There was a guy leaned over someone's desk, pointing at graphs on the computer screen as I was sailing past to make the seventeenth cup of tea for the day. My right hand twitched automatically and raised slightly. I was just about to swing it towards his butt when I remembered where I was.

Would this stand up in court? It wasn't sexual harassment yer honour, I just saw a denim-clad backside and next thing you know I'd slapped it.

Because that's what I mindlessly do every time I walk past Gareth, whether he's doing the dishes or trying to choose a beer at the corner shop. I saw this particular butt and forgot to put it in context. Sometimes you forget where you are. Like when you've eating something really fabulous in a restaurant and you forget you're in a restaurant and pick up the plate and almost lick up the last scraps. Or like when The Mothership was my teacher in Year Two and I couldn't stop blurting out "Mum" instead of "Ms Marsh".

It's easy to get confused. It's hard to stay in the here and now.

"Have you ever had sex while you were stoned?"

"No… what's it like?"

"It's amazing. It makes everything so much more intense and wild!"

"Wow. So when you'd do that?"

"Oh… I haven't. But I had a stoned wank one time!"

There were two girls on the bus the other day, and thank goodness for that, for if it wasn't for people on buses I would never have anything to write about.

Anyway, they spoke in the italicised manner of young teens. They huddled over notebooks and scribbled intently with neon pink pens.

"We're doomed," declared the blonde in the puffy jacket with the fake fur collar. She slumped in her seat and sighed.

"48%, that's not that bad," the redhead in the puffy jacket with the fake fur collar said in soothing tones.

"48% is rubbish!"

I peered over to see what they were doing. Oh, sweet nostalgia. Do you remember when you were young and crushing and you'd write your name on a piece of paper, then write LOVES underneath, then the name of the boy underneath that? Like this:

… and then you'd count how many L's are in your names, then how many O, V, E and S's, and keep adding up the numbers until you were left with a two-digit figure that spelled out your romantic destiny:

This poor girl was not happy with her compatibility with a young James. "He borrowed my pencil in Science yesterday so I thought things were going good."

My heart went out to her. At this stage of her life, all she had to go on was pure mathematics. She wasn't old enough to buy Cosmopolitan and let her self esteem be dictated by Are You Suckers Gonna Make It? multiple choice quizzes. I wanted to tap her on the shoulder and tell her that all was not lost. With some careful massaging of the data, it was entirely possible to turn the tide of their relationship.

Firstly, many schools of thought believe if you get a result under 50%, you have to double the number, the reason being 50% is the scientifically-proven minimum compatibility one can have with another human being. Or maybe it's just because a result less than 50% would be like ripping out your heart and inviting a herd of elephants to crap on it.

But if you don't feel comfortable with such blatant figure fudging, you can tinker with the words. Try adding your middle names and see if that beefs up the percentage. If you don't know his middle name, it is accepted practice to make one up.

Failing that, try a different word in the middle. "LOVES" is so traditional and stuffy. Try "adores", "admires", "worships", or:

If all that still fails produce a satisfactory result, well, whatever. Clearly the boy is so not good enough for you, girlfriend.

I woke up when I heard the mournful cry of a harpooned whale. Actually it was the sound of a flatmate approaching orgasm. Then suddenly she was bellowing impatiently "C'mon! C'mon! C'mooonnnn! C'MON!", followed by a quick and cranky smacking sound.

You know when you have a bottle of tomato sauce (ketchup) and it just won't come out, so you tip the bottle up and smack the end of it? Hello tomato sauce, are you in there? Sure that is a pretty frustrating thing to happen. But bash it around like that and you're headed for trouble. Maybe she was just trying to be encouraging but it sounded pretty mean. Whatever butters your muffin, I guess.

So there's my sleep-in ruined. It's the 1st of November. It's my birthday, dammit.

It's been oh oh oh oh so long since there was talk of orgasms on this site. But as I scribble in my notebook it's Saturday 12.33 AM and, ladies and gentlemen, we have a newcomer!

What a screamer. I've never heard such a high note, sustained for so long, ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah, so relentless, so shrill. The sound has pierced through the windows and is pinging off the stone walls in the courtyard. You can hear the neighbours sniggering.

Back in my singing lessons we did this exercise where the object was simply to climb up the scale as far as possible. The strained noise escaping from my throat sounded like what I imagined it would sound if you threw a rock at a seagull in flight. My friend Jenny, on the other hand, soared and soared so high I thought her lungs would be sucked up her windpipe and fly out her nostrils. My singing teacher would have been proud of this girl tonight.

Wow. Only ten minutes later, it's time for the Second Act.

Ah ah ah ah ah ah ah!

My Body Combat instructor likes us to be noisy. He prowls around the class as we're puffing away, yelling "I wanna hear your SCREAM!". Which means when you kick or punch the air you're mean to give a "HIIIII-YAH!".

"You are warriors!" he bellows with a smirk. "You are fighters! You can take on any enemy… so long as there's a light techno beat in the background!"

But I find it so hard to coordinate the body and the noise-making. My roundhouse kick looks more like a roundhouse duck-with-a-broken-wing as it is, so when teamed with a scream it's inevitably all too difficult and I stumble into the mirrors.

After a fifteen minute interval, would you believe she's at it again? The very same note. I am in full admiration of the swiftness of her recovery.

One has to acknowledge that it is Festival season here in Edinburgh, and there are a lot of performers in town right now. So this could mean one of two things about my neighbour:

1. She's in the theatre. You know, like acting. Ah ah ah ah, my arse!

2. She's Brunhilde or someone in the Scottish Opera's performance of Wagner's Ring Cycle. That's 16 hours of singing all up. You'd have to have stamina for that.

It's very hot. In the courtyard, the guys from the ground floor are playing cricket. We admire their sporting prowess, how they manage to bowl and brandish a beer at the same time. They're in shorts and t-shirts or no t-shirts at all. There's a lot of swearing and sweating and Howzaaaaaaat! Their voices have the drunken croak and rumble of old crows. Later on, it's impossible to sleep. There's an air conditioner in the living room, but it doesn't reach the sweltering bedrooms. I stare down my alarm clock, calculating how many hours of slumber I'm wasting before it's time for work. In winter, curtains are drawn and the building shows no signs of life. But as soon as it warms up, the windows are wide open and you can hear every little thing. You get to know all the night patterns. You know what time the courtyard sprinker system will kick in. You know in about ten minutes your sister will get up and make a banana sandwich. You know which apartment has someone pacing restlessly inside, icecubes rattling in a glass, the hum of a television. And then there will be that girl downstairs. Ohhh! Here we go again. Oh! Oh! Yeah! Oh! She sounds like an old electric kettle on the boil. Gurgling and whistling, on the verge of eruption. Uhhh. Uhhh! Aiiieeeeeeeeeee! The sprinklers pop up in the courtyard, choking and spluttering. The voice of an old crow cricketer rises from the ground floor. "AHHH COME ON MATE! SHE'S FAKIN' IT!"