Got in this morning and saw the headmistress I had two dates with last year had reappeared on the dating site. After our second meeting she emailed me to say that she was sorry but she wasn't over her husband yet and apologised for any implication that she was leading me on. That is decent and honest.

Seeing that fifteen months has passed, I thought it might be worth contacting her again, so I sent a polite email, wondering if she remembered meeting me, telling her my girls had gone to Sixth Form, asking after her, and saying it would be a pleasure to hear from her again.

Yes of course I remember you! Thank you for the message.

[some boring shite about her children, because I mentioned mine so as not to appear too eager]

I dipped my toe cautiously back into this site a few weeks ago and saw you here – and of course I received your note in February,

It wasn't a "note", it was a Valentines card made from one inch by one inch post-it notes which she had to peel off to read the full message, which I delivered to the pub in which she's a regular, not knowing her address, on 14th February, a day on which I could hardly afford the bus fare.

which was very flattering, thank you. However, in both cases, I decided not to contact you. I really enjoy your company but don’t think it would work for me in a romantic sense. Which is why we’re both here isn’t it?

Good luck looby – you deserve it!

I would normally assume that that means "I don't fancy you," but at the end of our first date we were snogging at the bus stop, and while she was still on the bus she texted me to say "Lovely night. Can we start the next one how we ended it?" We met the following Tuesday. I said "Could I ask that you wear that blue dress again?"

I went to hers. Immediately I was inside her door we started snogging. She's taller than me and I found it a turn-on to have to tilt my head up slightly to kiss her as I pulled up the blue dress and ran my fingers across her knickers. She cooked me dinner and we went to bed and had as successful a fuck as you can have on the second date. I told her honestly that she's gorgeous, without mentioning the modern abomination of a shaved cunt.

So "romantically" can't mean "sexually." But women talk in code all the time. Another rejection. I don't what the fuck more I've got to do. Stick with Trina, and see relationships as a form of commerce, successful in a disabused way.

Trina's next wish for her birthday was to go on the Settle to Carlisle railway, a feat of Victorian engineering which cost at least a hundred lives, not only from accidents but also from a smallpox epidemic. "The terrain traversed is among the bleakest and wildest in England", says Wikipedia, but is also, even to someone to whom all fields and hills look the same, and whose idea of a country walk is a hike across a car park to the pub's entrance -- beautiful.

We stayed in Appleby in a £140 a night hotel -- something impossible for me by my own means. It's an 1830s pile with a creaky, listing staircase and a soporific wood-panelled bar with none of the din and artificial noise and strobing television with which British public spaces are saturated. I wanted to hibernate there and let drink-softened days of inaction happen to me.

We ordered our evening meal and I overheard the receptionist shouting down the phone to a deaf enquirer. "No, I'm afraid we haven't found Mr Thompson's plus-fours." We had one of the most delicious meals I've ever hand, crab cakes with roasted vegetables, squid in garlic and basil sauce, and Appleby cheese and leek cake in a batter made with the house bitter from Carlisle.

We found the best pub in town, full of swearing and tattoos. Three women walked in and went up to the old blokes at the next table. One of them opened their conversation with "Did you get your fat balls?"

But it was the railway we were there for. On the platform, the stationmaster came up to an infirm lady, addressed her by her name, and told her that he'd ring Leeds to make sure there was someone to help her get off there.

We went to Horton-in-Ribblesdale, over the border in Yorkshire. Neither of us are interested in walking, so we found the pub and had a meal which brought us back to the median of English food: generalised fishcakes and a bag of undressed leaves advertised as a salad. In what was to be a pattern for the village, the pub was full of hectoring notices. "No muddy boots, large rucksacks or wet clothes in this bar." "Dogs must be on a short lead and children must be accompanied at all times." "Please be aware these toilets are not changing rooms."

A couple of guests arrived to book in. Me and Trina, ploughing through the food, were inadvertently looking like the sort of people who were eyeing up the spirits bottles for a raid. The landlady said "Well, it's just I can't leave the bar. You'll have to wait until the girl's here."

The unwelcoming, admonishing mood continued elsewhere in the village. At the entrance to the road to the railway station, a sign with a crossed out camera and train said "No entry for trainspotters vehicles." Haughty, but no apostrophe. A sign in someone's window read "If you don't live here, don't park here." It's a village determined to maintain the mean-spirited stereotype of its county.

Back in a gentler Westmorland, we returned to the Hare and Hounds, where we chatted to a man who was born in the same hospital as Trina, and heard convincingly precise anecdotes of an ex-Marine who bought us a drink. There was nothing to eat, but the barmaid told us to get a pie from the shop next door and bring it back. Appleby is a one-horse town but its inhabitants advertise it well.

That is, except during the Horse Fair, when thousands of pikeys descend on the town with their horses. The landlady told us that whilst it's on, they have to hire a removal firm and carpet fitters, and a storage unit in Carlisle. They have to take out all the lightbulbs except those behind the bar, all the pictures, the TV, the fruit machine, the tables and chairs, the condiment bottles, and take the carpets up -- because they piss in the corner-- and remove all the glassware and replace it with plastic glasses.

Back at our lovely hotel, we chose from a six-page wine list that treated you with the respect of assuming some basic knowledge of grape varieties and regions, with no descriptions of the wine at all beyond what is on the label. I asked our waiter about the Horse Fair. "No, we don't really get that sort of trade here." I felt comfortably snobbish, and wriggled myself deeper into my armchair.

Last Tuesday I got up at crack of dawn to wave the girls off on the bus to Sixth Form College, silently protective and concerned. It's a long bus ride to Preston and they have to be out of bed at 6.15. Neither me nor Kirsty are sure how long it will last. Once they'd gone, Kirsty said "I wish they'd chosen Lancaster. This means I can't stay in bed now."

At Wine Club, there is no-one I fancy, and I am stuck with the elderly male bores who always pour themselves bigger measures than everyone else. The woman who said "You [plural] must come round" two months ago has still not offered a date, despite me reacting warmly and saying that she should suggest one as I've probably got more free time than her. In some middle class circles, "you must come round" means "goodbye."

August's book club meeting was cancelled as no-one was around, so we had two books to discuss this time. H is for Hawk, and Frenchman's Creek, Daphne du Maurier's piratical bodice-ripper. "Perhaps nothing has happened yet. But as we are dealing with a Frenchman, it is only a matter of time before something dastardly happens!" T-- , the actor who chose it, couldn't act enough to suppress his bridling at us dismissing such a corny book. N--- was doing that tic in which he keeps scratching himself close to his cock.

I'd met him in the pub earlier; the secret society of habitual heavy drinkers. He said he's not sleeping very well. Money problems, he said, but I think he's forgotten that a few months ago he told me that his wife had been diagnosed with cancer. He rents a comfortable old house in a village up the valley where he goes back a long way. I asked him if they could move somewhere cheaper, but he doesn't want to leave his village. The locals can't afford to stay. We're being zoned now, like in America.

On Friday, my benefactress took me to Brussels. It's her birthday round about now and she wanted to go away somewhere, but I didn't realise it would be Brussels.

"I'm a gigolo, " I tell my friends. It's true. I give her an access to a life of dancing and drugs and fun that she'd never get from her friends, all human rights and yoga. She thinks the sex we have is brilliant but it's pretty ordinary.

This is how it's going to be from now on. My poor background, my ambivalent class status, and being class-ly bilingual, and my "daring" lifestyle, will be the currency which I will use in relationships with women, which will remain at heart, commercial. The women I find sexually attractive with whom I have giddy nights of druggy, unpredictable fun -- Kim, Wendy, Kitty -- don't want to fuck me.

Inexpressible lust crackles between the tables at
Les Gens Que J'Aime

So with that much tacitly understood, Trina paid for almost all of our long weekend at the Brussels Beer Festival, where we got through about 10% of the 450 beers --- all Belgian --- available in a crowded Grand Place. It was a very poor show on the train at Calais, not a hitchhiker to be seen.

Late afternoon, a brewer stood on a pedestal and sliced the top of a bottle of beer off with a sword. We found our favourite bar -- Le Coq -- where we sat drunkenly talking in my mediocre but adequate French to the locals. I pretended to be Cypriot when the France v Cyprus match came on. Trina told the bony, uncommunicative man sitting next to us that he had lovely hands and asked if he was an artist. He looked at her with the wide-eyed stare of lunatic solipsism.

The Flemish pronunciation is quite a challenge. I had particular difficulties with asking for a "Leeuwse Schutter". My attempts to say it raised titters at the bar and an impromptu lesson. The bloke I was talking to said -- "don't worry, we can't say those words like 'Worcestershire', which is a shame because I really like Worcestershire sauce."

Apologies for the several mistakes in an earlier version of this post. I was very tired.

Went up to see my Mum over in Middlesbrough. Got back and two weeks later, she rings me, voice cracking, to tell me that the last of her brothers has died. "It's just us [sisters] left now."

I was in the pub the other day when our local MP walked in with a couple of friends for a drink. She's definitely the most attractive and well-dressed member of the House. I dashed over to her as she was about to leave and congratulated her on defying the leadership and voting against the latest Bill to punish the poor, and for mentioning fracking in her maiden speech. To my astonishment, when I mentioned my uncommon Christian name, she knew my surname, and talked me into going on a phone bank at the Labour Hall to ring up existing members of the Labour Party to try to persuade them to vote for Jeremy Corbyn in the leadership election.

I was given a mobile phone, a list of numbers, and an instruction not to leave messages. It was in a run-down hall in Scotforth. I was offered a "drink". I declined, thinking it the usual shredded tea or instant coffee, but one of the choices was a homemade wine, which was viscous and heady. I noticed that, as the new boy, I did most of the actual work, while they had those self-reflecting conversations for which people sometimes join political parties.

Our MP met me outside and I felt myself melting with a lack of self-control. She was wearing this gorgeous scooped, high-necked dress of black and white dots, black tights, and black flatties. Sex. I want to have sex with you.

Kim came over for a few days most of which we spent in Liverpool. On our way up to the station, we passed by the gorgeous ginger-haired Irish girl I had my one and only date with a few months ago. See what I've got now, I said, silently lying to myself and her.

Kim was being fickle. I thought we were going to the Jackson Pollock exhibition at the Tate right up until the last moment, so we never got further than the shop, where I stole seven postcards and a rubber.

We walked back and she diverted us into a dog-rough pub, a proper boozer, where we were instantly accepted. I like how she's fearless about walking into pubs that almost all my middle class friends would eschew, with a mixture of fear and their sense of the boundaries of class. If you look up the pub on YT, you get a video of a woman kicking shit out of a bloke outside, entitled "Prozzer v Drunk, Liverpool".

Back at the hotel, we got into bed and my fingertips crept across towards her. It was hard being in bed with Kim, in more ways than one, but that's not allowed, so I didn't touch her, even though I was longing to do so.

The next morning she suggested scrapping breakfast for cocktails, so we had Bellinis at 11am. On the train back to mine, we got talking to the couple at the next table. I found out the female half was originally from Morecambe, and the fact that we'd asynchronously gone to the same school turned us into bestie mates. They seemed OK so I offered them a wee line of my speed. He was modest about it, but she dug into the bag and shovelled two large artificial nails-full of it up her nose.

She lit up a cigarette. A teenage boy came over and told her that she couldn't do that. “Oh it's OK, love, don't worry about that.” They invited us back to their house in Wigan. No.

At Preston station, I fancied a last drink. The man poured a pint of Heineken and asked me for £4.20. "Four twenty?" I said. "We're in Lancashire, not Surrey. Sorry mate, I'm not paying that." We walked out and he poured it down the drain.

Kim was off her head the other night. In an admirable act of forethought, she maxed out her credit card on something in the week before it became illegal, and is blessed with ample stocks.

She left me a long message around midnight. I was asleep and didn't hear it, but turned my phone on when I woke up. Her voice was unintentionally sexy. I texted her to say that it was a pleasure having her in bed with me this morning. She'll literally will be in bed with me on Wednesday, in that unsexed way that is half compliment, half insult.

The woman from the dating site I was supposed to be meeting last week ducked out the day before, saying that she was leaving the site (she's still there) because there are "too many dickheads" and she's "not ready for anything." The crumb I was thrown was an invite to connect on farce book.

Thanks for letting me know. Although can I just say --- having been let down in this way several times before, I wish women would make up their minds before they go on dating sites whether or not they are interested in actually meeting up. Never mind though, I understand that you can sometimes get cold feet.

I'd rather not get in touch on FB. An impersonal, online connection isn't really what I'm looking for.

All the best and hope you have a nice evening.

To London, where my middle daughter was at a summer school at the National Youth Theatre. My youngest had been warning her about the effects of the city's miasma, and as we set off to the station, she opened the front door and yelled down the street "Don't come back a wanker!"

I am out of practice with London, and I underestimated the amount of time it would take to get out to Greenwich and back to Victoria. I missed my coach, so blagged the train instead, working myself up into that quality of lying in which you almost convince yourself. It was a hot day and I was pleased to notice a speckle of sweat on my forehead, which I hoped the guard would take as an indication of honest anxiety.

We sped through Milton Keynes, Donna's home town, and I started mentally re-running, for the hundredth time, the Sex on the Stairs Session.

The guard came along. "Look, it's alright. You can tell the genuine ones. I'm happy to accept you've made a genuine mistake, so you'll be OK to Lancaster."

I had also lost my phone, so I asked to borrow one from the man sitting opposite me to inform Trina, who was meeting me at the station. The following day, I discovered that when he got off the train at Crewe, he'd texted her. "Hi this is the man from the train. Sounds like your friend's had a really awful day, so I hope you're going to take him out for a couple of pints tonight!" How exquisitely kind, searching and flirty.

I went back down a fortnight later to fetch her. I stayed in a hostel in Elephant and Castle, whose one redeeming feature is that it's far too rough an area for the hectares of cawing American tourists that waddle all over the canonised bits of London. (Do they not have long trousers in America?)

I went to a pub where groups of elderly black men with greying hair and pork pie hats looked as though they'd just finished putting down some backing tracks on a Cameo album. I got talking to someone about shoplifting; he'd been made redundant from his job as an assistant supermarket manager.

At closing time, he said that there was another real ale place a little way off. Rather disinhibited at this stage, I said "Would you mind if I gave you a snog?" "Not in here!" he said, with some alarm; and I felt incredibly stupid, finished my pint and bade him goodnight.

Trina had an early meeting in Burnley, and was staying in a budget hotel there. I was rather elbowed out from my house for the night. A Chinese girl, to whom I'd explained that there would be a room coming up in about a week to ten days' time, turned up to have a look round, then informed me that she'd like to move in that afternoon, as she had nowhere to stay.

I told her she could go on the settee for a few days. Then the other lodger informed me that there was a couchsurfer coming that night and asked me if he could sleep on the sofa. I asked Trina if she fancied a bit of company in Burnley, and moved the Chinese girl into my room.

In a beautiful old pub, we got talking to the blokes on the next table. It was slightly awkward as they were on a lower level, so they eventually all moved up to ours. The elderly man sitting next to me noticed I'd taken my shoes off. "Yes," I said, "I know it's not very classy but my feet are hot."

He bent down and massaged my feet for a few seconds. "I've got a foot fetish, you know. If I was to suck your toes, my cock would get hard."

A younger man with such a large chip on his shoulder that I'm surprised he could stand up straight, was telling us over and over again that he's been told he's one of the best songwriters in the country, and that he's a plumber's son and has lived in Burnley all his life. He kept interrupting us with question of the form "What about..." and then it would be Plato or Marx or someone.

I had ignored him up to that point but couldn't stop myself. "Oh God this is boring mate. I feel like I'm being quizzed about my knowledge of the Routledge Very Short Introductions series." This made him quite aggressive and he told us to "get out of Burnley", which had a comical opposite effect to that which he was trying to create.

We turned back to the mixture of conversation and foot massage. At the end, I gave the footman my card. The following morning, there was a message from him. "Hello, it's Ernest. I would love to suck your toes. I think you're a lovely man and if you would like to ring me and let me suck your toes, it's [number]. I would just like to do that and give you a cuddle and be kind to you."