After our day in Manchester for her birthday, Kirsty invited me back to hers.

I order us pizza from L---, run by a Mezzogiorno immigrant, who left his rented shop on Market St to the highest bidder and now runs it from a phone order only and pisshead-free unit on an industrial estate. He's an habitué of a betting shop in town. He always smiles the same smile to me -- outside the bookie's, as when he arrived at Kirsty's. I like the uniform lack of apology on his face.

I'm on a warm high from the gas fire in Kirsty's house and the cheap wine from the corner shop, when L arrives with stacked boxes of pizza and garlic bread. I shake and then clasp his hand and we chat for a couple of minutes. It's lovely to be warm with someone without the slightest qualification.

We watch shit telly, which I enjoy, fat people and first dates and baking disasters. I say to Kirsty "I like you Kirsty. I'm still fond of you." I feel free saying it, not aiming at something, nothing tendentious. She gets me a quilt and I snuggle down, contented, on her settee.

In the pub the morning after, I'm with the 11am drinkers. Mel is there, the man who knows a bit about horseracing and who once won me eighty pounds. "Very well thanks. I'm in Bristol now." "Yeah, I know." I like Lancaster's monitoring reach.

I went over to talk to the Scots man I know. Twelve months ago he was all pally, inviting me into a fraud he was setting up. "You're as dodgy as me looby, so shut the fuck up," he said, when I demurred. I didn't want to get involved with him in that respect but went along with it. Business inconcluded, he told me he was getting married.

A few months later I came up for his wedding. Having just moved to Bristol with very little money, I "slept" under a tree on the cycle path that night. I thought this might be a good introductory anecdote, but he just nodded and shook his head through my tale, waiting for me to finish. He's still wrongly convinced I am after his wife. "Just go back and enjoy your drink." I shrug at her, and she shrugs back.

It's not finished. Back at my table, some unwanted reputation precedes me. "Hello," says the small-headed man whose eyes are too deep in his skull, who once burst into our cubicle when me and Well Meaning but Loud Mouthed Friend had just finished a chat. "Hello," he said, leaning into me. "I assume...I assume, you can get some coke for me?"

"No, no, not any more. I live in Bristol now mate, I can't do that." "Yeah but surely you can get it?" The best way to get rid of a cokehead is to make them wait. "No," he said, "I was thinking in the next five minutes." He looked at me disdainfully and walked away.

All that was easy to say; this is more difficult. It's Kitty's birthday in a couple of weeks. Wendy texts me to ask if I'm about in February at all. I'd love to see her, and I tell her that I'll be in Lancaster for Kitty's birthday weekend, although there's no arrangements yet, and it depends on Kirsty having me to stay.

"Oh dear," she replies. "I'm working Friday, then it's The Little Dictator all weekend."

This means: "At some point me and Kitty will be getting together for her birthday, but I just need to remind you that The Injunction still stands and as The Little Dictator will be there, you're not to turn up."

It cuts me so much, that I can't see two of my closest friends together, that I am excluded from the gatherings we used to have. I miss those times, but I can't talk about it with either of them. They take a resigned view of it, not being affected by it.

It's a re-run of the time when Helen came over from Norway. We were in the pub, having a great time, before she rang Kitty to tell her that we were going to come up to hers. I could imagine the call without actually hearing a word. "Oh God no Helen, are you with looby? No, The Little Dictator's here -- the invite's for you, not him!" Helen had to say "thing is looby..."

When is this going to end? When she's sixteen? Eighteen? When she leaves home? How long must this jealous ex have his power over me, and for how long will Wendy enforce his judgment?

Me, my mum and my eldest are in her still, bright living room in Middlesbrough. Wide streets, houses with front and back gardens and lots of sky, built for working class people before they became landlords' villeins again. But mum is getting worried.

Fiona is asking me how to get on the other web, and how one installs the browser. We mischievously provoke mum's curiosity about this novelty with hints of rugs, weapons and fraud.

"So why would you be interested in that?" she asks Fiona. "Hang on, I don't want to know." We then compound her unease by discussing our plan to go to North Korea after Fiona's graduation. A woman who has never been abroad and doesn't want to, whose last two votes have been for the BNP and Brexit, suddenly becomes knowledgeable about life in the DPRK.

One shouldn't, but there is sport to be had with the uninformed elderly.

To Manchester, where I'm to meet Kirsty and the girls in Manchester Art Gallery. It was Kirsty's birthday, and she (we all) wanted to see the Martin Parr exhibition. Walking slightly behind them all at one point, I smiled inwardly and out at my bohemian, arty brood in their secondhand chic, bandying conversation about.

We were accommodated without a reservation at a lovely tapas bar. We'd left all our cases in the Art Gallery and a delegation was sent off from the restaurant to fetch them. We ran, advert-fast, through the city centre. I was very pleased at being able to keep up with two twenty-year-olds without feeling as though I were courting a heart attack, and without needing much recovery time. I was hoping they'd comment, but no-one said anything.

The food was delicious, and by the time I'd paid for three glasses of Manzanilla, I wish I'd ordered the whole bottle. I was supposed to be getting the last train to Bristol, but Kirsty wondered if I'd like to stay at hers and go back the following day. The rejuventation of our relationship has been an unforeseen pleasure of the past few months.

There is an unpleasant episode on the train back. Two young Asian men get on the little suburban train, and start jauntily moving up and down the carriage, the noisier one half-singing, half-shouting Allahu Akbar. He then stands and leans over a teenage girl sitting down; she looked at me imploringly.

Coming to a boil of anger at this point, I told him "shift your arm," intending to knock it off the stanchion, but he moved it before I could get him. I stood facing him and with my back to the girl, looking him up and down with as concentrated a look of contempt as I could manage. I looked back at her, and she mouthed "thank you."

After a few minutes I had to tell her that I was getting off at the next stop. The Devotee is still standing a foot away from me. As I moved past him, I spat a "fuck off" at him, then spent a good half hour wishing I'd made my parting shot much stronger. Later, I berated myself for not having had the presence of mind to ring the BTP; and later still, realised that it hadn't crossed my mind that he might have been equipped with the fanatic's current weapon of choice.

There's an old brewery near an older quay, on the roof of which someone has painted in large letters "ACAB". In case you're not quite au courant with the acronyms employed by British left-wing groupuscules c. 1990, it stood for "all coppers are bastards."

Underneath it, someone has appended a new translation: "All clitoris are [sic] beautiful." They were mean-spiritedly jetting it off yesterday.

My landlady suggested we could all go down the pub where her boyfriend works on what is commonly known as New Year's Eve, although she had to point out to me that they don't normally celebrate festivals on their dates in the Gregorian calendar. This modern mania for individuation.

They were making an effort to include me, I know; but why would I go straight from work into the bellowing mire of New Year's Eve, shivering outside all night so that they can smoke?

I got in. "I'm very sorry -- it's just I've spent an easy shift of well under ten hours being nice to people," and lumbered up to my room with a show of factitious tiredness. It occurred to me that as they've not had a single visitor in the three months I've lived here, and as I hear little about any friends, they might be a bit lonely.

On Christmas Eve, my girls' twentieth birthday, I managed to get to Lancaster after work for 7pm. We went down The Macrame Belt with a shop-bought cake, but my youngest left early. Kirsty later told me that she'd got a bit upset, and said that she felt "useless, like Dad," a remark which caused much merriment when it was disclosed to the rest of the family. Always set out to disappoint, then ordinary competence surprises.

On Christmas Day, my eldest, Fiona tossed insouciantly into the room a remark that she has a girlfriend now. This disclosure -- which is only an instantiation of a long-known generality -- met with indifference, overshadowed by the more important question of whether it was to be Swan Lake or Bake-Off next.

The former, Fiona's preference, prevailed. Fiona got amusingly tipsy on port, clapping violently along to the more strident numbers. "All the the Ruskies clap along in this bit...whoa, come on!" It was like watching a heavy rocker who'd wandered into the Royal Opera House.

On Boxing Day I went round to my old house in Lancaster -- the one that Trina announced she was buying for "us" when she picked me up from the airport after the Kazakhstan episode -- wondering if my key would still work.

It did, and I let myself in, pushing the shoal of post away to look round the denuded house. A list of weekly inspections going back to May was in the kitchen, surveys which had failed to spot the stray tab of acid in one of the kitchen drawers. I collected some letters: 5.7K still outstanding, despite it having been thrown around in the debt market, its value decreasing with every new "Assignment", as the correctly-buttoned letters called it.

An hour or so with Kitty, in her fairy lights- and lamp-lit front room, cosy and unaffectedly arty. We drank to her success in getting her new job, and her escape from the institution which might have once been a school but is now a combination of a children's day hostel and palliative psychiatric unit for the under-11s.

At this point, with my pleasant demeanour starting to dilute her reserve, I knew I should have stopped or greatly slowed my drinking. But no, the juggernaut trundled forwards, the brake marked "self-control" flat to the floor yet ineffective. I got truculent with her over her doubting that the microdosing is actually that.

The mood was gone now, but she offered me some tea, which I should have refused; but never cooking in my place in Bristol I am often hungry, or malnourished on train sandwiches. I ate it and left, the Days Since I Have Acted Like a Twat to My Best Friends meter, set back to nil.

Kitty sent me a text. "...I wish you weren't so self-absorbed and so easily hurt."

Rght then, 2019.

1. Continue to get a grip on the drinking. Most of the unpleasantness I inflict on others comes from the bottom of a pint glass.
2. Rebuild the trust and perhaps, in the long term, the closeness with Kitty and Wendy. Almost everything I need to do is in Kitty's text, but points 1 and 2 are closely related.
3. Get my own place.
4. Get out in Bristol more. Find a couple of pals to go out dancing with.
5. Fillet three chapters from this blog to dangle in front of an agent.

To Lancaster for a couple of days. Wendy rang as I was in The Shipbuilder's Arms. I'd told her that I have some presents for her and wondered if I could pop them round before I went back to Bristol to work Christmas Eve. To my delight, she said that she'd rather us leave it until we could arrange an unhurried handover, maybe in the New Year. An afternoon or evening with Wendy is what I really wanted, not just a brief hello at the door while her possessive ex simmers with unjustified jealousy inside.

The conversation got round to Kitty. I had a text from her on Saturday, the day after she broke up for Christmas, but nothing since. I've left two voicemails and a few texts, saying that I hoped she was enjoying days of bra-less leisure. She had an interview last week -- her escape route out of her desperate current situation -- and I hoped that it went well.

"But she got the job!" said Wendy. I was shocked into silence. "Are you still there?", she said." "Yes." "Oh, sorry, I thought you knew."

I walked up to Kirsty and the girls' house, my stomach and eyes working somersaults over the distance that now pertains between me and Kitty. I texted Wendy. "Please don't say this to Kitty but I'm really upset that despite texting her and asking if I could bring her pressies round she never told me about the job. I suppose I've not been the best of friends this year though. It really makes me almost tearful." (It wasn't 'almost'). "Please don't tell her this. She's every reason to keep me at arm's length."

Still stunned, I went back to Kirsty's. The girls' birthdays fall on Christmas Eve so there was plenty of distraction. I was muttering, criticising myself for being yet another man upset at not being included, a telling-off unable to erase the visceral upset. I was glad to get to hers for a forced change in my self-pitying mood.

My three girls, and a suspiciously industrious Kirsty, who was using the busy occupations of the girls' birthday and Christmas to cover tipsyness or, more likely, the effects of something more dessicated. I improvised various precarious perches on the furniture in order to tack the paper chains, decorations, and card string into the walls and the ceiling, as The Wombles wormed their way into a semi-permanent lodging in my ear.

But thoughts of Kitty stalked insistently round my head. As I was leaving Kirsty's, Wendy replied, saying that Kitty's been under a lot of stress and not to take it personally, and asking me if I were seeing her. I'm not sure how I can not take it personally, but I didn't say that. "Yes, of course she has been. And as to seeing her, I think not -- she hasn't replied to anything since Saturday and I don't want to push it now. I'm just glad for her, and a bit upset that she didn't tell me. A lot upset really. Never mind, off to Bristol now x"

My instinct is to ring her, congratulate her, tell her that a little bird told me some great news, but she probably just wants me to leave her alone for a while.

With commendable timing, my adopted pub in Bristol has been kind recently. Last week I found a bag of what might be dangerous chemicals. Worried that these might fall into the hands of children, I took them back to my house for safe keeping. A few days later, there was a tenner on the floor looking unloved.

Thank you all, for persisting with me this year. Writing this is one of the few activities in my life that I care about intrinsically, where the effort involved doesn't feel at all like work; but it would eventually be a lonely furrow to tread without your reading and commenting on it. And to the small but almost perfectly formed gang of fellow bloggers -- your endlessly interesting and sharply individual styles are a source of pleasure to me all year. Merry Christmas everybody.

I'm on a train to York, the youngest person in first class, on my way to see my mum and sister for a couple of days in the land of the two quid pint. We've just passed something labelled the Crewe Lifestyle Centre. I spent a week in Crewe once on one of those training courses that send you out with not a clue about how to do the job, after which I got the impression that lifestyle in Crewe is meeting in the bus shelter for a spit.

Yesterday, an overdue meet-up with polyglot and organ-grinder kalebuel of this parish, who has been educating, informing and entertaining me - and I hope, many other readers -- from the right hand side of this blog for several years. We wound round a couple of pubs, including a money-drenched place in Lincoln's Inn Fields for men with briefs, where I was served a cheeseboard that looked as though it had been regurgitated.

Then, rather glamorously, I discovered middle daughter was a few minutes' walk away having just left the Adelphi on The Strand. Little ripples of dad pride as we all chatted together easily. In fact, the whole afternoon was effortless.

I left my daughter at Charing Cross as she made her way up to her friend's dad's flat in Holloway, and fell into drunken kleptomania, a thrill, as well as a money saver which has served me well for decades. I went to Sainsbury's, stole some cider, and then, irriated by the theft's easiness, I went back for some wine.

They were up the the challenge. Outside the shop, a man sitting insouciantly on a bench pointed to the bulge under my jacket, and took me back to the shop. I already had another bottle in my bag, so while the store detectives were calling the police, I tried to surreptitiously put that bottle onto a trolley behind me. I missed, and it smashed onto the floor, an archipelago of shards in a red mere.

The police asked me if I was known to them. I told them about my unimpressive criminal record -- a minor drug offence. The manager arrived. One of the policemen muttered a script. "Well, if you're ok with a banning order..." and I felt a sense of relief at getting away with only an adminstrative order, whilst my blood thumped through noisily through my head.

They went away again and came back with a letter, headed "pPrivate [sic] and confidential", addressed to "A Name, Address Line 1, Address Line 2, Address Line 3, Date" saying that I am now banned from Sainsbury's.

Wendy and I met in The Macrame Belt and started with what a degraded Lancaster pub used to call a Southampton -- a large port. Wendy tilted our glasses sceptically, looked port measures up, and went back to the diluted-Asian barmaid, who had sold us singles.

"She's gorgeous," said Wendy. As she came round to collect the glasses, I saw Wendy do a scan I recognise: hair, shoulders, back, then longer on her arse, then her legs.

We took her dog up to the hilltop park. It was a bright December day, and the sky and the low sun were in cahoots with me. We wanged the ball for the dog, sending her scuttling and returning with the best asymmetry of effort.

"It is really lovely to see you," I said, and kissed her on her cheek, something that she would never do to me; and in a moment the mounting togetherness of the morning was smothered; her familar, small stiffening. "It's lovely to see you too," she said, and I cursed myself for pressing her into a formality neither of us wanted.

We bobbed down the long hill to the Fur Coat and No Knickers Arms and had three-quarters of a bottle of Prosecco, the dog's ebullient tail knocking over the rest. Anyway, it's a re-start.