QUITE a weekend it was, full of the stresses of modern life and some of the very good bits which are also part of the human experience.
Down to London I went on Friday morning on one of those rancid, privately-run trains, all plastic walls and plastic smiles from an “on-board crew� dressed like Ruritarian secret policemen.
I had an important working lunch to attend but thanks to the mega-crap railway system in our country I missed lunch by a mile and had to reschedule the meeting for the evening. I know, during valuable drinking time!
The railway workers were, as usual, very slow to tell frustrated passengers what the hell had caused our train to grind to a halt for so long miles from any station. When they did make an announcement they kept the details to a minimum.
Lightning had struck the line, apparently, meaning nothing could get in or out of Crewe station for hours on end. Brilliant.
Some of the passengers were getting very irritated at being stuck in the middle of nowhere for so long.
In an effort to calm one old gentleman I explained to him about the lightning strike.
He got hold of the wrong end of the stick completely. “F*****g unions!" he raged. "F*****g lazy, greedy b******s.�
I don't know, you try to help people ...

Well, eventually we got to London some four hours late - and after being forced on and off various stranded trains at Crewe. Presumably the railway staff just did that for a giggle.
Memo to rail workers: If you want to organise a piss-up in a brewery, do it in your own time.
What a sick joke modern railways are. Run by tinpot little companies who practise legalised robbery on the British taxpayer for massive subsidies and then give us trains that are dirtier, slower and less reliable than they were 100 years ago.
If that’s progress, then I’m Miss New Brighton 1963.
Anyway, my meeting went ahead eventually and then I continued on my way to the social part of the weekend, which involved first going for dinner and staying overnight in Kingston, Surrey, with my old college chum, Constantine Northwich, his wife Ting Tong and their sons, Hector and Lysander.
Constantine can be as grumpy as hell but he was perfectly fine all through weekend, and well, you know, it's just so good, if you are a singleton like me, to be in the bosom of a normal family for a while.
OK, not entirely sure about the word ‘normal’ in the previous sentence but I will leave it in there.
I have always got on with Ting Tong. She is Chinese Malaysian and a Roman Catholic, so we’ve always had a lot in common (the Catholicism, I mean, not race or gender factors).
I was the best man at their wedding nearly 20 years ago and I’m chuffed that they are still together after all these years.
They tell me the Prestige frying pan I bought as a wedding present for them has not once been used in anger, despite plentiful provokation over the years.
Twenty years of married life and children. That is an achievement and something to be admired, as I think I was saying to a couple in a similar position in New Brighton recently.
I’ve been giving a lot of thought to family life recently and I feel I’ve missed out by never marrying and raising children.
I'd make a marvellous dad. There you are, I've said it, because no-one else will.
Among the new friends I’ve made since moving to New Brighton, most are, in fact singletons, though quite a few of them have children from previous relationships.
Some of my new pals are just a tiny bit bonkers and nearly all of them drink too much (though, God knows, I’m in no position to criticise anyone for that).
Anyway, it was good to meet up with my old chum Constantine, the family man, to chew over our shared past and talk about the future for our troubled, edgy world.
Oh yes, all that and how we think West Ham and Wigan Athletic will get on this season. Hmmm. Mixed signals on that one at the weekend.
So there we were, hunkered down in a nice old-fashioned pub drinking Fuller's real ale. We talked about how it feels to be commuting to work every weekday and the pathetic nonsense that is office politics.
Work in an office can cause stress, extreme boredom and a painful tightness in the chest for maverick libertarians like me and Constantine. On that we agreed. Don't even try to fence us in.
By the time we were each on our fifth pint, we came up with a number of solutions to the things that are wrong with contemporary society.
However, I don’t think I am at liberty to reveal our political and moral manifesto in the current climate of insane PC rules and liberal-fascist thought control.
Anyway, on the Saturday night, Ting Tong and Constantine gave me a key to their house in Kingston before I set off for the 50th birthday of another old friend, Whigfield, way across the leafy south-west London suburbs, in Ealing.
The plan was that I would come back to Kingston in the early hours to sleep, though it didn’t work out quite like that.
The party was held in a restaurant called Joi de Vivre (that’s French for “have another pint�) and then continued at the home of Whigfield and her husband Pete Poland somewhere in Ealing.
Earlier in the day, by the way, I had discovered that the birthday present I had brought down from Cheshire for my friend – a beautiful cut crystal perfume bottle with a handsome silver cap – had got smashed in transit.
It was probably me having to swing that bag on an off all those bloody useless trains parked in Crewe that caused the crystal to smash.
I hadn’t wrapped the present up properly anyway because, well ... because I am a man and it is illegal for men to wrap birthday presents. That's women's work.
I managed to buy a replacement gift for Whigfield, however, which I think she liked very much.
There was so much booze at her party (all of it seemingly free, unless I missed something) that I ended up crashing out on a nice big bed at her home, forgetting to tell the Northwiches back in Kingston that I wouldn’t be coming back to them that evening after all.
And they were quite worried by my stop-out stunt. They are parents of teenage lads, you see, so it is instinctive for them to fret and be constantly checking up on what time young bucks come home after partying.
However, I am aged 37 and well capable of looking after myself.
Something strange happened at the party, by the way ... I got drunk without offending anyone. That’s gotta be a first.
I'm sure being in the company of such agreeable people helped.
Though come to think I came perilously close to causing an incident by lobbing into the round-table talk an incendiary remark about how difficult it was to decide, with the benefit of hindsight, just which side in the Spanish Civil war had been the most evil and barbaric.
I also ventured firmly into the territory of religion, opining primly that people who come from a long line of Christians have a duty to baptise their children and thereby to pass on the gift of faith – whether or not they are believers themselves.
I’m surprised I didn’t start an argument about abortion. I usually do when I am that drunk.
But it was a lovely party, so I’m really glad I didn’t.
Watch this space for Part Two of The Unbearable Tightness of Being.

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