Wednesday December 26th 2001

I’m writing this while watching the sun come up over North London on a bright and glacial Boxing Day morning. I’m listening to the first part of John Peel’s Festive Fifty, which I taped last night while falling into a slumber induced by a day of drinking Baileys, Babycham and Beecham’s Flu Plus.

I find myself cheering aloud when “Someday” by The Strokes comes on. I had tried hard not to like the Strokes, resisting their relentless hyping by the media, but the sparky charm of their more catchy tunes (like “Someday”) finally got to me. I do love their album, though it’s not in my Favourite Albums of 2001, which are:

1. Stina Nordenstam – “This Is Stina Nordenstam”
2. Daft Punk “Discovery”
3. Life Without Buildings “Any Other City”
4. A Camp “A Camp”
5. Barbara Cook “…Sings Mostly Sondheim”

Favourite Songs of 2001 Not On The Above Albums:

1. The Avalanches “Since I Left You”
2. Kylie Minogue “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”
3. Trembling Blue Stars “The Ghost Of An Unkissed Kiss”
4. The Strokes “Someday”
5. Mercury Rev “A Drop In Time”

FILM of 2001: “Chuck and Buck”. The makers must have been reading my diaries.

BOOKS of 2001: I read dozens of books this year. Sadly, they were mostly all published before 1939. I don’t seem to have much faith in modern novels. But I did enjoy JT LeRoy’s “The heart is deceitful above all things”

I awoke in the middle of the Night Before Christmas thanks to a coughing fit, and found I couldn’t get back to sleep. I flicked on the television, something I’m making a concerted effort to avoid over the season, and watched “O Lucky Man!”, one of my favourite ever films, which one of the channels had decided was the perfect film to show in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve. They were quite right. The young Malcolm McDowell embarks on an odyssey of mid-1970s Britain, in a similar vein to Candide or Pilgrim’s Progress. He starts off as a coffee salesman (which may or may not be the same character he played in “If….”), then goes on to have various adventures and career changes… at a nuclear power station, in an experimental genetics laboratory, in politics, in prison, in poverty, even dying several times. There hasn’t really been anything like it in British cinema, before or since, although Mike Leigh’s “Naked” comes to mind as a more recent example of a “British Odyssey” film.

“O Lucky Man!” has the rulebook-trashing air one of those countless 60s and 70s French surreal films, but without the handicap of actually being French. Despite the fact that I already have it on video and have seen it many times, I lie in bed and watch it as transmitted. Like “Ghost World”, the film is not the least bit Christmassy, but it is absolutely, searingly appropriate to the mood I’m in this season. Mr McDowell wandering around the English countryside in a gold lame suit, wondering what will happen to him next, means the whole world to me.

Yesterday I was doing my bit to counteract the cruelty afforded to the bird world on millions of dinner tables yesterday. By feeding the ducks in my local park after a meat-free meal. Like all my meals. I don’t like to describe myself as a proper vegetarian, because I’m sure I’m being cruel to animals somewhere along the line. I have leather shoes and belts, and I don’t check for gelatin on the wrappers of biscuits. But I can’t bring myself to knowingly eat meat or fish any more.

L emails to assure me that he too wasn’t eating turkey yesterday…. just roast duck.

Tuesday December 25th 2001

Here is my Christmas Message.

I’m writing this on Christmas Day, alone in my room in Highgate, where I have decided to spend the season to be cheerless. I’m also consumed with flu and am feeling even more rotten than usual.

Despite my illness, I forced myself to leave the house this afternoon in order to feed the ducks in Waterlow Park, who remain my only true friends.

The park was full of adults with children in tow. A father and daughter try out what are presumably brand new Father-and-Daughter Rollerblades together.

As I break up and scatter bits of bread to the hungry birds in the pond, one family behind me are continuing their Christmas Dinner Table discussion loudly behind me while their children join me in playing Santa to waterfowl. It’s a September 11th debate, predictably. The gist of his rant was “haven’t we gone on about it enough? More people die in the Third World every year due to US foreign policy…”. That sort of thing. Presumably the topic was sparked off by the content of today’s Queen’s Speech.

I didn’t hear much in the way of retorts from his wife behind me, or even any noises of agreement. It was one of those conversations that aren’t really conversations. Where one person performs and the other is the audience under duress. It’s the way I imagine many marriages and relationships end up going. It’s the sort of thing that makes me glad that I live alone, in a lifelong marriage to myself. I say a quiet prayer and give thanks that although the Lord has had it in for me on many occasions throughout my lifetime, He has not been so unkind as to ever inflict upon me a Proper Relationship. That would really trump my own personal Book of Job. A few ill-advised flings, tentative trysts of curiosity, doomed attempts at True Love, and entirely alcoholic assignations aside, I have been extremely lucky. My principal aim for now is keep up that status. And also to stay slim, otherwise I fear I shall resemble Boris Johnson.

I spent Christmas Eve shopping in Central London. For myself, naturally. I was after a copy of Gavin Bryer’s “Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet” on CD, plus Stephen Malkmus’ single, “Jo Jo’s Jacket”, sample lyric “Stay inside on Christmas Day / And make believe you are my candy cane”. Not the most Christmassy of songs, but the CD single does come with my favourite pop video of recent times. It’s got kittens in it. Playing drum solos.

Navigating my way through the hordes on Oxford Street, one young couple holding hands are coming the other way, and there’s not enough room on the pavement for me to side-step them. They have to disengage their hands in order to get past me, and for me to get past them. I’m literally breaking couples up now. It’s my life’s work! Oh, the poetry of it all…

I spend the afternoon of Christmas Eve in a cinema, watching Ghost World, starring two teenage girls who don’t have mobile phones. Steve Buscemi’s character confesses at one point that he feels he doesn’t have anything in common with 99% of Humanity.

I heartily recommend this film to anyone who thinks “is it just me…?” The answer is no, you’re not the only one. You’re just heavily outnumbered by those who think they know better.

Ignore them. Live alone. Live deliberately. Merry Christma