This really is alcoholism. Buying a bottle of wine at quarter to fucking eight in the morning. I don't care, I am laughing to myself coming back from the shop, drunk already, not been to bed, after a deliriously loved-up day with Wendy, of which more later. I love losing myself in drink. It's such a lovely experience -- and I have many lovely experiences.

---

I somehow got roped in to helping Chris put a shed up. I have not the slightest interest in DIY nor the merest practical abilities. My education amounts to a shaky, sub-Wikipedia grasp of aesthetic theories of contemporary classical music, but I haven't the foggiest about drills, screwdrivers, and reverse flange lever lug rivets. We sweated about ineffectually in her garden, and got as far as unwrapping the various parts, gathering up all the screws which went flying everywhere, laying two panels on the ground and failing to screw them together. We put it all back in the outhouse and had a much pleasanter hour chatting in her front room. She said that this period of four months is the longest she's ever gone without sex. I told her that there was a time in my twenties and thirties when I didn't have sex for eleven years.

A couple of days later, we went to the bingo in Morecambe. I really enjoyed bingo night when we used to go on holiday in Brittany. The difference being that in Brittany you're surrounded by elegant women in linen shift dresses, walking by as you drink excellent cider and Breton ale, but it being Morecambe I thought I might pull some desperate pissed-up wallop in trackie bottoms after a couple of pints of Fosters and a hot dog instead.

Chris turned up in a tight black dress and a belt collar with a clasp on it round her neck. It said "sex"; Chris carries off that S&M look very well. There were more young people there than I'd expected. It was the one place where mobile phone addicts leave their phones alone for a few minutes at a time.

The caller doesn't use the picturesque bingo argot of old any more. There are no fat ladies, and legs do not come in elevens. Numbers are called rapidly, demanding a degree of concentration and manual dexterity, which nevertheless didn't prevent the woman next to us gobbling down chips and a burger down in between numbers. She was a picture of everything that is wrong with fast food, but helpful as well, inducting me.

---

Friend of mine asked me if I fancied helping him out at Barefest. Not some nudist festival but basically an excuse for a twelve hour-long piss-up in a suburb of Morecambe with a rather unusual name, Bare. "Play what you like," he said. "I could do a bit of disco going on early house if you liked?" "Whatever, looby." (Vanity playlist here). It went down well, by which I mean that the Brexity, uPvC'd crowd ignored my music. We had to stop for the fucking stupid football but carried on later.

I got ten pounds for "expenses", which nearly covered my taxi back. I got home at half one. Kitty and Wendy texted me asking me to go round but I was absolutely knackered. Five days straight on the sparkledust and I was collapsing, and also theoretically in charge of my daughters. I went to bed and slept for twelve hours straight. I found my youngest raking through my records in the morning and that gave me a thrill. She's really into music, contemporary popular music, and it felt an honour to have her riffling through my records.

---

I am utterly and stupidly, stupid, stupid, anti-intellectual, wrong, wrong, useless, foolish, stupid, an idiot, in love with Wendy. She called for me yesterday. She turned up in this gorgeous brown dress. "You look lovely. Is that a new dress?" "Yes, brown's not really normally my colour but I liked this one. Can I wash my hands? The dog's ball has gone in some shit." She stood at the sink. We were talking, and it was all I could do to not wrap my arms round her lovely waist and kiss her.

We took a bottle of Prosecco up to the park at 10am and drank it and talked, had a bit of mdma and some yellow haze, which made us laugh. She was talking about Theodore Dreiser and struggling to remember what school of literature that is. I've read Sister Carrie but couldn't really think of the term that she was looking for, but I loved her in that moment (although I love her in every moment in which I am conscious). It was coursing through me, a river of emotion incapable of being expressed physically. We scrabbled around for terms. "What, American Realism?", I ventured. She shook her head.

We went to the pub and had loads of cheese. There was this massive party of solicitors in there, all strangled into ties and high heels. Having lunch with ties on, what the fuck's all that about. There was a tang of sweat. We met this bloke and me and Wendy both gave him our numbers. He was a depressive, intelligent, self-deprecating but not irritatingly so. "Depression is the highest form of vanity," as Julie Birchall once cruelly but accurately said. He assumed we were a couple. Afterwards me and him walked a short way together. "Yes," I said. "I do love her. First of all, every time I see her, I want to fuck her. I want to have sex with her. Then, when you've had a few, her lovely characteristics, her kindness, make me love her more."

I got home and sent Wendy a text. "... and I do love you. I don't quite know what love is but if it means every single time I see you I think I have never seen you looking so lovely and wanting to rake you with my eyes, and a desperately suppressed desire to stroke you and hold you and snuggle you, and if it means being constantly open-eyed at your kindness and generosity to others, and how I can feel so much myself that I never say anything but the truth, well then, I love you."

I thought it was over then but then she rang. "Looby, have you had enough of me?" "What? What are you on about? I could never have enough of you!" "No, it's just that Gerald [husband] has gone off in a huff. Just had a row with him because he accused me of always looking nice when I see you Xx."

I went round to hers, sat in her garden with The Little Dictator (aka her daughter) and her aunt, ate pizza, drank wine, threw the slobber-soaked ball for the dog, and stared at her legs, her dress doing that lovely oblique hem slant that is a consequence of leg-crossing. I am smitten.

I'm not sure how I agreed to take some faulty bras of Kitty's back to Debenhams, but I did. I said I could be in when she dropped them round. "Well you don't have to be. They'll fit through the letterbox, looby. They're not that big!"

I got in and rang her to say I'd take them back next day. "Thanks. Don't spend too much time with them tonight will you, otherwise you'll never get a refund."

At Debenhams I was led through a lingerie department of Father Ted proportions, displays fronted by varnished cardboard girls. I was receipt-less, and the sceptical assistant thought that the fault, a bit of the underwiring poking up at the middle, might have been caused by her buying the wrong size, but we haggled a bit and settled on a 50% refund.

---

Other news in brief.

Someone's stolen my bike. Chained up, and in broad daylight.

I had my blood pressure taken and I've got prehypertension, although the nurse said not to worry about it too much. I might have it done again after a few days of clean living, whenever that may be. Wish I hadn't bothered now.

I've lost all my keys, my camera, a really nice bag that work gave me a couple of months ago, and most seriously of all, the card for the gas meter.

I applied for another receptionist job, this time with an agency firm which deals with railways and construction. Didn't get an interview.

Kim rang. She's coming over weekend after next. I went to bed and tried to imagine having sex with her but I couldn't; it seemed absurd. All these sexless female friendships.

I've got to appear at the Magistrates Court sometime this month for not paying my Council Tax.

Trina sent me an email telling me that she loves me and can't imagine life without me. She said that her demented mother had said "Jeremy's coming round for tea." "Oh really, that's nice. Afternoon tea?" "No, Edmonton tea. It's a harder tea, with alcohol."

Sparkle dust has many attractive qualities, but it doesn't always improve one's moral character. Reading back the unexpurgated version of my last post made me wince.

However, when I re-read something I've written off the cuff which holds an uncomfortable mirror up to my venality, I hope that I could deploy the unpleasantness of my reflection as a catalyst that might drag me a little closer to decency. I have a poor moral character, but I'm too lazy to do much to improve it. "I don't know how you get away with being you," Kim said once.

I'm into the second volume of Knausgård. Never has such a prolix novel sequence been so involving. Several bloggers must have written more than could be published in three thousand pages, but you wouldn't read them all in one go -- although certain ones, like Parma Violet Tea, must be read in their entirety in order to experience stupid moments when you almost feel in love with her appreciate the structure of its narrative; and others, like the incomparable On The Rocks, deserve to be read ab initio because it would be like putting the needle down in media res, and you wouldn't notice the literary device he uses to enchain his entries. And there are many "entries" there.

It's a sultry blog, drenched. He spends time in Africa, gets into fights in shanty bars in lawless cities in what I surmise might be Nigeria or Ivory Coast although I don't want to know where. Sex is an element in the chemistry of the air he breathes and he it uses to talk. It reminds me of my time in Funchal, in a contentedly sexless relationship with Kirsty that would never happen now.

I loved the humidity of Madeira, the camaraderie of the locals in our struggles up hills. "Pega o ferro!" ("use the handrail"), an elderly woman commanded me once, as I sweated up the long set of steps that was a shortcut to my flat. Here, in Preston, drinking again, spending the lodger's money, I like the runels of sweat in my skin creases, as warm as piss. I flap my shirt as I go to the bar, but it's just for show, my effort into making us all feel together.

Now, I want to fuck and fuck and fuck. I want to fuck Wendy. I want her to fuck me. I want to stroke my fingers into the rills of her sweat. I want the salt of her cunt. I want my eyes to sting with it, nuzzling my mouth into her. I want us to fuck when it's too hot to fuck. No, you can't take off your dress. None of this will happen, and I can't resign myself to anyone else.

Fuck it, let's send this post to her, see what happens.

---

Update, Sunday 10am. Wendy texts. "...and I love you too, somehow." What is going on?

Wilma came round yesterday with a litre of port, three different cheeses, Mozzarella and chillies, some sort of spicy olives, and a bottle of red. She'd stolen it all. We drank our way through it. We talked about sex. She'd had a useless lover recently. "'Play with me', I said -- and he didn't know what to do."

I said that I feel like I've got this drive, some of which is in sex, but it's also in art. "I wish I did," she said. "Well you won't feel like that will you? You're a depressive," I replied. I like Wilma. I can say what I think.

I'm off my tits. Its ten to eleven in the morning, I'm on my second pint, and haven't been to bed. In the pub, I've just extricated myself from Mick, whose words of wisdom you can see in the righthand column there. He's a cantakerous curmudgeon, one of those men you don't want to like but end up asking to your table. He doesn't know my name. "Are you still at the hospital?" he said. No idea where he's got that idea from, so I said "Yes, you know, just jogging along." I've never worked at the hospital. I know his full name. He knows neither part of mine, because he's neither interested nor observant.

The ship has docked and unloaded a lovely cargo. When people talk about sparkle dust, they talk about it as if it's one drug. Well, no, there are different types and this one is exactly what I like. I suppose it must be a consequence of vasodilation, but fuck the science, it makes me feel sensual, as if I need any encouragement in that respect. Everything is brighter, the trees are more vivid, and the birdsong is more sibilant. Across from me, two men who are trying to be friends but are more interested in their phones, are tap-tap-tapping, heads down. God grant me never to have friends like that.

Me and Trina went out in Preston yesterday and got pissed. We had arranged to go to the Southport Food and Drink Festival today and I rather stupidly said that I had also arranged to go out with Wendy and Kitty and daughters and perhaps I could come over a bit later. Oh fuck, bad idea. Edited highlights: "I have now accepted that you've moved on. Your obsession with Wendy has ruined our friendship. And please don't contact me now as I'm going to get ratted and you know not to go there. Even my autistically introverted ex husband can't be bothered to respond." So much fucking drama, can't be bothered.

I was absolutely coursing with sex desire for Wendy this morning, and managed to keep my hands off my phone, if not my cock. Me and Kitty and her are meeting up in an hour or so. I want to fuck her so much, and that's never going to happen. I want her wearing nothing but her dresses. We can go through all of them, my cock stuck in her as I gaze at her and run my hands slowly along her gorgeous body. I want to fuck her so much.

I remember what Donna said the morning after we were in the same position. Silent, me gazing at her, raking her with my eyes. "I love how you look at me. I feel adored." I want Wendy to feel adored, but she doesn't want me to adore her.

To Morecambe for the weekend. Me and Trina went to a soul and house music festival there and stayed over for two nights. It was a sociable, chatty, dancey weekend, spoiled only on the Saturday night, when some lech took an evening off from cutting out pictures from the Sunday Sport to pin up in his bedsit to go crawling over Trina and a couple of other girls. He was coming up to her from, behind and then running his hands over her, as if she'd be grateful of the attention. It was horrible to witness, a throwback to old nightclub behaviour.

After the first time he did it, I said "if he tries it again, let's just start snogging on the dancefloor." He did do -- twice, and so did we, but he wasn't to be outdone and came back for a third go, at which point we went and sat down. I'd had some mdma by this point and once something like that happens, you can never recover the mood. Around 1am, I suggested we leave. I felt very uneasy with having this groping, controlling, slimeball of a man in the same room as me and Trina, and I was glad that she left the place with me.

We went back to the hotel, I fulminated about him. We had a couple of glasses of port and put some music on. And then, I confess, we had sex. And I'd been doing so well, for months. Wrong wrong wrong. I texted Kitty about it. "I know it sounds utterly stupid, but I feel I've been unfaithful to Wendy."

Sunday afternoon was great though and repaired everything. We sat and danced and drank outside the Midland Hotel with a couple of people we know. Erica and some of her friends turned up and a compliant boyfriend ran to the nearby Aldi for supplies.

---

On Tuesday we went to Llandudno. It's one of the the most attractive, carefully planned and unspoilt early Victorian towns I've ever seen, with an elegance and sense of civic pride that very few northern resorts retain. We went up Great Orme Head. I walked, Trina took the funicular railway, and I got to the summit, and a pint of Welsh Gold from Great Orme Brewery, before her.

Back in town, and the wrong side of a few more pints, she started obsessing about me seeing Wendy today, dragging the mood down. If I could have left her there and got the train home I would have. "I know you so well," she kept saying -- which makes me inwardly clench my fists -- "and your feelings about Wendy are different to what you feel about Kitty or Kim." I didn't admit it but she is right. We were rescued by one of those fellow elderly holidaying couples that one always encounters in seaside pubs.

---

Back in Lancaster, I was itching to see Wendy. This morning, I made a salad and some scones for us to take up to the park. She turned up in my favourite dress of them all, the green one. She looked utterly gorgeous, and I told her so. I texted Kitty. "Wendy looks incredible! Help me!!"

We found our seat on a rocky outcrop, and threw the ball repeatedly for the dog. A loony circled us from time to time; we'd probably taken her seat. She made a pig's ear of opening the Prosecco and it frothed all over my trousers. We talked and smoked some kush in her vape thing which doesn't need any tobacco. Talked and talked and talked, had some speed. Bought another bottle of wine from the cafe. "Do you like Satie?" she said, and put his Gnossienne no. 1 on from her phone. The birds and the frollicking dog joined in the soundscape. It was magical and close.

I walked her as far as where she goes off to pick up her daughter from school. "I love you and fancy you very much. I love spending time with you and talking with you and everything. I love you Wendy x".

"I love you too petal. I really feel we're made of the self same mettle. I recognise myself and I like it."

Back at home, drunk, stoned, and honestly, feeling in love with her, I wanted to write something longer. Put it as an email, with the title of this post, since "Edna O'Brien" -- whose works we both like -- is used as code between us for something; then decided to write it on an arty postcard instead, and sent it to her in the post.

I love you from the bottom and selfish and most base parts of my heart, the West End of Morecambe bit, the fuck I can't stop looking at you undressingly bit, the let's have more bit, all the way up, via this afternoon, which is a lovely halfway, a form of joy in fact, all the way up to the novels and the refinements of culture that are worth every effort in preserving. I want it all, and I want it all with you. I love you. I love you in the birdsong and Satie's discordant notes and his dreaming music, and the sound of [the dog] rolling and cracking the branches. I love you in the mess of our bottles and spillages. I love you in the changing look of that tree. I love you in the park and I love you now.

Tonight, an email arrives from her, a photograph of the frontispiece of William Boyd's Sweet Caress. It's a made-up quote from a character in the novel.

I pray secularly, to myself. Please, please, please, let this be my love affair. Please let us be in love. Please let me have this. Please.

What does she mean, "I love you"? I wish I knew what she means. She never makes any physical approaches to me. It's her caress I want. I long to be touched and stroked and kissed by her. What is this "love" of hers then, that needs no physical expression?