Thursday April 26th 2001

I firmly maintain that a person’s possessions should reach a designated limit. This is one of the reasons I chose to live in one room. So when I have to find space on my crammed shelves for recently purchased records, rather than finding new storage space, I have to remove an equal amount of old records and dispose of them in a uncontrolled environment. Record and Tape Exchange, Camden Town branch if I’m feeling hungry. Local charity shops if I’m not.

Today I can’t make my mind out which CDs to dispose of, enema fashion, to make room for some newly-procured Monochrome Set albums. So I eject all those knowingly recorded by lead singers with beards. It seems as good a reason as any. Out goes everything by Shack and Nirvana and the last Scritti Politti album. Serves them bloody well right.

I spend Easter staying with my brother Tom’s family, and their over-excited Pomeranian, Silver, at his home in Ipswich. On a hungover journey to the nearest grocer’s shop, Tom, who like me feels nervous and vulnerable in shopping environments, forever falls foul of the herd instinct in others. We both loathe being in queues, believing that the unobserved shopping life is the only kind worth living. To this end, our inclination requires us to gather our goods as quickly as possible, but then wait and pretend to browse futher, while keeping an eye on the counter until it’s definitely free, preferably with the shop empty as well.

Only then, of course, as soon as we approach the till, a huge queue IMMEDIATELY forms behind us, seemingly from nowhere. “There’s that Edwards boy,” think all other shoppers within a square mile. “Quick, now’s our chance to make him feel even more nervous. Let us instantly fill the shop with a intimidating queue behind him, and sigh loudly with umbrage as he rummages desperately through his bag for that fiver he could have sworn he had on leaving the house. Let his debit card refuse to swipe in public view! Let us tut in choral unison as his cheque book pen runs out halfway through!

Tom’s ordeal on this particular occasion is newly compounded by cries from a gang of nattering Suffolk old ladies, who seem to spend their days loitering by cash registers, conspiring with assistants and passing judgement on the inconvenienced convenience-store shopper. “OOOOH…” cackle the cake-hatted elderly hooligans, as Tom’s blushes reach levels of puce to rival those of a vicar caught with his hand up a chorister’s cassock. “DUNNEE LOOK LIKE JAMIE OLIVURRRR?”

My brother’s features, it has to be said, do indeed vaguely resemble those of the UK’s most famous Mockney TV chef, though I can thankfully report he doesn’t share Mr Oliver’s uncommonly fat tongue.

Tom’s “look” may accidentally approximate this current fashion amongst trendy young media things to wear their hair in a permanently spiky, uncombed, “just-got-out-of-bed” manner, but the reason for him is usually because he HAS just gotten out of bed.

High street chemists currently stock a new type of hair wax for this very purpose. The jar actually reads “for that Just Got Up look”.

“Who would buy that?” says Taylor. “The whole point of dishevelled, slept-on hair is that it remains exactly like that all day naturally.”