He raised his head and banged his fist on his desk, causing the ink bottles and nibbed pens he uses to jump. 'I have only one regret.' He looked me in the face and locked on to my eyes. I was unable to tear my gaze away from his. 'I desperately wanted a son. And, Adrian, I think I've found him. You and I have so much in common. I too despise sport and low culture. And I, like you, adore Marigold. I honestly feel, Adrian, that you are the son I never had. Please say that I can lean on you in the dark days to come.

He held his hand out. What could I do, diary, but take it? My audience in his study lasted fourteen minutes, yet I did not speak one word.

Monday December 9th A scandal has broken out concerning Mrs Blair, the prime minister's barrister wife. She has allowed a convicted fraudster called Peter Foster to negotiate on her behalf to buy two riverside apartments in Bristol, costing in total over half a million pounds.

Foster is wanted by the Australian police for selling false slimming pills. On September 1st he was told by immigration officials at Luton Airport that he would be deported within two days on the grounds that he was 'not conducive to the public good'. Mr Foster is the lover of Cherie Blair's guru and aromatherapist, Carole Caplin.

I wonder why she didn't use an estate agent. I know that in opinion polls they are less respected than politicians and journalists, but surely even an estate agent is more trustworthy than a convicted fraudster.

The Leicestershire and Rutland Creative Writing Group met in the snug at the Red Cow. Only Ken Blunt turned up. Gary Milksop left a message on my mobile to say that he was stuck on the M6, where a lorry had shed its load of frozen turkeys, but he said, 'I'll see you on the 23rd. I'll be bringing my partner and a couple of friends. Please text details of venue, time and dress code.'

Ken read to me a vicious piece of polemic called 'Bush's Poodle'.

'Bitch America is on heat She straddles the globe Defecating hamburgers, apple pie and Coke Tony, the toy poodle, minces at the rear Sniffing the bitch's arse and trying to mount.'

A couple of old blokes who were sitting in the snug looked up in alarm. Ken has got a loud voice.

After I'd read him a few pages of my Celebrity and Madness book, Ken said, 'I'm not surprised you've not found a publisher. It's bloody crap. Who wants to read about a load of fake-tanned tosspots?' He then said, 'And this dinner on the 23rd, have you booked a venue?'

I told him that I had.

He then said, 'So who's the guest speaker?'

I told him that it would be a pleasant surprise.

He said almost menacingly, 'I hope so. My wife is a keen autograph hunter.'

As soon as I got home to Rat Wharf I sent a text message to Pandora: Keep the evening of 23 12 2002 free. U R guest speaker at VIP dinner in Leicester.

Tuesday December 10th According to Asif, the garage log bloke, the photocopiers at the United Nations cannot cope with copying the 12,000-page document listing Iraq's weapons programme.

Syria wants to know why America, Britain, France, Russia and China will see the document first.

Asif said, 'America needs time to use the Tippex and blank out all the bad bits, what it's done in the past, like selling weapons to Saddam, innit?'

I said, 'As if, Asif.'

Mr Carlton-Hayes arranged for two armchairs to be delivered today. They are Edwardian and are covered in worn brown velvet.

I sat by the fire in one and checked his stock list. I was asleep within minutes.

When I woke, Marigold was sitting in the opposite chair. She said that she would be at mumming rehearsals each night this week. She asked me if I would join the group and play Joseph opposite her Mary.

I told Marigold that I was an official agnostic and couldn't possibly take part in any religious enactment whatsoever.

Marigold said, 'Mummery simply means mime. It isn't necessarily religious. It has its roots in paganism. Mummy and Daddy were founder members of the New Secular Society.'

I threw another log on the fire and said, 'I cannot tolerate mime, Marigold.'

Marigold said, 'You are a very intolerant person. I told her that a combination of mime and madrigals was my idea of hell.

Marigold said, 'My idea of hell is a life without you.' Then she said, 'You should wear gloves when you're handling logs. A splinter could lead to septicaemia.' Then she left the shop.

Before her parting remark I had handled logs with a nonchalance bordering on recklessness. But for the rest of the day I handled them as if they were sticks of dynamite.

Wednesday December 11th Moon's First Quarter A hundred Hollywood stars signed a petition against a pre-emptive strike on Iraq. I have never heard of any of them apart from Gillian Anderson, the X-Files woman.

Pandora rang me at work to say that she won't be in Leicester until the 24th, when she is attending a constituency drinks party. I begged her to change her plans.

She said, 'Gordon and Sarah Brown have invited me for champagne and mince pies at Downing Street. He wants to talk to me about my political future. Is your "VIP" dinner more important than that?'

I had to admit that it wasn't.

Thursday December 12th An email from William asking me to go to Nigeria for Christmas. As if! As I write, I am completely penniless, there is no petrol in the car and my fridge freezer contains two croissants and a wizened lemon.

Direct debits have snatched my wages from my account.

Friday December 13th My credit card bill arrived. I was gob smacked to see how much Barclays were charging me per month for the money I had borrowed for my deposit on Rat Wharf.

My solicitor, Dave Barwell, has sent me a Christmas card of a robin wearing a Santa Claus hat. Inside was a bill for PS569.48 for 'professional services'.

I ate the croissants and squeezed the lemon juice into a mug of hot water. I felt like a monk in a monastic order.

I was glad when lunchtime came and Mr Carlton-Hayes offered me one of his cheese sandwiches.

Saturday December 14th Barclaycard are a truly magnificent organization. I received a letter from them today which said, 'As a valued Barclaycard customer we are delighted to advise you that your credit limit has been increased to PS12,000. Your new credit limit is available to use straight away and will show on your statement.'

Perhaps there is a God. Barclaycard have given me PS2,000 to spend immediately.

Sunday December 15th My fridge freezer is packed with food. The car's petrol tank is full. However, so are all the car parks within two miles of the city centre, so I walked along the towpath to Water Meadow Park, the out-of-town shopping centre. I kept a wary eye out for the swans. A cruel east wind was blowing around the squat buildings.

Next, Marks & Spencer, WH Smith and DFS looked as though they had been dropped on to the former water meadows from outer space, and the shoppers streaming into their front entrances looked to me to be similarly alien.

Cars were queuing to get into the car parks and also to get out of the car parks. The main approach roads were clogged with shoppers. A police motorcyclist was trying to unjam the traffic. A police helicopter hovered overhead and car horns were blaring. It sounded more like Rome than the East Midlands. When I passed a makeshift garden hut/Santa's grotto that had been erected in the north car park and saw a queue of shivering children waiting their turn to see the great man, I had a moment of utter desolation and I turned around and walked home.

Marigold rang me eleven times tonight. I didn't ring her back. She makes me unhappy.

Monday December 16th Two teenage girls wearing miniskirts, crop tops and thin cotton jackets came into the shop this morning and made immediately for the fire. The sight of them filled me with irritation. If they were so cold, why didn't they wear more clothes?

Since they showed no interest in the books, I tried out a bit of sales patter. I asked them if they had done their Christmas shopping yet. They said they hadn't.

I told them that books make very good Christmas presents, and one of them said, 'Yeah, my mum sometimes reads a book when there's nowt on the telly.'

I asked her what her mother's interests were.

She said, 'I don't think my mum is interested in owt really.'

After a few more probing questions, I ascertained that the girl's mother was called Pat, that she was forty-three, that she worked part-time in a light-bulb factory, that she was the mother of three children, that she drank cocktails when she went out on Saturday nights with her husband, that she was an Elvis fan and grew her own tomatoes.

After a few minutes I brought the girl a selection of suitable books: One Hundred Cocktails to Make at Home, Elvis -- a Life in Pictures and Vegetables on Your Window Sill. None of them was more than PS3.

She said she would take the cocktail book and asked if I could gift-wrap it. Young people today are so spoilt.

Before they left the shop, I asked the girls why they were wearing skimpy clothes on such a cold day.

They giggled, and after the shop door was closed I heard one girl say to the other, 'What an old perv!'

I wanted to run after them and explain that I wasn't a dirty old man, but, feeling that this would have made matters worse, I stayed inside the shop.

Tuesday December 17th Marigold came into the shop at lunchtime and said that she was unable to eat or sleep. She said, 'If I had known that falling in love with you was going to make me -so miserable, I would have frozen my heart against you.

She asked Mr Canton-Hayes if he would display a poster advertising the mummers' various performances.

He was too kind to refuse, though the poster was badly designed. The group of mummers looked more like characters from The Night of the Living Dead.

She asked if I would be there when the mummers make their debut outside the Ball and Wicket at Thrussington Parva on Thursday night. I couldn't think of a suitable excuse, so I said yes.

After she'd gone, Mr Carlton-Hayes said, 'Forgive me if I'm speaking out of turn, Adrian, but that young lady seems to have you wrapped around her little finger.'

Diary, I should have fallen on his neck and confessed that I needed to talk to him about my Marigold dilemma, but pride would not allow me to be open and honest with him. Because the truth is, diary, I never want to see Marigold or her horrible family again, though I exclude Daisy from the above statement. I would like to see a lot more of Daisy. In fact I would like to see the whole of Daisy, every inch of her, inside and out.

Wednesday December 18th Dreamed that Ken Blunt and Marigold had gone into Habitat with my Visa card and bought a king-size bed.

Thursday December 19th Full Moon Mr Carlton-Hayes was very kind to me today. He said, 'Adrian, my dear, you don't have to go to this mummery-fummery thing tonight, you know. Simply tell the young lady that you do not care for her and wish to be free of any obligations.'

I wish I had taken his advice. I drove to the Ball and Wicket at Thrussington Parva and had half a lager shandy in the bar.

The landlord, a surly fat man, told me that the mummers were in an upstairs room getting changed into their masks and costumes.

A group of Morris men and Morris women in civilian clothes came into the bar. They looked almost normal, though there was rather a lot of facial hair. They were joined by a group of folk musicians carrying strange-looking instruments that later turned out to be medieval. Among them was Poppy. Her hair was tied at the back with a holly-printed ribbon, but it still cascaded over her bum.

The surly landlord laboured behind the bar, pulling pints of real ale. He went to the bottom of the stairs and shouted, 'Noreen, Noreen, I'm down 'ere on my own!'

I bought Poppy a drink and we sat in the corner. I asked her why she was not taking part.

She said, 'Medievalism is not my thing. The clothes were terrible. I prefer the Romans.'

I said, 'But the Romans were invaders.' She pulled a hank of hair over her shoulder and stroked it as though it were an animal, and said, 'The Romans were a civilizing force. They had hot baths and amazing hair products I asked her how often Daisy came to Beeby on the Wold.

She tossed her hair back and said, 'Often enough to cause a row.

At 8 o'clock a bearded man wearing a smock and gaiters came into the bar and announced in a stentorian voice, 'My lords, my ladies, gentle folk of the parish and those that toil by thy hands, please be of knowledge that the mummers be about to enact the story of how Jesus be born.'

It was drizzling outside and I had not brought an umbrella. My mother had borrowed it and failed to bring it back.

The street lights were on and several of the mummers held old-fashioned lanterns aloft, but it was still hard to see what was going on, even though the moon hung above Thrussington Parva like a globular ceiling light.

It was a peripatetic performance. We trooped around the village. Marigold/pagan Mary gave birth to Jesus outside the former post office. I think it was a mistake for her to have worn her glasses over the top of her mask; it made her look like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly.

The three kings presented their gifts outside Mrs Briggs's Internet tea room. The madrigals were sung in that peculiar sort of English that only singers use. It was impossible to understand the words.

Afterwards in the pub I told Marigold that she was very brave'. She took this as a compliment.

Friday December 20th Woke up and had a panic attack about the arrangements for the writers' group Christmas dinner. I texted: Pandora, cancel Brown, VIP dinner more important. U O me a favr. Adrian. X.

Saturday December 21st We were busy all day in the shop. There was a run on Marilyn Monroe memorabilia and snooker autobiographies. We almost sold out of Dickens, and all six copies of Barry Kent's second anthology, Making Love with Wendy Cope, were bought by a man with a baby strapped to his chest.

We didn't close until 7.30.

Mr Carlton-Hayes had brought in a bottle of sherry. For some reason, sherry always reminds me of old women's corsets. But it was very pleasant winding down, sitting by the fire.

Mr Carlton-Hayes told me that he is most appreciative of my help and hoped that I was happy working for him. He said that I sometimes looked distrait.

Emboldened by the sherry, I told him that a combination of worries -- money, Marigold and the swans --kept me awake at night. He nodded sympathetically but didn't offer any solutions, such as increasing my wages.

As I walked down the High Street towards the towpath, I passed crowds of marauding, drunken teenagers of both sexes. A youth in a vest was being sick in the doorway of Dixons.

The moon lit my way home along the towpath. The swans came to meet me halfway, but didn't get out of the water. Gielgud wasn't there. I hope he is dead.

My apartment was unbearably hot when I got home from work. The thermostat which controls my underfloor heating seems to have a life of its own. I opened the sliding doors and sat on the balcony to cool down.

With a sinking heart I saw Gielgud swim across the canal. I told him to push off, but he stayed there, motionless, trying to stare me out. I stared back, determined not to drop my eyes first. Eventually his wife came to join him and two pairs of eyes glittered in the darkness, but it was the cold that drove me back inside.

I could not get rid of the image of Gielgud and his wife, floating side by side. I wondered how long they had been together, and why they had been attracted to each other in the first place. I envied them their relationship.

Suddenly adrenalin surged through my body and propelled me out of the door and into my car. I drove to Beeby on the Wold and waited outside the Flowerses' empty house. It was 11 o'clock before they arrived home.

Marigold's parents went inside the house. A man with a big nose followed them. Marigold came round and opened my car door and sat next to me. I asked if the man with the big nose was Roger Middleton.

She said, 'Yes. They're starting the open marriage thing tonight.'

I said that I had something to tell her.

She said despairingly, 'Oh, no, not again! Why does this always happen to me? Why do men satisfy their lust and then throw me aside like a dirty tea towel?'

I was longing to go home, but I knew I was in for at least half an hour of tears and self-denigration from Marigold.

First of all I told her I was not worthy of her, was not ready to commit, blah, blah, blah, etc., etc., etc. Then I told her about Plato's allegory -- that the first humans had four legs, four arms and two heads and were perfectly happy cartwheeling around the earth, but the gods looked down on them and became jealous and cut each human in half. The humans now had two arms, two legs and one head each. They seemed happy enough on the surface, and they were able to walk and to play, but inside they were in turmoil, and were forever looking for their other half, so that they could feel complete again.

I said, 'Marigold, you will find your other half one day. He is out there now, looking for you.'

She peered through the windscreen as if expecting to see her other half standing by the laurel hedge.

There followed ten minutes of loud crying, five minutes of silent weeping and sniffing, and a couple of minutes of broken-voiced pathos.

I was relieved when she said, 'I'm going to bed. I just want this dreadful day to be over.'