Life’s complicated when you have a girlfriend. I don’t mean complicated in a Dawson’s Creek, anxty soundtrack, oh other people’s feelings are so complicated, hey let’s watch black and white films, oh I know we can project them onto my massive forehead, type of way. I mean, literally, logistically complicated.

What seems to occur is a symptom I’ve dubbed ‘social doubling by proxy’. This essentially means that when you achieve the status of boyfriend you automatically gain entry to every social event that your girlfriend is invited too and visa versa. Logistically this can be difficult. I find it difficult remembering to breathe, I have an organisational disability. I forget my Mother’s birthday for God’s sake. Every year the date passes without even a flicker of recognition from me. It’s as if she was never born. What does this say about me? I am a person who thinks his mother was never born.

Clearly I am ill equipped to deal with such a sharp increase in ‘popularity’ and the engagements that go with it. Practically, up to this point, this has meant that every morning when I wake up I’m gently reminded of my schedule for the day and told to dress appropriately. This is good in that life is a constant surprise, a new day full of possibilities, who knows what the evening will bring, who am I having dinner with today? Unfortunately it is almost exactly the same as having Alzheimer’s.

Clearly there are problems with being the demented one in a relationship. Knowledge is power, if you don’t even know what you are doing tomorrow, then how can you have any influence over it? I need to regain control over my social life. I need to be able to say yes, I can come out for drinks when asked. Right now I just look blank, shrug my shoulders and say ‘I’ll have to ask my girlfriend’. This is why, today, I have started a diary.

In the old days diaries were out of the reach of people like me. The problem was that the same thing that meant that you relied heavily upon a diary was exactly the same reason that you would leave your diary on a bus, or drop it in a river, or accidentally use it as kindling, but now they have them online http:// calender.google.com I’m even able to make the girlfriend a co-author so that she doesn’t resent it usurping her!