I was supposed to be going to a Modernist opera based on Hamlet yesterday, but Karen asked me if I fancied a drink, as she's lost her job, facing the same difficulty at work as I had at the pub -- being offered so few hours, and at such short notice, it wasn't viable. Perhaps unwisely, we decided to embark upon this venture at 12 noon. The opera would have been the cheaper night out.

The woman sitting at the next table said "I just had to come out for some fake tan and now I'm absolutely fucked [at midday]. I'm just killing it with more beer." We fell in with The Geordie Shopfitters, which gave me good practice in understanding my third langauage. Karen was on form and looking prettier with every pint.

There were a couple of small difficulties, literally. She nearly got into an argument with two former colleagues, and an ugly little roly-poly dwarf had to be dissuaded from having a go at her -- disguised jealousy that she was out with me and not him. Poor fucker, he should have a prossie on the social.

We shared reports this morning. Karen decorated her neighbour's doorstep. I too, had experienced some minor difficulties in returning home. My bike fell over by itself and then the pavement kept asking for a fight. I wanted to leave it, but it just wouldn't let go. A bottle of wine I was carrying got smashed when the wall I was leaning on suddenly moved, and one of my ribs might have suffered somewhat because it hurts when I laugh or cough.

Neither did my shirt didn't come off very well, I've got a gash under my jaw and the pillow looks like a baby has been murdered in the bed. It looks worse than it is. A bit of it is blood, but most of it is Syrah.

In other news, I was delighted to be asked into my neighbours' garden the other day, for a drink and something else. That's handy. Don't have to pretend.

I went to have a haircut before meeting Karen. The hairdresser said she was from Bradford and had taught herself a bit of Urdu.

"Why did you learn Urdu?" "Well," -- the hesitation on the pivot of concealment and honesty -- "I had to." She told me of the pleasure it gave, listening to a headful of abuse from the local Pakistanis before sending them off with a rejoinder in a tongue they'd thought opaque.

Halfway through my inconsequential drink with Karen, I went to the bar and met a couple of the barmaids who work in the same pub as she used to. "How's it going?" "Naah, friendzone. And some bloke has plonked himself next to us and is going on and on and on about his fucking split-up." "Well, it's a bit of a stupid place to bring her, isn't it? Anyway, serves you right for being such a slag."

Karen's "friend" was wearing a repellent T-shirt, four images of women's arses (just their arses) in different knickers. He misses his ex-wife so much that after I left he started asking Karen to snog him. She told me that a few years ago he was acquitted of rape.

The landlady came round to clear the glasses. "How's it going -- Slag?"

After three hours, I was drunkenly paddling in a level of self-disclosure I didn't want to yield, so made up an excuse about the girls. "You off?, said one of the girls at the bar. "You know, you can do better than Karen." "Can I? Who with?"

Wendy came round to help me sort my house out a bit. My front room has been a depressing sight for a week or so since my book club friend dropped most of my furniture off, none of which I could move by myself.

Our efforts to move the awkward, tall bookcase looked like something out of Laurel and Hardy, but we managed it all. Kitty turned up to help, which she did by twiddling a glass of Riesling. I'd made them a bit of dinner, a simple potato and bean bake effort and a Non-Specific Levantine Salad, and was surprised at how much they enjoyed it. We sat outside in the sun with more wine, Wendy's gorgeous blue dress almost a character in itself. "Nope," she said. "Children and dogs now, and that's it."

Looking round the room afterwards, I felt rejuvenated (rescued?) somatically and mentally; whilst even at the time twinging with wondering if this new-found feeling would be sufficiently robust to withstand my nightly extended remix of mutterings of abandonment, of being unloved, the same sentences addressed to Wendy over and over again.

But in the meantime, I have a front room which has Wendy all over it, and is bordering on the pretty, and because of this, I've got right back into reading, for not reading itself is a form of unhealth. From the quotations that precede Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano, John Bunyan writes in Augustinian mood.

...gladly would I have been in the condition of the dog or the horse, for I knew they had no soul to perish under the everlasting weight of Hell or Sin, as mine was like to do... [A]nd though I saw this, felt this, and was broken to pieces with it, yet that which added to my sorrow was, that I could not find with all my soul that I did desire deliverance."

Deliverance. What a pregnant word.

As she was arranging my books, Wendy showed an interest in a collection of A L Kennedy's short stories but forgot to take it with her. I inscribed it. To Wendy, with a houseful of love X. I put it in an envelope, wrote her name in the form that her ex is now copying, and cycled round to deliver it -- something which required tactics from 'Allo 'Allo! I parked my bike a few yards away, crouched down close to the pavement, slowly and as noiselessly as possible pushed it through the letterbox, then eased the letterbox's flap back shut. A low voice from inside.

I ran back to my bike and cycled round the back alley to avoid being seen. I ran into her washing stretched across the back alley, her blue dress interfering with my face, her ex's voice unmistakable now.

A-level results day. I should be happy, stars and distinctions shining everywhere. But I'm going to lose you. Middle daughter, who goes went to a posh comp in Preston, said that after they'd all opened their determining envelopes, they'd had Buck's Fizz and strawberries and cream. Eldest, who goes up the road to a school sometimes described as "mixed", said that they'd had Tesco Value chocolate bites and tap water.

To Morecambe.

In the pub, I stroke every toilet roll holder for coke, but it's not rush hour. I'm here because I had a ticket to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak, but I didn't receive the email informing us of the top secret venue.

In the charity shop, a man is haggling over the price of two black corsets. "Hope it bloody fits her," he says. "Do you want a bag? Or do you want to walk round Morecambe with two corsets?" "Don't give a shit really. We're getting divorced. Last bloody present she ever gets."

Wendy and me went for a drink the other day, before going up to Kitty's. Wendy's ex has started sending her postcards, addressing her in the same way on the envelope as I do. I'm not allowed to be with her daughter, because I take drugs -- which, in the random hierarchy of the censorious, are worse than the ones he was snorting at a wedding a couple of weeks ago. I was told I'd have to leave at five o'clock, when he was dropping her off, while they continued the party.

The clock was ticking down, and her ex's presence was all the air in the room. He's controlling me now, as well as Wendy. Wendy has said that she'll sort it out with him but she's said that before and nothing has happened. Everything that we do together has to be lied about and concealed. It's awkward for her because she relies on him with their daughter, but I still wish she would be a bit more forceful with him. I was ushered out of the house at a good interval before he was likely to turn up, and I bade them all a cheerful farewell that I didn't feel.

Yesterday evening, I was informed that I wouldn't be working at the pub any more. The Cunning Little Vixen has ousted me and there is nothing I can do about it. I did some half-hearted job applications -- waiter, social media content writer, admin in a rail electrification project -- before texting Wendy with an unattractive mixture of self-pity, frustration and accusation.

I'm going to do this [CELTA] course then fuck off to Portugal. I'm getting nowhere here. I love you, you don't love me. My girls are going to uni soon. I keep losing jobs. What's keeping me here? You can get a grant to do it and I'm going to stay at Trina's house while I do the course in Liverpool. I'm drinking too much and I want to get a fucking grip. I'm sick of this.

Kim rang, as dejected as me. She's split up with her boyfriend. "It was nice not to think of the weekends as a big morass of loneliness. It's a shame. This one meant something." All the misery attachment can bring. She's coming to stay on Bank Holiday weekend. It can't come quickly enough. I could do with an arm round my shoulders at the moment.

Joining the band of the recently separated, is Attractive Former Barmaid, who seems more relieved than upset about her break-up. We bumped into each other in the pub. She was looking very pretty, in a white broderie anglaise top which narrowed in at the waist.

"It must be far easier for a bloke to find someone."

"Eh? It's a thousand times harder for men. It's almost impossible. Well, for me it is anyway."

"Well, you can go out and chat to people."

"Yes, but do you not notice the way men look at you Karen? Like that bloke you said hello to a minute ago? Women choose, not men. We're the commodities, you're the buyers. We're on the shelf; you come along and pick. So fuck knows what price I'd fetch."

We passed a pleasant couple of pints of time. That evening I texted her and suggested we should do it again.

U make me giggle! Anytime u want to meet is fine by me xxx

I suggested Monday, tomorrow.

I'm all yours love!! Give me a time and I'll be there xxx

There were a few more, but I wasn't sure what she was up to, so I sent her one at sex o'clock saying "Oh dear Karen, I'm having thoughts about you that I shouldn't be having X"

Aww least your honest looby I like that in a man thankyou xxxx

"You could wear that white broderie anglaise top you've got if you liked. There's a couple of buttons on it that need undoing very slowly XX"

Your a bugger I like it lol xxx See you on Monday my sweet xxx

Please fuck me Karen. Please rescue me from Wendy.

My mother was up for a few days, during which I demonstrated my utter selfishness.

We went to see my middle daughter, who has a part in a professional production of an adaptation of a book whose title sounds a bit like Pleasure Thailand. I had to look nonplussed when she said last night that it lasts for three hours.

Its duration isn't the problem -- I've sat (well, lay) contendly through a four-and-a-half-hour-long performance of John Cage's Imaginary Landscapes; it's the fact that Pleasure Thailand is produced outdoors.

In the evenings, there's only one reason to go up there, and it's not sitting on a cushion wrapped in a binliner listening to a three-hour play I can't hear. It's like a re-cast Milgram experiment. "Watch the play." "But the subject is suffering. He's saying his arse and back are killing him and that he doesn't give a shit what happens to the characters." "Watch the play."

I lasted about ten minutes. A set of harlequin-panted actors shouting at each other whilst dancing like chuggers. I made my excuses and sloped off: guilt and relief in equal measure.

I rang Kitty and went round hers. She reminded me that last time I was in her house, a few days ago, she said that if I wanted to stay over (a certain amount of alcohol and another relaxant had been consumed) she'd put my clothes in her washing machine. I promptly stood up, took every single item of clothing off, clasped her to my naked body, thanked her profusely, and took myself to bed.

Every workplace has one person who takes an irrational dislike to you and makes your job as difficult as possible. The Cunning Little Vixen never speaks to me except to criticise me. Glancing up at the cricket score whilst pouring a pint, I am told "keep your eye on the pint." Resting my elbow on the back of the bar for a few seconds has me told to stand up.

She does the rosters, and this week I have been allocated 5.5 hours' work. If I had anything as archaic as a contract it would be constructive dismissal.

Never mind, all will be forgotten soon. I'm off right now, to Glasgow, for house music all night long.

My friend asked me to do the bingo calling at one of those mini blocks of flats for the over-55s. I was under the impression I'd be paid in a few pints but when we went to the pub afterwards, a drink for the caller there was none.

I'd thought of some ways to add a bit of zest to the ways you call the numbers -- "are you a Tory, number forty" -- but they didn't go down well. "Can we just have it...straight?" was an early heckle.

I've managed to get a few shifts at a pub in a village a few miles out of Lancaster. It's a friendly, locals pub. I like the late afternoon, where men who do jobs involving roofs and pipes come in with thick, dirty hands and order agribusiness lager.

I recognised straight away that the young girl who is the de facto bar manager is someone who's got to be managed. Insecure, attention-seeking, and anxious about her status, she drops little criticisms of me at any opportunity. I ask her advice, and I go to her of choice when I don't know how to do something. I want to help her feel superior.

An old school pal came in. "I'll have three pints of that," he said. "Two in a proper glass and one in a girl's glass for the handbrake." "You've always been on the cutting edge of feminism, haven't you Bill?"

After my shift on Sunday I locked my bike up outside New Favourite Pub (darts, swearing, and the snogging a seventy-two-year-old incident -- who, I found out the other day, is a retired prossie). Had a couple, then left to find that my bike was gone.

Walking through town this morning, I was astonished to see my bike, chained up with a new lock in the middle of Market Square.

With the benefit of hindsight, it might have been a better idea at this point to ring the police rather than take the matter into my own hands. Instead, I ran to a tool hire shop and told them that I'd had my bike stolen last night and that I'd just found it, and asked them if they had any bolt croppers. The nearest thing they had was a large hacksaw.

I ran back to my bike and started sawing through the difficult chain. The saw shouted out a metallic, rasping racket. The passing worker ants slowed down from their high-heeled and necktied haste at half past eight in the morning to give me their non-contact disapproval.

I was three quarters of the way though the lock when the police arrived. I explained what I was doing, detailing my movements through Lancaster last night. They told me to return the saw while they checked the CCTV from the pub. I said that I was not leaving the bike, but I did briefly, to buy a D-lock, so that when the robber or his dastardly accomplice returned, he wouldn't be able to make off with my bike.

I sat next to what had earlier looked like my bike, for two hours, during which my doubts grew about whether in fact this bike was mine. The thief, also known as the rightful owner, came back to unlock it, I decided to front it out with the story I had created. He started swearing and shouting. "I'm going to call the police." "I already have. They're on their way." He dialled the emergency number rather than the non-emergency one, swore his way through a frustrated rant, not knowing what street he was on, before telling them that they were useless.

The police turned up, took his side of the story, then decided that they would impound the bike until their investigations had been concluded. He went away swearing and shouting, while I walked away, faking calm, but rippling inwardly with the fear that he would lamp me.

Yesterday the police rang to say that whilst they will log my bike as stolen, the one I was attempting to liberate wasn't mine.