Summer...summer..summAUTUMN!

Wow, that was the quickest transition between seasons ever.

Sunday: Swimming outdoors at the Ladies Bathing Pond in Hampstead Heath, enjoying the surprisingly mild late-afternoon air and the odd bursts of blissfully warm sunshine through the clouds. Wearing flip flops. Eating ice-cream. (probably only about 23 degrees, but this is London after all, and I feel obliged to make the most of any 20+ weather).

Monday: Wake up to FREEZING COLD MORNING. Jack Frost giggles maniacally as he tip-toes around homes in London, blowing blasts of ice-cold air into the gaps in people's beds. Didn't think to take a coat to work; after all, I was swimming at the heath yesterday! In a bikini! But I seriously regret that when I see that London has collectively brought out their Proper Winter Coats (I obviously didn't get that memo). Once again, the streets of London are clad in shades of Black, Grey, Bland, Khaki and Boring.

Belatedly, my workplace has scheduled the "Summer Social" for this Thursday, with a Caribbean theme. Timely, I don't think. But it will be one last chance to drag out the colourful Summer dresses and pretend, for one blissful night, that we are in the tropics. I am planning to wear my yellow sun dress with the purple tights I bought for Prince.

Not Prince, The Man, mind you - Prince, the Stadium Spectacular. The little man in the white suit funked. He grooved. He played his git-ar with alarming sensuality. His twin dancers bent every which way. His female drummer, grimacing in her zebra stripe outfit, scared me a little. The bogans in the audience scared me a lot.

It was fantastic!

Regretting the fourth Tiger beer

It is all coming back to me, like a bad dream. All the crap things about being single. After a few weeks grace period in which I have been happy socialising and keeping busy, trying to do some yoga now and again, eating well, looking after myself - the sordid reality is creeping in.

The booze-filled nights out, where you spend more time fending off drunken stags than enjoying yourself.

The bizarre logic of rounds-drinking, in which you seem to have no choice but to drink loads in order to be part of the 'group'. And the laws of mathematics dictate that the more people there are in the group, the greater the portion of alcohol each person consumes. How the hell do you break out of this sorry cycle? No wonder the Brits are a nation of binge-drinkers.

The greasy food consumed after the night out, leaving you feeling poorly the next day (on top of the hangover).

The way you haemorrhage money, what with the eating out every second night, the booze, the entry fees, the theatre and movie tickets, the new clothes, the steep increase in rent...

Moaning aside, I am enjoying being more sociable generally. My new flatmate has been generous enough to invite me out with her and her mates on several occassions, so I shouldn't really complain. And my workmates have been brilliant, as always. I love those girls (in a strictly hetero kind of way). Unfortunately, my ex and I were both quite anti-social home-bodies, and we had a bad habit of discouraging each other from going anywhere, at all, ever.

But oh, my head! My bank balance! My liver!