A "couple of drinks" after work with Karen.

After an hour or so, her boyfriend turned up. He bought me a drink, and we all sat in a line, resolutely ignoring any hint of awkwardness. A funeral plan salesman rang me up. I took him to the porch of The Shipbuilder's Arms where an Irishman was also loudly on the phone. "I'm pissed as a cunt," he said. "And you've got to turn up with your knickers on this time."

He passed the phone to me to tell his interlocutor where to find the pub he was going to next, all the time some poor minimum wage callcentre worker trying to interpose his questions.

"No," I said to the Irishman's friend. "You've got it right. It used to be called The Boar's Head but it's called Ruxton's now, or The Mad House as we call it. Yes, corner of Dalton Square. Also, love, you've got to turn up with your knickers on this time, 'cos I believe you've got previous in turning up knickerless." I gave him his phone back and he grasped my hand in a fracturing labourer's handshake.

"Is this going to take much longer?" I said to the callcentre bod. "It's just that I'm neglecting a younger woman in here." I put him off till tomorrow and went back to Karen.

Karen's boyfriend said he was leaving. "Alright, see you," she said. A minute later he came back when he realised that neither me nor Karen were shifting. The atmosphere was stiffening with his presence. He finished another pint, then stomped off definitively, saying "well, there's no point me being here is there?" Self-pity; attempted control; insecurity. Got you sussed mate.

Karen and I watched the door for a couple of minutes to make sure he had actually left, so that we could sigh.

Karen said about how she didn't like that he rarely texted her. I said that I like how she texts me every day asking how my day's been. "Helps that you're a right fittie of course." She clasped my hands in hers and said "you're growing on me like a wart."

"You know, looby. It's going to happen, isn't it?" our legs and arms touching now. "To be honest I didn't feel about you in that way at first, but we're getting closer now aren't we? And you know -- it's going to happen." I felt a mixture of disbelief and exultation.

She's got a travel agent friend who can get cheap holidays. "What would you say if I asked if you would be able to come to Tenerife or somewhere with me warm with me, say in November? I need a holiday." "I'd bite your hand off Karen! I'd love to!"

We walked to the bus stop arm-in-arm. We stopped and she kissed me, beautifully, wrapped round each other. We parted and she smiled, walked a yard away, then came back and kissed me again.

We're meeting again after work on Friday. "I'm going to wear my little skirt. Would you like that?"

This morning, she says that she's been dumped by text. "Told him that's fine by me! not even bothered any more"

Sunday morning I was up at six, crying and talking to myself with a mixture of self-blame and self-pity over why my youngest didn't want me in Liverpool to wave her off to University, receiving solid support from the kitchen worktop.

I went round to Kitty's for an hour and a couple of Bloody Mary's with her and Wendy, before going to Kirsty and the girls' house: its calme habituel, only a slightly watered smile from Kirsty to me when we were alone and hugging for a moment in the front room, giving anything away.

I went up to Melanie's room and said goodbye, saying that I would send Dad's Book of Home Recipes to her as soon as she could give me her address, and saying that she could always contact me.

I sought the last refuge of the self-loving -- Farce Book -- and saw that my friend Sarah, whom I've met through going out dancing, said that she was going to be in Liverpool too, taking her daughter back for her second year. Sarah, her daughter, and I sat in an unaccustomed sun, taking the the Mojito and Prosecco Cure, efficacious in all cases of separation anxiety.

Trish sent me the most unbelievably lovely texts; which indeed proved unbelievable, when she dumped me hours after sending the last one; so reading texts from Karen along the lines of "Me to miss u xx", "See you Wednesday my love XX", and "I'm so looking forward to seeing you tomorrow xxx", I feel detached rather than excited. Kim's advice: "I know you like her but just be careful. You tend to get fucked about a bit by women."

We met up in The Shipbuilders Arms. She looked gorgeous, in a stolen white embroidered top, black trousers and sparkly black pumps. "Oooh, it's hot in here." "Well, you could always take off some clothes." "There's not a lot to take off. Do you like it?" she said, smoothing her hand sexily down her side.

"I love it that you just ask me how I am, Karen. You keep texting me asking me how my day's been. It's a simple thing but no-one else does that."

She was getting more tactile as the evening wore on, every touch of hers sending a confusion of indecipherable signals. Going to kiss her at the end, she deflected me into a safety-kiss, followed by the quick, bright talking that girls use to reinstate boundaries. "Not to worry," I thought. "At the end of this week we'll be in Glasgow and in bed." I originally had planned to go with Trina, but in an unrelated incident which is too dull to relate, she had told me to fuck off. So I did, and invited Karen instead.

The evening before we were due to set off to Glasgow, Karen was still saying that she was coming -- despite me having made it clear that it was a double bedroom.

I should have known that Trina would regret what she'd said. I accepted her apologies; so at 5pm on Friday two women thought they were coming out for an overnight with me in Glasgow the following day.

I went for a drink with Karen after work, wondering how to extricate myself. Her Not Ex turned up, a publicly pleasant man whom she slags off behind his back, yet to whom she is still attached.

To my regret and relief, Karen got a bit upset about a silly incident which involving her getting barred from the pub in which she used to work. Her mother is also very ill, and her son had failed his driving test. Cumulatively, it was too much for her and she apologised for letting me down at the last minute in not being able to go to Glasgow.

I went round the pub from which she had been barred and told the landlady that I was barring myself because of the way she had treated Karen. "Right, fine." I came back and told Karen what I had done, vainly pleased with myself for all of a few short seconds, before I realised that I had debased myself by doing something as an act of competition for the woman sat between us. A man like me, with virtually no capital to deploy in the relationship economy, soon learns that resignation to being ignored is the only effective long-term strategy, even though the sour reward of dignity is a physical and emotional isolation that can feel relentless.

In Glasgow we had to ring the bell to get into The Laurieston. It was the day of the Old Firm game and they didn't want ruffians. The barman cast the briefest of looks over my intimidating 9st frame and we were waved in.

The Laurieston looks almost untouched since c.1975, appealing alike to young hipsters and those of who don't have to fake the distressed by age look. There's a rather odd painting of an emaciated nude on the wall, executed by one of the locals. "Do you not find that painting a bit odd?" I said to a woman sitting near it. "I just wish I had ribs to show."

Trina's quicksands of jealousy, dangerous in proportion to how much she's had to drink, called for some improvisation. "You seem to talk about Karen a lot. Are you seeing her?" "Yes. I see her down the pub all the time." Unsatisfied, she took hold of my elbow -- which is still a bit scarred after falling off my bike a couple of weeks ago -- and asserted that the redness must have been caused by carpet burns during sex. To that, laughter is surely the only rejoinder.

Writing my postcard to Wendy, which I refuse to do surreptitiously, she asked "has Wendy not got a surname then? I know you'd rather be here with her." "You're obsessed. Anyway onto more practical matters, there's a Matalan over there. I really need some new socks. Are you OK here for five minutes?" and I deliberately left the postcard there for her to pretend to ignore.

Some gay lads went out of their way to steer us to the hotel where the night was taking place. Downstairs in the club, the DJ's girlfriend gave me such a long hug that I had to say "OK Zoë, I get the message." Friendly people unbothered by our age; reaching the stage in the chat afterwards at which you affectionately call someone a cunt.

Walking home back in Lancaster, I unthinkingly applied the same easy speech of Glaswegians to a more timid folk, forgetting the conservatism of where I live. "You're going to take some time going on that route," I said to a group of men who were drunkenly meandering along.

"Who are you? Shut the fuck up."

I smiled at them, hoping to convey a touch of my own hostility, and walked away to jot the exchange down in my note book." "What are you doing by that window?"

I thought I might be going through it in a few seconds, but they satisfied themselves with a few volleys of homophobia and lost interest.

It was Trina's birthday last week. We went to the pub and had Prosecco and a pie. We went back to hers, where in bed, she did that writhing, please fuck me, which I did not indulge. There is only one girl I want to fuck, and love; neither will ever happen.

It was the annual house music weekender in St Annes. Two-and-a-half days and nights of house music, which to many people would sound like torture, but for us, it's subculturally indulgent. Overheard in the pub: "Who said you could sit here you Burnley bastard? I'd rather sit next to a Paki. I'd rather sit next to Bin Laden." "You'd have a job, 'cos he's fucking dead." "You'll be dead if you sit here you fucking Burnley bastard."

And then last night, a shock, the intensity of which I still can't dim.

Later today, my youngest is off to Liverpool University. Ever since they expressed an interest in going to University, I have just assumed that I would be there, with Kirsty and her boyfriend, at their halls, settling them in and biting my lip as we arrange their crockery and make sure they have enough things to eat and exchanging a few pleasantries with equally distressed parents.

Last night, I was at Kirsty's, all of us sitting around having a last supper, slagging off the contestants on X Factor. Melanie had had a pre-university haircut which makes her prettier. I didn't say that I preferred the more doleful, lank hair of her late adolescence.

Melanie, her sisters, Kirsty and her boyf are going down in boyfriend's car. Knowing there wouldn't be room for me in the car, I had planned to get a train to Liverpool. I asked where would be the best place to meet them.

"Well, why don't you come down a bit later, maybe a bit later in the term. The new computer will have arrived by then and you could take it to her," said Kirsty. I looked to Melanie for help in such a gut-wrenching rejection, but she just nodded in assent. Every member of my family, bar me, will be there. I am not allowed to accompany my youngest to University today as she leaves home. I sat there stunned, a reservoir of tears building behind my eyes, making comments about the X Factor contestants to display an inscouciant cover for the worst rejection I have ever had.

I am up at 6am wondering why. Wondering how bad a Dad have I been to make them not want me there. I'm not a horrible person. I don't deserve this. Is this going to be repeated then? Should I not buy the tickets to Loughborough and Bristol for the other two? Am I to be excluded for their leaving as well? Wendy and I are going Kitty's at 10am today for one of our brief little mornings together, --Wendy's controlling, jealous ex thinking that it's just Kitty and Wendy -- but I'm not going to be great company.

In The Shipbuilders Arms, the dwarf, who has attached himself to the group of darts players with a degree of camaraderie slightly in excess of that with which he is welcomed, shows his hurt too openly on his face when the landlady brings out drinks for the darts team, of which he is not a member. In the toilets, men lean against the wall as if exhausted, sighing as they stare down at their penises.

Kim came over for the Bank Holiday weekend and stayed here for three days. I can't think of anyone else who could be in my house that long without me inventing lies to get rid of them early. We got up late, took picnics out, went to Morecambe and had chips and Sauvignon Blanc and trawled the secondhand bookshop.

Back at home, we had the comfortable silences that are the mark of closeness. Reading. "It'd never have worked out between us looby. You don't realise how much I want to be dominated."

In the pizza takeaway, an acquaintance is looking at his watch, asking why his order is taking so long, histrionically sighing, the breath of his own self-importance adding to the heat in which the employees were working to serve privileged people like ourselves. A burn of class consciousness lit the alcohol in me.

"Why are you moaning at them? Give them a break -- they're doing their best." "I just want to know exactly how long it'll be." "For fuck's sake Kevin, do you think they're not trying hard enough? This is the difference between working- and middle-class life. You have absolutely no fucking idea about how most people live. They're doing their best. They're on the minimum wage, so fucking leave it."

He's a stuck-up prig, and this is but an extract from a rant I had at him, of which I regret not a syllable. When he passes me in the street now I make a point of looking at him with disgust. The satisfaction of severing relations.

Kitty said that Wendy and her daughter were coming round for tea; the little twisting hurt of my exclusion, the looming of her ex. Today, she texted me saying that her and Wendy were going out for lunch. "Can I tag along?" I asked. "Yes! No Little Dictator!" (her daughter), both events driving home how obedient Wendy is to her ex's controlling, jealous command that she must never meet me when her daughter is with her.

I told them that I had worked out at the weekend that I was being paid about £5 an hour in my new job, and that I was going to ring a local business development agency who can offer help to start-ups, because I am being exploited to an extent that marks a new nadir in even in my own tatty career. Wendy's gorgeous smile as she suggested a pun on my name for my business.

I had to get back to work. "I want..." and I dipped a finger at Wendy, alarm and the moral imperative to be sympathetic struggling for supremacy on her face, "...well, you know what I want Wendy, but failing that, another dinner date would be great." She smiled and concurred. No woman, apart from Trish when she ended it, has ever made me feel so rejected.

Spending my £5 an hour in advance of receiving it, I went to Manchester for my techno fix. Everyone my age thinks their raving days are gone -- which is a decision, not some kind of chronological inevitability. It always works out OK at Hidden though, as I always get adopted by someone. Last night it was these two lads from Stockport, one an accountant and the other on the dole, brothers. I sometimes feel like a bit of a curiosity at techno nights, but they were charming. "Who are you with?" "Well, no-one." "Right, you're with us now," and we all danced together and sat on the settees together.

I love nights like Saturday, even despite the constant wish that Wendy could be with me. An 8am finish. E'd up people dancing and chatting and flirting and stroking. A cool black security guard at the afterparty who couldn't resist dancing with us, a pleasant change from the ones in the main venue, who couldn't resist imposing themselves on the most harmless group of people. As I was talking to the brothers from Stockport, a group of people were crowded onto one of those sofas which has an extendible foot rest. A "security" guard came over and kicked down the footrest. Once he had turned his back, we all looked at each other and laughed.

Afterwards, a stagger to Piccadilly Wethers and a veggie sausage roll and a pint of Mordue at 9am, where I wrote postcards to Wendy and Kim. A disappointing pie and chips in Wigan at midday waiting for my train home. I got into bed at 2pm, a distaste at my own sweatiness, but too tired to shower; the drive of fantasies and stories with a compliant and desirous Wendy.

The other night I went through my phone, an old Nokia which struggles to hold more than about forty messages, transferring all Trish's messages into the internet's unsafe keeping. My non-sexual favourite text of hers, is the best compliment that anyone's ever paid me, made better because it came from one of the two girls in my life who have physically fancied me: "You write beautifully, but you talk like shit."

It hasn't helped. At some point I'll have to clear again the drain now suffocated with texts from Wendy telling me that she loves me. Which is bollocks.

"You don't love me Wendy. You manage me. I recognise it and I know what you're doing, because I'm doing the same with someone else. I'm useful to you; you're wary of me. That's not love."

I don't even need to send it. She knows all this. She encourages me to continue to financially exploit Trina's feelings for me, in conversations which I suppose she thinks of as some kind of matey honesty between us. In the background, the tacit, glaring shared knowledge that she's keeping me at the same distance from her as I keep Trina away from me. What a depressing trigonometry.

"You are incorrigible and very dear," she texted the other night. It's a strange form of being dear to anyone. I hear little about her day-to-day life but through Kitty. I'm an intermittently amusing sideshow for her, my currency nothing that I want to be of value.

Went round to the girls' the other night. Watched the women's rugby, France v England, with my eldest and Kirsty. Kirsty offered me some soup. Kirsty rarely offers me food when I'm round at hers, once even having asked me if I was going when I'd made and served up a tea for me, her and the girls, timed for when she'd got back from seeing her boyfriend all weekend. The last days are here, aren't they, Kirsty?

This morning, Erica texts. "Yo!!! Do you fancy doing some content writing? Cash in hand?" "Yes, if I''m capable of it?"

Erica showed me into this beautiful Georgian building. She had a radio playing Now That's What I Call Shite in their office, in which she is clearly queen bee, at least in terms of her choice of musical pollutant. What they do is take free off-the-shelf web templates, populate them, then re-sell them to gullible plumbers, cakemakers, and childminders, charging them for a bit of SEO and content saying how marvellous they are.

The boss came in and took me up to an empty room. "So what are you doing now?" "Well, I do a little bit of freelance work, mainly content editing, a little bit of SEO."

Am I fuck. "I think about this girl Wendy all the time. I make up elaborate sexual fantasies about her and wank thinking about her. I sometimes also imagine sex with my other two close female friends. I like spending time with my daughters; I'm going to be sad when they leave Lancaster. I worry about money and my housing situation. I've got a blog. I want to be held and cuddled -- I never am. I drink and take drugs and enjoy both. I like dancing very much, and also cooking, reading, and cricket."

We talked a bit, me worrying, because I can fuck up even a shoe-in. But no: "Well, welcome on board," he said. "I've actually sat round a table with you late at night with Erica at hers." "Oh no..." and I faked embarrassment, "all my secrets are out then." "Well, it was late, and it's OK. It's nice that you know her."

The rates are subcontractual and nothing like they should be, but there you go, I am a full-time content writer from Tuesday, whatever that'll turn out to mean.

I informed the girls and Kirsty first, in a severally-distributed text. "I hope you're sitting down for this momentous news. Your father, or, in one case, your ex-boyfriend, is now a full-time copywriter with a web design company in Lancaster. You may all now go to university and say your Dad is something in IT."

For the first time I can ever remember, Kirsty suffixed her reply with a kiss.