Double & Large

We got back in the hire car to travel to Lincoln. Of course the only time I've ever been to Lincoln before was while Kate was in a choir at school and mother and I travelled there to hear them sing at the cathedral, and back, in one day. Dedication.

When we've found our B&B, which has a double and single in the room – no need to wonder who had which – we walk into town for some over-priced food. Afterwards we go to find our friend Hazel. We met Hazel last year at the Edinburgh Fringe and she is studying in Lincoln. She is a high-octane kind of a person and lovely. She takes us to a bar which would, normally, be heaving with students, but it's holiday time, so it's pretty empty. I buy the drinks, a double vodka and tonic for Bartelt, a large red wine for Hazel and a pint of soda and cranberry for the person who has got to do some work tomorrow.

There is an embarrassment of choice about where to sit, but more embarrassing is my lightweight collaborator and Hazel, who giggle, drink, giggle, gurn, drink, ask for more drinks, drink, and become the tedious, drunken monsters, Double and Large. I don't want to sound mean-spirited, but I am a mean-spirit person, so it's hard for me not to. I was tired, we had to walk home, it was getting cold out there and I'm stuck here with these two teenage girls, oggling boys and laughing uncontrollably at everything and nothing.

We make our way home via Hazel's place – Lincoln, it turns out, is pretty walkable, and return to our lovely B&B. She promises she's going to do her best to find us a tripod for the video camera so we can record the show. I loathe the idea, but we need it. As we walk home we talk about how bleeding cold it is, which it ought to be at this time of year, but Martin is not at all happy about it. Oh, how I hope the electric radiator in our room works or I am never going to hear the end of it.

In the morning there is great news: Hazel texts us to say she has found us a tripod. We have had a good night's sleep at our B&B, which began with much hilarity as Martin, my pet lizard, the coldest man in the world, requested that the heating be turned down as he would get to warm in the night. His comfort zone, I declared, is about two centimetres long. Mine, on the other hand, is about two feet. I'm pretty flexible, but Martin cannot stand to be overwarm or overcold, too rushed or too slow, too tidy or too untidy.... princess and the pea is a name I have thrown at him in moments of frustration, but yesterday we just lay in our beds laughing, as we did when Marie, our landlady, took one look at us and worried that she had prepared a twin rather than a double room. We are a dysfunctional couple, clearly, and deserve to have to share a bed.

We are gong to be Marie's last breakfasts of the day - her other guests are people who start work at 9am; we are people who consider that a bit early for brekky. Well, one of us is, anyway. I pick a book off Marie's shelves - military-nautical warfare, one of my faves - and we settle down in the companionable silence of those who have been in a relationship for a long time. Little do we know it, but Martin's life is about to be thrown into context in a way which would have seemed impossible before we sat down at this table, one of those mundane life-changing moments which will have considerable repercussions, and all before we even get to the Lincoln Drill Hall to tech.