Pandora said, 'No probs.' She stubbed her Benson s out on a bike rack and we went inside.

'Sexual Healing' had drawn people on to the dance floor. There was an excited murmur when Pandora made her entrance, and Roger Patience broke off from fawning over Barry Kent to go forward and greet Pandora, and to formally welcome her back to the school.

Brain-box Henderson hurried to the mobile disco and asked Craig Thomas to turn Marvin Gaye off. He then tapped on the side of a wine glass with a fork and silence fell.

Brain-box then led Pandora, Roger Patience and Miss Fossington-Gore on to the stage, where there was a Formica table on which stood a large gift-wrapped box.

There was a lot of clapping and whistling, and Barry Kent made a yee-haw sound, like a cowboy riding a bucking bronco at a rodeo.

Roger Patience went on about Pandora, telling the audience that she spoke five languages fluently, including Russian and Mandarin (as if we didn't know!), that she got a double first at Oxford, that she was the Labour member for Ashby de la Zouch and that she was a junior minister in the Department of the Environment. He said these were all great achievements, but he was sure that Pandora's greatest triumphs were yet to come -- that the Daily Telegraph had hinted recently that Pandora could well be Britain's first woman Labour prime minister --'So, Gordon Brown watch out!'

There was polite laughter. Then Pandora, looking magnificent in a tailored Lauren Bacall jacket and what looked like men's trousers, addressed us. She started, 'Let me make it absolutely clear that without the guidance and inspirational teaching of Miss Fossington-Gore I would not be here today -- at least, not in my capacity as Member of Parliament and Junior Minister. It was Miss Fossington-Gore who said, on hearing of my ambition to be a catwalk model for the House of Balenciaga, "Oh, I'm sure we can do a little better than that, dear."'

Miss Fossington-Gore bowed her head modestly.

Pandora blabbed on mostly about herself and her achievements for another five minutes. Then she handed the gift-wrapped box to Miss Fossington-Gore and said, 'I'm sure this will look lovely on your mantelpiece. May the hours and minutes it records of your retirement be precious.'

Miss Fossington-Gore took a small handkerchief from under the cuff of her cardigan suit and said, 'The class of '83 was quite remarkable. Not only did it have Pandora Braithwaite, it also had Barry Kent. And let us not forget Adrian Mole, whose TV series, Offally Good!, I quite enjoyed. I would, before I open my present, like to say a few words about Nigel.' She gestured towards Nigel, who was sitting down with his white stick held in front of him like those old blokes in Greek cafes. 'Nigel has been terrifically brave since suffering severe sight impairment.'

I looked across at Nigel and saw him swearing under his breath. There was a huge round of applause and stamping and cheering for Nigel's bravery.

Then Miss Fossington-Gore, who is a vegan and who lives alone in a one-bedroom flat, painstakingly opened her present and found a George Foreman family-size grill. However, good breeding and a lifetime of repressing her true feelings saved the day, and she gave a gracious little speech thanking the assembled company for their kindness and generosity.

When told what the present was, Nigel gave a bitter laugh and said, 'Will it fit her mantelpiece?'

Barry Kent was invited on to the stage to draw the raffle. He turned a simple task into something akin to lighting the Olympic flame. Claire Neilson, who had gone home to check on her children, won the giant teddy bear. By a cruel irony, the second prize was won by Nigel, and the first prize was won, to Pandora's considerable disgust, by Brain-box Henderson.

Kent then left for East Midlands Airport, saying that he had to meet a publisher in Amsterdam in the morning.

I am amazed, diary, at how much I still dislike Barry Kent and how much I long for his downfall.

When the caretaker came in jangling his keys, Craig put on 'Every Breath You Take' and announced that it was to be the last record. I asked Pandora if she would like to dance and amazingly she agreed.

She is slightly taller than me in high heels, but I have reached the age where it no longer matters quite as much as it once did.

I sang along with Sting, 'I'll be watching you', until Pandora asked me to stop. But for once she didn't try to lead and allowed me to shuffle her around the dance floor.

I am, of course, still madly in love with her. She has spoiled me for any other female. She is a ten-out-of-ten woman, whereas Marigold is, tragically, two and a half, or perhaps three on a good day.

I asked Pandora if she would like to join a group of intimates for dinner at the Imperial Dragon, explaining that Wayne Wong would give us a 10 per cent discount.

She said, 'You're still penny-pinching then?'

I replied, 'On the contrary, I've just forked almost 10,000 quid out to furnish my new canalside loft at Rat Wharf.'

However, for the second time that night she surprised me and agreed to come to dinner.

Pandora, Nigel, Parvez, Barbara, Victoria Louise and I shared an Emperor's Banquet. We sat at a large round table. I sat in between Nigel and Pandora. I asked the waiter, Wayne's brother, Keith Wong, to take Nigel's chopsticks away and bring a fork and spoon, explaining that this would make life easier for Nigel as he was almost blind.

To my astonishment, Nigel had a mini temper tantrum and demanded that Keith return his chopsticks.

Nigel said, 'Keep your nose out, Mole,' and turned his back to me and talked to Parvez about his finances.

Parvez said, 'You're not as badly off as Adrian. He's saddled himself with a pile of debts.'

I said, 'Parvez, don't accountants take a vow of silence, or a Hippocratic oath or something? My finances are not a suitable subject for dinner-table conversation.'

Barbara Bowyer asked Pandora what Tony and Cherie were 'really like'.

Pandora said, 'I'm keeping my trap shut about the Blairs. Adrian keeps a diary, you know.'

Nigel said, 'You'd better not write anything about me.

I said, 'Don't flatter yourself, Nigel.' And I said to Pandora, 'Your secrets are safe with me. My diary is not for publication.'

Pandora said, 'That's what that creepy butler Paul Burrell said. I hear he's toting Diana's secrets around.'

'And anyway,' said Nigel, 'who would be interested in publishing the diary of a provincial nonentity?'

I took a prawn cracker from the lazy Susan in the middle of the table and bit into it to disguise how much his remark had hurt me.

At 11.45 p.m. my mobile rang. It was Marigold, asking me how the writing was going. Unfortunately, at that moment Keith Wong was serving the next course, shouting, 'OK, you got yuck sung, you got seaweed, you got prawn toasts, you got wantons, and you got vegetable spring rolls.'

Marigold said, 'Where are you?'

I thought about lying and saying it was the television in the background, but Marigold knew that ntl had not yet connected my television, so I was forced to tell the truth.

Pandora laughed at a joke Parvez made.

Marigold said, 'Who are you with?'

Pandora said suggestively, 'Can I help you to a spring roll, Aidy, darling?'

Marigold said, 'Who is that?'

I left the table and walked over to the fish tank. A large carp swam to the glass. It looked disconcertingly like Marigold without her glasses. I gained courage and said to the fish, 'Look, Marigold, this is not working for me. Perhaps we shouldn't see each other again.'

She said in a flat voice, 'You're with another woman, aren't you?'

I said I was with three women and two men.

Marigold sobbed, 'Three couples.'

I said, 'Please, don't cry.'

She said, 'I've spent all evening working on a loft apartment doll's house. It was going to be your Christmas present.'

I didn't know how to break off the conversation. It seemed heartless to point out to Marigold that my food was getting cold. I had to let her ramble on about her disastrous track record with men. The carp in the tank continued to stare mournfully at me. I could see my reflection in the glass. I looked a bit mournful myself.

Eventually Marigold rang off, saying in that spooky flat voice, 'There's no point in living without you.

The fish swam to the bottom of the tank and lay there without moving. I went back to the table. Keith Wong was putting down a dish of duck and pineapple, but when I pronged a bit with a chopstick it tasted like sawdust in my mouth.

I drank four tiny cups of sake and told my dinner companions about Marigold. The general consensus was that Marigold had to go.

Wayne Wong said, 'No offence, Aidy, but you can do a lot better. She ain't exactly a laugh a minute, is she?'

Pandora said, 'She sounds like one of those snivelling whiny types that give women a bad name.'

Nigel said, 'But any woman who fell for Adrian would have to be half off her rocker.'

Then Pandora said, 'You forget, Nigel, that I was once in love with Adrian myself.' She took my hand and held it. 'We were both fourteen. We were going to live in a farmhouse and have lots of children. Adrian was going to be an ice-cream man during the day and I was going to milk cows and bake bread and wait for him to come home.'

Suddenly we were both weeping. 'It's that fucking rice wine,' said Pandora. 'It always does this to me.

Nigel broke the party up by saying he had to get up early in the morning, because a woman from the RNIB was coming to interview him to vet his suitability for a guide dog.

Parvez, being a Muslim, was the only one sober enough to drive, so the rest of us left our cars parked outside the restaurant and we squeezed into Parvez's people carrier and I invited everybody back to Rat Wharf for a nightcap.

Gielgud was waiting for me in the car park, but I scared him off with a Star Wars light sabre belonging to Ali, Parvez's youngest son, which had been left in the car.

I switched the lamps on and made coffee and warned everybody about the glass lavatory. People went out on to the balcony and Pandora said how beautiful the swans looked in the moonlight. I hoped that, for once, Gielgud wouldn't spoil the party.

Sunday November 24th Parvez took everyone home except Pandora. We stayed up talking until it was almost light. She told me about the terrible workload she had, of how she could never get on top of the paperwork, of how the press monitored her every statement. She was almost certainly under constant surveillance. She knew for sure that her phones were tapped, and said that it was a relief to be able to talk openly and freely with an old and trusted friend.

I said, 'We should have moved into that farmhouse, Pandora.'

She laughed and said, 'It's a real shame that we were not sexually compatible.'

I pointed out to her that her theory had never been tested. However, I made no move in that direction and neither did she.

At 5 a.m. I rang for a taxi, and when I heard it blaring its horn in the car park I escorted her to its door.

Just as I was preparing myself to sleep on the futon, my phone rang and left a text message from Pandora. It said: Thanks, Aidy. I do love you, Pan.

My mobile rang again at 7.30 a.m. It was Marigold, telling me that she had written me a letter explaining to me why she had done what she had done. She put the phone down. I immediately rang back. The phone rang and rang. Eventually Michael Flowers picked the phone up and bellowed, 'Who is this?'

I told him it was me and he said, 'It's 7.35 on a Sunday morning. This is terribly inconsiderate of you. I realize you're besotted with Marigold, but you must try and restrain your passion. Come to lunch. I've got something to show you.'

I heard myself asking, 'What time?'

It was a gruesome meal, not only badly cooked and gracelessly served, but a meatless, flavourless repast served with cloudy home-made beer poured from an earthenware jug.

A smoky log fire burned half-heartedly in the grate in the dining room. Through the window, a row of forlorn frozen brassicas could be seen in the garden. A robin perched on the handle of a deserted spade, unaware that it had become a living cliche.

Marigold's eyes were swollen with crying. Every now and again throughout the meal, she pressed pads of cotton wool impregnated with witch hazel to puffy eyes.

Netta Flowers tried to enlist my help in stewarding a 'Stop the War March' she was organizing in Beeby on the Wold.

I said, 'I doubt if you will need stewards. I can't imagine that there will be tens of thousands thronging the village green.

She said that she had received messages of support from Little Snetton, Frisby on the Wreake, Long Lampton, Shepshed, Melton Mowbray, Short under Curtly and Burrow twixt Soar.

I interrupted her recitation of these centres of civil disobedience and said that I fully supported Mr Blair's stand against Saddam Hussein and his Weapons of Mass Destruction.

I asked Marigold for her opinions about a possible war in Iraq. She looked down at her plate of badly cooked root vegetables and said, 'I think war is wrong. Why can't people be nice to each other?'

Perhaps she is an idiot savant.

After lunch was over I offered to wash up. To my considerable annoyance, Netta Flowers said, 'That would be super. And you'll find clean tea towels drying on the Aga.'

So I was obviously expected to wash and dry. Marigold said that I would find her in the attic after I'd finished.

The Flowers family make their own washing-up liquid out of lemon and glycerine and keep it in a screw-top jar next to the sink. When it came to washing the burnt roasting pans, I went into the sitting room and asked if there was a Brillo Pad in the house. You would have thought from the consternation and shock this caused to Mr and Mrs Flowers that I had asked then to hold down a baby seal while I clubbed it to death.

Finally, when the last battered tin and chipped crockery had been put away, Michael Flowers led me to his study and invited me to 'peruse his library shelves and give a quick valuation'.

I told him that Mr Carlton-Hayes did the valuations and explained that I was still a novice in the antiquarian and second-hand book trade.

He said, 'Give me a ball-park figure, a guesstimate.'

I said that it would take many hours of work and that I would need reference books etc.

He plucked a book off a shelf and said, 'This, for instance.'

It was Tales of an Empty Cabin by Grey Owl. It was in a slip case, a little scuffed and stained but sound. I took the book out and opened it. It was the Lovat Dickson 1936 edition and was signed 'Grey Owl'.

I examined the book more carefully and said to Flowers, 'The cloth boards are a little scuffed. The spine is faded. The top gilt edge is nice, but the fore and lower edges are a bit foxed, and it's a shame that the ribbon bookmark has lost its colour.'

'So, how much?' said Flowers impatiently.

I looked at the sepia illustrations and at the colour plate of Grey Owl's strong face in his Indian headdress, and I wanted the book for myself. I knew that the book that I was holding in my hand was worth at least PS250.

I was barely able to control my voice. I asked as casually as I could, 'Do you have any more books by Grey Owl?'

Flowers said that he had collected them at one time, but when he saw the film starring Pierce Brosnan and he found out that Grey Owl was a fraud and was really an Englishman called Archie Belaney, he no longer wanted the fraudster's books in his house.

I told Flowers that the book might fetch PS50 and offered to take it off his hands. Flowers seemed pleased enough and hunted along the shelves for his remaining Grey Owls.

The other books he had were Men of the Last Frontier, Pilgrims of the Wild and Sajo and Her Beaver People.

They were all first editions and signed by the author.

All three were in .fair condition. My mouth watered.

I told Michael Flowers that the books would probably fetch PS200.