Saturday night Sunday morning: `It is such a relief to know that my ex is right. I do think my life is a film'

Why am I outside Buckingham Palace at 6.30 in the morning, wearing a Walkman and dancing to the Rolling Stones? If my on / off ex could see me, he'd say it's because I think my life is a movie. I do a little high kick. A soldier in a green beret eyes me nervously. I tell the soldier that I'm listening to "Happy" - "It's one of the few tracks that Keef sang on", as if that explains everything. Not quite. At what point did I decide I hated the people I invited back to my flat so much that I threw myself out and came stomping past Victoria tube to complain to the Queen?

When I get home, they are still there, asleep. Lauren is awake, but I'm not angry at her. She spends the afternoon doing the washing-up. My flatmate Grace calls, furious, from work. "It's hard to concentrate at the office when you've been kept up all night by the sound of people cooking pasta." "I'm sorry." She yawns. "Who's there?" "Um, Lauren, that guy Floyd and ..." I eye the body under the sleeping bag. Lauren tells me his name is Punk James. "Yeah, and Punk James." Grace snorts, "Oh, lucky you."

Punk James only made it into the equation after we've been skulking round Camden for three hours like saddo Blur fans. Lauren and I flit from grotty, peeling pub to grotty, peeling cafe. Then we go to Sonic Youth, who we don't have tickets for and don't particularly want to see. But we get in anyway. Then we go to a bar in the West End, where we bump into Floyd. Then on to Stringfellows.

Sonic Youth, Stringfellows, they're both the same to Lauren, who gets us in even though we seem to be the only ones around not wearing white leather. She has a word with a bouncer and we are given a complimentary bottle of champagne. Lauren is like a DC comic: by day she's a philosophy student by night a Warhol Superstar. Next we go to a Spanish bar, then an illegal drinking den beneath a sex shop. Then back to my flat to cook pasta and watch videos. In the cab, it turns out that Floyd is a major film buff.

I tear around my room pulling books from shelves and videos from their boxes. "Look at this." I put on The Bad and the Beautiful and make him look at photos of Burt Lancaster. He admires them all, wearing the same encouraging face my Mum used to make when I'd yell, "Hey, watch me dive!"

But as he knocks back another drink, he decides it would be a good idea to wake Grace up because, he grins, she fancies him. I have known Grace for four years. I know which men she fancies and he is not one of them. Downstairs, I hear Punk James smash a glass.

Floyd continues looking through my books and magazines and now I don't want him to. I have lost interest in show-and-tell. He finds an old school magazine and starts teasing me: "Jolly hockey sticks." "No, actually," I sulk. "I always had miserable hockey sticks because I'd carve Manic Street Preacher lyrics on to the wood with my compass." He spits out his vodka. "Worst band in the world. I once punched one of them." "You did not." "Yes I did." This is ridiculous - "my favourite band could have your favourite band", which would probably mean The Manics versus Nancy Sinatra.

I put on my ex's compilation tape: The Stones, Happy Mondays, Dexys Midnight Runners. "Eurgh," cries Floyd, "I hate that record. Whoever made you this tape has no taste in music." I put on my best "I knew Jack Kennedy and you, Sir, are no Jack Kennedy" voice and inform him that my boyfriend had excellent taste in music. Since Floyd has now passed out cold, I can't throw him out of my flat so I grab my Walkman and keys and stomp out.

Once I have stormed on to the landing I remember that whenever you read about terrible crimes, they have always happened in the early hours of the morning. For a while, I curl up on the stairs. But that's not how any proper film would end. I have the soundtrack in my hand. It is my duty to get out there and run through the rain. It is such a relief to know, for sure, that my ex is right. I do think my life is a film. It kills me that no one is around to see how well I act my part. And that's when I do my dance for the Queen.