Keen to maintain the momentum with Daniella, I text her asking her what she is doing on Monday or Wednesday. I take in my breath when I see her name appear on the phone. I have no idea what her reaction will be.

A little small talk, and then I approach the main question.

"Looby," she says, hesitatingly. "After the other night..." and her voice starts shaking, "I just realised that.. I'm not over my last relationship. I was really upset the day after seeing you. I really didn't realise it'd affect me so much." She's struggling not to cry now. "It's too soon--it's nothing to do with you." She said a couple of utterly lovely, complimentary things about me, which make all my worrying after our "dinner" date seem silly. "I'm sorry--I'm not over it, I'm just not ready yet. I've been dreading telling you."

I tell her it's alright, not to worry, honestly it's alright, I understand. I said that I enjoyed the evening very much too, and I said that if she ever wanted to meet for a coffee or a drink that would be fine, but that I'd leave the ball in her court. We exchanged a couple of gentle and kind texts, and left it like that.

"Are you feeling alright Dad? You look a bit vacant." I am in Kirsty's living room, standing around, waiting to get the bus to see Daniella. "No, I feel fine. I just feel a bit overdressed." I'd told them I was going out for a bit of a knees-up at Really Late. Jenny perspicaciously said "Will you be the only man?" "Yes, it's all women apart from me." She does a headmisstressy finger-wagging. Well...remember Dad, you've got Trina."

On my dating profile, I include the information in the righthand column of this blog. She texted a couple of days ago saying that if I had anything, she'd be happy to take me into the shed, as long as I shared it about. I was very glad to hear her ask, even though I had to reply that the cupboard is bare at the moment.

She meets me off the bus, takes me to her house. Immediately the front door is closed, we are snogging. "Right," she said. "I'll just go and slip into something less comfortable. The blue dress, by request."

We go outside, into her garden. "Put on some music if you like." Must we? I choose Miles Davis's noodling Sketches of Spain, on the basis that it's the easiest of her CD collection to ignore, especially if a guest craftily turns the volume down a few notches. Neither of us are interested in it and we get back to snogging. "Shall we have a lay down?" she says.

It's all white, the sort of bedroom where my gums will start bleeding or I will wake up to find I've left some sort of mysterious mouth-blob on the pillow. We lay down on the bed. My legs are sticking off the edge and I wish we could move up a bit, but am afraid to dispel any spell that might be developing. I'm too conscious of everything, regretting only having had one pint beforehand; sobriety is a curse. She gets up and goes to unzip the dress, but I want to do that. She is wearing lovely black underwear. I hold her tits whilst standing behind her. She says "fuck, fuck, fuck," over and over again. That might be a bit difficult at the moment.

Back on the bed, my cock refuses to play. I wonder whether it is despite, or because, she's so good-looking. I start feeling that I am with someone who is out of my league; a worry about her seeing my cock, which I am trying to hide, which is mixed up in my head with a sense of class inferiority, what with her spangly bathroom and 300K house. I try for as long as I can not to mention my useless lack of an erection, but eventually I mutter, "Sorry--nerves. First time."

She's made six different dishes, on a Middle Eastern theme. We share a bottle of Prosecco and I am increasingly anxious to drink more. For a few moments, immediately we've signalled we've finished, I think the evening is finally going to take off. I put my hand under the table and start stroking her skirt hem, where it tightens along her thighs. Reaching under her skirt, I grasp her knickers in my fist and pull them tightly up her cunt. She scrapes the chair backwards and I stand in front of her; she takes my cock and puts it in her mouth; the sight and feel of my unhard cock. We somehow slide onto the kitchen floor, on our knees. I hope we'll just invent something. "Let's go onto the carpet instead," she says.

We move the couple of feet into the living room. She bends over the dresser and takes it with both hands. She tries sucking my cock again, but it doesn't work, so I gently ease her down onto the floor and start licking her cunt, the time-honoured erection failure avoidance tactic.

We settle back on the settee and talk easily enough. "Everyone," she says disparagingly about the G---'s dating website, "is looking for the one," which made me hope that she was implying that she wasn't interested in sexual fidelity. For some reason, and despite the relative lack of drink, I start feeling very tired, at only something past eleven. She suggests I go to bed while she tidies round, and I'm again aware that I'm not acquitting myself very well. I do so, forgetting to brush my teeth, a fact about which I am embarrassed when, too late, I realise my error. She comes to bed in a slinky red slip; still the same. She is playing all the cards she knows, and they are stacking up to a pack of let-downs. All this crap about there being lots of equally satisfying ways to have sex. All women I have ever been with want, at some point, a good rodding.

The following morning, we are standing together in her kitchen. I am aware of the tooth-brushing error and ask for a different knife with which to spread my marmalade from that which I used for the butter as a way of compensating, with an excess of fastidiousness, for forgetting to brush my teeth. She makes a mocking joke about me being posh and I am making an effort with the conversation, and another effort in making it look like it's effortless. "You can sit down if you like," she says. "You don't have to hover." I do as I'm told, trying to amble to the chair as though I had just had the same idea. I can't even eat toast correctly.

She drives me back into town. In Sainsbury's car park, we have another snog. My catalogue of errors still doesn't seem to have introduced the slightest physical froideur. It's only half past ten but I go to a pub and compose a long text to Kim.

"[...] I'd like to pursue this one. She's quite an A-list girl. Clever, sharp, fit, takes the piss, good cook, but basically sees dinner as an excuse to spend the evening fucking. Not sure, but might not be into monogamy."

Kim's reply is sympathetic but urges me to recover the situation. Next time, I'm going to go equipped with more drink, and perhaps contact Mr Patel, who runs the most reputable online pharmacy in all of Rawalpindi. I have to clear this hurdle in my mind of being inferior, and then we're away.

I've been unable to meet the rent for two successive months now, partly because the lodger is fucking me about with the rent, again. I've paid about half of it. A gas and electricity bill for £884 arrives, which I have no way of paying. So just a typical Monday then.

Seriouscrush came round with her daughter yesterday and gave me the depressing materials for what seems to me to be a complicated job of sanding, priming, undercoating, and painting the windows--full of awkward recessed grooves, the windows difficult to reach. I know she won't be pleased with the half-job I will do, and I know she won't say anything about it. The cost to me will be her judgement. We used to lie to arrange last-minute secret rendezvous in the Sun Hotel, sitting in the bar hardly talking, me thinking the ambivalent thought that I will never get enough of her, before going up to Vicarage Field where our unbuttoning and kisses we thought more noble than the chavs' rutting. Now, she's bringing pots of paint round so that I can sand and paint the fucking window frames. For doing this job, I am being let off one month's rent, a dispensation from the rentier.

Helen and Kitty were in Lancaster the other evening. Helen is going out with a Norwegian man we met a few months ago. We gather in the garden of the Sun, outside because smokers are in the majority. Helen has gathered around her some of the reckless-looking women she knows. Generous as ever, she has bought me a pint, ready on the table. She's slimmer and brighter-looking. "You're looking very nice, Helen. Must be all that Norwegian cock."

I get several enquiries about "how things are going" with Trina. The questions irritate me, and I reply more pessimistically than I might have had I been allowed to volunteer the information. As Helen's son announces that he and his compadres are off to McDonald's, Kitty's daughter shouts out a request. Twenty minutes later, they return with a bag of chips for her. We verbally applaud the boys for having remembered, trying to teach Daughter a standard of gratitude. "That'll do," she says, "as a start."

I had my fifteen minutes of fame the other day. I was following the Guardian's over-by-over coverage of the Third Test, when the discussion meandered around to stories from one's first job. I emailed an anecdote from my brief spell in the basement of the legal profession.

I walked into the Sun Hotel and glanced at a tall, blue-eyed blonde. She was wearing silver flatties and a blue shift dress that stopped a few inches short of her knees. I ignored her, thinking "it won't be her." She waved and called me over, and immediately offered to buy me a drink. All night she was even-handed about buying drinks. This is Correct Female Behaviour, and it reminded me--as a pleasant contrast--of the Senior Lecturer in Naughty Boys Studies at Ribble Polytechnic who let me buy every single drink on our first and last date. She was on, what, 40K. Of course I buy all the drinks!

Danniella kept tugging at her skirt. Don't, it's OK, you've judged your skirt length perfectly. It doesn't matter if it rides up a bit. I remember us talking about how much life changes after you've had children, and her daughter who finished a degree a few years ago and now lives a contented hand-to-mouth existence on a houseboat.

She had to go to get her last bus to her village up the valley. We stood up together. We went out the door and I set myself to accompany her. "Are you walking me to the bus station?" she said. "Of course I am!" Oh no, we're not shaking hands and saying a polite goodbye yet.

I put my arm through hers, as New Road is a bit steep. On our way to her bus stop we passed the Head of Flipcharts of our local Council, out on the lash as usual at this time of night with his taciturn friend. Both of them saw us and stared. Everyone notices every acquaintances's social changes here. I have come to like it; it gives you broader scope for telling stories.

Her bus arrived and we quickly had to solve the saying goodbye problem. I advance my lips towards hers; an inch away, I am still waiting for a signal. I turned mine conservatively towards her cheek, but she turned her lips towards mine, and I made a correction, to snog her. Her mouth and body were gorgeous. She's taller than me and it was exciting having to tilt my head up to meet her lips.

I walked through town full of it, and diverted myself into a new pub which serves good beer at high prices and which has the atmosphere of a cardboard box. I wanted to sit down and drink her in, to feel the evening with her as a recent memory on my skin. I had just got to my table and met a young barmaid from a pub I frequent, who was there with a man she seemed to be very pleased to be marrying. What a waste, at your age. In the way that one can sometimes talk more openly to people like taxi drivers, whom one doesn't know, I recounted a version of my evening.

At home, there was a text on my phone. "Blimey, that was nice, can we start at the moment where we ended next time?" After several flirty texts, some of which discussed the zip down the back of her dress, we have agreed that I'm going up to hers on Tuesday. She warns "If I meet you in a FROCK the whole village will talk. I'll meet you in jeans and a T-shirt." "Well," I reply, "you could always change into something more comfortable when we're in your house."

Out of the blue, Seriouscrush (who owns this house), suggests "Beer? It's been ages."

Why? Perhaps the answer might come if I stare at the screen hard enough. We never go out any more. I ring Kim and tell her, trying to dilute my worry about what they might want by saying it out loud. She takes me laughingly away by telling me about her successful date with a Politics postgrad and some crap drugs.

In the pub's slanting garden, the wooden seats aren't levelled off, and I sit in a vulgar open-legged straddle across the plank, presenting a laddish 90 degree angle to Seriouscrush and her boyf which is not the sort of pose one wants to present in polite Lancaster society. I am nervous and am drinking quickly, becoming a bit animated.

Boyf goes to get another round. The beer, from Kirkby Lonsdale, is first class. We give their two-year-old a little sip. She puckers a little, then asks for more. Good girl.

"Yes," says Seriouscrush, sitting up a little, announcing the topic. Her beautiful tits arch slightly towards me. Everything about her looks and clothes, her estuary colours, her skirt hemmed on the bias, her black square editorish glasses, her expensively untrammelled black hair, her gorgeous body, those thin, prematurely-old fingers that I used to silently shout at in desperation, to touch me, is still beautiful; but I don't want to be consumed, burnt away to something she could breathe on and make disappear, again.

Oh get on with it. Have you found out about our affair, or are you chucking me out of the house?

"The window frames and the door really need taking back to some good wood, or down to some decent paint, and repainting. It would be easier if, er, you could do it."

I wasn't expecting that. So this is where is has ended, discussing window frames. Giddy with relief, I fetch another round and we settle into a English Sunday Pub Chat about varnish and kitchen units and what has happened lately to people we know and friends stuck in rubbish jobs.

In further house news, I receive an enquiry about the room which will become vacant at the beginning of the next academic year. It doesn't make any difference whatsoever to my objective and impartial housemate selection process that she is mid-twenties, very pretty, and a PhDer. She's Canadian, but we all have our crosses to bear in life.