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.

Fitbit extends an olive branch, with kisses suffixed, suggesting with a lack of sensibility that is almost admirable, a meet up in the week before Christmas, when I'm off.

"No I'm sorry love. We're no longer as much friends as we ever were, but no more being stood up without an explanation and waiting for hours on end in the pub without any news from you. It'll be OK though -- I'm not at all sure we'll bump into each other xx."

What a pleasure there is to be had from being calmly and reasonably assertive.

Life at the new house continues as a daily tip-toe on cat-ice. The second morning I was there, I came down and offered to make everyone coffee, in what I now realise was an over-familiar gesture of housely comradeship.

The landlady -- a woman carrying an obvious early childhood trauma which I expect I will hear about in a prolix sermon that could be visited upon me at any moment -- spoke without preamble. "I'm a bit spiky in the morning. It's nothing personal."

Recognising a draining mental when I see one, I tried to fend off the louring mood. "Oh well," I said, turning to her boyfriend, "we'll just have to talk amongst ourselves."

My attempt at cheer was not appreciated. "Oh.. I can't stand this," she said, perhaps frustrated that the attention was no longer on her, and flounced out. With that English determination not to acknowledge anything awkward, I manufactured a bit of conversation with the boyfriend before fleeing delicately upstairs, only to find her on the stairs with her head in her hands. I had to ask her to shift her traumabulk out of the way so that I could pass.

Then, the other day, it's 11.15am, and I put a podcast from a DJ I like on -- low, I hasten to add; I'm not antisocial with my music.

There's a crashing and banging and slamming of a door. My hope that she's moving some furniture about is ousted by a guess that she's pissed off again. From outside my room, she calls "I was trying to have a birthday lie-in. Never mind, I'm awake now, carry on." Superadded to the financial costs, every house share has those of emotional management.

I'm up in six hours' time, at 5am, for a weekend in Lancaster. Me and Wendy are going to take her dog out, then we're going for our dinner down The Fur Coat and No Knickers Arms, which will be full of chesty men pivoting on their heels as they shout exhibitionist sentences. But we'll shun them in our enclave. I'll be tired, but it's dosing day tomorrow, so I'm looking forward to being with a girl I love -- and whose qualified affection I am slowly coming round to appreciate without self-pity and complaints that it doesn't involve sex.

Then, I'm going round to Kirsty's and staying the night. Kirsty surprised me the other day when she rang me up and suggested we -- me her and our girls -- could all go to the same lovingly remembered holiday venue in France we had for a fortnight every decade, next July. Sometimes I look at Kirsty, in her secondhand clothes and little skirts and listen to her with her pisstaking which never veers over into unkindness, and sit on the settee next to her-- and think to myself, "you fucking idiot."

Friday evening I was at the Town Hall, "showing" as one says in the drinks trade, some beers at a local wine company's Christmas tasting. It's a great gig. I get paid expenses which more than cover my hotel, and I get to sample a dozen uncommon beers. It's a dressy night, popular with women around my age.

Several weeks ago, Fitbit expressed an interest in coming, and surprised me by asking if she could stay in my hotel room afterwards, adding quickly the expected stipulation. "Don't worry Fitbit, it'll be like sleeping with your little sister."

I rang the organiser. It had long since sold out, and there was a waiting list, but he agreed to let her in if we pretended that she was helping me with the stall. He couldn't issue her a ticket as he'd sold the quota that would keep him within the fire regulations.

Five days ago, she texted (not even rang) to tell me that she'd "forgotten" that her ex-sister-in-law had invited her to a "pamper night" in a hotel near Skipton. "I'm gutted that I won't see you tonight," she texted. No, you're not love, you've chosen not to see me.

I told her that I was a bit pissed off with her, given the efforts I'd made to get her in, but she suggested meeting up the following day at 2.00 in The Shipbuilder's Armpit. At 2.40, she texted "be right there love!" And that's the last I've heard from her, my calls and texts going unanswered.

It was dosing day, and I could feel something lovely waiting to be welcomed in, which wasn't going to happen in the Shipbuilder's Armpit, with the objectionable ex-copper who thinks he still rules his bailiwick, now shrunken to a banquette in a cheap pub. He always tells me that a vacant place anywhere near him is taken. "No you can't sit there, they're coming back." "Sit there looby," overuled his friend.

At 4.00, I gave up, went to The Fur Coat and No Knickers Arms and read The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and the Preludes. But first, I wanted to state my case to Fitbit.

"Fitbit. This is the second time in two days that you've let me down. I put a great deal of effort into coming to see you, but I'm starting to feel like a sucker. Little reliable looby. If we bump into each other when I'm in Lancaster I would happily go out for a drink with you, but I am not making any more arrangements to see you."

I texted Wendy and Kitty: "Oh Wendy/Kitty, you must try this. It makes everything gentle and lovely. So wish you were here! xxx "

It was raining and I had the urge for the raw vegetables for which LSD serves as a gateway drug. I bought a cauliflower, a red pepper, some cherry tomatoes and a few dried apricots for an al fresco tea. I bumped into one of my oldest friends in Lancaster, as I was walking along, chomping on cauliflower florets like sweets.

Then the something lovely thing happened: Wendy rang. Her and Kitty had half an hour to spare and wondered if I was in town. We met in the arthouse cinema's bar, where I had soda water: not for show, just because I didn't fancy a drink.

Kitty looked worn out with having to carry a very overloaded plate for a long time now -- a mourning and needy dad, a recalcitrant teenage daughter and a poorly-paid job in "education" that is much nearer social work of a sometimes distressing kind. Wendy was witty, pisstaking and gorgeous. Wendy had to go and I had another ten minutes or so with Kitty. I told Kitty, honestly, that I love and care for her.

That night I was staying in an airbnb in Carnforth -- a town utterly miserable and without culture. I so wanted her to invite me back for an hour or so, and later found out that they did indeed spend the evening together with a few bottles of wine, careful in the cinema bar to avoid telling me of such plans; but it's too early in my probation to expect anything else. It puts a hurtful twist into my stomach, felt all the more keenly because of their evading telling me until I was safely away in my room in Carnforth.

I paid my rent the other day: £450 (for a room, not a flat, let alone a house). On Monday my landlady texted me, asking me to buy some toilet rolls, "as we're out."

"I can certainly buy some toilet rolls, but I'm in Lancaster until the weekend, and aren't toilet rolls included in the rent?"

"No they're not. We'll get some." Can't you feel the petulance?

I got my deposit back from my previous house, The Negative House -- no kitchen, no living room, no heating. Chatting to Helen, my friend in Norway, I rather rashly booked a flight over to see her for a couple of days. She's in a couple of flavours of trouble at the moment, and so I went to hold her hand.

I bought us a 4-bottle box of wine from duty free. Helen is convinced she paid for it, but that would mean my bank statement has been doctored. I had a couple of glasses from it before I went to bed. A few minutes later some friends of hers came round. In Helen's oft-repeated description of them they are "lovely", but I can think of other adjectives for a couple who drank every drop of the wine before leaving.

Next night we went to a bar where I was introduced to the Norwegian cost of drinking. "A glass of red and a pint of bitter? That'll be £21 please sir"; I was later informed by a local that it was an expensive bar even by Norwegian standards. There was an open mic night, a phrase which depresses me in the same way as does "large screen sports" or "rail replacement bus service", and the first act did nothing to disabuse me of that preconception.

Clad in black, failing twice to get her fingers round Fmaj7, (the chord of clunk and thud for the small fingered guitarist) she sang some unintentionally comical dirges of Nordic gloom: "I am a visitor / I stand alone / I am sucked into the fire / I am a visitor / I stand alone." Helen looked at her with understanding and sympathy, but I was wondering if there was a house or techno night going on -- anything where we wouldn't have to look inside ourselves in order to find the cliché within.

It picked up greatly thereafter. I was taken aback by the people who turned to me and said "hej" as an introduction. It's literally just "hej," and then they wait for a response. Once you get used to it, it's a very welcoming feeling, an open-ended question far better than my standard closed opener, of "hello, looby, pleased to meet you," which leads nowhere. I found out about failed marriages, dangerous and well-paid railway jobs, and spoke to someone who was setting up a publishing house who hadn't heard of Knausgård.

We were the last ones in the bar. Me and Helen, and this wide boy who came up to me at the bar and rattled off something in Norwegian. "I'm very sorry," I replied, "I don't speak Norwegian." "Well fuck off then," he said, and I knew we were bound to get on. An hour later, we were being driven at high and possibly drunken speed out to God knows where, to look at his boat. Then we went to his friend's flat where the latter said "you will never have heard guitar played like this before" and played guitar just like I have heard it played a thousand times before; but we will forgive him because he gave us a lift back to Helen's.

This morning, I missed my 6am flight. Helen got in a mood, accusing me of freeloading, forgetting about the box of wine she'd donated to her lovely friends, and flinging a letter I'd written to Wendy's dad onto the floor.

I left her flat, jumped the tram to the airport, and my eldest paid the 277 quid it takes to get to London from Bergen at three hours' notice. "Of course I'll bail you out, you hopeless twat."

I went to Lancaster just for one day, to see Fitbit. The day and early evening fell into an old pattern. The first theme, and the longest, far exceeding the point at which a development or modulation would be welcome, is The New Boyfriend.

A more interesting and varied one follows, albeit with many quotes from, and variations on, the first appearing within it. The coda comes suddenly when The Old Boyfriend turns up. At which point I am ignored -- with the occasional sop in which she pops over and asks me if I am alright. Once your friend is repeatedly asking you that, the evening's over. I was irritated, but managed not to mention it, and made my farewells friendly this time.

Talking to Kim a couple of days later, she was describing the boorish behaviour of the pub landlord with whom she had a dalliance a few weeks ago, and said "I don't expect much. The bar's quite low for a boyfriend of mine." "So I fail to make even that, do I?" I didn't say. The little injuries we can inflict on each other with not the slightest malice aforethought.

Kitty sent me a card, saying that whilst she's still my friend, she has to keep me at arm's length for a while. She's overloaded with work and she's got her daughter to think about. She said that for the time being, she can't be doing with such a high maintenance friend.

It ended optimistically though. She said she'd like me to be her "equal, for fun times and confidences." My heart did a little leap at that. And what I have to do is so simple: "Just be a decent person when we meet."

I sent her a letter, partly thanking her for yet another act of undeserved generosity, but mainly aiming at something anecdotal and light. A couple of days later some friendly "night night" type texts. And to end the week, Wendy texted. "...I couldn't fall out with you for long, even though you can be such a tit Xxx." The high I felt from that was drug-like.

But why stick to drug-like? I began the microdosing experiment yesterday. I followed the dosage midpoint recommended by James Fadiman, the psychiatrist who pioneered research into therapeutic uses of microdosing. It started with a familiar slight weakness in the legs and a mild wooziness, a desire to nest into a thick quilt with a cup of tea and a cow biscuit.

A couple of hours in and I was texting Wendy, who was round at her dad's, with brief updates on progress. "No, not by any means wasted but I think I'll reduce it in the future. It's just a bit too lovely :) Like you! Xxx" "The giggles are looming. This is definitely too high, in more ways than one! ... Everything seems a bit comical."

A couple of hours later I had to go to work, where I successfully tiptoed through a bit of a minefield. I was serving four Jewish property developers who wanted to pay by card, except that I didn't have a card machine available, so I asked them if they could rustle up the cash, whilst silently resisting the urge to make any jokes about four Jews being short of money.