Now here's the thing. This weekend I went up to London for a friend's 30th birthday drinks. The weather was hot and sunny. The beer was cool and delicious. A good time was had by all.

The birthday girl was an old flame. Not THAT old, as it goes - we hooked up on an internet dating site last year. We got to the point of sleeping together (which was nice) but it turned out she was having an exploratory fling / crisis of conscience with her long-term beau. He was (and is) pretty much her ideal man, except for a long-standing aversion to having any kids, and they were going through a rough patch while she came to terms with this. Anyway, they are now back together, and he was there.

Retrospectively, I can only describe it as a fling, though at the time my aspirations were for something much more substantial and long-lasting. Without the rosy glow of infatuation, and without wishing to do her (or me) down, it is a good thing that it didn't go any further than it did, and I think we're much happier apart than we would have been together.

Since we split up, we've stayed in touch, and on friendly, mutually platonic terms; hence my invite to the party.

I chatted away happily with my friend's mum, and an old publishing friend of hers. As the evening wore on, people swapped seats and chatted to whoever was sat next to them - which was a beer-fuelled, sociable joy. By about 9.00pm I was sat next to an old school friend of our host and getting on rather well, and flirting quite a bit too. Very pleasant.

Now, I'd gone up intending to get the last train home (ok, a forlorn hope, especially once I've got the sniff or the barmaid's apron in my nostrils) but as time started ticking towards me needing to leave, echoed by similar not-too-enthusiastic noises from the publishing friend, the funny lively girl I had found myself chatting to for the last hour or two said that she had a sofa bed in her hotel room that pulled out into two singles, and that we were welcome to use it.

It may be the drink, but I had the distinct impression that she was keener to spend more time in the pub (and, concievably, elsewhere) with me than she was with publisher guy, who she'd known for ages anyway. But regardless of that, we both agreed, and settled back into our conversations.

My own conversations were largely focused on the school friend, and hers on me. We chatted and chatted and laughed and listened and generally got on like the proverbial domestic arson case.

A few hugs and kisses were unselfconsciously exchanged - much to the apparent delight of birthday girl and, I was surprised to see, her fella. He seemed relieved that I was no longer any kind of competitive threat, after which point we found that we got on rather well too (though I didn't kiss him, nor he me). Or perhaps we both just relaxed more as were had more to drink, in our typically British, emotionally aloof way. (Any foreign readers out there? We British drink so much because our culture permits us very few opportunities to be open; and drink grants us the permission we deny ourselves without it. In case you didn't know.)

By the end of the evening, everyone was pretty lubricated. Speaking for myself, I was little more then halfway to being out-and-out drunk. I was certainly in no condition to drive, but I wasn't slurring my words or wobbling - unlike our publisher chum, who was doing lots of both. The whole party left the pub together. Birthday girl & her boyfriend, her school friend, publishing man and I went towards the hotels. Birthday girl & her man went to theirs, and we went to ours. It was all quite civilised, though perhaps she & I took a little more mirth from the publishing guy's condition than absolutely necessary.

So there we were tucked up in our three separate beds in the dark.

And a little hand reaches out for mine. (She's quite tiny, something I've always found attractive in a woman.) Lowered inhibitions are a wonderful thing. Some more kissing, trying not to wake publishing guy (whose snores made him easy to monitor). Me joining her in the large main bed. Nothing untoward happened, for a first meeting - I believe an American assessment of progress would be "second base".

Yesterday morning we woke up, back in our separate beds. Publishing guy was nowhere to be seen; he'd apparently disappeared, fully dressed, at about 3.30 am. Later on that morning we found out he'd awoken drunk in a strange dark room and decided he needed to get a cab home; I slept soundly through this, though my new friend was woken up by it.

As I'd intended to travel back the night before, I was without a change of clothes or any toiletries, so I just got dressed while she showered. We mooched around in the room for a short while, exchanging text messages with birthday girl to plan breakfast. We looked out of the hotel window across at a very sunny London. And hugged some more. We idly watched some morning news on television and chatted about issues raised. And snatched a quick kiss here and there (and it wasn't me making all the running).

Once dressed and packed up, we headed out to meet with BG and her bloke. It was already hot at 10.30 am. We chatted some more and went on to a cafe, where we met the others. After that, the girls went off to shop while BG'sB and I wandered to the riverside, chatted in a repressed British way (which, if you ARE repressed and British, can be immensely enjoyable, and was). Just as we were getting too hot and thirsty and wondering after the opening status of local hostelries, the girls returned.

My diminutive new friend needed to get a coach home from London, which meant a tube train journey in about 45 minutes' time. We went into the shade of the pub next to the station to pass the time, and then all got onto the train. BG & HB got off at their stop, and I accompanied the little one to hers. More hugs. A kiss goodbye.

Lunchtime on a hot, sunny Sunday in London with no particular rush to get home is a decidedly fine thing. I decided to start walking. Initially I headed for Hyde Park, aiming for Bayswater, an area I knew well from when I lived in London myself. This took good few hours, past Speaker's Corner. It's been at least a decade since I went past here, and the Islamist/Islamophobic rants that have come to dominate international debate have, unsuprisingly, come to dominate here too. It was too hot, and the arguments from both sides too stale, to want to stay for long, so I carried on to the Baywater Road.

For readers who don't know, the railings along Bayswater Road that separate it from Hyde Park have long been a place where artists (mostly painters, but a few sculptors) come to exhibit their work. By now the sun had moved behind the trees overhead, so it was a pleasantly-shaded mile or so of mostly very good art that I walked past.

I stopped for a long time to watch a fat Middle Eastern man with a pastel pencil draw a portrait of a young Asian man. The model's friend stood next to me. Neither the subject, nor his friend would have looked out of place shouting about injustice and te superiority of Islam back on Speakers' Corner, but here the focus was on the artistry - this guy was amazingly good. I have aspirations to this sort of portrait talent myself (I can do it, but not first time like this guy - I have to draw and erase multiple times to get to any kind of likeness, while he got pretty much every line right first time.) so it was really interesting to see the work in progress of someone who knows what he's doing.

I don't know how long I stood and watched - if I had to guess, about an hour. I only really began to focus on anything else when I noticed that I was hungry and needed to visit the facilities (as it were), so I excused myself and headed off towards Queensway and the Whiteley's shopping mall there, where I could *ahem* see some friends off to the coast and then get myself fed.

I decided on sushi. I didn't eat a lot, but enjoyed what I had very much. The miso soup was especally good yesterday. In between dishes, I sent a text to my new friend to thank her making the weekend so much fun and that I'd be in touch soon.

On reflection, I over-egged it by asking her to text me when she got home so I wouldn't worry. On one level - the one I intended - this was just polite concern for a (small) single women travelling for several hours alone. My feverish mind turned this into over-eager, intrusive semi-stalker oppressiveness since she nither replied to say "yes I will" nor texted me when she did get home. Which could mean she took umbrage at the impostion. Or that she secretly hates me and couldn't wait to get away. Or that her mangled body is lying in a ditch somewhere. Or (more gently) that she was just dog-tired after a hot sweaty coach trip after a fitful night's sleep and she forgot.

See what I have to put up with? I know I'm supposed to be casual and friendly, and neither clingy & desperate nor callously indifferent, but my mind WILL decide to run and rerun events over and over again to wring our every possible nuance and meaning. Maybe I just should avoid reflecting.

Then I went into a big bookshop and another hour or so whizzed by unnoticed as I leafed through their wares (a Hilary Swank interview in Vanity Fair - for a woman whose film career specialises in mannish-ness, she certainly scrubs up well - and then three or four of Frank Miller's 'Sin City' books)

I wandered to the cinema in the mall, but nothing grabbed my attention, so I headed to Paddington Station to see about going home. My next train wasn't for 45 minutes or so, so I bought a magazine, a doughnut and some water and passed the time.

The train home was hot and overcrowded (the one before had been cancelled, so two lots of passengers had to cram into one train. I did, at least find a seat, so I read some more. And stared out of the window, endlessly calculating the meanings and possibilities of the time I'd spend with my new friend.

I am improving - most of my imaginings were limited to will she want to meet up again, rather than where would we live and what would our kids be like - but it's early days and doubtless by date three or four, if we get that far, I'll be in full-on mental overdrive.

On past history, I'll be so wrapped up in the internal mental analysis of the relationship, I won't notice what's going on in the real world, won't really talk about any of it for fear of it scaring her as much as it does me, so she will get bored and/or irritated, and by the time I've passed through the mental firefighting and am ready to behave like a sensible adult (1-3 months on past form) she'll be mentally scripting the break-up.

I mean - look at this entry. I've spent the last hour re-hashing it all for public view (retaining enough composure to change names to protect the innocent, though doubtless if she Googles me tomorrow, like I've done at least twice today, she'll come across it on page two or three).

I've struggled to concentrate on work today because my mind has been elsewhere  (a pub and a hotel in South West London, to be precise. To be even more precise, some blue eyes, some lips, a very nice toned petite figure, and skin made black against white sheets by the darkness. *sigh*)

Responses are most welcome - be they constructive suggestions on how to make my mind just SHUT UP and go with my instincts, or predictions of how long it will (or won't) last. Especially from throat-stoppingly cute healthcare professionals in the West Midlands(?).