. A spare domain and a second phone number are so useful in life.

Hayley went on a date. A few hours later, "we are officially seeing each other! I fucking love you. I'm so happy xx". It set off somersaults of jealousy in my stomach, even as I know that he will unwittingly help me gain the healthier degree of distance from her that I need.

Me and Hayley got ourselves in a tangle over the room we were supposed to move into today. A skein of text messages from her about complicated lines of credit, thickened until I gave up trying to unravel it. I just assumed we were splitting everything 50/50 and paying it on the due dates. With two days to go to our moving date, I told her that I am withdrawing from the plan.

The following morning, my sangfroid lost, I asked Unhinged Landlady if I could rescind my notice. She turned bright and hot, telling me that I had been very rude when I had spoken to her on the phone a month or so ago, and refused, saying "I don't want you living here any more." She wanted a fight, so I reacted as though someone had declined me a tea bag." "No, no, that's fine, that's OK."

I went to my room, but she wasn't giving up. "And that goes for [her boyfriend] too!" she shouted up the stairs.

A few seconds later she remembers something. "Are you still alright to look after the cat this weekend or do you want me to find someone else?" I leant over the landing to dispense what I hoped would be an irritating generosity of spirit. "Of course I am! Really, it's fine, Unhinged Landlady, more than happy to do that."

I got back from work, looking forward to a weekend in the house with but a cat for company. A while ago, I had unscrewed two of the bulbs in my room and draped a red flannel over the remaining one, exploiting cotton's natural fire retardant properties. I wanted to smother the Estate Agent White of the halogen bulbs. Last night, the light being insufficient to write this, I went to replace one of the set of three bulbs set into their S-bend aluminium fitting (school of Argos, c.1988).

There was a bang and the house went dark. I had fused all the upstairs lights. I rang Trina, the most practical of my friends, who advised me to flick a switch in the fuse box. I did so and it let out a blue flash like a pilot light, and returned to its refusal position. I was stoned, and I was horrified for a moment to hear a man asleep breathing in rasps on the sofa, before I realised that it was my own amplified respiration.

Trina told me to tell Unhinged Landlady that it had blown after I'd switched the lights on. It's a common enough occurence, a plausible explanation, but something I dreaded saying, imagining the way she'd find pleasure in adding it to her ledger of my errors and omissions I have committed during our year-long co-dependency. I looked up "emergency electrician Bristol" and found a possible saviour at £75 per hour plus VAT, then went to bed with the cannabis that was meant to sail with me through a night of house music and improvised flannel-draped lighting now over-analysing the consequences of a blown fuse.

I got up at half past six, after what felt like a sleepless night. I tried switching the fuse again, and everything apart from the lights in my room came back on. I rang Trina. It was more to thank her for listening to me worry out loud in several phone calls at eleven o'clock, but her practical advice, about trying it again when the circuit was cold, proved to be the electrical and social remedy.

I texted her tonight. "You, my darling, are a rock xx."

Hayley's done all the running in finding us a new place; and as I felt a sigh coming on in the pub when she asked me to walk her part of the way home, I gave myself a big slap round the face and stopped that resentful breath coming out.

It's my sex that makes women fearful of walking home alone. It's her that's walked over to the house viewing (I was at work) and walked back to report back. So STFU looby and walk her to the bus stop.

She'd been to see a room on the first floor of a house owned by an Indian couple. "She had a...Sahara on, you know, and they were so polite. I felt like a queen! The husband said that they've got a few other people looking at it tomorrow but said 'my wife likes you'." It'd be £480 a month, an exploitative rent for a room but when halved we could save up for when we can get exploited more expensively.

There was a kerfuffle at the table opposite. A couple were talking to a homeless man, but some blokes at an adjacent table start haranguing the couple; the argument developed noisily before it was forcibly becalmed by the barman.

Hayley was refilling her coffee (she's not a big drinker, restricting herself to speed, coke and crack), and I went and sat with them. "I saw and heard all that, and I'm really glad you were helping that homeless bloke before that twat behind us stuck his oar in. It's a sad state of affairs when people object to you giving help to people."

We sat with them for half an hour. He had simply been giving the homeless man a number to ring at the council to see if they could help him. "And then he said 'you've just given that man false hope." "Don't worry mate, it's because they're cunts themselves." When we left them I stuck a single finger up at him, which I regret he didn't see. I was in the mood for putting him down with a weapon he'll never possess.

I lost the phone Esther lent me ages ago and replaced it with a similar model. It was an old one which fetches 40 to 60 quid on ebay. I hardly use it, as having a smartphone is like having a demanding toddler in your pocket.

On the bus from work the other night, sweaty, manky, feet aching, Esther rings and demands her phone back. I explain the situation and say that by a fluke, having changed my jacket tonight, I can give her the new one if we meet down the pub opposite her house when the bus got in, as I'd like a drink after nine hours at the dishwasher.

An unknown number rings me. A black man's voice announces himself. "Hi, this is O'Neil." I have no idea who O'Neil is but the man's such a cunt that I break the normal rule of obfuscating people's real names on this blog just this once. "Is that looby?" "Who are you?" "Esther's friend. Have you got that phone? Where are you?" "I'm on the bus?" "Where on the bus?" "At the airport, what's all this about then? I'm meeting Esther at a quarter past ten."

"You'd better have that phone." "I've got the phone, what's the problem?"

He then kept ringing me repeatedly, leaving message after threatening message, until my mouth was dry with fear as I walked through Castle Park to meet him. She's slept at mine a couple of times but we went a shorter, more twisty way home through a park she'd never venture into nor remember, so she wouldn't be able to give my address to the bloke who fancies himself as Bristol's answer to Jimmy Cliff.

"I'm coming now. No, no, I'll see you before you see me. You'd better have that phone otherwise I'm coming through your door." A few minutes later: "I know people. They're coming." (I've added punctuation, of which he is ignorant.) And then, a longer voicemail. "Ahhh, blood claat, you some pussy..." in this big man Jamaican patois intended to intimidate the white man. It worked.

I changed my route with a mental "fuck you", and texted them.

"Hi, I am sending this to you both. I was perfectly happy to meet you tonight with the new phone, so that this ridiculous affair could have been brought to an end, but there is no way I am meeting you now after receiving these threatening texts and voicemails. I have saved all of your texts and voicemails and I'm perfectly happy to take them to the police tomorrow morning should they continue." To my surprise, silence.

I met Hayley briefly last night. She passed me the post-work resuscitation potion, before withdrawing it. "Hang on, let's make it stronger," and rubbed it in her crotch before handing it back to me. Her advice was to tell Esther to go fuck herself. I haven't done that, because me and Esther have spoken for the last time.

I feel like I'm on a production line, metro-boulot-dodo; I've also had to prise some distance from Hayley. I have hardly any time to myself now and I'm losing my generally sunny disposition. I'm colonised -- by work and, at times, Hayley. I have absolutely no money, to the extent of having to borrow the bus fare to my work at the airport.

Yesterday we went to the most middle class dancey event I've been to for years. It should have been good -- a rooftop terrace in the centre of town. There were babies there, wearing ear defenders, their parents presumably not having heard of babysitters. Men in Stax and Philadephia International T-shirts stood around encircling the dancers -- in which group I was the only man. They were not my people. Hayley (again) didn't seem to like me dancing with them and kept herself on the periphery. The whole afternoon was flat and I couldn't dig myself out of it.

Last weekend was brighter. I went to Lancaster and for the first time for many months, saw Kitty and Wendy together for a brief hour. We chatted, drank and parted, with Wendy giving me the longest hug she's ever granted, her slender body a couple of layers of cotton away.

I then went to see Trina in Chester. What was meant to be a three-hour visit turned into an overnight one, and I got the 6am train and went straight to work. There's a synchrony in mine and Trina's attachments: just as I appear finally to be freeing myself from eight years of corrosive, wearing attraction to Wendy, Trina seems to have loosened herself from the grip of her own jealous obsession with her.

I had an interview on Saturday for a mental health support worker job. I quite fancy a job that involves taking people down the pub and to the cinema. They're people with various degrees of learning difficulties, from fiftysomething upwards. I'd be the only man working in the place. She's ringing me today to tell me the result; I've another interview on Thursday for a similar position.