I hung on the side, quietly contented, a warmth of laughter still resonating. I drew to the door to see her familiar blond flash, watched it slope to the bar, and wondered whether to make contact. It seems it's now commonplace to be jealous of people who were not yet alive by one's first conscious favourite year of the eighties. Or any year of the eighties. He stood vaguely in front of me, all hair and t-shirts, reminding me of you again, again. Why are you everywhere lately? Everywhere and no-where.

Why was I so dry? Why did I have nothing to say to anyone? I bought this amazing Oulipo Compendium, I could've shared, Have you got anything exciting happening with the Design Festival, cool boy with compass? Instead I hung on the radiator cover, balancing achy femoral heads, feeling glad I was A Person again, not just A Job. I was warmed, like a bun under the grill on low, not yet toasty. Not yet ready, still quite an empty shell.

I hate these moments. You're so super aware of yourself that that awareness is all there is. The rest is on holiday. The rest is on the forbidden Cyprus beach holiday. On lunch. In the bath. Out in the back garden too far away to call. All there is is you being you. No references, no hung beliefs, just a naked idea, a framework less its weight, not yet bearing the guise of fact. I'm in hibernation, you can't shout, I've been internet shopping all afternoon (for money) and I've given my entire consideration to the screen. I'm not normally like this. I can be A Person. But right now I'm also slightly A Job.

I got the bus out of town to the chip shop.

How Necessary Is A Relationship?

How necessary is a relationship? We're looking at the proposal in a severely limited, Hollywood rom-com kind of way, an internet dating kind of way, a mortgages and dogs kind of way, a him and her kind of way, a lead and a follow kind of way, a black and white kind of way. Coupled up or singled out, that's the way I went in, and I came away with a new set of potentials. Not either or. Not binary. Not this or that. It expanded my thoughts on the matter for the first time in months.

I walked back from the recycling bins, noticing the detritus on high balconies, the leaves on the trees, and just felt like I had a lot to be self-satisfied with. I sat in the kitchen with delicious soup heated by the new perfect porridge pan, a warm bowl of romance for one, and it's not sad actually, it's fucking perfect and if anyone else was here it would be actually slightly ruined. It's no fun when they're not enjoying the film as much as you are. It actually ruins it for you. Romance is not dead, and it's not just for two. At all.

You're lucky you caught us, she said, as I checked the sign and clock through the glass. I pretended I hadn't done this pre-check, fully believing the 'open' sign, (unlike the confusing sign earlier, 'Sorry we are open'). We shut at five but we've just been chatting, she said, and I could see how eight hours together wasn't enough for this pair, after we'd talked moth prevention for over fifteen minutes I didn't want to leave either. Eight years of dry cleaning, seven years of sale rail, twenty minutes of moth tips, six part-eaten admissions, two amazing friends. I wondered whether they talked dry cleaning all day, because with them, I certainly could've.

They said on Wednesday night that good friendships, like theirs, seem to continue way back before you literally knew each other, and continue to some infinite point long after death. I watched them watching each other read, a glow from both. To see two people in respect and awe of each other is quite voyeuristic heaven. Contrast this with overseeing a romantic couple merging into one; bodies and styles locked, a street pair that fuse into ultimate dullness, two separates amalgamate into a waste. Fit them one body with four limbs, rolling down the street, two wholes rendered new useless.

How necessary is a relationship? Necessary enough to connect with other humans but not lose yourself. Necessary to support and nurture but not hold up or drag down. Necessary to inspire and spur on, help fill in the gaps, not fill them with selfish glue. The romance is all about you. Not yous. Relationship does not mean sex. They don't have a class called How Necessary Is Sex, but maybe they should. Relationships are free and all over the place, and you can make them in the dry cleaners at 5.29 on a Saturday. Or indeed take up the 84 year old's offer of the role as his part-time girlfriend.

The new ego

Oh how I worship at my own altar since I know that she loves me! I didn't shout, at the point in the evening last night where it may have fitted, my thought in her 'conversation', well Goethe's thought in my moment in her conversation. My veins coursed with potential, there's a point that fits, and, you, don't take it. Where does that energy go? They were talking about soap operas and Mike Leigh films and I didn't feel it was appropriate to shout out, didn't know if my point was just to prove I had a point, to prove to myself I had a memory (a memory! A good one!) without choice.

The point, is I didn't shout it. Again I didn't say something I had formed in my head, didn't do something I could minute-momentarily see as correct, something kept me back, restrained me. The ego. The ego is not always out for your best interests, naughty, naughty ego. I don't like this trick it's playing on me at the moment. An over-arching sense of self-awareness, a person-proofer, a social filter hiked up to a million. No, I won't press if they speak mostly French in Antwerp, ask whether you're familiar with soaking pulses overnight, say that you look totally melt-worthy in that suit. I'll step back into my up tight self and keep all these wonderings in, because they're not worth anything.

Isn't it much more fun when you're under slept and hung over, saying things you didn't know you thought, let alone meant? The ego grumbles under a cold thin bed sheet and too much gin, and you're free to be as loose as you please! What's that? I'm fun today? I know I'm fun today, I feel a bit mental to be honest, but isn't it also, fun! Maybe I've been sleeping too much lately, my devotion to good dincharya perhaps a little too meticulous. It is perhaps odd that I was up before the light outside my window went off. This is an extreme version. Perhaps I also tricked the ego this morning, peeled open the sheets to the first birdsong before it even stirred.

She was talking about the mind, intellect and ego. I was glad this was around two thousand years ago and not just a modern Freudian thing. It started on the course, seeing this weird outside version of myself, just another comparison of paper and pens to bring to the sharing table. It poured out from creativity into the everyday (if at all discernible). I'm standing in my own way! I shouted last night as I spun round a corner at high speed to bedtime castigating my quotation refrain. The thing is I don't know if I said it, or thought it, was it in, or out, did I stop it, or did it pour out riotously while the ego wasn't looking? More of this please.