Trina has been here since Monday. This three days a week is far too long for me. Yesterday she said, with what I suppose she thought was a magnanimity for which I should be grateful, "Well, I was going to give you some 'me time' today anyway," as if my free time is now her monopoly, to be gifted to me for finite periods at times to suit her.

Which is a shame, because when we do things of mutual interest together, we have a great time. On Monday we went to the launch night of our Dark and Winter Ales Festival. The landlord, handsomely dressed in one of those palely coloured shirts with patterns of small flowers or curlicues, that would have seemed a bit poofy ten years ago but which look quite good now, was a bit jittery, eyes roaming the room while we were talking, carefully tending, like a Tolstoyan hostess, to the social success of the evening.

Yesterday we were chatting away in the pub. Someone who thinks I'm his friend latched onto us. I met Larry two years ago when he overheard me saying something and asked if I had any work to give him. I explained that a man who earned £7775 last year hardly has a richesse to share with others, but unfortunately he hasn't been put off. His conversation is an account, at limitless length, of his crap life. Like many people with this brand of solipsism, his one real talent is turning any known or theoretical topic of conversation back to himself within seconds.

Trina and I plotted our escape by pretending to text, showing each other our unsent messages. The last message I wrote reflected the extent of the naturally sparkling compassion I effervesce towards others: "Fucking victim".

I had to go to work for a short time, then came back to hear Trina talking incessantly at the lodgers. I later discovered she had availed herself--which I have told her she can do any time--of the Extra Strong Mints hidden behind the unread Saul Bellow novel. I cooked a hurried tea, then suggested, with what I hoped sounded like an imperative, that we go upstairs, to give everyone else a rest. We danced about a bit for an hour or so to some house music and then we had rubbish sex.

This won't work, and I need to broach the issue. She thinks I want to spend as much time with her as I can. I've already started lying about the amount of time I am required to spend with the girls. I feel stifled and controlled, having to give a performance of delight at spending more time than I want to with her, which occludes the enjoyable parts of that time. If only she could just turn up, we could drink, dance, fuck, take drugs, go to concerts and pubs, and then if she could--you know--sort of, bugger off.

---

An odd moment the other day when I was out with Chris and Barry. I was on my way to attend to my ablutions, when I saw Erica, out with some of her colleagues. I went over to Erica, just chatting amiably, pleased to see her as I always am, and without design, put my hand on the upright of the chair on which the mental woman to my left was sitting.

I turned to her and smiled, as an invitation into our conversation. She slowly recoiled, shrinking from her chair, making a look of disdain. "Don't touch me," she said, and slid off her chair. Erica reached across us with her hand, and gestured and said to her "It's alright, stay there." I was bemused and surprised, but composed myself and turned to Erica and said "OK lovely, I'll see you later."

For the next day or two I practised better responses, talking to myself. The winning candidate was "Listen, I'm sat down there with a beautiful, clever, well-dressed woman. Why do you think I would want to touch you?" But she's a bit unhinged, and I think struggles with the pop, so probably best that my insult was only retrospectively available.

I've just been out with Barry and Chris, who got it together at my NYE party. I've known them separately for some time. I think they're both gorgeous and I sometimes imagine being Chris's pornographic photographer. I like telling a girl what to do, without giving her any option or choice or say about what type of sex will now happen. I like depriving a woman of agency. It wasn't the dominant theme of the evening, but I always end up talking about sex when I'm with Chris. She's got this sexual energy, a drive. I think having sex as a drive, as something which is at the core of your person, is natural, but there are very few people with whom one can talk about it--just normally, not making a big exceptional category of it. It's almost impossible with men, who often ridicule women who like sex, a displacement of the male fear of the libidinous woman which drives (different sense of the same word, same force) a great deal of the misogyny in everyday life.

It's been so nice since NYE, getting a bit closer to them both. I feel privileged that a couple of days before a very big operation to do with Chris's cancer, that they chose to spend a night in the pub with me. It's lovely how he looks at her, his mixture of fascination, surprise, simple enjoyment in her company, and lust; all of us talking without thinking about what we say but picking up on interesting things.

They're all coming to Kitty's party in three weeks' time. Barry is doing the music; he's got this enviable collection of funk, jazz-funk and disco, on vinyl. I told Chris, "even if you're laid out drugged up and senseless post-op on the sofa, you've got to come." She said she wants to, as something to look forward to. I'm looking forward to it too. Every single day, I think "we're all going to die." But before then, let's just roll up the banknotes, or train tickets, and have lots of sex and get another pint in.

Meta: Could the person reading this apparently from the Maldives on Dhiraagu Internet Services, drop me a quick line and introduce yourself please? Thanks.

---

A French couchsurfer has been here for a couple of days for a conference at the Uni. He arrived on the same night as I was hosting our book group, and I was nervous about what I would do with him.

He turned up with a man he said he'd just met in the pub. I assumed he was a co-presenter at the conference but he literally was someone he'd just bumped into in the pub. We were halfway through our drunken discussion of anything but the book, but they both settled effortlessly, as we discussed Hollande's infidelity, fracking, borderline mentally ill flatmates and, most interestingly to me--as it's a career option with great appeal--fraud. It runs in the acquired family. I think I've mentioned before the time when Kirsty's Dad strolled out, acquitted of such a charge, from the Old Bailey. "That's a good job," he said to her. "Because I did it."

I told everyone of a night when some friends and I, the right side of a few pints, were collectively poring over the problem of how to garner a bit more cash, and were talking out loud, to see how it sounded, about getting a carousel fraud together--a very small one, way under the radar of HMRC--which would net us about £20K each for a couple of weeks' work.

Edward, a forensic accountant, told us of a couple of frauds going on now in Lancaster, and about a lucrative case his firm refused to take on, trying to trace and freeze the assets of someone who defrauded the Bank of Kazakhstan of between three and six billion dollars. One such property is a port in northern Russia known for its blind eye. "No, we didn't want that one. They'll just shoot you and pay the judge ten times his annual salary to record it as an accident."

---

On Sunday me old pal Keiran rang me to see if I was around. He went from pipe fitter to Philosophy lecturer and is now about to retire from a university in London. I'd never met his wife before. I was dog-tired, and stared at her for what I knew was an impolitely long time, arrested by her ineptly applied black eyeliner.

They're trying to decide where they'd like to spend their retirement. I suspect Keiran would like to come back here, but wifey isn't keen. "I know this sounds very Southern," she said, "but I'm from London and have lived in London all my life, and this 'Northern friendliness' you like and are recommending to me--it can sometimes come across as a bit intrusive or nosey. People start talking to you and you can't get rid of them."

Hearing the case for hardline Southern individualism stated so honestly was a surprise. "Well," I said, "you just learn techniques for telling them to go away. You can say something like 'Anyway, you'll have to excuse us--we're just grabbing an hour off between looking after the children', or something like that." Or you could try being friendly to strangers, perhaps? Living like that would send me mentally ill.

---

Here in Lancaster, though...

Next to me, at the bar. Mid, late forties? The loveliest hair: brown going on ginger in a longish bob; purple woollen crew neck jumper; inverted box pleat grey skirt, ending just above the knee; black tights and flatties. She's struggling to remember someone's drink.

I'll have a double (long pause)...er, Jack Daniels and Coke. She looks at me and says "I thought it was you next."

No, it was you. Although I was thinking of ordering while you remembered what you wanted.

--It was a senior moment.

You're too young to have those.

--No I'm not. You and me went to the same school.

Really? Did we? I went to --- High School.

--So did I. You'll be fifty this year then.

Yes, in March.

--Ha, well I'm younger than you then.

I look at ourselves in the mirror at the back of the bar and make a gesture like windscreen wipers between our two faces.

Well, I think that's obvious. What's your name?

--Doesn't matter. And your daughter's had orthodontic treatment. I'm a Dental Nurse.

Oh, you work with Mr --- then?

--Yes sometimes.

Blimey, there's no secrets round here are there?

--Not many. Anyway have a nice evening.

You're fucking gorgeous and I love that skirt and you've got beautiful hair. Yes, and yourself.

Trina has just left after arriving on Monday. She got very drunk that evening, and picked at her idées fixes at exhausting, inconclusive length. That is, how Kim wants to drive us apart; how I mustn't hide my financial situation from her and accept without baulking at it, the constant financial assistance she gives me; and the worst of all, the "where is this going" question, related in her mind to my "lack of commitment." A couple of weeks ago I was very cool about the idea of some kind of "public commitment party", where we invite our friends round for an afternoon in which they spectate upon our narcissistic self-congratulation; so, a marriage ceremony in all but name.

I shushed her, aware of the figure we are presenting: a Shaz and Daz who volubly rehearse their domestic disagreements over too much drink in cheap pubs. "I was that far just now, that far, from walking away," she said, once her emotional state came out of the nadir of the sine wave that maps its movements once she's on the second bottle. That tactic won't work Trina, because you'd be bereft; I'd be a bit regretful and would find another girlfriend fairly quickly. I just wish we could enjoy the good times and not analyse everything.

The following morning, alcohol's effacing work was done, and she was apologetic and unknowing, asking to be reminded of what she had said. I said that it doesn't matter, and "that was then and this is now", too weak to do anything other than postpone any further mining of her insecurity. "You were a bit withdrawn though, and grumpy," she said. "Mmmm. Well, shall we have some coffee?" Just go, just leave. I want to be on my own.

The following evening she was outwardly changed, chatty in that overlapping way that I do like with her, sociable, wandering off to talk to these two women we'd earlier given directions to. Even then, she raised the worrying prospect of her soon having ten consecutive days off, most of which she assumes I'll be happy sharing with her. She showed an entirely false interest in a lecture I'm going to on Tuesday, when Terry Eagleton will be discussing "Raymond Williams and Marxism." Please no. What do structuralist critiques of literature mean to you? This is my interest, not yours. And most importantly, I'll be desperate to escape by then. Which came out as "Erm... I'm not sure it would be of great interest, to be honest."

---

Out of my un-harangued ear, I picked up the following.

Man: You got me ex to cheat on me.

Woman: No I didn't.

Yes you did, you set me up with a fucking ginger.

(They both laugh)

Woman: Get it down yer. You let it happen.

Man: I had to have a fucking DNA test on my ginger child because of you.

---

However, she was handy in helping me assemble a futon I bought recently, a bargain at £27 off Ebay. At one point we had to support a strut while we screwed it in at the other end. I knew my Philosophy degree would come in useful one day. The futon, by the way, is the most comfortable bed I have ever in. Several nights in, I still marvel at it. By day, it folds up and gives you so much more space.

---

Kitty's having her birthday party at mine next month because parties at mine are of surpassing excellence. I sent the invites out:

Hello all. Just a reminder to iron your knickers and polish your cravats for Kitty's party at 44 Acacia Avenue [date] 9ish. Superfly soundtrack from DJ Barry. Be there or be talked about. Or worse, not be talked about.

Melissa replied "Knickers? What an assumption!"

Chilly in the house at the moment and The Sartorialist won't be coming round any time soon to photograph me in my two jumpers, scarf, pink blanky, and Santa hat. I can't afford the heating, just like my parents couldn't. It is the natural order. We shouldn't expect to be warm in our houses all the time.

I rang Kim last night, partly to arrange the next long weekend of malarkey at hers, and to talk out my regrets about us not being able to go to see Joey Negro in Leeds next month. Kim proffered the consolatory straw that the venue isn't really a dancey place. I'm not going to Leeds to see Joey Negro and sit down.

We compared diaries and I think we've got a date. We started talking about non-consensual sex, something which turns me on no end--I mean, in that ludic form in which the terms of engagement are agreed beforehand--and I parted my legs to enjoy the sense of my cock hardening as I was on the phone to her. This is the signal to put the phone down; certain boundaries mustn't be crossed, and phone sex would not be quite the done thing at the moment. It has been explicitly agreed that sex will not become part of us and we have agreed to pretend to forget the time when I had an orgasm of shuddering closeness and intensity with her in my bed a few weeks ago when we were both wanking at the same time. In my head though, that's still "friends".

Ignoring my own advice to myself, I texted her from bed. "That's a lovely way of making my cock hard," I said. "Happy to oblige, sir," she replied. A few hours later, I texted her again and told her that I love her, which I shouldn't have done. This morning I apologised and blamed it on the beer. "I know you do X" she replied.

---

In the pub later, Trina was hammering the Chardonnay somewhat and got upset when I told her about my plans with Kim. "That woman deliberately wants to drive us apart," she said, her voice quavering, eyes wettening. "And she doesn't want to meet me." You and her meeting would be a fucking car crash, I didn't say.

I put my arm round her and kissed her. "She doesn't, darling. She's not interested in us." I glanced up and became aware we were making something of a spectacle of ourselves. "Let's not talk about this here. It's been a lovely day." The conversation drunkenly meandered away from a dangerous topic, and she was soon laughing and smiling again

Trina went back to mine while I went to breathe alcohol fumes over everyone at the girls' school's 6th form Open Evening. It's a brilliant school and it gives them something a Grammar School education can never provide--how to mix with people of different classes, nationalities and backgrounds. The Girls' Grammar, where I used to teach, really only has one subject on the curriculum: How To Avoid Mixing With The Lower Orders.

Naturally, following five or six pints of Allendale, I put my foot in it a couple of times. I bumped into the Dad of a friend of the girls and started talking about how the A-level subjects are very different nowadays. I went off on one about how vocational subjects shouldn't be taught in a University and how it was a mistake that Polytechnics were abolished. At this point he informed me that he teaches a vocational subject at a University.

I followed this up by what might have been some needlessly extensive questions about the [subject redacted] syllabus, which had nothing to do with the fact that its teacher is arrestingly attractive, with her ginger bob, black glasses and a gorgeous little metal hairclip; she was wearing a pale brown shift dress with small moss-green flowers on it. I regret I am unable to report on the hem position coordinates as she was standing behind a table.

I then went to pick on the Philosophy teacher. The subject is actually called Philosophy and Ethics. I didn't understand why Ethics had to be appended like that to a general term that includes its consequent. It's like saying Music and Notation, or Management and Bullshit. I informed her, because I could tell she was interested, that I started out at Uni doing Aesthetics and Metaphysics, but ended up being quite interested in Ethics and the Philosophy of Religion, whilst maintaining my interest in Aesthetics. She nodded slightly and politely kept looking away, which was an appreciative yet understated way of showing her fascination with the slurred memories of a drunkard's failed academic career.

My alma mater sent two ridiculous looking ciphers: black suits, ties, standing in front of some managementspeak. The Polytechnic of Black Pudding was just as bad. Their board read "Innovative thinking for the real world". I turned away and ate a good portion of the buffet the school had provided, then went home and thought about Frances and The Reverse Cowgirl.