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Saturday, 4th August – 12 weeks, 6 days

1. The person who tries to draw a swastika on the fence outside the hospital but keeps getting the prongs the wrong way up.

2. Quorn manufacturers. Stop kidding yourself. It tastes nothing like it.

3. Sandra Huggins.

Had one of my dreams again – this time about the baby. I’m in a garden and in the centre is a deep pit and the baby’s at the bottom, naked and kicking and crying. I climb down inside but when I get to the bottom it’s gone, though I can still hear it crying. And I look up and standing at the edge of the pit is a woman holding a bundle. I can’t get out. And the shaft of light above me gets smaller and smaller. And I can’t scream because my mouth won’t open. What in the name of cock does that mean?

Jim and Elaine were out early at the hospital for Jim’s checkup, leaving me to feed Tink, a loud sing-a-long to Nicki Minaj in the shower, and a damn good wank. There being no decent dicks on the horizon, this is about as good as my sex life gets these days. There are three remote possibilities – a bin man who bears a passing resemblance to Ryan Reynolds, the blond guy in the dry cleaners who wears Iron Man socks, and what Elaine calls ‘The Element’, who sits on the war memorial in piss-stained joggers, drinking Diamond White and telling passers-by how Frank Sinatra stole his medals.

But for now, to the Masturbation Chamber it is.

It’s so much better when the olds are out. You try fudding yourself off with a silent vibe when your bedroom wall is cracker-thin and your mother-in-law’s practising her descant for ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’ in the next room. Now that my sickness seems to have subsided, my other symptoms have come screaming into view. Horniness is one of them. Another is mood swings. Yeah, I know, I’m a psychopath, mood swings come with the territory, but these are more frequent – like Quasimodo on a bell rope.

Any given day I’ll start off Angry (e.g. gameshows), then veer into Sad (e.g. woman on TV with kid born without eyes) then I’m awash with Guilt (e.g. shouting at old man crossing the road/anxiety dream about AJ) then euphorically Happy (e.g. being in the garden or watching documentaries with Tink and Jim). This rotation sometimes only takes about twenty minutes.

Hungry for some junk, I took a little trip to the mini mart and then walked with Tink up to the Well House.

A tranquil, former fisherman’s cottage built in the 1700s and burnt down in the 1750s, it’s newly-thatched and white-washed, a little gravel path winds through the trees to the front door – painted blue with a brass knocker shaped like a knot of rope. Through the back garden gate there’s a patio right in the sun spot, with two chairs and a glass-topped table. The walls are thick granite and the ceilings are low and uneven. The floors are all worn flagstone downstairs and hardwood above and in the living room is an inglenook hearth with wood burner and a log basket. You can burn allsorts in there.