Yesterday there were three women in my life. Now before you mock or pour scorn on that innocent statement, sex was not involved... Now before you click onto another webpage is bored disillusionment and contempt at my failure to have wild passionate sex at every possible opportunity and boast about it afterward, I would like to point out that it is possible to have a warm, fulfilling, rewarding, platonic relationship with the opposite sex. It's just a little less expensive and genuinely less exciting.

It goes a bit like this. The first lady I ecountered yesterday was at the Job Centre. She very kindly went to get another jobsearch booklet for me and smiled sweetly when I thanked her and left. She didn't try to chat me up, or fish for compliments, or even attempt to get a date from me. And you're disappointed?

The second woman in my life was a dog owner I encountered in Lawns Wood, by the bottom lake. Her dog had decided to go for the World Canine Endurance Swimming Record (I was a witness, Guiness Book Of Records please note) and paddled furiously after a flock of ducks calmly swimming away in no great urgency to avoid a homicidal (should that be duckacidal?) dog in the water.

I have never seen a dog so deliriously happy at swimming. It was literally wagging it's tail as it swam, and every time the owner called to her dog to please come back to dry land it turned the other way and made another fruitless attempt on duck's lives. I had a little chat to the lady whilst she waited for her dog to get tired.

Oh come on. You really think the dog was going to listen to me?

The third woman was a fresh faced young lass newly arrived from Birmingham in a vain attempt to get me to sign up for charitable contributions for deaf kids. A worthy cause, but since I live on charity for the time being, I couldn't help her. She had come a long way for that conversation on my doorstep so we had a pleasant little chat before she realised she had thirty seven other addresses to cover that evening.

Now some of you might believe I missed some opportunities in these encounters. Possibly. But then again, I hadn't shaved. Without those expensive gel bottles and those curiously effete body sprays I was helplessly unsexy, a fact made worse because I don't own or use the latest top secret razor, with sixteen cutting edges and microchip terrain following radar.

Never mind because...

Revelation about the Secret Life of Caldrail (of the week)

Sorry, not telling you. It's a secret.