London has a beach

The Polish Footballer and I meet up at the end of the Thames Festival. We've missed the fireworks, but walk hand-in-hand along the South Bank and down onto the beach.

He thanks me for lending him my flat briefly. "I played with your little trains," he said, and smiled. "You have so many."

We walked on for a bit. "I should have seen you a couple of weeks ago," he said. "I'd just moved out of my ex's and was having so much sex. I was such a slut, you'd have been very happy. Now though, I am off sex. Poor you. It was just too much endless empty sex, my god."

He shares his new flat with a Greek rich kid, his vile porn star boyfriend, and a marketing student who's never around. "But they are all such thin bitches! So I must diet, otherwise I can't steal their clothes!" The Footballer stays in at nights, watching Sex & The City and eating tinned tuna and miso soup.

We walk back along Embankment and sit on a bench just watching the river at night. I steal one of his cigarettes and he explains, very carefully, where the Polish translation of Harry Potter goes wrong. It's all to do with House Elves.