Lea in Big Brother:

“These aren’t my friends. They’re just people I know.”

A quote of the year, not least because of MySpace Nation.

(I’ve just come up with that phrase on the spot, though I don’t doubt minds have been thinking alike across the world. I’d lay money that someone somewhere is writing a book called ‘Myspace Nation’. Purely because it’s so absolutely, searingly inevitable.)

I get a kind of cathartic buzz watching Lea on Big Brother. She’s a paranoid, attention-seeking depressive given to regular fits of tears, whose spending of money trying to feel happier and at home in her skin – her plastic surgery – clearly has failed to deliver even an iota of the hoped-for results. By way of excusing my watching of Big Brother at all, I like to think of Ms Lea as doing the side of me that I’d like to have surgically removed myself. She’s my emotional stunt double.

Something currently driving me mad: knowing how to greet people I know. A handshake, a hug, a kiss on one cheek, a kiss on both cheeks, or a kiss on the lips? Which one for which person at which occasion? No one ever tells you this. It’s an absolute minefield of anxiety. People should wear signs. “We should hug.” “A handshake is fine.” “Not on the mouth!”

I can never work out what people want, and am terrified that I’ll do the wrong thing, and they’ll call the police.

A cartoon seen recently, worthy of pre-war Punch, marked ‘Modern London Life’.

Two drawings, each of two women hugging effusively, saying “How ARE you?”. The caption for one says “Best Friends”. The other says “Vague Aquaintances”.

Both drawings are, of course, absolutely identical.

Said the pond to Narcissus, “It’s just ‘self, self, self’ with some people.”

Talking Heads: “Nothing But Flowers” (1988)

A rare video from Talking Heads’ last album, featuring not only Mr D Byrne and pals on the verge of splitting up, but also Mr J Marr fresh from splitting up The Smiths. And Ms K MacColl fresh from THAT Pogues duet, to boot. An pro-environmental song of sorts, but with a witty twist. It’s a kind of retort to Ms Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, where the protaganist laments Paradise being paved to ‘put up a parking lot’. Here, Mr Byrne’s character is in some kind of post-apocalypse rural Paradise, but misses the parking lots, shopping malls and billboards that went before.

Musically, it reminds me somewhat of The Smiths’ “Ask”: Mr Marr’s jangly summer guitar, Ms MacColl’s winning pop harmonies.

If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower

Here’s another Talking Heads song, the better-known “Once In A Lifetime”. As covered by Mr K Frog and The Muppets. Oh yes!

Finally, here’s fellow New York witty art-pop purveyor Ms Laurie Anderson, delivering a short spoken word piece about Women And Money. Proving her advice on how best to avoid accusations of pretension while making Art: take the mickey out of yourself. I can’t watch her these days without thinking of the UK comedienne Ms Jo Neary, who I saw in Edinburgh last year. One of her character routines is essentially ‘Laurie Anderson Orders A Bag Of Chips’. It was a pretty funny impersonation, though I did wonder if your average UK comedy audience would recognise a Laurie Anderson spoof. It’s not like she’s Tony Blair. Actually, Ms Anderson’s latest show, Happiness, includes her account of SELLING bags of chips, when she worked at a NYC branch of McDonalds, just out of wondering what it was like. In her (puts on Laurie Anderson voice)… de- tached…. ar-ty ec-cen-tric… vague-ly a-sexual… a-loof but po-litical… way.

You can see why I relate to her.

Today’s News Of The World screams predictably about ‘Sarah’s Law’, and the need to keep convicted paedophiles monitored. They seem to be doing a pretty good job themselves, publishing a photo of two gentlemen apparently filming small children in a park. Later that day, the police report they’ve arrested one of the men, thanks to the paper’s vigilence. The papers sell, the readers are happy, the police are happy. Who needs a new law?

In fact, if Sarah’s Law were to come into being, the tabloid would no longer be obliged to do this sort of monitoring themselves. I can’t believe that’s what they really want, deep down. They clearly love taking pictures of paedophiles, and would hate to have to stop. Monitoring paedophiles is the tabloids’ fetish. They’re paedophile-philes. They get off on taking photos of men getting off on taking photos.

Just underneath this story on the NOTW website is a rather shocking juxtaposition: a little ad for a competition called ‘Baby Idol’. Next to a photo of a smiling naked baby is the following invitation. “Does your baby have the X Factor? Do you think your nipper could be Britain’s cutest? Text or email us your top tot photos and you could win a family holiday for four.”

Something else that springs to mind: the editor of The Sun and lately of the NOTW, Ms R. Wade, is married to the Eastenders actor Mr R. Kemp. With his shaven head and moon-like features, I can’t help thinking Mr Kemp rather resembles a giant baby. I’d better not dwell on this line of thinking any further.

I do hope no one saw me looking at the News Of The World. I was doing it purely for research purposes.

YouTube.com is this year’s free-for-all Internet time-manslaughtering fad. It’s a quick way of uploading poor quality videos for the world to see, as long as they’re only a few minutes long. So although most YouTube videos are home recordings of friends at home with a camcorder, usually dancing in their underwear, the format also lends itself to airing pop videos from dusty VHS collections. One can have a jolly time watching wonderful, obscure clips of favourite bands for hours on end. Or at least until the boss catches you. Whatever that’s like.

Doubtless it will only be a matter of time before the site is closed down due to copyright infringement, or because the next thing has come along to replace it. I remember first being told I should sign up to MySpace, “because Friendster is getting too commercial”. And now MySpace is riddled with adverts and is owned by Rupert Murdoch. And so shall it be until the next fad comes along, and we all have to open new accounts yet again, think of yet another password, try to remember what our favourite films are, and so on. All that changes things is someone somewhere thinking about money – and doing something about it. Which is the case with most angles of life.

So I’ve succumbed to YouTube, and am keen to share a few choices before they vanish into the ether. Forgive the indulgence.

First, here’s Galaxie 500 – “Strange”, from UK TV circa 1990. A weird drum-less kazoo performance. Dean Wareham’s incredible voice and guitar. A wonderful song.

Here they are again, this time from “Transmission”, an indie music programme that went out at about 3AM. They’re introduced by a Melody Maker writer from the time, called ‘Ngaire’, though I think she was also known as ‘Ngaire-Ruth’. Note her baggy hooded top – 1990 indie fashion personified. I’m afraid I had one too. We all did. No time is more distant than the recent past.

Still, I agree with her bit about them making perfect music to listen alone to. In your hooded top.

How beautiful is Mr Wareham here? “I see myself as the American Morrissey” he jokes. But he was, in a way, to me.

Awake from a ridiculous dream. Something to do with being in a speedboat racing along the Thames near Oxford, with two men who insist on singing Morrissey’s Piccadilly Palare. “I’m more concerned about safety than speed” I say to the driver as he hurtles the machine along.

Then I realise this is all frankly substandard for an ostensibly limitless imagination, and so I do the dream equivalent of walking out of the cinema in a huff: I force myself to wake up. I wake up out of protest at my own dreams. Even the real world has better pictures when one’s dreams are this silly.

It’s 3.30am. I decide to debrief.

The previous day is one of those where I find myself lurching purely from errands to chores, taking journeys in between that take far too long. Waiting for a bus, waiting as the bus gets stuck in traffic, waiting as the bus stops and parks to change drivers (twice in one day). Waiting behind a woman in a coffee bar while she uses a credit card to pay for a ersatz-uccino. During one of these many longeurs, I muse on how normal people manage to get things done. How does anyone even manage to find the time to do their job? I find it incredibly hard just to manage three or four household errands in a day.

Getting up is a monumental task in itself. Washing, shaving, grooming, fiddling with contact lenses. Worrying about whether these lenses are right for me, or if they’re worth the £30 a month that I can’t afford anyway. I used to use disposables, but my eyes didn’t take to them too well. So now they’ve got me on these ‘Night & Day’ monthly soft lenses, which are meant to be okay to leave in overnight for up to a month. It’s true they’re a lot easier to fit than disposables, but I’m still not sure if my eyes will ever get used to lenses at all. From time to time one of them becomes cloudy or irritable. I’ll see what the optician says when I see her next week.

I mention all this, because THINKING about all this takes up time already.

After ploughing through emails, noting events in my diary that I may or may not attend, replying to those that warrant a reply, I finally leave the room at about noon. Already I’ve wasted too much time. But before I manage to make it outside, the phone rings. Can I review Cat Power at the Barbican tonight? No, not at short notice when I’ve got other undone and overdue things to do. And then I waste further time worrying if turning down this job was a bad move, career-wise. I’ll never know now. And already my day is a maelstrom of anxiety. And I haven’t even left the house.

I have to return a book to Holloway Central Library, so that means a bus journey. And then I’ve got to go to the bank. Another journey. And then to Argos to exhange a timer plug for Lawrence & Alison’s flat in Camden, which I’m ‘house-sitting’ while they’re both away. And then to their flat to fit it. Then my bag starts to fall apart, so I have to find a shop which sells Superglue to fix it. And then I have to fix the bag. I pass Virgin Megastore so I pop in to see if they have any copies of the free newspaper The Penny, which carries a large interview with me about the club. I know this because some people have told me they’ve seen me in it.

Z: (via text) Was just in Virgin Megastore. Great interview and photo of you!
DE: Where? What magazine?
Z: Oh, didn’t you know? I thought you’d know.
Me: No. I can’t know anything till I’m told about it. That’s how knowledge works. Which magazine is it?
Z: Oh, it was a free thing in Virgin. Can’t remember what it’s called. I’d have gotten you a copy, if I’d known you didn’t know about it. But how was I to know you didn’t know?
Me: (gritted teeth). Thanks for letting me… know.

It’s a bit like finding out about a friend’s love life status.

DE: So how’s things with you and Mr X?
Y: Oh, didn’t you know? We stopped going out AGES ago! It’s been AGES!
DE: I can’t help that. No one told me. I’m not on your relationship mailing list. How am I meant to know if no one tells me?
Y: You should find out.
DE: I don’t see you that often. I don’t see anyone that often. I’m too busy wrestling with trying to keep sane on a daily basis.

Actually, last I heard, Mr X is now back with Ms Y yet again. I can’t keep up. But anyway. This magazine thing I’m in.

I eventually realise it must be The Penny, and by the time I get to Virgin all the copies are gone. So I decide to go online, find the website, and email them very nicely, asking for copies.

By which time it’s getting on for 5pm, so I have to make it back to Highgate in order to meet Mr Chipping at a Pete Doherty event at the Boogaloo. I could do with sitting down and collecting my thoughts. So I stop off at a cafe with free wireless internet. Where I snap slightly.

Me: A filter coffee please.
Assistant: Do you want it from this machine, which is a bit dead, or a fresh cup from this machine, which is fresh but is a different type of coffee?
Me: (suddenly shouting, trying to disguise it as humour, probably failing) Oh – I DON’T KNOW! You choose for me! I can’t take the uncertainty of the day any longer! Decisions upon decisions!
Assistant: God, you seem stressed out…!
Me: (trying to calm down) I’m so sorry. I’m having a frustrating day. Stuck on buses for errands which didn’t deserve the time they took. I can only deal with a fixed amount of anxiety per 24 hours. And I used that up getting out of bed. It’s the agony of choice. Freedom to do whatever I want is getting to me… All those alternative universes dashed against the rocks… It’s a good reason to be a vegetarian. So you have less to choose from. Less worry that way. Except in a vegetarian cafe.
Assistant: Yes… So, do you want anything else with that?
Me: There you go again! Sorry.

Poor girl. What she makes of this man with funny hair going mad in front of her, I don’t know. I should really get some more therapy.

Of course, this would seem like an entirely blissful existence to your average refugee from ‘Insert Tough Foreign Land Here’. I’m not ungrateful for this life. Not one of these journeys was interrupted by gunfire or violence. I’m just deafened by the sound of wasted time trickling away. I am trying to get things done, it just seems to take so long even attempting to tick off the slightest chore. How normal people manage to live is utterly beyond me.

So, this Pete Doherty event at the Boogaloo. A special press-only gathering to make a ‘career announcement’. The pub is full of journalists and photographers who have actually queued up to get in. A guest list is checked, and there’s security on the door. Inside, the photographers set their tripods up in front of the stage. Once everyone is in, we are told Mr Doherty is not going to be there after all. Instead, a man with glasses from Orion Books says they’re going to be publishing The Doherty Diaries next March. Mr Doherty himself was going to be doing a reading here today, but… it’s “fallen through”. Still, he tells the assembled hacks, there’s a free drink at the bar, press packs to pick up, and thanks for coming.

It’s hilarious. And I thought I was having a wasted day.

Someone does take my photo, though, which is nice. Quite frankly, with all those photographers there primed for snapping Mr D, but thwarted; and me standing near them in my white suit and silk scarf, it seems the height of sarcasm for them NOT to take a photo of me. I should have taken to the stage and read some of THIS diary. And then squirted a syringe at the cameras – but filled with Body Shop White Musk rather than blood. To make the cameras smell nicer.

I chat to Mr C at the bar and mention seeing our old friend Cheska Grover’s boyfriend Gavin in a woman’s magazine. He’s playing in the band The Soho Dolls, and I saw they’re featured in a very Vogue-like article, looking expensively styled on a sofa.

DE: Can’t remember what the mag’s called. ‘Me Magazine’, I think.
TMC: You mean ‘You Magazine’.
DE: That’s it.
TMC: ‘Me Magazine’ would be the magazine YOU would edit.

From last month. Number Six – The Nightclub Of The Beast:

“Unmissable!”:

Time Out, June 14-21 2006, page 131. Click to enlarge.

Afternoon – to Claudia Andrei’s to continue helping her with some gardening. It’s the closest I’ve come to actual physical labour for some time. Essentially, she’s cutting away the decade-old mass of twisting foliage, rogue rose bushes and thorny branches that have obscured her back yard for so long. Armed with secateurs and gloves, we get to work, while temperatures hit 30C. For once I’m living up to my namesake from The Secret Garden, with the therapeutic metaphor all too obvious. A decade of unchecked strangulating weeds, snipped away with immediate visual results. It’s work completed which looks like work completed. Something has been done. Progress has been made. Her bathroom window finally has a clear view to the yard. Though her cat is pretty annoyed with us for destroying his private playground.

Then to the Gate cinema in Notting Hill for a rare concert by Robin Guthrie. Rose thorns fall out of my hair on the way in, which seems a suitably Cocteau Twins-y thing to happen. Emily and Kate H from Client say hello and keep me company. The performance is Mr Guthrie plus guitar and trademark effects units, plus laptop plus backdrop of a specially-prepared film: “Lumiere”. Only halfway through, the Gate’s DVD machine gives up the ghost. Still, we’re happy to just hear Mr Guthrie perform, backing visuals or no. And it’s absolutely, blissfully special stuff. Perfect for a sweltering night surrounded by football insanity elsewhere. Here, you can buy a drink from a bar and enjoy something other than football. It can be done.

I recognise a few pieces from his recent score to the movie Mysterious Skin, and presume some of the other instrumentals feature on his latest album, Continental.

Kate Holmes: Doesn’t it sound fantastic? Exactly like the Cocteaus, when we went on tour with them…

She means her stint with the band Frazier Chorus.

After the main solo set, Mr G takes a Q&A from the audience. He seems rightfully cheesed-off about the venue’s DVD player letting him down, and it doesn’t help when, for a encore, the venue fails to provide him with a working microphone to do the Q&A with. It’s like Whit Stillman at the ICA the other week: London arts venues being all too happy to put on great events with an overpriced bar, with lots of management running around. But the merest basic technical requirements seem to elude them. London can be a broken embarrassment at times. Everything’s expensive – AND it doesn’t work properly.

He does mention how much he loved working on Mysterious Skin, and that he’d been waiting since 1982 for a movie soundtrack commission, always thinking his music would really suit the genre. It seems ridiculous that Mysterious Skin is his first (and to date, only) movie score. But then, it’s also ridiculous that the venue is barely half-full, despite the prescence of Emma Anderson (Lush, Sing-Sing) and Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3) after the Q&A, performing live improvisations with the man of the evening. It’s a kind of Shoegazing Legends Tournament.

Meanwhile the latest Orange Mobile TV ad features an ambient tune from the band Oceansize. It sounds impossibly like Robin Guthrie. Elsewhere Mogwai and Sigur Ros, who must surely include the Cocteaus as an influence, sell out venues several times the size of this one. I’m reminded of the time Patti Smith and PJ Harvey both had dates at the Brixton Academy. Ms Harvey’s tickets were somewhat pricier than Ms Smith’s. Once again, no glory for pioneers. Oh, except for The Smiths.

I buy the NME for about the first time in 5 years, because of The Smiths’ ‘The Queen Is Dead’ anniversary feature. And of course, it makes me annoyed. Too many swear words and exclamation marks. What is interesting is that they now carry an expanded personal ads page, including a Boys Seeking Boys section. I’m fairly sure that wasn’t in place last time I took the magazine regularly.

NME gay ads, June 2006:
“You must have GSOH, be emo, skater punk. ”
“WLMT (sic) a caring, romantic, funny, friendly, emo guy.”

DE to Emily: You’re a well-connected young person. What does ’emo’ mean?
Emily: I have absolutely no idea.

Page 46, album review: The Klaxons. I spot at least three mistakes in the following sentence:

“Klaxons once remarked to NME that they bridge the gap between Atlantis and Interzone. Yes, that’s Atlantis the lost Greek and, let’s not forget underwater island and Interzone, sci-fi writer William Burroughs’ dystopic and, let’s not forget fictional place.”

1) William Burroughs is not best described as a sci-fi writer. He is a Beat writer, or a cult author, or an experimental author, or just an author of general fiction. I’m fairly certain a librarian would back me up on this.
2) Interzone isn’t strictly fictional, as it’s Burroughs’s term for the International Zone of Tangier. Which is a very real place. I was there last December.
3) It’s Burroughs’s, not Burroughs’. Burroughs is a name, not a plural, so adds an ‘s’. As in Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Walking home, a man in a football strip kicks me as I pass, and calls me a f—- poof. I blow him a kiss and shout ‘Ah, the Beautiful Game!’. And increase my stride.

I get in to a nice chatty email from Scott Heim, author of the novel Mysterious Skin, which begat the film. So that gives the evening a pleasantly rounded finish.

[The new Robin Guthrie CD, Continental, is on Rocketgirl Records. Highly recommended.]

Designed by Lawrence Gullo.

BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED – ANTI-WORLD CUP EDITION
Date: Thur 15th June.
Times: 9pm to midnight.
Club title: The Beautiful And Damned: A Thoroughly Splendid Club Night.
Venue: The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, London N6 5AT, UK. 020 8340 2928.
Tube: Highgate (Northern Line). Buses: 43, 134, 263.
DE’s well-dressed club night returns on Thursday June 15th, defiantly not caring three figs about the dreary old World Cup. Time Out magazine featured the last B&D in its Top Ten Nights Out.

The Beautiful And Damned is a timezone-jumping decadent disco curated (as opposed to ‘DJ’d’) by Mr Dickon Edwards and Miss Red. Patrons are encouraged to dress up in their own take on period glamour, though anything more stylish than the ubiquitous Old Street fashions is welcome. Cigarillos, braces, tweeds, beads, silk scarves, unforgiving teddy bears Drink, dance, and ponder the nights tenderness to an eclectic but discerning mix of Sinatra (Frank & Nancy), Strauss waltzes, soundtracks, musicals, El Records, Gilbert & Sullivan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dory Previn, Doris Day, Bugsy Malone, Cabaret, Chicago, deviant disco, shadowy soul, parvenu pop and insouciant indie. Free entry, but please dress up.