This morning: I’m hungover, have spent money I wish I hadn’t, and last night I nearly burst into tears on the tube home. It probably wasn’t a good idea to go out after all.

***

After the Adam Green gig, Ms S wants to go to a nearby pub. Which is fine, except that en route she bumps into a couple of her friends, and they come with us. Then at the pub, after sitting in silence while Ms S and her friends talk – with each other rather than me – and I attempt to smile amiably, a third friend of hers appears out of the blue and sits down at our table.

At which I point I suddenly get up and run out of the pub without saying goodbye.

Make a slight mess of that, in fact. I bolt for the door only to find it’s bolted, and have to try the next one along. There’s always a comedy edge to my tragedy. Which is the way I like it.

Sheltering in the doorway of Woolworths on Camden High Street, I send Ms S a hasty apology by text. ‘I’m so sorry for running out like that. I’m not feeling too sociable around strangers right now.’

Her reply: ‘That’s okay. They thought it was something they said!’

***
All I could really cope with – and wanted last night – was a one-to-one chat with a friend. Not to have to do the group sociable bit. Apart from anything else, it was one of those pubs where the jukebox music is too loud to be able to join in on conversations between two other people. So I just sat there morosely and tried to pretend I could hear what they were talking about. And I felt like the most excluded person in the world. Didn’t help when one of her friends tried to make conversation with me:

‘And what do you do?’

Which as you can imagine, is exactly the wrong question to ask me right now. And another reason not to talk to people I don’t know, in case they ask me this.

It’s such a silly question anyway. Few people like to talk about their jobs at social gatherings, even if they have jobs. I once made the mistake of asking this at a party years ago, searching for a conversation opener at an awkward moment. The lady in question snorted, ‘I refuse to be defined by what I have to do for a living!’ and stormed away. That’s one way of doing it.

I should have just not gone out at all. Or made it clear that I’m only capable of one-to-one company, and certainly can’t cope with introductions to a group of strangers. Not right now. Ah well.

It also didn’t help that this was the fourth bar we went to in three hours, including Koko. ‘Merry’ would be quite the wrong term. ‘Alcohol-enhanced malaise’ is closer.

The pub in which we agreed to meet before the gig turned out to be dominated by a TV football game. We repaired to another down the road, only to find the same problem. When you’re feeling excluded from much of the human race, and you don’t care for football, it’s really not a good idea to go to any pub with a sports screen. Which is most pubs. Large amounts of men suddenly shouting when you’re at a fragile and sensitive moment in your conversation doesn’t do wonders for one’s mental well-being. London is meant to be a city of choice, of possibilities, of diversity. But not when you want a drink with a friend and there’s a big match on.

***

At the guestlist booth for Koko, I noticed Geoff Travis was briefly next to me. Adam Green is on Rough Trade, his label. Mr Travis once signed my old band. I don’t know if he recognised me, because I currently don’t look like me. I’ve had my blond hair cut off, leaving a thick ‘Action Man’ style crop of mousy brown. I intend to re-bleach it shortly, but fancied a night out looking unlike myself. The links between depression and cutting one’s hair off are all too obvious, I know, but in this case it was pure coincidence. I’m just giving my hair a mini-break.

Mr Travis has been good enough to grant permission for use of the Orlando lyrics in The Portable Dickon Edwards, and I’ve since sent him a copy of the book along with the new Fosca CD. So if I did broach a conversation with him, we’d have to talk about what he thought of the Fosca record. Which I’m guessing he doesn’t care for. Maybe’s he’s not heard it. Maybe he has heard it and likes it, but is too busy right now, what with being in Adam Green Label Manager mode. Regardless, I was in no state to say hello.

Ms S pointed out one tall, long-haired man standing at the Koko bar. It was Chris Gentry from the band Menswear. Or so she said. He was unrecognisable from the cute boyish guitarist I remember from those mid-90s days of Britpop hubris. Again, I felt surround by ghosts, the past, that I was returning to somewhere I’d left: it felt like an uneasy school reunion.

***

On stage, Adam Green does his best. It’s a sold-out gig, and I wonder how many people here are proper Adam Green solo fans. The sweet duet at the end of the film Juno, ‘Anyone Else But You’, is by Mr Green’s old band The Moldy Peaches, from 2001. He doesn’t do this song tonight, or any of the other better known Moldy Peaches numbers, but I wonder if he feels the pressure to do so, given the ubiquitous success of the film.

Instead he does his unkind song about the pop singer Jessica Simpson. I wonder if Jessica Simpson has been tempted to respond in kind? Maybe her reply could go something like this, written and sung in the Moldy Peaches ‘anti-folk’ style:

Adam Green, Oh Adam Green
You do indie rock songs that are slightly obscene…
Your backing band’s tight, your singing voice’s awesome
Yet people only want you and Kimya Dawson
To get back together, at least till, you know,
Until they’ve worn out their DVDs of ‘Juno’

Only joking, Mr Green. You were fine. I liked your skinny t-shirt with fringed white tresses.