I tried sitting under a tree in the park. I had the second volume of David Kynaston's history of post-war Britain and a couple of bottles of cider.

A bra-heightened fortyish woman walked on the footpath in front of me with her shoulders back, hair all shimmering, her lovely tits forward, relaxed. White shirt. She returned my look, smiled at me, and carried on sashaying past.

Alas, an aggressive hay fever drove me home snotting, weeping, phelgming and itching. Mixed excrescences running down my cheeks at the pedestrian crossing; wiping my nose on my sleeve, too stuffed with pollen to care what it looked like.

As I was working the train yesterday, my supervisor rings, asking me if I could go to C--- today to be shown how to use the ramps to get disabled people on to the new trains that are to be Transport That Fails's saviour. And then do my normal shift.

I agreed to this, thinking I was a manful negotiator for asking for three-and-a-half hours overtime, whilst knowing in my head that it was wrong. In my bed last night, I seethed and wriggled, irritated with my weakness in not saying "hang on, it's either the training in C--- or my shift, not both." So as a way of punishing them for their audacity, I rang them at half eight this morning with a story about a collapsed toilet in the flat above me.

A few months ago someone's toilet shifted as he was sat on it, rupturing the flimsy floor on which it was anchored. A solution of his shit and piss dripped into the communal room downstairs for hours until anyone went in there and discovered the leak. I adapted the story for my own purposes, saying that I would have to stay in for the contractor. Everyone knows it's a lie.

Mel is away for a couple of weeks in Greece at a wedding, so armed with Loratidine and something for the journey, I am off to Poynton in Cheshire, to look at a roundabout. It's one of those things that men do when their girlfriends aren't around.

My interest in it arose from a fascinating Lancaster Civic Society talk about it years ago, which explained how the village's main crossroads were in desperate need of something that considered the safety of its inhabitants, above all, its pedestrians. I've always wanted to see the results for myself. The junction could hardly have been any worse before the alterations, as you can see from the opening minute or so of this youtube video about it, made shortly after its completion. I'd like to see how it's faring, a decade later.

And after an afternoon's hard work examining roundabout remodelling developments in Cheshire, I'm up to Manchester for pizza and beer with my middle daughter -- which is a more attractive pair of jobs in one day than the two that my employer was trying to get me to do.

I've now been handed over to the care of a more personable dentist than the unsmiling Brazilian consultant. She has bursting hair which is artfully wound into long weaves. She's African or West Indian, or both, and doesn't mind her breasts being in touch with the back of my head as I lay horizontally agape, knowing that there's nothing sexual in it for either of us.

She injected me several times around my gums. I like the pinning, the silvery, sliding feel of the metal going in. I started laughing when she said "if it feels too sensitive, we've got more" -- a combination of nerves, the overtones of what might feel "sensitive", the druggy suggestion of having more, and the effects of the adrenaline that's part of the serum.

When I left, with dribble dropping uncontrollably onto my trousers, I unbottled the farts that always arise at the dentist's, trumpeting carelessly as I walked up Union Street. "Union", a rousing, imperial word to accompany trumpeting anal noises. I only lacked a proper brass section.

The train in front of us broke down the other day and there was a three-hour-long confusion whilst other people had to sort out what to do with a hundred passengers stuck at Shrewsbury.

Our train was standing on one side of the platform and on the other, a few dozen mainly mid- to late-teenage girls, skirted and bloused, restless.

They noticed me and the guard on the train and waved at us. I waved back. There was an exchange of hand signals, as I made bodily gestures back saying "yes, I know" pointing my hand at my chest then turning my palms upwards towards them and tilting my head to the side, trying to sympathise with them. They were bearing up well, not knowing when their train would leave. They returned with blown kisses and heart shapes with their hands.

After a few minutes, our cross-platform semaphore had to cease as our train eased off, running empty -- just me, the guard, and the driver -- to our depot. The girls started running up the platform with more kisses and hearts. At the end of the platform, I could only wave, as they did back.

The looby-Kirsty clan, being unable to get together at Easter due to the youngest being subject to French term times -- she's in Brittany doing an eight-month long bar survey, with a cover story about doing a French degree -- so we arranged Not Easter for last weekend. At the bus stop in Bristol, I made an innocent remark to a man about the bus times, and he asked me if I was a Jehovah's Witness.

Almost as soon as the train had left Temple Meads, the guard invited me to sit in first class. It's astonishing how some staff remember me despite me leaving that particular train company over ten years ago. On the last leg up, from Manchester to Lancaster, even the excellent locally-brewed beer was free.

I had a boozy afternoon with Wendy, Kitty, Helen, and Wendy's charming, unassuming auntie. I met Wendy by herself the day before. She has lost none of her lustre, and I felt some of the old headiness of being close to her.

She said that there'd been a bit of a diplomatic incident with Helen, who was insisting on bringing this man whose head is an empty as it is big, whom none of us like. "So just be prepared tomorrow." She said that Kitty had done her level best, but Helen can be froward when opposed. He wasn't there, but a work colleague of Kitty's, whom I find a bit intense without much substance behind it, was. We all enjoyed ourselves, although I think us older group of friends collectively realised that the brakes couldn't quite come off.

On Sunday we went en famille to Morecambe. In a charity shop, amidst the notices about homeless cats and dogs, there was a notice, with photographs, advertising "snails looking for homes".

The eldest announced that a friend was coming round to cut her hair. Yet another lesbian. On the way back from a walk to the brewery, some of us went into the local "community" centre, and walked in on Queer Crafts Club. The premises used to house a pub -- i.e., a community centre -- but the dwindling numbers of working class people who live in the area now have been slowly evicted from what was their pub by a combination of refugee language lessons, reiki classes, and speculators only interested in renting to students.

I took myself off to The Old Shipbuilder's Arms, where I could relax into pints of bitter at £2.60, the horseracing on the telly, and bumping into my old school friend -- the hairdresser who once said, when we were alone, that it was a good job her and her husband had to go, "because otherwise I'd have to take you home and fuck you."

I was asked at work if I would like to spend a few hours representing the catering department of Transport that Fails at a reception and naming ceremony of the first of a new set of train which will be running around Wales. The Minister for Transport, Members of the Senedd, and various other high-ups were to be present.

I leapt at the chance -- first because my manager said "it should be over by about half twelve", but also because I imagined being in a posh hotel with some decent food.

Instead, we welcomed our esteemed guests, amongst which was a party of senior engineers from Switzerland who had had a big hand in designing and building the trains, to a windswept station up in the valleys, and stood everyone under a rusting tin roof which was pouring rainwater onto the tracks. Our coffee machine couldn't be plugged in, so our culinary offering consisted of flapjacks, oranges, and water.

As we were leaving, the ticket office supervisor at the station wouldn't let me use the station toilets, "because of the money." Which thwarted my carefully-laid plan to steal a hundred pounds or so from my employer that morning.

My unsmiling dentist, her face close to mine, asks "do you snack?" in the same tone of voice she'd use if she suspected me of wanking on buses. She hacks at my teeth for what feels like a long time, bits of wet, fine debris flying out and landing on my face, as I swallow repeatedly, trickles of spit trailing down my neck.

Halfway through, I feel a building fart starting to protest at its confinement. I wince at the pain of it, and she stops for a moment. "Bit sensitive there, is it?" "No, it's just I really need to do a stonking fart," I didn't say.

Afterwards, and all I really want to do is go home, she says "a toothbrush is the last thing that should go into your mouth at night." A lewd thought crossed my mind.

I am released at last. In the toilets, I let off a two-note cubicle-trembler, with added aftershocks as I walked down the street.

The new buffet steward I sometimes work with is forty-two-years-old but looks at least a decade younger. She's easy to talk to and we share a past employer. She's very attractive in a mannered way, and she hasn't been issued with all her uniform yet, so she wears this close-fitting grey dress. I catch the chef glancing at the hem-thigh interface as she cocks her leg on the ledge holding the shelves up, just as I have been doing.

She tells us that she's a part-time lingerie model. She shows me and the chef a couple of pictures of herself, hair tumbling over a black and red bra. I move the picture up and she's wearing a little triangle of cunt-knicker. "No!" she say, and snatches the phone away from me.

The chef shows us a picture of his niece, and I don't know what to say. She looks ridiculous, a doll, big tits pushed up in a silver dress and a doltish expression. As though we were now in a game, the model then shows us a picture of her daughter in a one-piece black garment, hand on hip, bum thrust out like she's having difficulty shitting. "She's trying to bag a footballer," she explains.

Weeks ago I suggested to my brother, who likes football, that we could go to see Morecambe, who were away to Milton Keynes Dons. He's teetotal, with the teetotaller's de haut en bas way of looking at others, but I get on very well with him as long as we observe some unspoken rules.

As we entered the stadium, there were the band of chanting and drumming Morecambe supporters with whom I wanted to stand, but I could feel his wanting to be distinct from their coarseness.

My brother sat down throughout and liked the padded seats. They've got a huge stadium but it feels a bit corporate, with giant screens showing irritating, banal ads. We were supervised by seven stewards, one of whom was a sour-faced woman who was itching for some agg, but who had to settle for staring hard at us for the duration of the match.

I stayed at his. His house was really cold. On Sunday I had a couple of pints in Paddington and met the sound engineer for Stiff Little Fingers, who was looking forward to his bed after three exhausting months on the road.

Opposite me on the train were an auditor and a teacher, both stooped in concentration over their computers. On a Sunday afternoon.

Back from Tenerife, I waded through nine hundred whatsapp messages on my work phone, mainly things like in-group-hugging emojis and emails saying "thanks Bev" sent to a hundred-and-twenty people as well as Bev, from people who, decades in, still can't work out the difference between "reply to" and "reply to all"; most of it is drivel, brown-nosing and empty-headedness.

At Bristol airport, the red light goes on as I walk though the body scanner and I am waved away from the queue. For some inexplicable reason, I seize a couple of seconds' inattention from the security guard to take my amphetamine out of my pants and into my hand, despite seeing the man before me being asked to show his hands to the guard.

First I have to lean on a foot-scanning machine one foot at a time; then I am pressed all over -- then asked about my left shoulder. "Turn round," he said. "Look, it's showing something in your left shoulder." I shrugged, and he waved me through. I was quite shaken; fortunately there are bars in airports.

We passed a very enjoyable week dancing and drinking at a hotel takeover where a couple of DJs I know were playing. We were in the Lads On Tour end of Tenerife: couples had late night domestics in the street, and the expats (or "immigrants" as they don't like to be called) indulge in a drinking culture that makes Glasgow look tame. A beautifully-situated beachfront bar was sullied by a party from Plymouth shouting their heads off, above which one woman, as if to settle the cacophonous argument, shouted "I've got cocaine." They were drunkenly happy and good-natured; just so loud.

Most of the time though, we had nothing to do with the sub-species of blob-like Brits, their ugly shorts, their swearing, and their inauthentic yelling at the giant-screen football, voices fuelled by the tasteless Mozambican Dourado lager which achieves equilibrium between quality and price -- being sold in one place, during the daytime, for a Euro a pint. We instead, were dancing with sociable and friendly folk on the hotel terrace by day, and in the nightclub after sundown, the windows open to the soft African air. We inadvertently caught one of our fellow party-goers, a chatty man from Belfast, in the background of a photograph.

Mel fitted in fine, chatting away, dancing, and making me not worry about her. House music for four days and nights would be a test for some, but we had several escapes, many of which involved patisserie; and on our last day, after the do had ended, we went to Santa Cruz, the capital, and had a look round the surprisingly lifeless old town, with its beautiful, abandoned nineteenth century houses.

And I am still wondering how the reggae bar downstairs, run by an amiable Senegalese fluent in four languages, makes a living from so few customers. One might be tempted to draw a perverse conclusion from the sign in the window saying "no drugs here."