It's half past ten and I'm up at 5am tomorrow to be Presiding Officer at the polling station at the University. Morgane came in an hour ago and told me she'd split up with her boyfriend, and I said that me and Trina had done the same.

I took the ballot box and all the other stuff up to the Uni yesterday. The taxi driver knows Wilma and we were chatting about break-ups. I told him about mine and he said he'd broken up with his. "Fancy a swap?" he said. "She's gorgeous. Sixty but looks about forty-three." "Yeah, Trina's sixty as well." I was on the edge of asking him for an introduction.

We had a pre-booked holiday in St Malo, so agreeing that there was no point in wasting all her that money, we set off to Portsmouth, from where the MV Bretagne made lowing progress across the Celtic Sea. We sat in at cabaret, where an artiste threw three oranges onto his head and they all landed still on top of one another, that kind of thing. An almost extinct, technical, unthinking craft, a relief from pop music's and theatre's seriousness.

A chatty Norwegian woman joined us. She surreptitously passed us a bottle of aquavit at thigh level whilst talking at length about her fuckwit husband -- a story of which there might be another side. The aquavit was delicious; the man balanced two sabres on his chin, connecting them at their points. At the next table a group of three beshorted lads rejected my eye contact and laughing attempts to merge the two tables.

We went to our cabin. Trina started snoring so I went to sleep in the corridor. I'd forgotten to take a pillow so it was very uncomfortable. At some hour a female security guard type person someone came round and roused me, asking me what I was doing there. "Desolé. Elle ronfle -- bruit." "Is OK," and she went off smiling.

We stayed in a ruthlessly modernised flat in a grand 1770's corsaire's building, with plastic wood-effect panelling stapled over the stone. It had a precipitous staircase and only one window in the whole flat, which made the bedroom stiflingly hot. In the middle of the second night Trina came down and demanded that I go upstairs and sleep up there. In the morning she said that she didn't remember how she came to be sleeping in the living room.

We spent most of the time on the beach with our Carrefour haul of cider and wine, thus sustaining the reputation for decorous drinking behaviour in public for which the English are renowned. I was pleased one day to to see the habit spreading to some young people, sitting there with a carry-out of Grimbergen.

Back in England, any implied hope for a reconciliation died as sulphorously as an extinguished match. For example, here's this evening's email exchange.

From: Trina, 1601
Win tickets to the Ashes on [Hardy's, the winemaker's, website]

From: looby, 1637
Brill! Thank you -- any of those matches would beat the last day of today's inevitable draw between Northants and Lancashire that has provided gripping entertainment today!

From: looby, 2019
Ahh... I understand now ... it comes off a bottle of Hardy's :)

From: Trina, 2024
Once a drunk always a drunk.

From: looby, 2029
No doubt unintentionally, you sent that twice :)

From: looby, 2106
But not that bad a one if it means a day at the cricket!

From: Trina, 2112
Actually I get several messages from you twice. The latest was today - "Thank you. It will be a very interesting night" You were probably drunk though anyway.

This refers to a text message I sent this afternoon referring to the election tomorrow. I hadn't had a drink at that point.

From: looby, 2115
Of course I was! For God's sake woman, do you have so little respect for me to think that I would still be sober at 4pm?

From: Trina, 2117
Fed up with word-playing. Good night.

She's nicer than this most of the time, and was generous and kind to the last, leaving me with some Monsoon Malabar coffee before she started clearing out her room. But it's too fraught for me. I am simple and want a quiet life without much drama.

The Lancashire anti-fracking stormtrooper avant-garde made a pincer movement upon County Hall last Friday in order to hand in one of several petitions against the drilling for shale gas in the county. I was 1/7th of the regiment but due to my retiring nature I wasn't in the photo.

Afterwards I repaired to the bewitching surroundings of a new pub in a Grade II listed former bank chambers; it glinted and spangled. There was a giddy, holiday atmosphere. Looking around at the sea of Fred Perry and Ellesse -- surely the most feminine-sounding brand ever to be adopted by self-consciously manly men -- the penny dropped. Preston were away to Port Vale. Mid-afternoon, they drifted off to get the train to Stoke.

They took all the breath in the atmosphere with them, and so I turned to the bothersome matter of my drugs charge. The constable in question had texted me whilst I was mid-protest asking me to contact him for a "chat."

"By the way," I said, "based on what you've outlined in your letter and what you've just said now -- just to say, I'm not going to be contesting this." I arranged to see him at Lancaster Police Station at 9am the following day.

The policeman walked in to the reception area, and I swallowed my embarrassment as I saw the man who had herded me away from being a pest to everyone at the Castle that night -- but not without riffling through my pockets first. He shook my hand, which seemed wrong for the relationship.

We went into a windowless room and he started the tapes. I sat poised in a way which I hope demonstrated worry and the desire to be helpful. "So, you bought these items from this man in the nightclub in Manchester. What did you buy?" My reply avoided the terms used by those fluent in the argot. "It was four tablets of ecstasy, and four little square things of LSD."

"And what did you do with them?" he asked, fishing about for a supply charge. "I just kept them till the right occasion turned up, and I thought a rave in a former prison was such an occasion." "Right. I'll just have to find these drugs on the computer now." After a bit of constable-ish faffing he said "Hmm, it's not letting me add the LSD, so -- we'll just put it down as ecstasy."

He said he'd have to check his decision with a superior officer, but that he was going to recommend a Caution, with a condition that I attend a Drugs Education and Awareness course. "It's only two days but it is compulsory."

I had my DNA swabbed from the inside of my mouth, I was photographed and measured. Back in the main room, the officer wanted a word, and took me down the corridor a few yards.

"I've had a word with the Sergeant, and he says that the course isn't really suitable for you. It's aimed more at habitual, hardcore users of drugs, and I think to be honest you've learnt your own lesson from that night, haven't you?" I took a slow breath in, bit my lip, looked downward, scratched my left eyebrow and said "Yes, you could say that." I was disappointed not to go on the course. It would have been most interesting to get some new contacts understand the current state of official drug prevention strategy.

I was issued with the Caution and had to sign to say that I understood its provisions. He led me chattily back to reception. "So what are you doing for the rest of the day?" "I might have a drink later to be honest." "Well, don't get out of control again because I'm on till 7pm and that would be embarrassing." With another handshake, I was out.

I bumped into Wilma, who was on the way round to mine with the twenty quid she owed me, and a bottle of wine. Together with Trina, we decided that exceptional circumstances called for un verre. The following day Trina and me went to Brittany for a week but I'll tell you about that next time.

Wilma's in a bad way again with her drinking, and is almost becoming annoying, with the stuck record of her woes, in between bouts of crying. I went round to hers because she's run out of money, and I lent her twenty quid; we started on the sherry at 9.45. The other day, down the pub, she won £100 on a scratchcard. Like all decent depressives, she made the worst of it, saying that she owes her daughter £60, it'll soon be gone, hundred quid's nothing these days, and so on.

"Look Wilma, you've got a good job, your own house, a car, some very loyal friends, and you've just won a hundred quid. Fuck's sake love, how much better has it got to get?" I went to the bar and the landlady said "Doing your social worker bit again I see, looby."

Kitty was more enjoyable company the night before. She said that Wendy's Somewhat Controlling Husband was saying that he's thinking of leaving her, but apparently he often says this without acting on it. Kitty said that their relationship is sexless. I know that often happens after a while but how you would not want to fuck Wendy, in and out of her gorgeous secondhand dresses, which are just aching to be slowly unzipped, I do not know. I bumped into them again this afternoon and we sat in a beer garden for a couple of hours. As Wendy went to the bar, Kitty said "I can read your mind." "She'd be better off with me. She could have complete freedom and abject poverty."

---

Morgane suggested we have a dinner party as compensation for the Lancaster episode of Come Dine With Me getting shelved. I made Sussex Pond Pudding from a Saturday Kitchen Live recipe. Basically you bake two lemons inside a steamed suet pudding. I found some unwaxed organic Amalfi lemons in Booths and no I don't care how poncy that sounds. When you cut into it the juice and liquid sugar pour out and surround the pudding with a lemony pond. It's absolutely delicious, and could serve as a useful blood-clotting agent if required.

We got through what I thought was a modest amount of cider and wine. Next morning, Morgane said "I just can't keep up with your drinking." I didn't tell her that before the party Trina had had a bottle and one glass of wine and I'd had possibly five pints.

---

I got a message on the dating site -- the first for months. It's from a woman thirteen years younger than me, in a polyamorous marriage, who said that she likes "well-written smut." The spark from seeing a message appear is quite addictive. We've learned that we both know Chris, and she says I know her husband, although I can't place him from the name. Chris gave her an excellent reference. We keep it in the family up here.

---

My débâcle at the rave night is compounded. I got a phone call on Sunday morning from Morgane, saying that the police had been round wanting to talk to me, but assuring her that it was "nothing serious". I went back to mine. Morgane watched me intently as I read the letter "inviting" me to a "voluntary" interview in connection with the fact that "you were found in possession of class A controlled drugs on 15th February 2015." I had to improvise. "Oh, they want me to come in because I might have been witness to something."

It's just a very small amount of e and acid; I'll have to admit to it. Optimistically, a caution; perhaps, a fine. Pessimistically, local readers of this blog may enjoy tittering at the sight of me wearing a hi-vis jacket with the slogan "Community Payback" emblazoned on its back, before we are herded on to the miscreants' minibus, which takes us off to redecorate a youth club.

Down the pub with Vic and Wilma. Everything's fine. Back home Trina asks me if she was flirting with Vic. "Yes, you were." "What, obviously?" "Well, it doesn't matter. It's nice to be fancied." Then, somehow, the conversation leads me into saying that it wouldn't bother me if they went to bed together. She got all tearful, saying that I am heartless and don't care about her and so on, then stood up, went outside and got into her car, and at the back end of a bottle-and-a-half of wine, drove herself home.

I've seen all this so many times before I simply ignore her. This evening, three concilatory emails arrive. But I've had enough now.

I'm not sure .... I think we've tried this before and it always ends up the same way. I absolutely abhor and detest from the bottom of my soul, stomach and mind -- I cannot tell you how much -- all this endless drama, and it's bound to happen again. I really am way beyond the far, outermost limits of the amount of crisis and crying and teenagerisms that I can stand. I want an easygoing, carefree life and that's not going to happen with you I'm afraid, due to the irreconcilable imbalance in feeling. I'm acutely aware of my own mortality and to waste what little time I've got left on things that aren't enjoyable isn't attractive to me. I am very happy to be shallow and that's how I intend to run the rest of my life.

I can't be with anyone with whom I have to watch what I am saying. Women bang on about honesty then don't like it when they get it. This is why men sometimes think it's just easier, just to get a quiet life, to lie. You have also said some very unkind things to me over the past couple of years and whilst I am more than happy to be criticised, yours is not a helpful criticism that I can learn from. I am not interested in defending myself in the lunatic asylum that is your head, but I would just say, as a statement of fact, that I am anything but cold and heartless. Of all the things you've said to me, that's the one that comes closest to hurting me.

I am also tired of your relentless paranoia -- my "dirty little secrets" as you called it this morning. I have tried absolutely every trick I have to try to talk you out of this -- up to and including roping Chris in to make fake phone calls in order to make you see the funny side of it, but nothing works, and I'm out of ideas now.

So I think we should call it a day. I don't think you're ready for someone like me. I know how big-headed that sounds and it's not meant like that. I just mean we're at different stages of life. I feel like the older one sometimes. I know this will make you bridle but you need someone more conservative and staid who won't keep upsetting you, as I seem to do by dint of me being me.

You are a very kind, generous and funny girl and I've had some lovely times with you which I will remember fondly. But I am tired to the point of exhaustion with all this fucking discussion and meta-analysis of a life, rather than just enjoying it.

So --- moving on to practical things -- I'm definitely going to the do in St Annes on Saturday and if I see you there that would be fine. Given that I thought you weren't coming I've asked Italian Looking Woman and Wendy along. Wendy almost certainly won't be able to get a passport off her husband by then, and Italian Looking Woman's on a date with a new fella on Friday so won't be able to tell me till Saturday -- I think she's hoping it might turn into 48 hours in bed -- so if you'd like to go you take the hotel room, and whatever happens I'll find my own way back or Italian Looking Woman will drive.

Just now though, your cruel, heartless, unfeeling, and cold friend is off to bury some more of his dirty little secrets.

Above is a sensational picture of the eclipse as it appeared in Lancaster. I avoided blindness by not looking at this dazzling spectacle directly, but instead through a pinhole projector that I made from instructions on the BBC. Special award goes to the students who turned up at Williamson Park without being arsed to get out of their 'jamas.

There were loads of people there; I went with Kirsty, but a female friend of mine had yesterday expressed an interest in going. Trundling along as I do on the hard shoulder of the information superhighway, I went to send her a message on farce book.

Talk about not being allowed to forget any more.

---

Afterwards I went back with Kirsty to hers, and we had a bit of a chat. It's always amiable. You fucking idiot, leaving her.

Then into town to meet my pal Vic, who's become quite a good drink-blether partner in the last few months. Wilma turned up. I said "You're not an alcoholic Wilma, you're a depressive." She's on day two of this pointless programme called "Journey to Recovery." She said "I've got to tell them I don't want to stop drinking."

A deaf girl I vaguely know turned up with her friend, and Vic got his Swiss Army knife out and cut down a photograph of her friend's recently deceased fiancé so that it would fit in a frame. Deaf girl was asking me if I knew anyone who could interpret the funeral on Monday. I wrote back "You'll get the gist, and most of it is quite boring." She showed it to the bereaved girl and I felt a moment of alarm, in case that'd hurt her feelings, but they both reacted with assent. Deaf girl screwed the paper up.

This gorgeous friend of theirs -- late thirties, darkish blonde hair in a bob that was strokably growing out, green eyes, a cotton green loose top -- came and sat with us for a few minutes. I saw Vic's look widen into an eye-smile, and I had a moment of self-disgust, knowing that mine had done the same. So fucking obvious. You're just the same.

---

Teaching Practice Colleague -- with whom I share an imminent birthday -- who I've known for thirty years -- rang late on tonight. Neither of us have planned anything, but I said that the one thing I would like to do is to see her. I suggested I could cycle over to her house in the morning, before Trina gets back in Lancaster at about 2pm. Trina would invite herself along and dominate the conversation; afterwards she would recast the chat as an accusation, dyeing it with jealousy about a girl who predates her.

---

I received a letter this morning: Donna's handwriting. I turned the envelope over and over. I thought it would be some precisely concise and honest letter about how she feels insulted by me having Trina on the margin while I was seeing her last year.

It was a birthday card, with kisses. She's happily seeing someone more propinquitous, both in terms of income and location -- and possibly in other ways too -- so I'm not going to interfere. I'll write a little thank you note, affectionate but light. It's understood now: gone.