It turns out that the Radio Times listing only mentions me in the website version of the magazine, not the print version. I say ‘only’, though it IS about people who use the Internet, so on this occasion you could argue the web version is more important.

But print IS all. The main reason I’m writing a diary online is because no one has employed me to do it in print. I see the other advantages (complete editorial freedom, instant access to a global readership and so on) as perks of the format. The advantage is the freedom and lack of filters. The disadvantage is also the freedom and lack of filters.

Books and magazines are real, websites are… an aid to the real. A reference. Maybe that will change, but I still wince when I hear people discussing websites or blogs in public. It still seems ‘faddy’, like Tamagotchis. But then, I’ve been doing this for nine years, and I feel the rest of the world catching up with me (ho ho) is like the way even a stopped clock keeps the right time twice a day.

At least BBC1 is a ‘real’ channel that even old people have heard of. And although there’s been news reports about the way the Web is stealing leisure time from TV, this only matters to those to whom it matters. Yes, I get most of my TV via downloading from torrent sites and watching on my laptop. But that’s not most people. Not yet. I don’t think TV will quite be replaced by the Net, if only because, like books and newspapers, people need a professional, authorised filter as a kind of handrail to the Web’s madness of infinite choice.

The producer did email me to say I’m definitely in the Imagine programme next Tuesday, but you should never count your chickens till you cross them.

Hope is such a destructive demon. There’s that wonderful line from Michael Frayn’s Clockwise:

“It’s not the despair. I can handle the despair. It’s the hope.”

Likewise, I shouldn’t have said I’d have a new entry done in the morning, as this is late afternoon. I was up till about 6am dawdling and dreaming without actually sleeping. And then I fell asleep, of course. This is the luxury of the man who can do what the hell he wants to do, but also the curse. I always feel I’ve missed out. And I have. I used to think nights are more fun than mornings. Not anymore. I like dawns, sunrises, shops about to open, people on the streets who’ve decided that life is actually worth living today, despite what the news says. That work is worth the less fun bits.

Noting Laurence Hughes’s advice, I’m trying to take a lot of brisk walks into town by way of daily exercise, avoiding public transport entirely where possible. After all, walking has more practical side effects than other forms of exertion – you actually get somewhere at the end. You save money. You feel free and alone. You don’t have to wear unflattering clothes. And there’s the whole flaneur connotations as well.

I usually take a vaguely scenic route in order to avoid the main roads as much as possible: up the hill to Highgate Village, through Waterlow Park onto Swain’s Lane, down to Camden Street. Maybe stopping in by St Pancras Old Church for a bit, and muse upon the Dark Ages ghosts that must gather there, as it’s been a site of Christian worship since the 4th century.

The first time, I arrive at the Library wheezing, gasping, absolutely exhausted. The second time, it’s a lot easier. Breaking myself in.

These days, the homeless Big Issue seller outside the British Library is losing his pitch to the more aggressive pushers of free newspapers like London Lite.

He shouts, all too aware of this usurping on the London streets:

“Big Issue! Big Issue! Yes, I know it’s not fashionable anymore…”

Last night, to a Dedalus Books reading. ‘Marthe – The Story Of A Whore’ by JK Huysmans, in a new translation by Brendan King. Huysmans’ 1876 debut, it was rather hurriedly finished when he heard another novel about the life of a prostitute was about to be published. He wanted to be the first one in the Naturalistic Prostitute Novels genre. And he was also trying to be a writer as opposed to just write, using this first work in order to get into the celebrity literary circles of the day (eg Zola). Still, rushed ending or no (and barely 150 pages), it is beautifully written, sensitively translated, and vividly takes the reader to that whole Paris demi-monde world.

In King’s introduction, we’re told how Huysmans had the first edition published in Brussels in order to avoid prosecution in France, but then made the frankly rather silly mistake of trying to return through customs with 400 copies at once, hoping he’d be lucky. Half his print run, confiscated in a second.

At the reading, Mr King is friendly, nervous and gentle, which makes you want to buy all his books, of course. It shouldn’t matter, but somehow it does. Whenever someone says they’ve met a well-known author or artist, the automatic question does seem to be:

“But is he nice?”

Never mind an author’s biographies, the letters, the diaries, the memoirs. The actual books. We just want to know if they’re nice. Reading a novel is effectively deciding to spend hours in the company of a stranger, so maybe it’s something to do with that.

The reading takes place in the basement of a wonderful bookshop called Treadwell’s, in Tavistock Street, Covent Garden. Upstairs is Treadwell’s itself, selling used books on witchcraf, folklore, the occult, philosophy, travel writing and so on. The sort of place you expect to find a genuine book of spells. They also sell home-made soaps and spices, making it surely one of London’s best smelling bookshops. Downstairs is Offstage Books, specialising in Theatre and Film. The staff on both floors are the sort of independent shop workers who are so friendly, they often forget they’re working at all.

[Links:
http://www.treadwells-london.com
http://www.offstagebooks.com ]

I get the tube home with Mary Groom, a proud glasses-wearer who’s annoyed by a current ad campaign on the tube trains. It’s for contact lenses, aimed at women, and implying that women really shouldn’t wear glasses, not if they want men to fancy them. “I looked deep into her… specs.” That sort of thing.

It’s not the same the other way round: Jarvis Cocker, Graham Coxon, etc. Even David Tennant’s Dr Who is allowed to look good in specs. Maybe there needs to be a heavy Nana Mouskouri comeback.

From the Radio Times website:

TUESDAY 5th DECEMBER
BBC1 London & South East
10:35pm – 11:25pm

“Alan Yentob journeys into the world wide web to find out how it began, who’s out there, and where it’s taking us. He meets Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the web, and explores how Lee’s creativity has fuelled the creativity of millions of others – such as Dandy blogger Dickon Edwards and sex blogger Abby Lee, the hardcore members of the Arctic Monkeys message board, masked animator David Firth, and Ewan Macdonald, the young Scot who wrote the millionth entry in Wikipedia.”

So I’d better start writing entries more regularly, then. Maybe this is the slap up the arse I need. Or is it a kick in the face? I always get those confused.

Saw Dad last Friday in Suffolk. He seems pretty much his old self now, and is recovering slowly at home. The only lasting damage from the dreaded stroke is a lack of grip in his drawing hand, and severe fatigue, though he’s not bed bound. It seems entirely possible that these symptoms will improve too, though it has meant his 70th birthday bash I was to DJ at has had to be postponed till another time. I put all the songs he’d requested for this occasion onto one CD compilation, and included it with his birthday present. Which was a DVD of Miyasaki’s ‘Porco Rosso’, as he’d ogled it when we were last out shopping in London.

Happy 70th Birthday for tomorrow, Brian ‘Bib’ Edwards.

Let’s get my own ailment stuff out of the way, as it’s so boring when people bang on about their health. Forgive me. But I do feel that writing it down helps to purge it from the ever-babbling maelstrom of anxiety in my mind.

Have been feeling a bit sorry for myself lately, and thus have neglected my diary. The aches and pains are still there, despite my bodily fluids being tested for everything possible (all clear), along with two different checks for hernias, appendicitis and what they now euphemistically call Men’s Health Issues. At the Naughty Health clinic, I am poked and prodded in every known orifice, including the tiny one that you’re meant to wince at. I don’t wince, not really. I’ve never seen this as my body, just a kind of vessel I’ve been set down in and asked to deal with. I harbour lifelong fantasies of being entirely genderless between the legs, after all. I must try that as a chat-up line.

I’ve always felt genitals should be applied for as an optional extra, with proper licensing from the authorities. Like firearms. Indeed, the gun analogy goes further: they’re too often the source of trouble across the world, and in my mind are best restricted to the movies.

Yesterday, the GP gives me a full examination, finds nothing worrying, and just sends me away saying ‘It’s just one of these things. Come back in two weeks if the aches are still there.’

He didn’t even give me anything to deal with the pain. It really is bothering me. I may have to ask for some kind of painkiller at one of those new NHS drop-in clinics, or try a third GP. It can’t be right to be in pain whenever you sit down. Unless you’re in love. (Yes, I know, couldn’t resist it).

The only explanations that spring to my mind are nocturnal probing by extraterrestrial aliens, or that someone out there is sticking pins into a voodoo effigy of me, having previously secured clippings from my hair.

Which reminds me.

“Nice syrup!” shouted a van driver at me, on the Archway Road the other day.

[Cockney rhyming slang: syrup = syrup of figs = wig]

The response to which is of course, who would dare pay for a wig that looked like this?

And who would want to make a voodoo doll of me? Don’t answer that.

I’ll end on another couple of clippings, and promise to have another entry written tomorrow morning. I know there’s a lot of catching up to do.

These are reviews of The Decadent Handbook, to which I’ve contributed. Published by Dedalus Books, out now. White gift-book style hardback with a shiny gold spine, for obvious Christmas present compatibility. Also features Rowan Pelling, Vanora Bennett, Robert Irwin, Belle Du Jour, Michael Bywater, Salena Godden, Louise Welsh, John Moore, Xavior Roide, and Sebastian Horsley.

“The book is an antidote to bland modernity…It covers everything from decadent sex (we’re talking fornicating with lobsters) to decadent death styles, and includes contributions from contemporary libertines such as Dickon Edwards (Shane McGowan’s New Romantic Butler’, pictured left with pet lobster), to the godfathers of decadence – The Earl of Rochester. J.K.Huysmans and Oscar Wilde. Five stars.”
– The Leeds Guide Book of the Fortnight

“…’El Hombre Indelible’ by Dickon Edwards seems to send up rock journalism by accompanying Shane MacGowan of the Pogues to Tangier, but the piece has a wonky charm of its own, with sentences such as, ‘He re-reads Finnegans Wake every day.”
– Duncan Fallowell in The Daily Telegraph.

‘Wonky charm’, indeed.

Dear Creature (if you’re in London)

Last call for this.

Tomorrow night, right near Highgate tube. Oh, the RELIEF it exists!

THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED – NOVEMBER EDITION
Date: Thursday 23rd November
Times: 9pm to 12.30am.
Venue: The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, London N6 5AT, UK. 020 8340 2928.
Tube: Highgate (Northern Line). Buses: 43, 134, 263.
Price: Free entry, but do please dress up.

More information on the News page.

Malcolm Ross plays the Boogaloo. He was once in the bands Josef K and Orange Juice, two favourites of mine, and tonight I’m delighted to see he still sings and plays guitar in that rather delicious and unique Postcard Records style. A cute geek croon over an effervescent, crunchy and zingy disco guitar. I feel Franz Ferdinand carry on at least one side of this tradition. Aesthetically too: like Alex Kapranos, Mr Ross still looks boyishly angular, with that David Byrne kind of mathematical cleanliness about him. Worth noting at a time when it’s rare to see men in bands who’ve even had a shave. He performs tracks from a new compilation of his solo stuff, ‘Wrong Place Wrong Time’, including a song that was written for the movie Chocolat.

In support is a rather impressively intense artist called Simon Breed, who vaguely resembles Howard Devoto. The Boogaloo actually shuts up and listens to him, so he clearly has something. Also on the bill is an immaculately-dressed keyboardist called Louis Vause, who plays a blissful lounge set. I’m told he also backs Graham Coxon.

Mr Ross’s musical cohort Edwyn Collins is rumoured to appear, but doesn’t. I presume he’s still on the mend from the dreaded haemorrhage.

The lady on the door looks for my name on the guest list:

Her: Oh, are you ‘Edwyn C’?

In my dreams.

An update from Mum. Dad’s back at home, recovering slowly. He’s lost the ability to grip in his left hand, and he’s a left-handed artist. But thankfully the other effects of the stroke have improved: he can walk, climb stairs, speak and see again. So we’re hoping for the best with his hand too.

Some cheering Victorian sarcasm from WS Gilbert, via John Julius Norwich’s ‘Christmas Cracker’.

This is the opening of his letter of complaint to the station-master at Baker Street, on the Metropolitan line:

Sir,

Saturday morning, although recurring at regular and well-foreseen intervals, always seems to take this railway by surprise.

Mum phones. Dad’s had some sort of stroke and is in Ipswich Hospital. A brain scan has revealed no damage, but otherwise things are bit unclear and undefined. Mum is waiting to hear from the doctors, and I’m waiting to hear from Mum.

They’re treating him with something called a ‘lumbar puncture’. I look it up.

It’s also known as The Spinal Tap.

Saint Shane’s First Letter to the Internetians.

Mr Edwards is typing this on the bar of The Boogaloo with his laptop. It’s gone 1am, and we’re the only ones here. Mr MacGowan speaks – slowly. Mr Edwards writes it down. Without editing.

Take a letter, Mr Edwards.

DE: So how are you, Mr MacGowan?

SMG: It’s been a great day. People collapsing all round me. I’ve decided there’s no such thing as a heterosexual. Omnisexual. That’s the word you used. I just went to see Borat. It’s sickeningly sexist, racist, anti-PC. And I love it.

DE: How was Vegas?

SMG: I was nine grand up on the roulette table. And then something happened that jinxed me. But I got out before I lost my original stake. Though the next night I was banned from the roulette table. Victoria won at Blackjack. And then walked away, which is a really hard thing to do. And then she walked back. And lost it.

[Footnote: Ms Clarke vehemently denies this last sentence.]

Spider and Louise got married by the pool. And I was the Best Man. I was also the Elvis Imitator in the ’68 Special get-up: leather suit, red neckerchief, shades etc. I sang the song they chose: Love Me Tender. Backed up by most of the Pogues. We had a great time in Japan as well. And San Francisco. And L.A. Hope to see you soon; hope to see ALL those old faces soon. Sayonara to Nippon. And Howdy Doody; and Happy Trails to you.

In San Fran I met once again with the great Clay Wilson. He gave a personally autographed copy of his new book of underground art. His personal selection from the mid 60s till the present day. I was really made up. Thanks to Rudi Fernandez and Del Zamora…! I was shocked to hear of the death of Luis. May he sleep in peace. May the helicopters in his eyes fly forever.

DE: What was it wanted to say about your sister’s music?

SMG: My sister made one great album and did a few live dates before she decided she wanted nothing more to do with the music business. She has been throughout the years a brilliant barmaid, a brilliant office worker for an insurance company in Lloyd Baker St. And an invaluable part of the Pogues administration. And an invaluable part of Van Morrison’s administration. She was an original follower of the Anti-Nowhere League. Whose lead singer Animal’s sister married and then broke up with my cousin Paul. He is now happily married again. After that she made her own album Chariot with a bunch of cowboys from Limerick who ripped her off. That situation has been rectified. And the album has been re-released – with the help of my father – including the single I Love Him With A Grace, and its original B-side, which wasn’t on the original album. And it’s available on her section of my website. (DE locates it: http://www.shanemacgowan.com/siobhan.shtml). It’s absolutely brilliant: it’s like Enya with real guts and heart and soul and spirit. The best female Celtic Soul album. And that’s my totally unbiased opinion. No, honestly, really, it is. Paradoxically, considering the hardest drugs she indulges in are booze, Xanax, and cigarettes, it is the ultimate spaced-out chill-out album. Just stick the big cans on and lie back on the waterbed and let her take you away to a world of timeless Gaelic mysticism. It also features my mother and father talking a love duet in Irish.

She’s also finishing off her first book based on the early Irish legends or history as you will have it. She’s already proved her writing and graphic art skills as an early Pogue Mahone poster designer (for gigs etc). And then editing and designing the original fan mag. Previously edited by Julie Pritchard. Siobhán re-christened it Ord na hOne. Inspired by the Irish Catholic magazine The Messenger Of The Sacred Heart. Her various graphic art is available also on that website, including her portraits of me personally signed by me and for sale, of course…

DE: What would you like to say to those curious about your work who have just heard Fairytale Of New York and nothing else?

SMG: Check out the five Pogues albums I’m on. And if you like, try the two I’m not on. And also the SMG & Popes albums: The Snake and The Crock Of Gold (ZTT Records). And the official live album: Across The Broad Atlantic; recorded mainly in Dublin and partly in New York when for some reason there were two St Patrick’s Days.

DE: Which 5 Pogues / solo tracks would you recommend them to legally download for starters, Fairytale aside?

SMG: That’s an impossible question. But off the top of my head right now I’d say – personally – Star Of The County Down, Rainy Night In Soho, Waxie’s Dargle (The Pogues), Yeah Yeah Yeah (Pogues), Victoria (SMG & The Popes).

Incidentally the Popes have an existence of their own that grew out of being my backing band and friends. I would recommend listening to their recordings. I was heavily involved in the recording of the first album they put out without my name: Holloway Boulevard. I did SOME singing, writing and producing and wrote the sleeve notes. However the second album is as different as it is more accomplished. Take it from there, yourself…

That’s all for now, folks.

Érin go Bragh!!!
Seán Mac Gabhan.

Eleven days since the last diary entry already? Time goes, goes and fades. Days through fingers like refined sand. Aches and pains are at least partly to blame. Aches which make sitting down painful, or standing up painful. Or walking painful. Or lying down painful. What a disappointment this body is: I should have kept the receipt.

I’m off to the Naughty Clinic tomorrow to get the aches between my legs investigated. It’s my first time to such a place, though I’ve found fellow males have been only too happy to weigh in with their experiences as soon as I mention the appointment. I’ve not done anything vaguely risky in THAT area for at least five years, but apparently I still have to go for a check up in case. If some religions are forged around The Virgin Birth, perhaps I can start one around The Celibate Clap.

Some days I’ve felt too busy, or too ill, or too sleepy. And then I think there must be more to life than feeling too tired or too ill to do anything with it. I need time to recover, to get better. I need to eat more healthily, drink less alcohol. And as ever, I need to say no to kind friends inviting me out all the time. I’m just not as hardy as they are. And I’m not just talking about Mr MacGowan.

Speaking of which, the other day I set up my laptop on the bar of the Boogaloo and took dictation from SMG as he wrote his first blog entry. In a locked pub, in the early hours, no one else about.

It’s called Saint Shane’s First Letter To The Internetians, and I’ll post it here shortly. Mr O’Boyle and Ms Clarke have already read it and given it their blessing, so it’s effectively a piece of Authorised Biography. I quite like the idea of Shane MacGowan – who doesn’t own a computer – having a blog. We’ll do it again if people like it. As he says, I’m like an occasional Boswell to his Dr Johnson.

Taylor Parkes has stopped reading blogs and online diaries. He says the entries where people are having a sad life are too depressing. And the ones where people are having a happy life are too depressing too.

Exchanging our various valetudinarian moans, he says that if he never could have sex again, he’d have to commit suicide.

This is, of course, where our views rather differ. He in turn has never harboured fantasies of having an operation to create a smooth, hairless, Barbie patch where one’s genitals should be.

In a world ruled by me, sexual organs would have to be applied for as an optional extra.

Halloween. My friend Ms Lucy Madison organises a spooky walking tour of the Middle Temple, Fleet Street and environs. Why? Because she likes doing it. Appropriately, she’s come straight from the set of Most Haunted Live, the popular TV show on which her boyfriend works. Some 30 odd people turn up, and it’s all great fun. She tells us dozens of local ghost stories, and points out locations like The Blackfriar pub – an outrageously ornate Art Nouveau hostelry. I later discover this was saved from demolition by Mr Betjeman.

Other tour highlights: the oldest working clock in London. A cavernous pub intact since 1666. Dr Johnson’s House. The banqueting hall in the Temple which the Harry Potter films use for the school hall. Temple Church, where we hear choirboys practising into the night. Actually, the whole Temple area of London is far more like Oxford than the capital. A different world. People ‘ssssh!’ each other as they pass in the lanes. The Sweeney Todd barber and pie shop locations, which she reassures us are fictional. I did know this, yet still need reminding. A clear indication of the strength of the tale. And a LOT of Dickens locations as featured in his novels. I do like fictional guided tours. They always seem more real than any actual history.

“This is the flat where, in Great Expectations, Pip discovers that his mysterious benefactor is –”

“Oh no, I’m in the middle of reading that!” complains David B. He’s not joking. So I’ve edited out the end of Ms Madison’s inadvertent spoiler, just in case you too have yet to finish Great Expectations in any form, Dear Reader. In which case, what are you waiting for?

I return home to find my front door refreshingly free of egg splatters. Happy Halloween.