Last Sunday, NDN, my next door neighbour and minder here in Kaz, took me to show me the school. First we went to buy some paper for the school. NDN, a retired Kazakh Government official, pointed out Nazarbayev's portrait, looking up at it with starry eyes.

"That's our President," she said. "Our President. That's our President." I nodded and assented with stepwardly upward force. "I know it's your fucking President. You can hardly escape him can you? Is he the Kaz 'government official' who bought a 65 million Euro apartment in Paris in November?" I didn't say.

For some mysterious reason, she stopped the car about a hundred yards away from the Presidential Palace. "Please look here," she said. "Yes?" I replied, thinking I was going to be shown another architectural expression of the benevolent refulgence of The Father.

Instead, she wanted me to get out; and said that she would pick me up from the same spot in five minutes. The area was deserted, yet hostile. I walked nervously around the huge building with the bitterly amusing name, "The Ministry of Justice", aware that two policemen in a nearby police car were watching me, hairspring alert.

I decided to turn back and wait for her. Out of nowhere, I saw this huge black clad man staring at me from about twenty yards away. He was walking in a slow, wide-legged way towards me, gun stiff at his side. At that moment, she arrived to pick me up. He watched me get in, his eyes tracing me.

Seeing the outside of the school filled me with a foreboding almost unto sickness, because of the irreversibility of what I had done. Afterwards, NDN took me to an agreeable little caff nearby. I ploughed my way through the nearest thing to vegetarianism that I could find -- a chicken and potato pie effort, a carrot salad that seemed to go on and on and on, reproducing itself in the dish as fast as I ate it, with a side of potatoes. I had this odd pre-sweetened tea. Here's the bill for two of us. There are 400 Tenge to the pound.

On my way to my first day at school, I stared from NDN's car at the half-mile of golden, reflecting glass windows of the curving edifice of government buildings which acts like a protective parabola to shield the Presidential Palace behind it. Fear, insecurity, and temporary power as architecture. I had a dissociative, fatalistic feeling, a resignation to death. A stress reaction, certainly; an unglamorous out of body experience, perhaps.

The school is on one of those unplanned, scruffy Soviet-style estates
where smoking urchins hang out of windows and shout down to people
below. There's a dodgy looking little shop and the building itself is
placed at a jaunty angle facing no street in particular. Inside, it's Soviet-modern: black lettering on gold-coloured plates just to let you know what floor you're on, but only a single plug socket in each classroom.

As NDN said goodbye and handed me over to Lidia, my mentor at school, I felt this urge to grab her coat tails and and beg her not to leave me. Lidia was lovely though, a rare example of an adult Kazakh who can smile, and to my great surprise, the first day went reasonably well; and there was one moment when I looked out to see a black cat plunging with feline delicacy into the snow with every step, and I had to resist a premature hope that this might actually work out for me.

The propect of eating with the other teachers in the canteen had been another colour to my fearful, sleepless night, but Lidia was an expert translator-cum-canteen host. I had borscht and bread for 50p. I am the sole male member of staff in the school, and I have been informed that they consider me too thin and that I would benefit from some proper Kazakh food. I'm trying to steer the horse away by stressing how much I love the range of vegetables you can get here.

I sat down with Lidia afterwards, who said that I'm the third native English teacher this academic year. "Please don't leave us looby. Please stay until the end of the year at least. I saw a fire in your eye this morning looby" (Lidia, that was fear), "and you're the first person ever to mention wanting to learn Kazakh."

When I got in there was an odd email from the London office. "Please be careful with what you say to any local teacher in the school. Don’t say anyone that you are experiencing problems apart from Lidia. No one should know you [have] had a long break [from teaching]. Some of the local teachers see us as a threat and will report everything what you say or do to a director, anything can be used against us." I'm not surprised. The native English teacher is paid a lot more than the other teachers, doesn't have to work Saturdays, and gets to live in a rent-free flat that they wouldn't be able to afford.

And one from my brother, reporting that my Mum, who is convinced I live in a wooden hut with only a friendly horse for company, is willing to send over the fare home immediately, should I desire it. The untravelled visit their anxiety on the traveller: Kim told me that my flat might be bugged.

Turn the radio up, Winston

The school and I are in a state of co-dependency, which provides both parties with equally good a hand. And so far, I'm having a fine time here, easily funded with not much. I changed £100 at the airport six days ago for 40 000 Tenge, and I've still got 17 000 left. The line between drunkard slacker and breadhead can be a fine one.

Christmas was lovely. Kirsty's glittering and overfed artificial tree, the cat arching in front of the gas fire, and most of all, my girls back after their first term at their various universities.

On 27th, me and Trina went over to Middlesbrough. My mum enjoys a trip to the Toby Carvery, where we can eat food sweltering under lamps which ferment every airborne excrescence that your average sneezing, coughing, spluttering, nose-picking Smoggy can fling at it.

As part of my New Year's Resolution -- to have the kind of difficulties I want to have, rather than the ones I have in Lancaster -- I started answering ads for TEFL jobs. With her connivance, I'd forged a reference from ... and played the Caring Dad card by explaining the hectares of vacant space on my cv with the unanswerable "full-time childcare responsibilities".

Fifteen applications yielded three interviews, one of which -- for a job in Kazakhstan -- had to be scheduled for mid-carvery. I borrowed Trina's phone and we Instawhatted for half an hour. She rang back to say I'd got the job -- but -- "please could you not tell anyone at the school that you haven't got any recent experience?"

So I'm typing this tonight from my grace-and-favour apartment in Astana, the second coldest, and the gaudiest, capital city in the world. I'm bang in the centre of town, surrounded by Our Glorious President's monuments to himself.

A day later, at the Christmas meeting of the Unholy Trinity, Kitty and Wendy sparkled. "Maybe he'll meet a female yak farmer," said Kitty. "Maybe he'll meet a female yak," said Wendy.

I called in at the The Shipbuilder's Arms, where Les gave me a betting slip. "Your going away present, he said, "because you're a star." The horse, called A Sky Full of Stars, came in at 8/1 and I had a free afternoon's drinking. An ex-Army bloke, as drunk as un-habitual drinkers get on furlough, released his ambivalently friendly grip around my neck only when I reached a pitch of repeated and increasing force to iterate that I was not going to Afghanistan.

The night before I was to leave, sleep was almost impossible. Amongst my preoccupations was The Injunction. Issued by Wendy's ex, administered by her, and obeyed by me. It makes me glower with resentment that both me and Wendy comply with its terms. Wendy can do what she wants, but I'm not going along with it any more. Neither am I waiting on her months-old promise to "sort it out".

Possibly spoiling the pre-departure goodwill, I sent a text to Wendy saying that, as far as my own actions are concerned, The Injunction no longer applies. "I'm fucked if I'm doing all this and then coming back to obey some little twat's orders -- having to hide behind a car when I simply want to drop a card off!"

On the flight out, there was a three hour stopover at Frankfurt. To get out to the big concourse where all the bars and cafes are you have to go through security again, whereupon I was taken aside, in the company of a German gentleman carrying a yard-long gun, because my computer had tested positive for explosives. I've had my finger in a couple of dodgy pies in the past but I'm not a bomb-maker.

They made me switch it on and load it up, and so I stood shaking like a leaf while Herr Flick stood over me with his weapon while it came on.

As soon as the "server not found" message came up on the start page, they let me go. I asked the marginally more approachable of the cops what the problem had been and he unhelpfully repeated "it came up for explosives."

On the second leg, I had a very good spinach and cauliflower curry, plentiful large glasses of red wine, and enjoyable sign language banter with my neighbour. As I went to get off the plane, the man behind me genially poked me in the back to indicate that I was wearing one of my own shoes and one of his.

I arrived in Astana at 5.30am, fending off the predatory taxi drivers picking on foreigners to offer their services at special prices before I was met by the school owner's aunt.

We walked into the car park. The cold was shocking; my trousers had turned into paper. She couldn't find her car for a few minutes, but when we did, she turned the heated seats on, which felt weird. Cold should be a holistic experience.

She kept talking about taking us to "our house", and I imagined us living together, and how secretive I'd have to be about my drinking. We went to the block, where to my partial relief I given a mercifully briefly tour of a flat adjacent to hers. As soon as she left I collapsed into bed.

My body is resolutely refusing to adapt to Kazakh time. It's half past three in the morning here and she's taking me out for dinner tomorrow. Which may well involve something which once had a mane.

"...looby, I can honestly say I love u xxxx". As soon as a woman says that, you know it's over.

Karen started getting keen to see me again -- "I've missed ya lol xxx", "Soooo looking forward to seeing u xxx" -- but given her track record for repeatedly cancelling on me, for reasons as pressing as "I'm going to Preston with my sister," and "I'm at my Dad's", I was cool and held out for a while, eventually agreeing to meet her yesterday afternoon in The Shipbuilder's Arms before she went to her sister's for her tea.

She was wearing a shift dress with a fine black geometric lined pattern against a creme background. Everything was going well for a while -- until the ex turned up. I have no animosity towards him whatsoever, but it's an awkward asymmetry. He took her hands in his and they turned slightly turned away from me, which I took as The Ex's efforts to assert ownership of her, but I refuse to get into any kind of competition for a woman. I want to be chosen for how I am, not for being better in some respect or other, than another man.

I got chatting instead to the 72-year-old ex-prossie I snogged in there a few weeks ago. She was articulately resentful about her inferior status compared to call girls who work out of hotels. I felt a deal of sympathy for her, and admired how even for a pedestrian Friday afternoon she'd bothered with a tailored brown cord jacket, a blue and green faux-silk scarf and narrow black trousers, but as interesting as the political economy of prostitution is, it was Karen I wanted to talk to. Still, every time I checked, there was no sign of getting her back.

I decided to leave. She protested, but I was hardly attracted by the prospect of sitting like a gooseberry while she chatted exclusively to her ex, and bade her a kissless farewell.

I stopped to text her. "I'm sorry pet. I just can't be doing with sitting there while you two sort out all this relationship shit. I just want a nice easy night out with chat and blah di blah and swapping stories with a nice interesting girl like you. Let me know how your meal goes. God help you with that! Lots of kisses xxx"

A couple of hours later she texted to say she hadn't made it to her sister's. She didn't sound very happy, and there were no kisses on her texts, so I rang her. I apologised for leaving her but said that I didn't want to spend the evening talking to the ex-prossie. My confirmation into sexlessness -- "I can honestly say I love you" -- was delivered in a text afterwards. The following day: "You mean everything to me and have been a rock in my life and I will never forget that looby XXX".

I hardly need a second girl who "loves" me. Wendy loves me by not allowing me ever to visit her, to hide when I drop a card round, and lying to her ex when she's seeing me. Karen's love for me is expressed by spending an afternoon -- before which she had said that she was "sooo looking forward" to seeing me -- chatting to her ex.

"I met a woman in town, she was drunk and apparently she'd recently fallen off a cliff. Must have been your lucky day. Are you free for a drink on Friday lunchtime?
Wendy X"

Every shred of resolve dissolves. I am drunk on unreciprocated love, again.

"I would be delighted to take you up on that. Thank you. Not sure I
deserve it but I'll say yes before you change your mind. Let me know
when and where suits
X

We had an almost unspeakably enjoyable hour-and-a-half. The low sun shining onto her face, wonky strands of her beautiful ragged hair hanging down over her left eye. Her dark blue eyes. Her skinny brown dress, the hem, her crossing her legs, her thighs. The always, always, far too brief, hug, her knowing what I want it to mean and her rejection of that.

As it behoves me to create more distance between a girl I love who doesn't love me, I sent a restrained email afterwards which I hope leaves her with an idea of the cool and reserved atmosphere between us which would be better for both of us.

Apologies for the editing error in this post which visitors who arrived before 0955 UTC today would have noticed. The sub-editor has been subject to a peculiar and original humiliation.

9am, and Karen's upstairs in bed, still asleep.

We bumped into each other in The Shipbuilders Arms last night and ended up walking back arm in arm to mine. The soundtrack: her head-tilted, sotto voce insinuation from a month or so ago. You know what's going to happen, don't you, looby?

We got to mine and she announced that she wanted to go to bed straight away. We went upstairs. I took all my clothes off. She took her shoes off and mummified herself with the duvet. Her thick, glossy black hair poured onto the pillow, as impossibly inviting as her wide open legs that I was imagining. After an hour or so I got up, put my vest and pants back on, and went to sleep in the spare room.

"I woke up and you weren't there! Was I snoring?" she asked the next morning. "It wasn't you snoring, pet." "Oh I'm sorry, I know I do it." "No, Karen -- it really wasn't that. You weren't snoring." Don't pursue it looby. She's not interested. "Anyway, shall we have some coffee?"

A few days later, she texts me to cancel our drink for the following day with that unanswerable reason, "I'm going to Preston with my sister." I reply suggesting we don't make any more arrangements and just leave it to bumping into each other. Two days later our paths cross unplanned, and she tells me that she's going to give it another go with her ex. It's a shame we couldn't have filled the hiatus with a few weeks of futureless sex.

Flirting with the bank teller. I eschew internet banking as far as possible, just to talk to her. I pull a crumpled fistful of notes and change out of my pocket. "Hello! How are you?," I start. "Some more of my ill-gotten gains to pay in." "Do you know how much is there?" "No, I'm sorry, I don't. I just thought you were looking a bit bored, so maybe you could count it." I know exactly how much there is; poor people keep accurate accounts. I just want to prolong standing there and to glance very quickly down at her bloused, buttoned, tight-skirted sexiness.

She asks me about my children and how they're getting on at university. I ask her about her cat and whether it misses her when she's out and how her cycle ride home was in the torrential rain the other day. I type in my PIN number on the keypad, imagining her arriving home drenched and leading her to sex without letting her dry herself, the rain, part of it.

"Would you like a receipt?" "No, the less of a paper trail the better." "Don't!" she says. I smile and say goodbye, nodding slightly and keeping eye contact while I do so. I hope she knows. I walk back down New Street wording and re-wording her Valentines card. All this imagining, always imagining.

At book club, someone who has been absent for a few meetings while he splits up from his wife, reminds us a few times that he's been suffering from depression, and turns every attempt to move the conversation on to general or impersonal or literary themes, back to himself. He reminds me irritatingly of Julie Birchall's dig: "depression is the highest form of vanity."

Trina comes round with some of my books and records, which were at hers when I didn't have anywhere to live earlier this year. Whilst I am in the kitchen she reads a card from Helen in which Helen urges me to make things right with Wendy.

Trina then goes on an hour-long, Malbec-fuelled pestilential interrogation of me. What's gone wrong between you and Wendy? You never tell me anything. Why does Helen know and I don't? Why do you always hide things from me? "Of course I hide things from you Trina. This is what happens when I tell you things -- or rather, when you go poking about in my private correspondence."

She only ceases when I threaten to stay at Kitty's. I clap my hands to signal the discussion over, and put some music on, but her drunken resentment clouds the room.

Trina won tickets to go to see a singer I like in Manchester. One of the artists sat with me for a while and wanted to show me a couple of pictures of semi-detached Edwardian houses in a suburb of Manchester. They were unremarkable to me, but his delight in them was a pleasure to share. Only me and a very drunk girl dancing.

On the way back I stop for a couple of hours in Wigan. An execrable open air radio station doing something for cancer; and there's some kind of campaign going on in the pubs to try to get men to talk to each other about depression. I deface the beermat.

Someone confides "I think he's on his way out." His friend, pointing to someone on another table, rejoins "no he's not, he's over there!" "Oh, sorry, I thought you meant the dog."