It's half eleven on Saturday morning. The girls are watching this depressing, gruesome DVD about zombies, so I've left them to it and am having a hair of the dog in The Seat of Learning, the thick pleasure of layering drink on that from the night before, like your head being stuffed with paper.

My eldest was in an open-air performance last night as part of a kind of Lancashire Diwali called Light Up Lancaster. They pranced about with paper lampshades to an electronified Four Seasons. Kitty, Wendy, and The Little Dictator were there too. I don't enjoy this sort of thing. It's too spectacular, a manufactured attempt at wonderment by electronics. There are too many children there, giving me myriad opportunities to accumulate slight irritations with others' child-rearing practices.

"So, Wendy, have you, er...started on anything?" "Well, not really. Well, just a bit of mdma, and some speed. And a bottle of Prosecco." "Oh right, just a nice quiet family teatime then."

In the loos in the Fur Coat And No Knickers Arms, I caught up with them somewhat. We were all wearing these ridiculous Minnie Mouse flashing ears. Kitty bumped into her headmistress, who knows me slightly through my girls. She's one of these good-looking, stylish women married to a lump of a man who dresses in black jeans and bomber jackets. Kitty and I chatted amiably to her before we returned to our respective tables.

Kitty made an alarmed gesture with a twisted mouth. Outside, she said "Fuck. Sitting next to your headmistress when you're shitfaced." "You were fine, Kitty. Honestly, you don't look shitfaced. She's really good-looking though isn't she? Makes me wonder I bother trying to make an effort if you can dress like a fucking binbag and get women like that." "Shhhh looby!"

Later, back at Wendy's, The Little Dictator sloped off to bed, then Kitty went too. Me and Wendy put some better music on, racked up a bit more, and danced around the room. She looked gorgeous as she danced, in her tight brown dress and her new haircut, an untrammelled bob. I like looking at her, and she likes being looked at. I mean, really, sexually, looking at her, more scanning than looking. I was getting turned on; the pleasure of my stiffening cock stuttering up against fabric. She has this movement she does, whether deliberately or not I don't know, of taking hold of her skirt hem in her fist and pulling it up slightly. I was stroking my mouth watching her, and caught myself murmuring, "Go on Wendy, go on, higher."

I can't remember what preceded the moment, but we ended up in a long holding of each other. I felt like I was collapsing, into a nowhere of her. I stroked my hands through her brittle, treated hair, over her shoulders and along her body, before stilling with my hands clasped in the small of her back, pressing her gently into me. I opened my eyes for a moment at the same time as she did. I closed them again, and parted my lips. We were on the cusp of kissing.

One of her favourite tracks came on and she separated us, smiling broadly. She checked to see if I was looking at her, then did that stroke of her eyes down my body and on to a spot on the floor between us, a look which says "watch me turn you on."

I don't recommend staying at Terminal 2 at Manchester Airport. I've given it one star on Twitadvisor. Needs must though when one is an impoverished follower of nieuw musiek.

Someone I momentarily came across during my ill-fated PhD was having a piece of hers performed at the Transit festival in Leuven in Belgium. I found a flight to Brussels for £30 return; instead of paid accommodation, I'd have been happy couchsurfing. Trina invited herself along, and paid for an airbnb place; after we split up she said I could keep the studio flat. I couldn't ask Wendy anyone else to come with me as that particular airline wants £110 to change names on the ticket.

Without my chauffeuse, the only way I could be at the airport for an early flight was to improvise a bed there the night before. It was chilly, uncomfortable, and there are endless security announcements all night.

In Leuven, there is nowhere to change money and I was walking around with a hundred and fifty of your useless English pounds. I tried the cashpoint with ever more modest requests until it relented at €30. I bought a baguette, a slab of cheap Gouda -- the sight of which was to become odious to me over the course of the next few days -- and a €3 bottle of wine.

The studio absolutely reeked of a washing powder which -- I think I have understood the Dutch correctly -- is dangerous to asthmatics, gerbils and the elderly. It persisted all weekend and rubbed itself everywhere.

This was not starting well. I had no credit on my phone, I'd left my EU/UK mains adapter at home, and there was no note from the studio's owner about internet access. I felt glum, but the plonk achieved the desired effect and I slept for fourteen hours.

Saturday; and If it's Atonal, it must mean an Unlit Concrete Underpass. Lauren Redhead, with her aptonymic hair dye, had a première piece in which two conversations were going on at either end of the keyboard; a more timid interlocutor was interjecting the odd comment in the middle, before acquiring more confidence. Later, I sat outside a pub, De Metafoor [sic], and heard a girl, who was rattling on one-sidedly to her friend, say "people talk too much sometimes." Conversations can work well between friends even when they are quite unequal. Thus it was in the Redhead piece.

Then Michael Finnissy, who was having a bit of a birthday Festschrift, had one of his pieces where he twists diatonic folk music so far until he gets impatient with it and rips it apart; I really have enjoyed his music for decades now.

Ferneyhough's piece was disappointing, a jumble sale of notes. It sounded like a workaday piece by a journeyman, rather than a thrilling work by the master that he is when he's given time and resources. A shame too, because the title, Quirl, describes one of the sexiest things a woman can do, with or without her clothes on.

Then another piano, for the best piece on the programme, by the Portuguese composer Patrícia de Almeida, who did her doctorate under Finnissy. Her Vacuum corporis hominem tem esse memento was a demanding feat of co-ordination with the other (the co-?) pianist Ben Smith, which motored along like a techno-charged Art Tatum, a joyous blizzard of energy fuelled with rhythms of the Charleston and football chants. It would have been better last: Luc Brewaeys' pieces couldn't hold me after that.

What might seem a disparate programme was connected in a most unusual way: all five pieces were scored for Piano and Air Conditioning Drone with a stipulation that the grey noise of the air conditioning system is to be played throughout and unto the beginning of the next piece.

Quatuor Diotima had not only the best shoes of the weekend, glinting constellations against dark leather matter, but the most exciting piece I heard -- Alberto Posadas's Elogio de la sombra, which sounds nothing like its title, with various extended techniques -- one of which demanded playing con sord. and then bowing across the mutes, which made a weepy snoring sound. It was driving, passionate, and involving.

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In the evening I upped the average age at a free techno night with an all-female DJ line-up called No-one Listens To Women. The music was excellent but the naive young crowd were a downer, texting and standing around talking in the middle of the dancefloor. I'm not going out dancing with young people any more. They've no idea of dancefloor etiquette. I got asked for rugs a few times. In the eyes of young people, I've graduated now to Old Weirdo Who Might Have Something On Him.

The bar staff eventually gave up trying to tell people to put their cigarettes out, and the air became more and more acrid. Outside, in the Grote Markt, the atmosphere was of friendly anarchy. Smashed glass everywhere, people sitting around on the pavement, drinking. A group of three young people asked me where I was from, and at 5am I ended up demonstrating batting and bowling actions in cricket to them.

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Next day I went exploring. My flat was close to the headquarters of the Brabant Nazi Party during the War. This house, built at the turn of the century, had an additional brick course added when it was appropriated by the Nazis. In a Council decision of 17 July 1953, it was decided to retain the house as it appears as a monument to the suffering of the citizens during the Occupation.

Leuven also houses the oldest college in Europe dedicated to the study of bananas.

In the evening I went to a jazz club; felt sorry for the group. Very few people were listening to them.

I decided to take a different route home and I soon got lost. The night was still and enveloping, and it was a liberating, sensual pleasure, to have no idea where I was going.

I ended up on this housing estate with this avenue of giant cannabis plants.

Back at Manchester airport, 11pm and too late for the train home, I settled down with the other international dossers in upgraded accommodation in the Lufthansa/Swissair backroom of T1. Woke up around 5am and sent Wendy a photograph of a dress I'd seen in Leuven, telling her, quite truthfully, that she would look utterly lovely in it. Just need to find €195 down the back of the settee first.

Today's Top Tip: When returning home from a most enjoyable day out in a state of considerable inebriation, and having become divorced from one's keys, cards, and phone under circumstances that one cannot recall, do not resort to smashing a window to get in, as a new one will cost you 120 quid.

Also, try to forget the announcement at breakfast the following morning from your housemate, that he was actually in at the time.

It's all Wendy's fault. We went up to the park, and possibly 10am was a little early to start on the cider, Prosecco, speed, and grass. It was a clear autumn day of high-definition vision and vivid colour contrast. Sitting next to her, and being able to look at her Enid Blyton legs and her dress's hem whilst pretending to be gazing insouciantly at a spot on the ground; a constant low ripple of joy at being with her -- her talk, her clothes, her hair, her mannerisms, her recklessness, her honesty, her unshowy intelligence, her compassion.

I've enjoyed every second I've ever spent with Wendy, but it's become easier now, post-Trish. I feel calmer with her. My all too brief, sex-drenched time with Trish has somehow made me accept the ever-sexless situation with Wendy more. I appreciate better what she said a few weeks ago. "Being in a relationship with you would feel incestuous."

I've signed up to another site where the aims and objectives are more straightforwardly stated. Having good sex makes me miss it for a long time afterwards. I loved the power balance that Trish and I were starting to make more detailed; it's a sine qua non of a successful sexual relationship. All this caring sharing equality bollocks doesn't work for me in sex. In social relationships and politics yes, but not in the bedroom (or kitchen, stairs, the park, etc.)

I see sex as a practice, something you can become better at through learning what works for both of you, but if the underlying structure of power isn't shared, nothing you do will turn either of you on that much. How I loved telling Trish that I was going to introduce her to Wendy and Kitty and have my middle finger stilled inside her cunt while we sat round the dinner table, with the threat that if she showed any outward signs of what was happening, we'd never do it again. And how I loved her submissive suggestions to me, about forced and helpless sex.

7pm the evening before my already once-rearranged date with the art teacher. I leave the second of my messages on her phone, wondering if she'd had any ideas yet about the finer details, like where, and when.

She emails to cancel, saying that she needs some "downtime totally away from an urban environment" to take care of herself "mentally and physically." She apologised for any further interruptions in communication as she's in the middle of the Lake District.

Let's leave it F---. I've been so fucked about by women lately, to the extent of having to change my mobile number, that my tolerance for cancelled and rearranged meetings is very low. It's clearly not a priority for you.

Hope you enjoy your time in the Lake District and every good wish for the future.

looby

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My mum's staying at the moment. She said that when my Dad died last year, she was contacted by the bank asking her to collect the balance in his account. It was 47p.

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Yesterday morning, I saw an employee of Ladbrokes fagging it outside the shop. She was wearing a sweatshirt with the slogan "Stand Up For Cancer."

Friday, an uneventful Riesling tasting at the local wine company shop; then it was into town to up the average age a little at a techno night organised by a Society at the University. Pleasant young people, a bit bemused at someone so old being there; then, after you passing some invisible testing process, they start talking to you. "Where are you from?" -- the decades-old standard dancefloor opener.

But they can't dance. Their movements are forced, imported to their bodies; they stand about texting and facebooking on the dancefloor. Hardly anyone on anything. It was a flat, alcohol-fuelled night. I lasted two hours then left for a home disco.

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Out of nowhere, or rather, out of two bottles of Prosecco, Trina unleashes another round midnight volley of texted bile. I am "self-centred", "destined to be lonely", "a fucking idiot"...and then I stopped reading them. The following morning, the cyclical apologies of the drunkard, promising me that she won't send any more nasty texts.

She's finding looking after her pissing and shitting, nappied, ninety-two-year-old mother a strain, so for the hundredth time, I overlook what she has sent me and offer to come over with a bottle or two.

We make chutney from apples from a neighbour before she starts getting wet-eyed, about my unwillingness to "commit" to her. Why the fuck would I do that, when I don't fancy you, and you've got the emotional maturity of a fourteen-year-old? It is a dull, circular subject.

She drives me back to the station. Back in Lancaster, there is some standard issue rock band in a local pub, but it's a relief to be superficial after Trina's intensity. At £3.50 a pint, I made one drink last all night.

I notice a succession of texts from her; do not read them.

In the morning, I get halfway through a series of texts following the same pattern as the night before. In a desert somewhere west of Quernmore, a straw breaks a camel's back. I find out how to change my mobile number, and do so. I inform Trina of the fact, but not the new number.

Another morning, another load of bile on my phone. I came over yesterday to be sympathetic and to cheer you up, and this is the thanks I get.

You are correct in saying that your latest tirade at me will be the last, since I have asked 02 to change my number to finally stop having to hear any more of your constant attacks on me, and your obsession about Wendy. And you call this loving me? If this is your idea of love then you can shove it up your arse. If it was a man doing it to a woman you'd be up in arms about it, calling it sexist harassment. However, I know how much you enjoy a teenagerish drama, so if you want to get any more vituperative bile out of your system, do it quickly because they have said that a number change takes up to four hours to process. I won't be reading anything further from you however.

I will tell my mum [who is visiting this week] that I don't know what your plans are or whether or not you'll be in touch. If there is an unavoidable need to contact me, please do it by email.

You say you don't want to see me except in "safe social social situations". I'd rather not see you at all, in any situation, but I will make an exception this week for my mum's sake. However, I don't want to spend any more time with you than is absolutely necessary. If in the future we meet anywhere where we both happen to be you can expect a brief civility and nothing more.

"Good." She replied. "Goodbye."

I distribute my new number. Later in the morning, Wendy rings and I outline what has happened. We arrange to meet in the pub. She sits down slenderly. She tells me that Trina texted Kitty at 1am saying that it's obvious I don't love her and love only Wendy, hoping that they can meet up at some point, and ending it "Girl power!" She hasn't replied.

I go off to meet my mum and take her to Kirsty's, where she is staying. We sit around chatting easily enough. Kirsty makes a fish pie for tea, to which I am not invited. I am cooking for all of them tomorrow. It wouldn't occur to me to exclude Kirsty.

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I've got a date with an art teacher on Thursday. We should have spent more time emailing and talking on the phone to build something up. By the time I went to meet Trish for the first time, our written and spoken communication had turned very sexual. Walking into the pub and seeing her looking even sexier than I had dare hope, felt like a consummation in itself.

I'll never refuse being asked out by a woman, but my gut feeling is that it'll be jobs, family, children, holidays, thanks, goodbye.