Well it's forty-eight hours on, and Lisa and I have successfully settled into our new life and formed a love triangle with a white-haired old duffer called Oscar. Who happens to be a cat. Belonging to Lorraine (she of the duck sausages). I have to come clean and admit that our reasons for venturing into the world of co-habitation have less to do with love, and more with the fact that we're house-sitting for the next nine days while Lorraine sails the seven seas with her mother.

Having been cruelly abandoned by his wicked stepmother, poor ickle Oscar needed someone to take care of him in his hour of need, and Lisa has a tendency to gag at the smell of cat food, so as someone who can't bear to see a cat abandoned so heartlessly, I naturally dropped everything and headed for Brighton. Leaving my cat Chloe on her own back in Suffolk. But hey, I'm sure she'll be fine. And let's face it, she doesn't come with a free three-bedroomed house and a broadband internet connection, so frankly it was no contest.

This might not be a permanent arrangement in the official, legal sense of the word, but we're pinning our hopes on Lorraine meeting a nice rich American bloke on this cruise and calling from a Beverley Hills tanning salon to say she doesn't need her house any more. It could happen. And if not, we're changing the locks and claiming squatters rights.

So far we've managed to keep Oscar alive, which personally I think is good going, and what's more I've avoided hitting him with my car every time I swing into the driveway. Which I'm sure won't last, but frankly if Oscar can cling on to life until the middle of the week, I'll consider it a good job done and expect Lorraine to be grateful. I don't expect she'll miss him much anyway. The fact that he knows her as 'Mummy', and she rang from the dockside in Florida just to check he's ok, means nothing.

Last night we broadened our horizons by making our way over to the other side of town to meet a bloke who told me you can buy houses for £800 in Croatia. I think he's getting confused with Monopoly, but he seemed like a nice chap anyway, and I've agreed to go dog racing with him on Wednesday. I'll introduce him to my surefire system of betting on the dog with the cutest name. It never fails.

The one drawback of living a few miles outside Brighton with a girl who failed her driving test in an automatic (which I'm sure is no secret and something she won't mind me mentioning), is that I have to drive her to work at 7:30am. But we've formulated a foolproof plan of action, which involves me getting up at 7:20am, putting on some clothes, and driving through the rush hour traffic without a shower, a shave, or some breakfast. It's a plan with no drawbacks. And if Lisa doesn't mind the smell, and the constant whines of "I'm hunnngryyy..." then I'm sure it'll work fine.