From Ms Jeremy Dennis comes this frame for <a href="http://www.caption.org/caption-cgi/hello.cgi/phoenix/" target="_blank">a collaborative Internet comic strip</a>, featuring a character based upon myself. I am addressing a troubled Red Riding Hood. Or rather, her alternative world cousin, Big Green Riding Hood.

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/starfishsolution1.gif">

It suggests an excellent first line to a story.

<i>"Hullo, Miss Hood", said the blond man walking a giant harlequin shrimp. "I understand you have a starfish problem."</i>

I'm reminded of that wonderful first line from Ms Macaulay's The Towers Of Trebizond:

<i>"Take my camel, dear," said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.</i>

This ranks as my joint favourite opening to a novel. The other is from Mr Lewis's The Voyage Of The Dawn Treader:

<i>There was once a boy named Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it.</i>

Wednesday – To a Kash Point garden photo shoot for Italian Vogue. The article is to be a ten-page feature about The Nu-New Romantics of 21st Century London, or some such. I'm too old to be considered part of any youth tribe of the moment, which is what I suspect they're after, but that doesn't stop me from mooching along anyway.

Despite the proximity of fashionable Ladbroke Grove, Highlever Road W10 is a standard English suburban street of identical 1960s semi-detached houses. There's a recreation ground and a cornershop around the corner, but it's otherwise entirely residential. HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs is nearby, just in case.

On a sunny July afternoon like today, most real people are at work. The street is hazy, humid and almost entirely silent. Almost, but for one door left significantly open, where garish synth-pop music spills out rudely onto the muttering pavement. I don't even need to check the door number.

Inside is a gaggle (is there any better collective noun?) of squawking young men, made-up and dressed up to the nines, tens and elevens. Their looks are placed somewhere between Charity Shop Cyber-Punk and Dysfunctional Dandyism. Everyone is titivating furiously before a couple of long mirrors, while Matthew Glamorre, off-duty, unshaven in shorts, supervises. Here, Mr Glamorre looks more like the healthy cyclist he is by day, than the gaudy nightclub impresario he's usually known as. When one Kash Point Kid turns up on a bike, Glamorre has an enthused discussion with him about types of bicycle.

Also out of make-up is Jason Atomic, whom I've neither seen out of warpaint nor in the harsh afternoon sunlight. That said, his clothes are entirely On Duty – homemade shirt and tie covered in his trademark graffiti. He's here to sketch the proceedings in his notebook, and I give my excuse as doing the same for the diary, with words rather than pictures.

The place is clearly someone's private house, probably the photographer's; with the kitchen, office and lounge all knocked through into one long room on the ground floor. I admire the owner highly for allowing his own home to be overrun by a stream of flapping boys of outlandish appearance. There's someone's curly-haired baby sleeping quite happily in a pushchair in one corner, clearly throwing in the towel in the solipsism and attention-seeking game. So there's some advice for parents everywhere. Want to get your baby to sleep? Fill the room with grown-up babies.

Before one mirror is a dressing chair, where one boy having his hair and face made-up. I arrive, of course, with make-up, hair and clothes as Model's Own. The seated boy is taking too long to be ready, so I hear "Let's do Dickon while we're waiting."

In the back garden, there's a huge floral arrangement to provide props and set dressing for photos. A white tarpaulin is set up within a wooden shelter by way of a backdrop. It's all natural light only, just as well on such a sunny day. A beaten-up, rusting pinball game lurks in another corner of the garden.

I am given a buttonhole from <a href="http://www.canoe.ca/HGGardening0407/26_onionflower-ap.html" target="_blank">an onion flower</a>. Perfect symbolism: the flower that can be delicious or upsetting. With too many layers.

I have brought a suggested prop – a copy of The Little Prince, because one acquaintance says <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mal1/41995.html" target="_blank">last night she dreamed of me reading it aloud to people at a party</a>. One quote stands out for me, which covers several of my favourite themes, from transgenderism to assuring the world I believe in dressing up in order to be oneself, rather than dressing up for the superficial sake of it. The fox's secret. <i>"It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."</i>

But then someone says, "Patrick Wolf's done a photo with that book". Curses. Away it goes.

Still, I enjoyed reading Monsieur De Saint-Exupéry's classic again, though sadly not aloud, on the long Tube journey there and back. I equally enjoyed the fact I was doing so in the sweltering summer heat, resolutely dressed in my black suit and tie. I was covered in even more make-up and hair products than usual, having to allow for the amount that would wear off in transit. I sincerely hope my fellow passengers – mostly tourists – enjoyed the sight. That's an advantage of the Tube over buses. With all the seats facing each other, one has a captive audience whether one likes it or not. Might as well give them something worth looking at on their stifling underground journey.

I get home, peel off my umpteen onion layers and sink into cat-like sleep. Which is a shame, as I miss the weekly Kash Point radio show on <a href="http://www.resonancefm.com" target="_blank">Resonance FM</a>. I'm told they played a Fosca track.

I'm somewhat upset by a few of the reactions to my Plan B piece. Really, I thought the article was the height of arm-flapping haughtiness and eye-rolling archness. It's called Letter From Hysterica, after all. But some people have taken it the wrong way. They must really, really like their trainers.

There I go again. I write that last sentence with, I hope apparent, a head-tilted smirk and an extending diva arm, and can't believe anyone would take genuine umbrage at the phrase. But clearly they do. So I immediately apologise.

Part of me sees myself like a character in the film Performance, holding a mirror up to my face and getting a reaction that says more about the onlooker or reader than about myself or what I've actually written. That's one idea for a future photoshoot, too.

But the other part takes such reactions as constructive criticism. I must make such archness more apparent in my writing when necessary. I can't use a "smiley", one of those Internet punctuation marks that indicates tone of voice. Though I like the idea of proper broadsheet columnists using them. A.N. Wilson ending a piece with a small symbol depicting a winking little face.

Proper Writing is meant to eliminate any danger of misinterpretation of tone, so on this occasion I have to concede the fault lies squarely at my door. Ultimately, I'm grateful for the feedback. If a reader has taken things The Wrong Way, I have to grudgingly admit the fault lies with me rather than them. There's irony when people react strangely to a piece about… people reacting strangely. But on the street my appearance is all I have, and people can make of it what they want. When I write, however, any reading that differs from my own is my own imperfection.

I read the piece now and still find it funny, or tragic, or tragicomic. If others read it and instead find it actually <i>offensive</i>, my reaction to their reaction is not to quickly sniff like one of those archetypal letters page correspondents ("were they even at the same concert?"), but to nod in quiet acknowledgement like a chided kitten with unique nodding powers. Certain readers with a strange love-hate attraction to me are always going to be annoyed with me whatever I say or do. I can do nothing about them. But the offended reaction of those who normally enjoy what I write must be noted.

For example, I find phrases like "Default Men offendeth mine eye" <i>extremely</i> amusing and nothing else. I'd never believe in a thousand years that anyone could take exception at such a statement. But some have. In the long run it says more about my writing than the reader. There's room for improvement. And it's not the first time I've offended some people with a comment or two I'd thought was harmlessly arch. It's not that I'm entirely joking, but a certain entertainment is always intended. Why are some people so annoyed with me? Why are they taking a man with fluffy hair so seriously?

I can only apologise to such people and had better make certain things abundantly, impossibly clear. I certainly never, ever, intend to be objectionable or offensive or solicit such a reaction. The cynical reader asks, "Why stop now?"

I <i>never</i> look down on people. Just sideways or up. Most people manage to hold down jobs, which is more than I can do – how could I possibly look down on the more humanly capable? To me, that's a self-evident absurdity, and therefore amusing. I am a thirty-two year old man living on benefits in a bedsit. Surely, if there's judgement to be done here, I am the pathetic one, I am the joke.

It's true I have my bugbears such as men dressing badly or not shaving, but I don't think any the worse about them as people. If I come across as snobbish or superior, I'm more like Mary Poppins declaring herself "practically perfect in every way" with otherworldly archness, rather than a denizen of The Real World saying the same thing to look down on others.

I don't live in the real world – can you blame me? I see myself as an alternative, an escape, a slightly ridiculous character from a different plane, floating about with my £3 mini-umbrella, sometimes bordering on the hysterical (in every sense), dancing with strange Americans in cartoon London puddles.

If I do possess an air of snobbery, then the snobbery is friendly, fluffy, playful and dreaming of magic. It's never intended to be unkind, judgemental or manifesto-forming. Some of my best friends are Default Chimney Sweeps.

I am incapable of violence, intimidation, bullying or shouting. Ultimately, I am Harmless. Can harmlessness cause offence? Perhaps I should save time and just become the misinterpretation. Become the unpleasant, angry, superior snob that some mistake me for.

But I can't. Because the truth is, the truth I need to make more apparent is, I'm more Julie Andrews than Julie Burchill.

I've written a piece for Plan B magazine about attracting attention. It's published online here:

http://www.planbmag.com/columns/archives/00000018.php

There's a rather amusing argument, or rather, exchange of abuse, in the comments section at the foot of the page. Most of the comments appear to be from males. Just call me the new Helen Of Troy.

I've been going out in London so much lately, and frittered away so much money, that I've had to impose a ban on myself leaving Highgate until my backlog of chores and promised writing is tackled to some degree of completion. There's also a backlog of things to write about in the diary, which I'll draw on when the previous day hasn't thrown up anything particularly interesting. I have a file full of notes and photos to consult, and I never leave the house without a pen and pocket notebook.

The two exceptions to this curbing of my social life are <a href="http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/" target="_blank">Scarlet's Well</a> at the LSE on Monday, and <a href="http://www.kashpoint.com/" target="_blank">Kash Point</a> on the Tattershall Castle on Thursday 29th. But that really is it. Anyone who badly wants my company can come up to the <a href="http://www.theboogaloo.org/" target="_blank">Boogaloo</a> and buy me a drink. Just as well Kash Point has gone monthly.

There are plenty of examples of great barflies of the past being able to balance work and play adequately. Francis Bacon would put in a good morning's painting before spending the rest of the day propping up the bar in the French House in unsubtle make-up. Dylan Thomas is another one. For all his much-documented Soho drinking sessions, he still got Under Milk Wood and all those BBC readings done. Even if he did once leave the manuscript of the former in the Admiral Duncan on one particular Soho pub crawl, fortunately retrieved the next day by a frantic BBC producer. That said, he never actually wrote a thing in London, instead going away to Wales for bouts of alcohol-free intensive writing when the deadlines approached. I can't afford to leave Highgate, so a writing holiday in Highgate it has to be. At least, until such time as I can multitask to a Baconesque degree.

There's other local attractions on my doorstep, though. As well as the Boogaloo, there's <a href="http://www.ents24.com/web/venue/16980/London/Jacksons_Lane_Community_Centre.html" target="_blank">Jacksons Lane Community Centre</a>.

<b>Last night:</b> To JLCC to see Richard Herring's new Edinburgh show, <a href="http://www.richardherring.com/hercules/" target="_blank">"The Twelve Tasks Of Hercules Terrace"</a> with Mr Martin White. Unfortunately, the box office misinforms us about the running order. So while we are happily chatting away in the Boogaloo across the road, confident of missing the other act on the bill, Mr Rob Deering, we are in fact missing the man we'd come to see. I refrain from asking for my money back purely because our tickets are free.

On being told of the staff's mistake, we do manage to sneak in and catch the last ten minutes of Mr Herring's set. I knew it was a preview of the Edinburgh show he hadn't yet finished, but I didn't realise just how unfinished. The comedian is clutching a microphone in its stand, not taking it out of the stand once, while reading entirely from notes in the other hand. Essentially, he is talking about what the show will be like when it's finished, and trying out bits to see if they work with audiences first. Quite a contrast from the slick multimedia show he'd last done, "Talking Cock", where he prowled confidently around the stage, radio mic somewhere on his person, delivering a well-crafted and memorised script with slides and little bits of seamless improvisation when deviation from the text is required.

It's true I'm fascinated in seeing the nuts and bolts of work-in-progress shows like this (or "scratch" shows as some arts centres call them), but feel I can't really comment on them until I've seen the completed version. On top of which, tonight I end up seeing only the last ten minutes of the draft version. So I see an incomplete version of an incomplete version.

You might ask, Dear Reader, why I wanted to miss the other comedian on the bill, even though his act was probably more finished, and that I'd not seen him before. Well, I'm funny about stand-up comedians. Given the choice between chatting with a friend of mine I've not chatted to for a while, and seeing a comedian I've not seen myself or had recommended to me, it's the friend every time. Most of my friends make me laugh more than most comedians.

On top of which, I have seen Mr Deering on television, presenting a programme about mistakes in Hollywood movies. He came across as a Chummy Young Bloke, which is a style I'm not keen on, you'll be vastly unsurprised to learn. I doubt very much he gets "Batty Man" shouted at him when walking around, though I could be wrong. Still, on this occasion I was exclusively psyched up to see Mr Herring and his tales of updating Mr Hercules's tasks, and gave Mr Deering the detriment of the doubt. So after the Herring set finished, I didn't stick around.

I've really not been at all lucky when seeing comedy gigs lately, at least not when accompanied by others. Tim Chipping and I went to see Adam Bloom and one of Parsons and Naylor at Crouch End King's Head. Both comics had their own shows on national BBC radio at the time. The show was cancelled due to insufficient audience numbers.

More recently, we both turned up at the Chalk Farm Enterprise to see Russell Brand. He cancelled.

Add to that this Richard Herring show of last night, which Mr White and effectively missed due to the venue staff not knowing what was going on in their own venue.

Yet, I've had no problems at all when going to comedy gigs by myself. I went to see the excellent Jo Caulfied at Comedy Camp the other week. She turned up, the audience was of a healthy size, and the venue staff didn't give me any misinformation.

I can only conclude that all these comedians and box office staff members are secretly jealous of me when I'm in company. They want me all to themselves, or not at all. Well, they're only human.

A new portrait by <a href="http://www.claudia-andrei.com/" target="_blank">Ms Andrei</a></a>.

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/dickoncemetery3.jpg">

Dickon Edwards, Highgate Cemetery, July 2004.

Friday night – to How Does It Feel To Be Loved. I only intend to stay a short time, as I'm currently trying to curb my wanton clubbing due to its effect on my meagre finances, and more importantly, on distracting me from doing any creative work. But typically I drink too much and dance too much and before I know it the club ends.

The place is sold out by 11.30. The snob part of me thinks there are too many non-member Office Monkeys turfed out of the nearest Firkin or O'Neills, only there for the cheap Friday night out, and possibly taking up spaces that might have belonged to proper fans and members.

But then I argue against myself. Regulars and members would know that they need to get there early. And perhaps playing records by Heavenly and The Monochrome Set and The Sea Urchins to the uninitiated does more good than preaching to the converted. To show Dave From Accounts that there are other worlds of Being.

I like to think my appearance has this effect too. In every gang of boys who shout "Batty Man" as I pass by, perhaps – just perhaps – there's one whose world has been secretly changed, if only a little. If only to advertise that there is another way of living, one without Mr Nike and Mr Reebok's permission. Visibility of other potential paths of life, at all costs. Many gangs are really formed around one bully who takes charge, who issues the orders. The others are just desperately trying to fit in.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that as soon as my fluffy little head disappears from view, such boys turn to each other and say "Actually, I thought he looked wonderful. It's so good that individual thought is thriving. What am we doing wearing this awful default sportswear? We just look like People. As opposed to Ourselves. Let's all flounce off to the nearest row of charity shops and look for suits." But I try to live in hope.

Ultimately, I refuse to believe that all young people who dress that way FEEL that way deep down. I'm reminded of the Paul Merton joke about Iraqi officials. "Why do they all have those moustaches? They can't ALL think it suits them."

Back at the club, and Rachel Stevenson points out that many of the How Does It Feel club's members are themselves, as I offensively described, Office Monkeys. "Ah yes, but are they so in their hearts?", I said, arms extending into the air as if I'm Frances De La Tour in Noel Coward's "Fallen Angels".

I find myself sharing a cab with an Australian girl living in Archway. I'm ashamed to admit my drunken snobbery had not yet receded, and I put her to my own British Citizenship Test. Does she know who Alan Bennett and A.E. Housman are? She does not. But then she gives me the names of important people who help the Environment, her line of work, and I am of course equally stumped. "What's this Alan Bennett ever done to curb the Greenhouse Effect?" she asks. Serves me right.

Now, I must talk about the most recent job I had. Arguably, it's the best job I've ever had to date.

On the day of the last tube strike, the streets are full of besuited men walking everywhere. But few of them are wearing cravats and walking plastic lobsters on pale blue ribbons.

I am being photographed for the cover of a book called The Decadent Handbook, edited by Ms Rowan Pelling of The Erotic Review. The black suit is my own, of course, though I'm giving a new acquisition its first airing. A bejewelled tie pin, £1.25 from the Neutering Stops Aids In Cats charity shop on Archway Road.

People are forever telling me I have a natural talent for posing for a photo, perhaps posing too much. "Can you look more natural?" photographers sometimes ask. Silly question. As Mr Wilde says, looking natural is the hardest pose of all. And looking unnatural comes extremely naturally to me. The other man's grass is always posing unnaturally.

So it's nice when occasionally someone is willing to pay me for this innate so-called ability of mine. Today it is <a href="http://www.dedalusbooks.com/">Dedalus Books</a>, publishers of Decadent Literature past and present. I'm tempted to ask that they pay me in selections from their back catalogue, starting with the FIVE lesser-known titles by J.K. Huysmans they do. But I do need the cash.

En route to the photo shoot, the photographer Mr Bird asks me a favour. Will I pick up the prop lobster, given the prop shop is on my way? I agree, and find myself in DZD on Tottenham Court Road. DZD turns out to be in a huge open-plan basement, full of Christmas trees draped in coloured ribbons, surrounded by little tableaux scenes on platforms designed to show off their prop range. They offer not one but two prop lobsters for sale. One is small and orange and edible-looking, probably used in plays featuring a dinner table spread. The other is huge and red and features as part of their World Of Fishing display amid nets, rods, plastic fish and so on. It's been posed as if it's trying to crawl out of a wicker fishing basket.

I can't make up my mind, but as both lobsters are inexpensive, I take both with me. I'm delighted that the shop provides me with a transparent carrier bag.

"Who's this for?", asks the female assistant, typing out the invoice.

"Dedalus Books. As in Icarus and Daedalus, but spelt the way James Joyce did in Portrait Of The Artist. You know the old Icarus story. Wax wings, flew too near the sun, over-used as a metaphor by newspaper columnists…?"

She's never heard of it. Far be it for me to expect that all assistants in theatrical prop stores should have a basic knowledge of the Greek Myths in order to take the job, but I did think that one tale was pretty damn well-known.

So I make my way across tube-strike-addled London, looking the way I do, carrying a clear transparent bag with two plastic lobsters inside.

Tube strikes over salaries (as opposed to safety) happen fairly regularly at the moment, despite overwhelming public disapproval, even from Mayor Livingstone, the trade unions' friend. When the tubes are operating, the service is hardly first class. To go on strike as well, given that tube drivers are paid far more than nurses and teachers, seems the height of sarcasm. It's the old cafe joke. "Isn't the food here terrible?" "Yes, and in such small portions too." Much about London can be similarly summed up by its people.

However, there's a little secret tactic one can take advantage of on tube strike days. Most people assume there'll be no trains whatsoever, but there's actually quite a few still running. And as many minor stations are closed, these trains stop less and so travel faster. So, oddly, I have the fastest Warren Street to Victoria tube journey possible on a virtually empty train.

Only at Victoria, my luck runs out. I can't get a bus to Sloane Square because they're all full to the brim. So I walk the remainder, playfully swinging my bag of artificial crustaceans all the way.

The photo shoot is intended to portray a New Decadent couple in 2004 London, paying homage to the Decadents of the past. My companion for the photo is the Parisian chanteuse, artist and recording artiste <a href="http://www.annepigalle.com/">Anne Pigalle</a>, wearing a long red silk dress, feathery headpiece, and lots of black lace. She's dressed a little bit Moulin Rouge, a little bit Frida Kahlo. I have more make-up on than she does. With Mme Pigalle on one hand, a ribbon leading to a plastic lobster on the ground in the other, this, then, is my job for one balmy June afternoon in 21st Century London.

Our lobster friend, which I name Susan, is the larger of the two I purchased, and is here as a reference to the story that in the 1840s, the poet Gerard de Nerval walked one through the park of the Palais Royal on a pale blue ribbon. He preferred lobsters to dogs, he said, because they don't bark and because they "know the secrets of the deep."

This tale is very possibly a myth, given French biographies of M. Nerval don't mention it at all, just British and American books about bohemians and eccentrics. It could be a wishful fib that's become truth over time. But true or not, it is considered to be an image of ultimate Decadence, so a homage is due.

We pose by the side of the <a href="http://london.openguides.org/index.cgi?Albert_Bridge">Albert Bridge</a>, by the old sign saying "All troops must break step when marching across this bridge." At one point a dog-walker came past: a woman walking six small terriers at once. One of the mutts had a curious sniff of our artificial crustacean friend, but sadly Mr Bird didn't snap this event in time.

Here's hoping Dedalus and Ms Pelling are happy with the photos. To be on the cover of something called The Decadent Handbook – what job could I possibly be more qualified to do?

<img align=left src="http://www.ri-ra.co.uk/photos/boogaloo.jpg"></img>Mr O'Boyle, landlord of The Boogaloo, rings me and invites me to be an "ambassador" of the pub. The will entail, he says, being myself, staying myself, and occasionally meeting with the other Ambassadors, who I've yet to meet, for meals. I gratefully agree. I see he's even made an announcement on the <a href="http://www.theboogaloo.org/news.htm">Boogaloo website</a>.

I regard this as something of a personal landmark. With stark Proustian terror, I recall the first time I ever stepped across the threshold of a pub by myself. I would have been about 11. The pub in question was The Red Lion in Bildeston, the Suffolk village where I attempted to grow up for eighteen years. Such an overrated idea.

My mother had asked, no Р<i>ordered</i> me to deliver a tin of home-made cakes to the Red Lion for some local f̻te or other. I remember begging her not to send me there, even for a matter of seconds. Given my reaction, she might as well have been sending me away to join the army. All I had to do was go into the hostelry in question, hand the tin to someone behind the bar and leave. Yet even this small filial assignment reduced my childhood self to a quavering mass of tears. The searing fear of this nominally trivial moment has stayed with me ever since, and will doubtlessly follow me to the grave.

So what was all the fuss about? One doesn't have to be a Friend Of Freud to suspect that for me, The Pub represented The World Of Adults, particularly of Adult Men. Which was somewhere I clearly never wanted to go, if I could at all help it.

Twenty-one years later, here I am, technically an adult, but merrily proving that one can be grown-up without having to grow up. I have found a pub that not only welcomes me, it's made me an official ambassador of the place. By a ludicrous piece of good fortune, it's also the nearest bar to my bed.

So, I suppose I'd better start carrying out my ambassadorial duties, and spread the word about the Boogaloo. It's just as well I'm only too happy to oblige.

It's true I admire that whole lineage of 20th century Soho barflies and Fitzrovian bedsit dandies, as celebrated in the works of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1899235698/dickonedwards-21">Mr Maclaren-Ross</a>. Hallowed haunts like The Coach and Horses, The French House, The Wheatsheaf, frequented by lounging legends of literature and art. There one could meet those who actually did worthwhile things between drinks, like Francis Bacon and Dylan Thomas, jostling at the bar with those who couldn't quite multi-task the business of Being with the business of Doing. Or, in the case of the late Mr Jeffrey Bernard, taking failure into his own tragicomic realm of success.

By a strange coincidence, the scene of my trial by fire, Bildeston's Red Lion, was once a drinking stop for Mr Bernard too, during a period in the late 60s where one of his hapless wives tried to change him by moving him out to the countryside. He actually lived in the next village, Chelsworth, but the Peacock Inn there had him barred for breaking in and serving himself out of hours. So he found himself regularly walking a mile or so of country lane to Bildeston, purely in order to get a drink. If you can't live in Soho, make Soho where you live.

I never met Mr Bernard in Suffolk myself – he would have moved away by the time I was old enough to remember anything. However, my father met the man a few times when sharing lifts into London, while a glamourous young cousin of mine, who does something or other in the Soho media world, once met him in the Coach and Horses in his amputee twilight years. Which probably cheered the old soak up no end. He drew some kind of cartoon for her, I believe. In fact, an older Boogaloo regular, Mr Michael Sharkey, tells me he also met Mr Bernard. This was it – he was a professional Local Character that everyone either met, or knew about, or knew someone that knew someone that had met him. Whether I like it or not, this is one aspect that I am beginning to share in common with Mr Bernard. I'm a Local Character that brings character to his local.

I hasten to add that, much as I admire Mr Bernard's writings (in his book <A HREF="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0715631500/dickonedwards-21">Reach For The Ground</a>, or as adapted in the play <A HREF="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004YVDE/dickonedwards-21">Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell</a>), I don't hero-worship his drinking habit per se. I do enjoy drinking, and being drunk, in company. But it has to be somewhere I vaguely feel welcome. Given my instant-opinion-soliciting appearance and my dislike of blokish men staring grimly at a tacky wall-mounted TV, just any pub won't do. And as much as I'd like to be a regular at those tried-and-tested bohemian Soho hostelries of yore, the thought of having to brave an interminable night bus journey home to Highgate most nights rather puts me off. That the spiritual heir to the French House should be on my doorstep therefore delights me immensely.

=================

Typically, <a href="http://www.lynnefeatherstone.org/news966.htm">some local councillors have voiced reservations</a> that the pub is in danger of bringing the West End to sleepy old Highgate. Well, I've lived here for ten years, voted here for ten years, and I for one welcome such a transformation. The Boogaloo is the best thing to happen to my neighbourhood since I moved here.

In any rate, it doesn't even make sense to complain about noise levels on Archway Road. The rest of Highgate is indeed a leafy residential area, but Archway Road itself is the beginning of the A1, for goodness's sake, and one of the major traffic routes out of London. It's already a noisy street, and always was. And the Boogaloo clientèle are never violent, or laddish. Some pubs are frightening places, certainly. But here, the only sense of fear is that struck into the hearts of badly-dressed louts, who on entering quickly realise their mistake and relocate elsewhere for their evening's shouting and fighting. Probably somewhere on the Holloway Road. Let's face it, if a pub nominates the likes of ME to be its foppish mascot, you know that brawls over sporting scores are in no way going to rear their ugly head. I may drink beer, but I will never be beery. There's more chances of catching me wearing trainers.

So I can only presume these so-called Liberal councillors are just referring to The Wrong Kind Of Noise – that of people audibly enjoying themselves. Juggernauts constantly rumbling away miserably into the night are, to their ears, somehow preferable to the sound of spontaneous human joy. Such an English quality – the idea that enjoying one's life isn't as essential as having one's supermarkets well-stocked in the morning.

The local councillors of Soho are even more ludricous in pursuing this line of curtain-twitching mean-spiritedness, given their location. Central London venues like the Astoria are constantly battling to keep their late licences from being revoked by Soho residents. It seems quite simple to me – if you want a quite night in, don't bloody live in the middle of London. Or if you do, then don't complain about the noise, and don't stop people trying to enjoy themselves non-violently after 11pm. I know someone who lives happily in a flat in Old Compton Street. He is, needless to say, a very heavy sleeper. And a DJ. Noisy streets are for noisy people. Just as it is in Soho, so should it be in Archway Road. Ye gods, this is a street dominated by Archway Bridge, a favourite North London suicide spot. It needs all the fun it can get.

===================

Any small pub can get a crowd in every night. What it seems Mr O'Boyle is keen on doing is instead getting it packed with "characters", with fans of music and literature, helping to making the Boogaloo unlike any other local. Making it hip as opposed to trendy. Stylish as opposed to fashionable. Unusual as opposed to commonplace. <a href="http://www.ri-ra.co.uk/features/features2.html">In a magazine article</a>, there's the rumour that Mr Thing from Coldplay was turned away for being too dull. I'm not sure if that story is true, but I fully approve of a pub that is happy to have such a rumour circulated.

So, what else goes on at the Boogaloo, apart from the sight of me in a corner sipping at a glass of Magners Irish cider and scribbling notes for diary entries like this?

Well, left over from the time Mr O'Boyle ran Filthy McNasty's, there's literary events and readings, such as the one this Thursday from Mr Jake Arnott, author of "The Long Firm" and other tales of Kray Brothers-esque gay East End gangster life. Lately, Time Out magazine employed Mr Arnott to interview Morrissey, and no one was in the least surprised.

From the days of the Shepherds comes the notoriously difficult Tuesday night pop quiz, attended in the past by Bernard Butler and the creators of the film "Shaun Of The Dead" (in which the Shepherds is referenced). I note that the <a href="http://www.theboogaloo.org/events.htm">Boogaloo website</a> currently mentions one regular team in particular, The Libretto Heels. This group includes certain passionate music loving associates of mine, Mr Timothy Chipping and Mr Edward Mole. If they lose, on no account tell them it's only a game.

There's also a monthly film quiz, which I have yet to attend. From the looks of it, it seems to cater more to those list-making boys who can recite scenes from Star Wars and Goodfellas, rather than flower-like Jean Cocteau fans like myself, but I shall go and find out for myself. It's also been turned into a MTV panel game of late, featuring people from, yes, "Shaun Of The Dead".

Then there's the jukebox, which Mr O'Boyle claims is the best in London. He makes a point of not including anything from the last ten years on it. This is not to suggest he's against any kind of new music – The Libertines' bassist is performing here soon – but one can hear the latest chart records in any other hostelry, after all.

Finally, the Boogaloo has two extremely cute black cats. Sisters, I'm told.

===========

Last Monday I drank with the androgynous Wren Gallo, of whom more another time, along with his Welsh companion Andy. We talked about Welsh bands, and I mentioned The Pooh Sticks, the semi-satirical indiepop band whose late 80s song "On Tape" deliciously reels off a list of the essential music to be found in any discerning indiekid's collection of the time. Albeit copied onto cassette. <i>"I've got Falling And Laughing / the original Postcard version / I've got the Pastels' Songs For Children / Sky Saxon's solo album…"</i>

In the background, there's an impromptu gig by <a href="http://www.skysaxonandtheseeds.com/">Sky Saxon</a> himself, and Mr O'Boyle introduces him to me. Such is the Boogaloo.

==============
Another famous drinker, Mr Shane MacGowan, is a regular. In fact, he stays in the flat upstairs whenever he's in London. Recently, the pub became the venue for the launch party of his brand new single, "The Road To Paradise". This is a rather infectious and jaunty summer pop song featuring the Kick Horns, and <a href="http://www2.hmv.co.uk/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;-1;-1;-1&sku=181492">it demands your immediate purchase</a>, Dear Reader. HMV are stocking it under "J" for Jimmy Johnstone, whose charity it benefits, in case you can't find it under "M".

I was lucky enough to be on the guestlist for this party, my name next to the likes of Ms Kate Moss and Mr Johnny Knoxville from the Jackass TV programme, where he endured a variety of dangerous stunts in preparation for sharing a small room in Highgate with Dickon Edwards. One onlooker in bad shorts asked what I was doing there. Because, he said, I didn't look like "an average Shane MacGowan fan". I replied, "I'd hate to look like an average anything." I wonder if he said the same thing to Ms Moss?

Someone else there insisted on telling me I resembled… (notebooks out, score-keepers!)… <a href="http://www.echonews.com/932/images/bob_downe_lismore.jpg">Bob Downe.</a>

At one point I was dragged off to be seated with the other best dressed person in the room, the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0283062991/dickonedwards-21">writer Ms Victoria Clarke</a>, resplendent in a white toga-like gown belted around the waist. She is the singer's close friend, biographer, and former lover of some fifteen years. Ms Clarke introduced me to the others around the table, including the man himself and Ms Moss. Later, I learn that Ms Clarke is an ex-New Romantic.

Mr MacGowan performed a couple of short live sets with a youthful backing band, some of whom can't have been born when the first Pogues album came out. They played a mesmerizing version of "A Rainy Night In Soho", which has to be my favourite song of his. Mr MacGowan has certainly had his much-reported physical problems over the years, but on the evidence of this iconic performance, his worst days are behind him.

<a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=14389170&method=full">The event is later reported in the Mirror newspaper</a>, as part of the gossip on Ms Moss's romantic life. Nothing in there about mine, I see. The article mentions a couple of inaccuracies. They say Ms Moss missed the gig. Not true. She missed the first set, but danced vigorously to the second and nearly high-kicked me in the face at one point. They also report that Mr Nick Cave played the gig too. He wasn't there, unless you count his calendar on the wall opposite. Again, this is another plus point for the Boogaloo: how many pubs have Nick Cave calendars?

There's a more accurate article about the party, with photos, online <a href="http://www.ri-ra.co.uk/features/features16.html">here</a>. I've just noticed, I'm in the background of two of the photos. I never was much good at fading unnoticed into the background.

There's another decent account of the event, <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7948-1172023,00.html">in the Times here.</a>

I think that's enough spreading the word about the Boogaloo for one day. Consider my ambassadorial duties fulfilled. I'm off for a drink.

===
In the next diary entry: My day spent posing by the Albert Bridge with Mme Anne Pigalle and a plastic lobster called Susan, for the cover of Ms Rowan Pelling's "The Decadent Handbook". I am not in the slightest bit joking.

A quote emailed to me today from Mr Laurence Hughes, from his newly-acquired home of a boat in Shropshire. "Life is either an adventure or a disaster. So better make it an adventure".

<img align=left src="http://freespace.virgin.net/jones.586/sw/16.jpg"></img><b>[Photo by <lj user=mzdt>. <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mzdt/152150.html">Click here to see more from the same concert</a>]. </b>

<i>Thinking back – May 26th 2004</i>
One of the highlights of my year thus far. I play a concert as part of the <a href="http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/">Scarlet's Well</a> band. This marks frontman Bid's first official UK performance in eight years, and the first since his former group, legendary New Wave dandies <a href="http://www.bid.clara.net/mset/">The Monochrome Set</a>, split up. In addition to playing on all the marvellous Scarlet's Well esoteric folk-pop songs, I get to sing an impromptu duet with Bid on the MS classic Goodbye Joe, and to emulate the Lester Square lead guitar part on Eine Symphonie Des Grauens, the Set's second single, originally released on Rough Trade in 1979. It's less a gig for me than a letter to Jim'll Fix It. The Monochrome Set and Scarlet's Well may not be household names, but to me they are household gods.

Meet Lester Square himself afterwards (tall, handsome, affable), and the other main Monochrome Set member, Andy Warren (small, wary, cynical). Someone from the Adam Ant fanclub was there to video the concert, which Bid rightfully finds odd. Apart from the fact it was really Messrs Warren and Square, not Bid, who had more of a connection with the young Adam Ant's first musical steps, I've personally found Bid's music far more enjoyable and closer to my heart than Mr Ant's oeuvre, and do wish a small number of lazy souls would cease regarding the MS as little more than a footnote in the Adam Ant story.

That there should be someone applauding at a Scarlet's Well concert saying "thank you, Bid, for being vaguely connected with Adam Ant over twenty years ago" is a depressing thought indeed. Thankfully, the effusive cheers tonight are in approbation of the Scarlet's Well songs, and for the band members passionately transforming this previously studio-bound project of Bid's into an impossibly engaging and infectiously entertaining live show. Scarlet's Well has quickly become the London concert world's best-kept secret. Elements of Kurt Weill, of sea-shanties, of Russian folk songs, of Disney musicals, of timeless melody. What better night out?

What the uninitiated make of it all, goodness knows. If a band is easier to put into a category, they are easier to play on a radio programme (even a specialist one), easier to review, easier to market. See also the band Keane. Why be different when you can be easily marketable? We're back to that dreaded question of St Peter at the gates of Heaven… "What do you bring to the party?" "Something you've heard before. Someone other than myself".

The music of Scarlet's Well is in a genre of its own, and defiantly so. Bid is a man more likely to say no to most things than yes. He's turned down playing support slots to certain big name groups, and is no way interested in the schmoozing and hustling side of the music industry. One half of me finds this frustrating, while the other admires it as an entirely praiseworthy trait, especially in a business saturated in sycophancy and the desperate urge to Keep In Touch.

One can never underestimate the power of deliberately saying no. In the music business, and in London media life in general, there are usually only two responses. Yes, and Anything Other Than Saying No. This latter can take the form of "We'll let you know", or simple non-responsiveness. Phone calls not returned, emails not replied to, a name silently crossed off the party invite list. I imagine people suddenly waking up and saying aloud, "Oh, I don't like that Dickon Edwards any more. I've gone off him."

People go through their pro- and anti- Dickon Edwards phases. I do too, it's just that mine are lifelong.

Also on this bill at the Spitz is the last set of the week by Gentleman Reg, whom I once again accompany on extra guitar. I get an enormous buzz out of Reg Vermue borrowing Bid's guitar – two very different worlds, generations, countries, scenes, genres, meeting as a direct result of me getting out of bed and doing something about the music I love. What have Scarlet's Well and Gentleman Reg got in common? Answer: Dickon Edwards is rather fond of them both, he wanted to see both in concert, so he did something about it. The Spitz was my suggestion to Bid when he asked about where to play this first SW UK gig, while Toronto-based Gentleman Reg travelled to the UK for the first time, to play the SW support slot I'd got him. I suppose for me it's a very small version of the Meltdown Festival. What have Alan Bennett and The New York Dolls got in common? Morrissey. Ivor Cutler and Lou Reed? Laurie Anderson. Scarlet's Well and Gentleman Reg? Yours truly. I note that Morrissey compares his festival to an i-Pod. Booking one's favourite groups as the ultimate DJ set or personal compilation. One does so to entertain others, to introduce acts one likes to the uninitiated, and to communicate one's own thoughts and personality via other people's music.

The day after, I receive an email from Bid asking me to leave the SW live band. After I've had a good cry, I concede that this is for the best. I'm keen to get on with my own creative affairs, and lack the energy to hold down several projects at once, unlike musical multi-taskers Martin, Jennifer and Kate in the band. It was always my assumption that I couldn't be in the Scarlet's Well band for long, not while Shinkansen Records (and the others in Fosca) are patiently awaiting a third Fosca album.

Bid's reasons are that he feels I'm too much of a frontman in my own right, and am miscast in the role of the backing musician. He's also frustrated that I'm not an innate lead guitarist. We're both essentially rhythm players. Meanwhile Peter Momtchiloff, lead guitarist in the bands Talulah Gosh, Heavenly and The Would-Be-Goods, offers his services a few weeks after I join. From that moment it feels silly for me to be there when he could be doing a better job. Given that I used to hitch-hike around the country to see Heavenly in the early 90s, I am only too happy to see him joining Scarlet's Well. Even if it means me stepping down. Mr M <i>understands</i> the guitar far better than myself. I'm just glad Bid didn't ask me to sling my hook before the Spitz concert.

The thing is, I am starting to admit I've never WANTED to be a guitarist – it's just the instrument I find the easiest to use as a songwriting tool. Or even, just somewhere to put my hands to stop myself from being arrested. I've played the thing on stages for over ten years now, and it's fair to say my six-string skills have barely improved one jot. In my music exam at school, I'd frequently get full marks for the theory, and shockingly low marks for the practical. Anyone out there who regards themselves as a guitarist would be able to see that I'm not the best man for the job.

When Martin and Jennifer hear the news, I find myself having to convince them on the phone that I agree with Bid's decision. Jennifer says, quite understandably, "I can't believe that you're arguing in favour of someone else's decision to dismiss you!"

It's not the first time. After I toured the world for the best part of a year playing guitar for Spearmint, my musical talents were found wanting and I was fired. Singer Shirley Lee invited me to a cafe in Muswell Hill one afternoon.

"Would you like a drink? Wine? Spirits?"

"It's a bit early", I reply, taking my seat at the bar table. "Tea would be fine, thanks."

"Are you sure?" he insists.

"Yes, yes. So what's this about?"

Shirley pauses, stares at me and smirks sheepishly. I cotton on and roll my eyes.

"Oh, god… You're sacking me."

He nods, with the expression of a kindly vet confirming the worst about a doomed sheepdog.

I sigh heavily.

"In that case…. Triple vodka and tonic, please."

Still, this is all fair enough in the world of music. Whatever is best for the songs must come first. I still wonder just how bad the other candidates at the Spearmint guitarist audition must have been.

Thankfully, I remain friends with Mr Lee and his bandmates. They seem to like my skills at Being Dickon Edwards, if not my skills at Being A Backing Guitarist. Shame, as I do love sharing a stage and strumming along with a band I'm fond of. Not a day goes by without my wishing, if only momentarily, that it'd be nice to not be Dickon Edwards sometimes. But I remain the best man for the job. If only that job.

With Scarlet's Well, I prefer to see my walking the plank as good party etiquette – arrive, make your mark, ensure everyone knows you were there, move on to the next party. For those that missed the Spitz concert, there'll be a Scarlet's Well live album out soon, which I'll be on, and which will also serve as a handy "greatest hits" collection for those needing an introduction to Bid's estimable talents. I shall also be contributing or co-writing new songs for future SW albums, which is really what I was meant to be doing in the first place.

Something I <i>do</i> seem to have an innate talent for is being a catalyst, a connection, a matchmaker, whether by default or design. Bid was after a drummer, keyboardist and accordion player, and I found him the three best ones for the job. <b>Scarlet's Well play again at the Kings Cross Water Rats on July 7th</b>. I shall be there, proudly watching a beautiful multi-headed creature I had a small hand in creating.