Fosca have confirmed a rare concert on Saturday 7th July. It’s in Saffle, deep in Northern Sweden. Two hours by train from Gothenburg, fairly close to the Norweigan border. Suits me.

The event is a little indie festival called Rip It Up, and we’re playing alongside veteran Sarah Records act St Christopher. Whose album ‘Bacharach’ is rather glorious; airy and graceful and really rather lovely, like The Walker Brothers on an indiepop budget. I think the last time I saw them play was in 1990 at the Kentish Town Bull & Gate, when I was just starting to realise there was a whole underground scene of bands that strove for a certain gentle pop beauty rather than joining in with the usual drug-loving noise merchants. At that gig, the opening synth line of ‘The Thrill Of The New’ went straight through me in just the right way. It hit the spot. In fact, it remains one of my favourite gig moments in all my years of concert-going.

More details on the Rip It Up festival here:

http://www.facetterad.net/ripitup/english.html

Line-up will be myself, Rachel Stevenson, Kate Dornan and Tom Edwards. It will be rather fantastic. We have our most devoted fans in Sweden, with their home-made videos of Fosca songs on YouTube and the like. Can’t wait to unveil our latest giddy work to them.

An email from Taiwan:

I don’t suppose there is *ANY* possibility of you making a recording of this concert available to fans….? Even just a standard, un-mixed soundboard recording made available on CD-R to people from this list would be awesome… and certainly wouldn’t lose you any money! Consider it! Some of us will most likely NEVER get to see you live.

I think any live recordings should be organized and circulated among the fans. All I can suggest is to contact the Swedish Fosca fans and see if they’ll help. They’re out there somewhere. Or better still, perhaps someone will film our set and put it on YouTube, as seems to be the fashion these days.

In the meantime, we still have an album to finish. Since we started work on it in 1867 or whenever it was, I’ve dithered and hit a slough of despond. I’ve acted just like a heroin addict, but without the actual drug. It’s cheaper. Heroin addicts let time drift by because they’re busy enjoying the comfort of the drug. I let time drift by because I was enjoying the comfort of either the sadness, or the nothingness itself.

In the hiatus, the other band members have moved house, worked with other bands, changed lovers, got married, got back with lovers, changed careers, changed genders, changed species, changed trains in 1930s Berlin… Well, maybe not all of the above.

This new Diary Angels discipline has shaken me up, however, and I’ve enlisted a third-party producer, the extremely clever Alex Mayor, to help finish the Fosca album in his Hackney studio. First session on Monday week.

I think self-production is all very well, but Tom and I were tending to tweak and twiddle each track forever, until we couldn’t hear anything anymore. The best thing about DIY recording is there’s no pricy by-the-hour studio fees to worry about. It’s also the worst thing about DIY recording, as you have no deadline to work to. And now Tom’s busy pursuing a career as a session guitarist in tandem with his day job, so he just can’t don his producer hat at present. A fresh element is required. Enter Mr Mayor.

(to be continued in a second entry, later today)

To the Scala venue in King’s Cross, guest of Ms Charley Stone, to see the bands Congregation and Electrelane.

Shall I say something interesting about the Scala? It’s a 1920s cinema. And it continued to be a cinema for sporadic periods all the way up to the early 1990s. Iggy & The Stooges played their only London gig there in 1972, and it’s the setting for the cover photo for their album Raw Power.

It’s also directly responsible for the classic Neil Jordan film The Crying Game. The film’s producer Stephen Woolley was also the Scala’s manager during its 80s life as a popular art-house cinema. To help finance the film he borrowed directly from the Scala’s box office takings. No Scala, no Crying Game.

Citing the fable of the scorpion and the frog crossing the river, The Crying Game is about the nature of things and the nature of people, versus situations that play on such natures. Its principal theme is that very Neil Jordan concern (whether it’s lonely vampires, werewolves, transvestites, prostitutes or IRA soldiers) – individuals caught up in situations that suppress individuality. His heroes are not so much rebels as gentle souls trying to do the decent thing. Accidental rebels.

So, as I think about this 1920s cinema which gave birth to The Crying Game, I think about how these connections neatly fit with the band headlining tonight, Electrelane.

Like The Crying Game, they tilt at a level of gender issues and androgyny which isn’t what they’re actually about, but is undeniably a part of their appeal. On paper they are four ladies on drums, bass, guitars and keyboards – the usual rock set-up – but their music is very removed from the identity of its players. They are as unlike personality-driven girl bands such as The Bangles or The Go-Gos as one could imagine, playing a brand of shifting art-rock; mainly instrumental with vocals as instruments more than carriers of lyrics.

Sometimes there’s elegant flourishes of intricate melody, sometimes there’s all-out noise. A lot of very studious, serious noise. Some pieces – as opposed to ‘songs’ – start and stop, slow down and speed up, become suddenly quiet or suddenly loud. And back again. They have a classical music approach to the rock band.

I am told they are more ‘Kraut Rock’ than ‘Prog Rock’, but I’m not the kind of boy to argue over musical pigeonholes. If you think I’m going to comment more on their appearance than their music, you’ve come to the right flaneur. Though their music has an androgynous ‘don’t look at me’ approach, they are better dressed than most all-male groups of a similar musical style. Their haircuts are elegant, and whether intentionally or not, Eletrelane’s hair is compatible with the flapper bobs, thick wavy partings and boy-cuts of those 1920s screen stars the Scala was built to worship in the first place. Same haircuts in the same space, eighty years apart. A temple to the 1920s ladies’ haircut, worshipped then as now.

Their thin, boyish-haired and boyish-dressed drummer has a distaff Crying Game appearance – an exquisite androgyny that steals hearts of all persuasions, that soldiers would die for. One imagines her journeying to the Trenches in male dress, writing letters home to her Violet Trefusis-like sweetheart.

Stage right, their guitarist is dressed in the kind of timelessly elegant dress that suggests she is about to launch into the ditties of Noel Coward, rather than wrestling ear-splitting feedback from her Gibson SG guitar. She handles the instrument in the manner of a Wodehouse character playing a game of whist, yet the sounds she produces are as muscular as the labours of the most swaggering and sweaty rock god.

One more fact about the Scala: Hawkwind played here in their 70s prime. And indeed, Electralane have their moments that recall Silver Machine, that chugging guitar hit beloved of regional indie discos from my youth. Admittedly, these are the moments where I decide to go to the toilet. When a band face each other on stage and grind away noisily at their guitars for extended periods, I can only salute so far. But that’s just me.

The Scala is packed to capacity, and it’s hard to find anywhere to stand without being jostled by strangers. A man keeps bumping into me as he dances, so I move to another part of the crowd. Then the new man in front of me also starts bumping into me as he dances. So I move right to the back. Then a woman treads squarely and painfully on my foot as she passes. I take the Universe’s hint and spend the rest of the gig in the bar.

Electralane are just too big for the Scala. Good for them, but they really should play larger venues next time. It’s hard to enjoy a band fully when one’s attentions are drawn by sweaty strangers constantly shoving themselves at you.

Also present at the gig are people I’ve known on and off since the mid 90s: Emma Jackson and Adrian L, and Rory M the Romo club doorman of old. They all look exactly the same as they did in 1996. Emma J was once in the teen band Kenickie writing unkind songs about the ugliness of Sunderland school dinner ladies. These days, she subscribes to the London Review Of Books and is a full-time academic and lecturer. But she’s still funny with it. Electralane do attract a certain chin-stroking type of intellectual (Emma J calls them Wire Magazine Types), but they also attract perfectly fun-loving people who enjoy music because it delights their heart, not because it lends itself to analytical essays. Brightly-dressed young and not-so-young girls and boys, dancing along even to the most seriously arty bits.

I did want to describe the Electrelane fans as either:

1) Gentlemen who intensely collect records.
2) Ladies who intensely collect other ladies.

But that’s unfair. Though both tribes are in evidence tonight – lots of men in glasses and half-beards, lots of women with boyish haircuts – there’s also plenty of, dare I say it? I think I will dare. Normal people. Blokes who are real blokes. Ladies who like real blokes. Straight couples. There’s even a few beefy lager lads, who stand to my right at the bar in football tops, all convict haircuts and ruddy cheeks, arguing over which of their many pints is Grolsch and which is Carling, as one of their number orders a seemingly endless amount of lager for his friends.

Before the gig, Ms Charley and I have dinner in a cheap but lovely cafe across the road. On the laminated menu are different fillings for jacket potatoes. One description in particular makes Charley laugh:

“Tuna – all styles.”

Many domestic refuse collection services in the UK are winding down from weekly to fortnightly, for the first time in my lifetime. Or they are threatening to do so, and it’s not always clear when it may happen. Which I entirely approve of.

Whether the more densely-populated areas such as my own dear Haringey will make the switch and stick with it is going to be interesting, what with the dangers of increased vermin and aroma concerns. But in terms of making what Americans terms a ‘wake-up call’ to the wasteful UK populace, it really seems to be working.

People are visibly recycling more and ditching less. Or rather, they’re purchasing fewer items which cannot be easily recycled. It’s the plastic tubs, carrier bags, fast food cartons, ready meal trays and other plastic food packaging that Haringey Council can’t take away (ho and indeed ho), even though many of these items are themselves marked as recyclable with those cute little symbols. It’s all very well saying there’s special depots to go to to dispose of such materials (eg for the long-term batteries used in electronic devices), but on the whole many people are just going to put everything their council can’t collect automatically into their normal dustbin.

Now that there’s this threat of fortnightly collections, however, people are really starting to enjoy the challenge of reducing their waste. Seeing one’s dustbin liners contain fewer and fewer items feels rather good for the soul. Even neighbourly one-upmanship can be used to do good in this regard; recycling is now seen as a matter of civic pride rather than the hippy-like eccentricity it once was. The curtain-twitchers have become the ‘alternative’ types they once feared.

To be the household on one’s street with the most black bin liners outside its gate is now utterly shameful. Black bags are black marks. This is the secret of real social change. Once you can harness the power of public embarrassment, you can make the English do anything.

Maybe some sort of 21st Century ASBO stocks should be brought back for certain repeat offenders; not to pelt burglars with rotten fruit, but just to embarrass them in public. Perhaps they should be forced to wear a pair of Mickey Mouse ears and nose. Or just dress them like me. There could be a sign above the miscreant’s head saying: “Here is a local criminal. Doesn’t he look gay?”

Maybe that wouldn’t work in the case of the Krays. I haven’t thought it through.

But I digress.

For my own anti-waste part, I’ve reduced my ready meal intake dramatically. I rarely buy them anymore. When you’re made more aware than ever that plastic tubs and trays just take up a landfill site for no good reason, it’s really hard to ever buy them again. And of course, there’s just no style to them. Not even those really nice ones at Marks & Spencer.

Wax-lined drinks cartons have had to go from my life, too. However ‘innocent’ the smoothies within say they are, if your council cannot recycle them in their weekly collection tubs, they’re the work of Satan.

A pressing concern is the recycling of CDRs and old VHS tapes. But thanks to the Web, I’ve now learned you can send away your piles of unsellable CDs to be made into burglar alarm boxes and street lighting:

http://www.london-recycling.co.uk

Here’s a company that will take your old VHS tapes off you for 20p a go:

http://www.tapesuk.co.uk/acatalog/Tape_Disposal.html

That trendy anti-waste shopping bag which people queued up for the other week has come under fire. Its slogan ‘I’m Not A Plastic Bag’ has been parodied as ‘I’m Not A Smug T–t’ by one Brick Lane stall holder who makes her own bags. Of course, to advertise to the world that you’re NOT smug is extremely smug in itself.

The news coverage of such bags will only last so long, and I suspect the irony is that they’ll be put out for recycling themselves in a few months, replaced by some other trendy bag. But what will stay is a general sense of people cutting down on their conspicuous consumption. Good news.

Sunday. To The Bullet Bar – formerly the Verge – in Kentish Town for the engagement party of the prong-haired, make-up clad music critic Simon Price and his doll-ed up girlfriend Ms Jenna (literally – she is dressed as a porcelain Victorian doll, and looks wonderful).

Present are faces from the past and present: Tim Chipping, Xavior Roide, Andrew Mueller, Chris Roberts, Taylor Parkes, Rhoda B, Ms Anwen’s Marc, DJ Val, David R-P, Seaneen, Tallulah. As it is with Mr Price’s clubs, plenty of glittery-attired people of all 48 genders, and a few takes on Cillian Murphy’s character in Breakfast On Pluto, as good an indication as any of the average attendee of Mr Price’s clubs. There’s also lots of older and more soberly-dressed people who are clearly family members. Both mothers make approving speeches.

Normally it’s the drably-dressed ones that I fear are going to attack me for my appearance – as has even happened in Mr P’s own club on occasion. But this is a private party, and Mr Price is in charge. Normal people are allowed in as long they don’t jeer at the more outlandishly attired and eccentrically coiffeured. Well, not to their faces anyway. It’s nice to go out and feel entirely safe like this.

Some might call those who dress like Mr Price and his dancing friends ‘Goths’. But despite their love of cemeteries and the iconography of death, Goths tend to be quite gentle and non-violent. It’s the other types of Children Of Night that I really fear.

Outside the Bullet Bar I wait to catch a 134 bus home, and when it comes, it zooms right past me. Full up. But I don’t mind too much. Buses at night really don’t agree with me.

On the previous night, Saturday, I take a 263 from Archway to Highgate. It’s a very short journey, but I am feeling rather tired. The time is about 9pm. Within seconds of the bus moving away, an undeniable stench of dope smoke fills the vehicle. The driver stops the bus and calls out for the smoker in question – the only person on the top deck – to desist. A young man in a puffy tracksuit and a baseball cap bounds angrily down the stairs and has a heated discussion with the driver.

“Look mate, do I have anything in my hands? Do I? Do I?”

He’s clearly disposed of the joint in question, which is the idea. But now he’s going to have an argument with the driver anyway. For the sake of it. Just because he wants to feel right. And myself and all the other passengers have to sit and wait until this petty tableau peters out. And we just hope he doesn’t involve us. There’s the inevitable stand off, and the argument quickly hits a loop of the same phrases uttered on both sides, again and again. As all such arguments do. I jump off the bus quietly and walk home, leaving them to it but feeling upset that this sort of thing happens far too often.

I’m sometimes accused of acting like the world revolves around me. If only. Sadly, on Saturday nights, if not every night, I’m made indelibly aware that the world really revolves around shouting young men (and women) like this. Readers who aren’t keen on my more liberal and Guardian-esque entries will be reassured to know that it’s on occasions like this I find it hard not to think of Daily Mail-ish terms like ‘feral youths’. These are the young people who shout, scream, fight, intimidate and generally make getting about London at night that little bit more stressful for me and my non-violent friends. One could argue that there’s always been youths like this in every generation, and always will be. But that doesn’t make me feel any happier about getting back from a party.

I can’t help thinking that perhaps these youths really should join the army. Not to kill people, but to keep the peace. Or perhaps just a boxing club. They’re clearly teeming with surplus aggression, and it does seem unfair to spend it on people in their immediate vicinity, hostages to these brasher striplings. Like any other energy source, this aggression should be harnessed to do some good, not channelled into petty arguments with unlucky bus drivers. And that’s about as Daily Mail as I get. I have such sympathy for the casualty staff and bus drivers who work at nights. Whatever they are paid, it can’t be enough.

So if I can’t afford a taxi, which is rather the case at present, I’m finding it can be safer and less stressful to walk the streets at night than catch a bus. And I do need the exercise. So when the 134 passes by, packed and unyielding to new passengers, I take the Universe’s hint.

Thankfully, though they act to the contrary, such youths are not the world. The Diary Angels page is still growing, and can be found here. Thirty-eight Angels so far. Most of whom, I’m fairly certain, don’t pick arguments with bus drivers about their right to fill a bus with dope smoke and pretend they haven’t.

I’ve already sent the Angels their first exclusive: a lovely e-card of colour artwork, specially commissioned from Oxford artist Jeremy Dennis. It’s of me at my laptop surrounded by a host of said Angels, with reference to an early Beardsley self-portrait where he’s working as a clerk, entitled “Le Debris D’un Poet”.

This week’s episode of Doctor Who concerns a mad scientist who makes himself decades younger, only to undergo a horrific side-effect. Has he never read any science fiction? Or even The Picture Of Dorian Gray? I’m reminded of a similar episode of Star Trek. In that story, when the character in question first appeared it was so obvious he was a young actor in old man make-up that one immediately knew what was going to happen.

At least the Doctor Who version sported such a convincing cosmetic job it was difficult to tell whether they’d cast a genuinely elderly actor. Or in this case, an older and balder Richard Briers. But no, it was Mark Gatiss underneath, who soon reverted to his more familiar appearance as a younger man. For his more monstrous incarnation he was replaced by a computer-generated scorpion-thing with a human face, straight out of Clive Barker’s Undying game. Small children watching must have had nightmares, which is obviously the idea.

The story is tried and tested, and so is the desired effect. It’s a magic formula about a magic formula. Though it was more about prolonging life than reclaiming one’s lost youth and beauty, the coinciding of this fictional story with news stories about people queuing up to buy theBoots No. 7 Protect and Perfect serum is exquisite. From Cleopatra and her milk baths, to the unpleasant Mr Gray of Oscar Wilde fame, to that Hammer horror film where Ingrid Pitt bathes in virgins’ blood to keep the prosthetic make-up wolves from her door. And now Doctor Who on TV, and Boots The Chemist in the real world.

[Idea for parody: The Picture Of David Gray. A mad scientist invents a serum which turns him into a monstrously inoffensive singer-songwriter with a wobbly head who has a few big hits about ‘Babylon’ or something, then vanishes from trace. Probably been done. ]

It’s the third time in as many weeks that there’s been news stories about women forming long queues outside London shops. First for some trendy shopping bag, then for Kate Moss’s clothing range at Topshop, and now for this Boots anti-aging cream.

Walking around Highgate with Anna S on Saturday, by way of a post-haircut stretching of the legs, we pop into the Flask pub for a quick drink. There’s a long queue at the bar. We don’t like the Flask THAT much, so we repair to the Angel Inn down the road, where there’s empty seats and no queue. There’s two men playing chess, and two women playing Trivial Pursuit. Which sounds like I’m trying to make a clever metaphorical point, but I’m not, honest.

Like the one in the Flask, most queues are not worth being in. Not really. I generally am suspicious of anything that can make people queue up when they don’t really need to. Particularly if it’s generated huge amounts of column inches.

But the thing is, these ladies are not queueing for just a bag, or just some celebrity-endorsed clothes, or just some skin cream. This is about being part of something that other people have been convinced to desire, which means they desire it too. And once again, it’s back to Tom Sawyer and his queue of boys paying to paint his fence for him. They’re not being conned, because they’re happy. A hunger has been generated, and they’re more than happy to satisfy it, however unnecessary it looks on paper.

God: But what do you want? What do you really want?
Mankind: I’ll have what everyone else is having.

Liz Jones in The Daily Mail, on the queues for Ms Moss’s range:

Actually, the queuing part – fuelled as we were by free bottles of water and packets of sweets – was quite fun.

Elsewhere:

“It’s a really fun thing to do with your friends,” said one 14-year-old girl. “We came prepared with hot chocolate, and the atmosphere in the queue was fantastic.”

Less happy are queuers for the Boots cream, covering their faces from the cameras. Perhaps they’re mutating into nasty scorpion monsters.

One feels the need to print up the following on stickers and affix it to the Boots shelves:

… Boots paid for the research [featured on BBC TV’s Horizon programme]. It sponsored the study, led by Christopher Griffiths, professor of dermatology at Manchester University… He said: ‘I only tested Boots products. If I’d tested other firms’ products, I may have seen changes with theirs too.’

So much for The Science Part. But then, this isn’t what they’re queuing for. People who use this cream really want the warm, skin-renewing glow from the sense of acquiring that which is desired en masse:

Head of customer care at Boots, Graham Hardy, said: “We’ve heard many stories as to why women should be top of the list to receive the serum, including ‘It’s my son’s wedding in three months’ time”.

Had I written the Doctor Who story, I’d have taken more of a Dorian Gray slant (Reader’s Voice: Oh Mr Edwards, you surprise us!). I’d have asked questions about male vanity, metrosexual men, boy bands, toy boys, Mark Oaten’s hair falling out as his alibi for taking on rent boys, and all the attendant homoerotic connotations.

The Boots stories have hinted at this, but prefer the chivalrous take:

“We have had some men in buying it, but whether we can believe that it’s for their wives and girlfriends as they claim and not for them is up for debate.”

Harry Roach, 73, was the first in line after creeping out of bed shortly after 4am to surprise his wife. The retired production manager from Wythenshawe said: ‘Edith had been trying to get hold of this cream for some time. She was over the moon. I’m definitely in her good books.’ Edith cooked him a huge breakfast as a thank you. The retired secretary said: ‘He is a very good husband and it was a lovely gesture. Friends will be jealous.‘

Never mind the cream itself; the feeling of getting one over on one’s neighbours, of owning whatever object of desire is in the news, will always do miracles for the complexion.

Friday evening. I’m in the Queens pub in Crouch End with some friends. Charley S, Anna S, Suzi L, Rhoda B. Also at the table are friends of these friends: Ms Miriam, and the bleached-hair couple Ms Francesca and Mr Rory. And later we’re joined by Ms Miriam’s friend Mr Steve (it helps that to me he has a slight resemblance to Miranda’s boyfriend Steve in Sex & The City), and later still, Ms Seaneen and Mr Rob.

On introduction – or even re-introduction – I have a little difficulty getting the names right of some of the Friends of Friends. It’s always been a problem for me. My brain works in such an odd way that if I’m not in regular contact with someone, their face and name can just fade from memory completely. Someone I’ve met only in clubs looks completely different to me if I see them in the open air, or in daytime. They can be terribly annoyed with me if I can’t recognise them or recall their name.

It’s as if there’s only a limited amount of names and faces I can store in my memory, and too many of those spaces have been taken up by people on TV or in magazines or figures from literature and history, who don’t even have the courtesy of knowing who I am in return. I know how to spot AE Housman in a crowd, and indeed know exactly where he lived when he wrote A Shropshire Lad. Yet visiting my friend Anna S’s for my haircut yesterday, a place in Archway I visit fairly often, I still have to take a piece of paper with her address on. Admittedly there’s a blue plaque at the former building, and none at Anna’s flat. Though I’m sure it’s only a matter of time. “Dickon Edwards came here to have his hair cut”.

Despite meeting in the pub’s beer garden, we all have to move to a table indoors as the evening progresses. It’s currently deceptively sunny during the day, but really rather chilly after five. Charley looks positively upon these changes of the season, rejoicing that she’s just seen her first swift of the year. By way of contrast, Suzi L bemoans the first flying ant.

At one point in the evening there’s a sudden cloud of potential violence, as a man at the bar shouts at the staff “Don’t tell me what to do! No one tells me what to do!”

It looks as if he might throw his pint glass at someone – anyone. Or do worse. But thankfully he just storms out the door and the atmosphere is calm once more. What’s particularly unusual is his appearance – not your usual pub troublemaker in sports wear, with a convict’s haircut and a face that’s permanently screwed up in knife-edge anger at the world. This forty-something gentleman has long, almost pirate-like brown hair and an expensive black suit over an arty black jersey. This being Crouch End, he could well be a playwright that’s just had a terrible career setback. Or a hugely expensive divorce settlement that’s not gone his way.

Also in the pub I bump into Emily Dean. Which is a bit of a coincidence as it’s the same day her sister sends me a clipping from her rather fun ‘Giving Fag Hags A Voice’ column in Boyz Magazine. It says terribly nice things about me. Here it is. (click on the image to view the page as a PDF file).

You can see the white marabou shrug worn by her sister in the photo, the one donated by one of their mum’s oldest friends, the glamorous 70s pop star and hit songwriter Lynsey De Paul. One of my earliest TV pop memories was watching Ms De Paul and Mike Moran performing Rock Bottom, their Eurovision Song Contest entry for the UK. This would have been 1977. Other people remember Punk Rock, I remember Lynsey De Paul. Much as I love the Sex Pistols, between clothes passed on by Johnny Rotten and clothes passed on by Ms De Paul, I have to say the latter is more ‘me’. So I’m absolutely delighted to be in the presence of her shrug.

Rachael Dean adds:

“Over the years Lynsey has given us some classic pieces. Favourites include a peacock blue velvet, jewel- encrusted, bell bottom jumpsuit and a pair of bell bottom jeans with red feathers and beads sewn along the seams, and a couple of floor length mink coats (very Joan Collins in The Stud).

I’m in heaven amid such descriptions. Just typing the words ‘Lynsey De Paul’s white marabou shrug’ gives me an almost criminal sense of pleasure.

I once saw an early live version of Little Britain, where Matt Lucas played a male police officer called Inspector Lynsey De Paul. It was joke you either got and found funny or didn’t, like their naming of council estates after contestants from the 90s comedy show Whose Line Is It Anyway, or calling a pub The Scarecrow And Mrs King. It’s a kind of Half Man Half Biscuit approach to comedy: names and references which can surely only make a limited amount of people smile.

Equally, last night’s Doctor Who had the Doctor ‘reversing the polarity’ of a wicked machine. This reference to the Jon Pertwee days would have made no difference to the viewing experience of most normal people, but the hardcore Doctor Who fans of a certain age would have been terribly pleased.

The Boyz photo is from a DJ gig I was booked to do for the Dean sisters, the same evening I returned from Tangier. I think I look pretty good considering I’d been awake for nearly 72 hours and had just flown in from Africa. I haven’t smoked since then, so the photo also features my last cigarette. Well, up to now.

I’m fairly sure this is my third appearance in Boyz Magazine, the lively if naughty weekly magazine supplied free to gay bars and clubs in the UK. The first time was as part of the band Orlando, the second as part of Fosca in a piece on Club V, and now I suppose this is the Third Age Of Dickon Edwards: dandy and occasional DJ until I can find something else to be Best Known For. Not that I’ve quite finished with Fosca, though.

The editor of Boyz used to be a chap called Hudson, who wore a Parka and was very much into indie music and guitar rock, rather than the more stereotypical choices of the average gay club attendee – techno, Kylie, trance, disco. Essentially, repetitive dance music made by computers for sweaty gentlemen to frolic to. Though the 90s did see the coming of clubs like Popstarz where Uranist boys were allowed to enjoy Blur and The Strokes, I don’t think the tide was ever completely turned in this direction.

But it did mean that for years Boyz happily featured indie guitar bands alongside the latest news on whatever DJ remixes were ‘having it large’ in the clubs. There’d be an interview with some band, and then a large pull-out photo of a young gentlemen appearing only as Nature intended him, for the purposes of what society used to call Against Nature.

The last section of the magazine was always a generous helping of pages containing adverts for the kind of pleasures one would expect in a colourful gay publication. The bands come and go, and the DJs come and go, but the adverts always stay the same.

Lynsey De Paul’s white marabou shrug. Me. The same paragraph.

Happiness.

(more on the provenance of this clipping tomorrow)

P.S. The next Beautiful & Damned is May 24th.

Just back from the doctor’s, where I am given a second gentle grilling by the ADHD specialist in the presence of my GP. He’s delighted that I’ve managed to get down to a new work discipline with the diary, with the help of the sponsorship scheme. It proves I can focus on one thing and get it done, and on a daily basis. Which rather negates any ADHD de facto. That’s one thing cleared up.

I also don’t appear to be quite as depressed any more. They both remark on a real outward change since they last saw me. Well, what can I say? It’s the Diary Angels sponsorship: not charity or benefits but investment in work I can do, work which only I can do, work which I take pride in, and work which I work AT. We’re back to the stadium full of U2 fans who are there out of pity or sarcasm. Less an idea for a comedy sketch, more a philosophical model about the reasons why people part with a little of their money and time for some things, while other things are free.

Some people make sense of their life through anti-depressive drugs, some do so through routine, some with religion and some with the love of a significant other. I’ve tried the first one (and preferred not to), feel the second one isn’t enough, haven’t found a calling for the third, and haven’t had much luck with the fourth. Yet. One thing at a time. But the Diary Angels works for me. It just took me ten years to find out.

Money should never just be meagre compensation for time wasted doing something you hate, which is the way I viewed it while doing all those minimum wage jobs in the past. It should be a due reward for worthwhile work done well.

I’m reminded of a terse conversation with my boss at the Bristol accountancy firm I once worked at. He passed by my desk, dumped a huge amount of documents on it and told me to process them by lunchtime.

I must have pulled an expression of sheer unhappiness.

Boss: What’s the matter?

And then I made a mistake. I gave him an honest answer. Which was the wrong answer.

Me: Um, I’d really rather not do this.

This is an example of my occasional bouts of disastrous honesty. You can either interpret them as a yen for the philosophical, or a touch of Asperger’s, or both. These days, I’m a lot better at this particularly adult game. Every day, I find a new way of politely saying ‘no’ to something without actually saying ‘no’. They should really put it on the school curriculum. But I digress.

Me: Um, I’d really rather not do this.
Boss: (suddenly angry) WELL THAT’S JUST WHY YOU’RE BEING PAID AND NOT DOING IT FOR FREE, THEN, ISN’T IT!

He stormed off, and I was sacked the following week. Which I can understand. The pile of documents didn’t need me and me only to do them. There was no way I could have processed them in a particularly Dickon Edwards style. In fact, I tended to make more mistakes than the average typist, which on statements of figures is particularly crucial. I was bad at my job, and had no desire to become better. I admire all those who can hold down jobs they’d rather not do, but persevere purely for the money. I’m just not one of them.

At our first meeting, the ADHD specialist had suggested that I consider becoming a mature student and get myself an English degree. This would give me a sense of improvement and purpose, bring ‘closure’ to my dropping-out at 17 when I was trying for Oxford or Cambridge, and I could then, he said, work towards becoming a teacher. To be fair this was only on his first impression of me. I have the air of someone who knows about things; hence teaching.

But from my time in the evening class last year, I know I’m just no good in a class environment, whether as student or teacher. I’ve written before about my inclination to befriend the teacher against my fellow students – and how the universe responded at the evening class by sending a teacher who happened to already BE a friend.

As for me teaching, well that WOULD be a comedy sketch. Every third utteration of mine would be something searingly inappropriate or irrelevant. Interesting, certainly. But I would be sacked. Actually, that’s more or less what Richard Griffiths’s character is like in The History Boys. The students have an inspirational figure, but at what cost to him?

Today, I realise there are types of work I CAN do, which people want me to do, and which I want to do. Not typing up accounts for huge companies, badly. Not teaching, badly.

Something like this.

Well.

Am currently waking up with BBC Radio 3, whose morning programme is presented by the gentle-voiced Rob Cowan. I’m far from an expert on classical music, but something without vocals tends to work better in the background when getting on with something involving words, such as writing.

The spoken word stations shout too much or depress me with their insistence on everything being soundbite-friendly and summarised “very briefly” (the pop song attitude to news reporting), while the pop music stations tend to play something that deeply irritates every bone in my body every few minutes. And the DJs shout too much too. Classic FM is punctuated with banal adverts like all commercial stations (ie non-BBC ones), though I quite like the movie soundtracks show they do on Saturdays. Thanks to that I’ve been introduced to the excellent likes of Danny Elfman’s ‘Ice Dance’ from ‘Edward Scissorhands’, with its exquisite choral hook. In fact, I heard it while supping coffee alone in the iconic New Piccadilly Cafe, Denman Street, which tends to have Classic FM burbling away in the background.

But listening to Rob Cowan’s breakfast show there’s also a feeling of loyalty to one’s extended family. Mr Cowan’s daughter Vicky married my brother (and Fosca guitarist & producer) Tom last year, and this week marks their first anniversary. I can confirm he’s an entirely nice man who made a poignant and quite lovely speech at Tom’s wedding. He had no choice in being related to me, granted, but he’s been very civil about it. The first time we met, we chatted about Radio 3’s late night ‘Other Music’ show Late Junction, possibly the only BBC programme to play selections from the last Scott Walker album The Drift. Which is, shall we say, somewhat more avant-garde and ‘difficult listening’ than the Walker Brothers hits. People are always banging on about the genius of Mr Walker, and rightly so, but there can’t be many radio stations that gave The Drift the attention it got in the monthly music press. What’s the use of making music that’s written about or talked about but not actually listened to? Hats off to Late Junction, I say.

Other family connections with non-shouting BBC presenters: my mother knows the BBC TV & radio presenter Martha Kearney’s mother. Mothers chat about what their offspring are up to, so when Mother K heard about my tentative dips into TV, being sought by producers and so on, she asked (or rather cajoled) Daughter K to phone me with advice. Which happened yesterday. So I’ve taken down her kind notes of tips and names to approach. “You’re to do with blogging and Shane MacGowan, aren’t you?” Well yes but no, I think. I tell her I’m this sort of London dandy character that dips in and out of many social and artistic spheres, and wince slightly at having to say so. But one must be careful not to be Best Known For something which isn’t quite what you want to be best known for.

More leftover thoughts from Cambridge. At the book festival, I attend one of the other events, a panel discussion on how to get published which features two literary agents and two publishers. The audience is presumably made up of unpublished authors, and I note there are far more women than men, and far more people over 50 than under. A lot of their advice is common sense: do your research about who you’re sending your manuscript to, approach agents not publishers, target the agents of the writers you’re more likely to be compared to, and so forth.

A man from Weidenfeld & Nicholson talks about the trend in biography publishing. It used be quite normal to put out lives of the great and good in large tomes, often carried over several volumes. These days, he says, people are less keen to wade through door-stopping biographies, regardless of who it is.

“There’s just been this huge biography of Kingsley Amis doing the rounds… [presumably he means the one by Zachary Leader] But does anyone in 2007 really want to slog though 1000 pages of Kingsley Amis’s life? Of anyone’s life?”

One of the panelists is from the noted feminist publishers Virago, and I think of that incident when they once accepted a novel from someone called Rahila Khan. It was about the life of a young British Asian woman, and was just the sort of thing they were looking for. Close to publication, they finally got to meet the author. Ms Kahn turned out to be a white male vicar called Toby, writing under a pseudonymous persona. He didn’t see himself as a hoaxer or trying to make any kind of satirical point; he just had seen the novel turned down when submitted under his real name everywhere else, and wondered if this approach might not be better. Virago disagreed, felt deceived, pulped all the copies and asked for their advance back.

I sympathise with both parties here. Yes, a book is a book, and the author’s identity shouldn’t affect its merit, particularly in these equality-driven times. But people like a bit of truth in their fiction, a handrail to grasp on the ride into another world. If Zadie Smith turned out to be an elderly man using an actress as a stand-in (as in the case of JT LeRoy) I do think it would affect the present reception of his / her books.

But it works the other way. Monica Ali’s follow-up to her bestseller Brick Lane hasn’t done nearly as well as her debut, and some observers have put this down to it being about villagers in Portugal rather than Bangladeshi Britons. She was doing what authors are meant to do: use her imagination. And her fans rewarded her by giving the book a miss. There’s probably other factors at work here (it’s had mixed reviews), but the connection between author identity and the reading experience must surely be one.

I wonder what Virago’s policy is on the transgendered? Do they now insist on a medical examination of a debut author, to check they are biologically female? Or give them a investigative fondle like Crocodile Dundee did with that transvestite? (a scene which seems appallingly homophobic until you find out the drag queen in question was played by the androgynous actress Anne Carlisle, star of Liquid Sky, making it curiously radical whether by intention or accident)

But facetiousness aside, I see Virago’s point. It shouldn’t matter, but it does matter. Virago is for women authors; it’s their raison d’etre. And it’s not like there’s a shortage of other publishers.

Likewise, I never buy a book if I don’t like the haircut or the clothes in the author photo. I don’t care how acclaimed a novelist is, if he dresses like Man At C&A he can never ‘only connect’ with me.

The centre of Cambridge at the weekend rather resembles Oxford Street. True, there are the more obvious landmarks unique to the city, not least the river with its punts, and King’s College, the world’s preferred source of Christmas choirboys. But away from those is an extremely busy shopping area with all the expected names of the day. HMV, Boots, Costa Coffee, Starbucks, Borders, and so on. I’m gratified to see that Heffers, the large bookshop synonymous with Cambridge, is still going despite being run by its old Oxford rivals Blackwells. It still has the old green-on-black Faber-like logo which looks a little dated (70s to early 80s), but dated is only what people call something from another time that has yet to achieve period charm. The 80s get better and better every year.

What is distinctly Cambridgey is the bicycles. Far more of them than Oxford. They’re nicer for a city than cars, obviously, though there’s a couple of bicycle-related aspects that slightly irritate me during my brief stay.

One is the ambiguity of the pedestrianised streets. Some streets are people only, but there’s some which allow bikes to pass through, and it’s not always clear which is which. On crowded weekends, people spill across the middle regardless because there’s plenty of people about and no cars. Sometimes the road area is the same level as the pavement, adding to the confusion as to whether one should look out for bikes or not. This means that one often hears cyclists ringing their bells to avoid running people over, and pedestrians constantly have to be on their guard.

Ringing a bell is not enough for some. A stern lady in her 70s with cut glass vowels cycles through one crowded area shouting “THIS IS A ROAD! THIS IS A ROAD!” She does this all the way along the street.

The other irritating aspect of the bicycles’ domination is the mirror of this scenario: cyclists taking to pavements in the normal streets. The ones that do allow cars. A couple of times I have to dodge bikes on the pavement while trying not to fall into the road to be hit by a car. On this occasion it’s clearly the cyclists that are in the wrong, though the bike-friendly air of the city must make it hard for them to resist going where the hell they like.

Outside King’s College, a young man is holding a white cardboard sign saying ‘FREE HUGS’. I presume he’s a student.

I don’t take him up on his offer, suspecting an ulterior motive. Perhaps something other than hugs is being advertised, or it’s one of those tiresome hidden camera stunts. Which is a shame, as I can never get enough hugs myself. I certainly prefer hugs to kisses on cheeks. With the latter, I never know if the person I’m meeting expects a peck on one cheek or both, or even on the lips. Or whether I should kiss them or they should kiss me, or both. And who should go first? It’s a very London dilemma. Frankly I’m surprised the Casualty wards of London aren’t stuffed with victims of forehead-collision who attempt this social manoeuvre without a stunt double.

At dinner, I mention the Free Hugs Boy to Michael Bywater. He remarks that by offering his services for free, the young man is ruining the hugs economy and skewing the hugs market.

He is hogging the hugging.

In Tomorrow’s Entry: Which BBC Breakfast DJ is related to me by marriage? Which Newsnight presenter phones me with career advice? And just how much does anyone really want to read about anyone else’s life: a biography publisher’s expert opinion.