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she remembered.
    â€˜How’s your granny? Did she like her flowers?’
    â€˜Oh, yes. She loved them.’
    This is one of the longest personal conversations I’ve ever had with a colleague at my desk. People are starting to look at us weirdly. Perhaps we’re endangering the wellbeing of the FTSE with our lightning banter.
    â€˜I’m making coffee,’ she continues. ‘Would you like some?’
    Would I like some? God, would I like some.
    â€˜Yes, please. Really milky.’
    â€˜Sugar?’
    Don’t say, ‘I’m sweet enough already.’ Don’t say, ‘I’m sweet enough already.’
    â€˜I’m sweet enough already.’
    Oh, Lancaster, you blundering arse. Again.
Sunday 6th February
    In these dark, private confines, I would like to write something in my diary about masturbation.
    Two things, in particular, strike me as extraordinary about the topic of self-gratification. The first is that it still happens atall. In the twenty-first century we can perform uniquely wonderful feats such as sending astronauts to the moon. But successful, attached, attractive men still tug themselves off on a regular basis. I know very little about the animal kingdom, but I’m pretty certain that elephants don’t pleasure themselves with their trunks. I know our family dog Buzz certainly doesn’t — although he does like a good chair leg.
    The other thing that amuses me about onanism is the way in which people broach it. Guys adopt a boorishly laddish approach to the subject. It’s something to joke about in games of ‘I have never’. Four times in one day? Well, I never. Caught by every single member of your family? Unbelievable. Are you a once-a-day man? Yep — me, too. Legend.
    Girls, on the other hand — or, at least, the demure little things that I seem to hang around with — appear to be shocked by the subject. Never believe a girl who claims never to have had a fiddle in the basement. This is like having a brand-new Ferrari in the garage and never taking it for a test drive. Get to know them better — Claire, Susie, Katie and Mel are all cases in point — and you’ll elicit fuller confessions.
    Enough beating about the bush: the really tricky bit as a home-movie director is deciding whom to cast opposite you in the role of leading lady. It’s fine when you stick to celebrities or random encounters whom you’re never going to come across again. It crosses the borderline into awkwardness when friends and colleagues start playing cameo roles. It becomes even more awkward if this recollection suddenly hits you during a conversation. Part of the reason for my appalling conversation with Leila on Friday afternoon was that she’d been bouncing on my lap in a full-length feature movie only eighteen hours previously.
    In fact, I can pretty much divide my female acquaintances into girls I’ve fantasised about and girls I haven’t. I always wonder what they would make of this if I told them. Probably nothing. When they’re not being so demure (i.e. untruthful),they’d probably admit to entertaining similar fantasies themselves. Except that theirs have a plot involving conversation and flowers, and we cut straight to Act V.
    And with these enlightening thoughts on the human condition, I retire to bed, wondering if I’m missing Lucy more than I’ve admitted to myself.
Monday 7th February
    I’ve never been an Olympic athlete, but I’m normally capable of walking the whole way up the fast lane on the Underground escalator without a pit stop. Today I had to pull over, panting, to let a pensioner overtake.
    Concerned, I checked my BMI with the doctor at work, who confirmed that I am now officially an overweight, balding, single banker. I complained about this to Buddy.
    â€˜Hey, be a man about it,’ he advised kindly. ‘Take it on the chins.’
    Later I tried to keep my chins up by