Saturday 14 June

DH returns from a lengthy work-trip to Mexico and it is no surprise to re-encounter him rolling-up outside the Northern Quarter’s Posh, alongside Larry, Bateman and brother Sydney. What separates DH from the others is not only the adventures he’s enjoyed out West, nor the romantic reunion he returns to, but the fact I can safely eliminate him from my enquires into the ‘moider’ of Bjorn and Cindy. The others, no matter how innocently they may giggle at my more-than-apparent lightheadedness (that’s what happens if you stop drinking for a week) remain suspects in the biggest crime in town.

Tonight, however, investigations remain perfunctory or pending; my awareness that only fictional detectives can solve crimes drunk recently reinforced by Exhibit A: Swarthy Erick’s cataclysmic Sunday drinking games. Designed as a way of enlivening a lazy afternoon in front of the gogglebox, all was fine while it was water he was necking, matching glass-for-glass the flickering yet unmistakable image of the tortoise-faced, Channel Island-based, recovering alcoholic known as Anorak. But when Erick acquired a Moose boxset the result was a ‘lost fortnight’ down south, during which he was rejected by, or ejected from, at least seven single-sex Oxford colleges.

I leave DH nursing a well-earned rum and coke, my own bottle from Belize concealed amidst the jungly tendrils of my most convenient armpit. Rest well, play hard DH. Not many men could have connected Latin America to the worldwidewotsit with little more than 100 yards of Sombrero fibre and a couple of oversized kahunas.