Tuesday evening, written up belatedly. To the Royal Albert Hall for one of the Proms concerts. I have a ticket in the stalls, courtesy of Rob Cowan, for which I’m truly grateful. The seat commands a decent view from the stage left side, is comfortable, and even swivels to provide extra leg room for those of us with long, unsupple legs.

The main arena is standing room only, for the ‘Prommers’ which give the concerts their name and defining feature. Inexpensive tickets, cheap access to top-rate classical performances, as long as you don’t mind queuing and standing. Some of the Prommers take it very seriously indeed, attending every single one of the 70-odd summer dates and forming little intense societies of their own. Some of them organise collections for charity, and in the interval there’s a group announcement from the arena, saying how much they’ve raised so far. They don’t have a microphone, so they make the announcement together like a chant.

I’ve been a Prommer myself once, as a teenager for Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition. I remember chatting with – and being looked after by – a thin, bespectacled Prommer who was famous among the regulars. He was first in the queue, and I was told he always had his own place down the front, dead centre. I remember tuning in for the televised Last Night At The Proms that year, and easily spotting him down the front, singing along with all the flag wavers. I can’t quite tell from the stalls if he’s still there these days, though.

I’ve come to hear Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) and Ligeti’s Atmospheres (1961). The Bartok is moody and strange and folk-influenced, while the Ligeti is downright avant-garde. Soundscapes of colour, the tuning of braking trains from distant dreams. Atmospheres features in the dark screen ‘overture’ to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick also uses Ligeti for the bits with the monolith, and the long bit at the end where the astronaut’s pod whizzes through endless landscapes of oddness. If it’s in 2001 and sounds scary, abstract and otherworldly, it’s Ligeti.

Note to self: stop pronouncing him ‘Li-GET-tee’ It’s ‘LIG-erty’. Hungarian, not Italian.

What makes tonight’s concert attractive enough to fill about 80% of the Hall, even in the midst of a Tube strike, is not just the inclusion of this challenging fare (the Ligeti’s never been played at the Proms before), but that the orchestra playing it is more suited to traditional Strauss waltzes and polkas. It’s the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

The Telegraph gives this concert a critical pasting the next day, saying the VPO are too polished, corporate and old-fashioned to handle the modern stuff. Well, the Bartok is 70 years old and the Ligeti is 40, but it’s modern enough for the VPO, established in 1842.

It’s true they’re hardly innovative in the gender equality stakes: I read that their first female member was only admitted in 2003, making front page news in Austria at the time. It does seem an anachronistic, golf-club-like imbalance these days, particularly when the audience tonight (like classical fans in general) is about fifty-fifty male and female. In fact, two women behind me comment loudly on how few ladies are on stage. ‘There’s one – on harp!’. ‘I think I see another one in the woodwinds…’

2001 – Humanity discovers an alien monolith.

2003 – the VPO discovers women.

But old-fashioned or no, they do the difficult stuff perfectly well as far as my ears are concerned. The slow, sparse first movement of the Bartok piece has the audience gripped from the off. It’s almost as if the entire Albert Hall is holding its breath. Barenboim jumps in the air for the faster passages.

And the Ligeti is astonishing; suitable otherworldly and dreamy. At one point, two men open up a grand piano and stroke the strings inside with what I imagine are special Ethereal Soundscape brushes.

Also in the programme are more melodic, traditional pieces: Kodaly’s Dances Of Galanta and Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No 1. There’s also two encores of Strauss: the catchy Annen-Polka and a fitting Hail To Hungary (given the Eastern European theme), complete with shouted ‘hoy!’ at the end. All of which pleases both audience and performers (there’s even some dancing in the Prommers’ arena), but it’s the experimental stuff that really delights my heart.

I really should go to more classical gigs. Apart from anything else, they smell nice. People are generally better deodorised.

The new school and college year is about to begin, because I overhear this from the crowds spilling out of the Albert Hall:

Girl: Oh I really love my year, daddy!

Dad: Are you with all your buddies?

The tube strike isn’t a pain at all. For many, it’s an excuse for to get some exercise from walking, particularly as the weather’s warm and dry. I happily march all the way across Hyde Park at night, along the main road that runs down the middle, and along Oxford Street to Tottenham Court Road. Then I catch a tube home. The Northern Line is unaffected, so my journey isn’t as awkward as it could be. It’s been a perfectly lovely evening, in fact.

Thursday evening. To the Spectrum Gallery in Great Titchfield Street, for Sebastian Horsley’s book launch and art show. The place is fairly small, and the art on display is effectively his greatest hits. The video of his crucifixion in the Philippines. A shark painting, from his close-up encounters with the beasts. A copy of the ‘This Is Not A Brothel’ sign from his front door. One of his beautiful suits.

Horsley bridges the Emin & Warhol world – art as advert for the artist – and the Soho Hooligan world of Bacon, Hambling, Melly, Bernard, Hamilton, and Quentin Crisp. He is possibly the only person to quote Quentin Crisp even more than me. Though he actually did actually meet Quentin, and suggests some of Crisp’s later quotes were his in the first place.

When Jarvis Cocker first appeared on TV, he was introduced as ‘a cross between Scott Walker and Quentin Crisp.’ Which wasn’t (and isn’t) entirely him. But it was a good start. A departure point. People need a way in; a handrail with which to approach the new.

Crisp was Firbank meets Saki meets Wilde. And Wilde was Ruskin meets Huysmans meets anyone else in the room at the time:

Wilde: I wish I had said that.
Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.

All innovators begin life as a one-man tribute band. As long as it’s on the way to becoming a tribute to themselves.

And so it is with Sebastian Horsley. Not the first man to be crucified, of course. Not even the first man to be crucified in recent years, given it goes on in the Philippines every Easter. But he is the first Westerner, and remains the only one. Dominik Diamond tried it for a TV show called Crucify Me, but his nerve left him right before the nails were driven in, and he called it off.

Flicking through his book, Dandy In The Underworld, I spot a Quentin-esque line immediately. It’s on the importance of living in small flats and bedsits. ‘I never know what people do with the rooms they are not in.’ But then Sebastian adds, ‘I’ve been in bigger women.’

Dandy In The Underworld is a terrific read: a litany of hedonistic, decadent acts. Some of which are the usual suspects: drugs, sex, degradation. But Horsely puts a personal, darkly funny spin on them all. He’s a gifted writer, cutting to the chase, one step ahead of his own critics. ‘I’ve suffered for my art,’ he says. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

The event at the gallery is packed, with people spilling out into the street. For someone who describes himself as untalented and unsuccessful, Horsley is impressively popular. Maybe because he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Make people smile, if you must make them do anything. Absinthe is served, and I’m afraid I help myself to a glass. Just the one, mind.

Names. I say hello to Sebastian, Sebastian’s family, Victoria Clarke, Miss Hattie, Sophie Parkin, Viktor Wynd, another man called Dickon (no one is terribly impressed by two Dickons meeting: the universe fails to implode), a young couple, fresh in London and hitting the top parties already – the boy is called Alexei. An AIDS charity worker turned teacher. Lots of girlish young men who look down their elegant noses at you (or at least, me). I eventually gravitate to Lady Billy from the Club Kitten scene, and Bleach Blonde Sarah, current landlady of Miss Shanthi. Billy and Sarah are in a band together called Wet Dog. Mark Keds says hello to them: I remember him from the band the Senseless Things. I bought their single, ‘Too Much Kissing’, when it came out, with its Jamie Hewlett sleeve. This was 1989. They all repair to Electrogogo, but I opt for bed.

Frequently asked boring question:

‘How do you know Sebastian?’

Answer: ‘Osmosis.’

‘Nice meeting you’, I say to one man who’s passing through.

‘You’re lying, aren’t you.’

‘Yes.’

‘It suits you.’

Actually I was lying that I was lying, but wanted to play his game. Sebastian’s approach rubs off on you.

Maybe I should try being deliberately rude, as opposed to being inadvertently rude. It’s so tiring having to apologise.

You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been deliberately rude in my life. Evasive, yes. Stand-offish, certainly. But not actually telling people to get knotted. Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong all this time.

Ahem. (clears throat)

You can all get knotted, frankly. You and the boat you rode in on.

I think I need lessons. 

Buy Sebastian H’s decadent feast of a book here.

Monday: spend my birthday in a perfectly happy state. No drinks, no social gatherings in a bar or club. Instead I plump for a day on my own, loafing about the British Library cafe and Reading Rooms (reading a book about happiness, in fact), going to the Post Office to send Fosca CDRs to labels and post the rarer books which I’ve sold on Amazon (which were NOT gifts to me), and a bit of indulgent shopping. Suits me fine. I’m meeting friends later this week as it is.

I had a perfectly lovely surprise meal thrown for me last year, which in happiness terms will keep me going for a long time yet. Sometimes, one’s birthday can feel like New Year’s Eve, ie strained, enforced jollity for its own sake. Worrying that you’re not happy enough. Happiness for me this year meant solitude, and not worrying. I was happy.

I didn’t fancy the idea of a drinks gathering organised at short notice, which people would find hard to attend (particularly with the Tube strike) and having to refuse alcohol while surrounded by people getting drunk.

At the Highgate garden party on Saturday, I was frequently offered drinks (Oh, poor Dickon! Our hearts bleed!). I gave in and supped a little Pimms and fruit punch, but couldn’t really enjoy it, knowing I was meant to be on the wagon and worrying that I’d get drunk. So I’m still struggling a little with that, and thus felt awkward about a birthday drinks do.

One year, though, I’d like to throw a proper bash in a venue, advertised weeks in advance (the only real way to do gatherings in London) with films, DJs and dancing. Maybe an ‘If….’ party, with everyone dressed as schoolboys.

The Tube strike is planned to go on until Friday morning. I have things to go to. So, a good excuse to do lots of walking.

Receive lots of birthday greetings via email and Facebook (much thanks). A few Facebook Gifts this year, which are cute little cartoon images of presents. Certainly very Green-friendly. No wrapping paper, no space taken up in the real world.

Tim Chipping sends me the new Edwyn Collins album in digital form, along with a video e-card. It’s that famous 60s Bob Dylan film where he holds up signs featuring words from the song’s lyrics. On the e-card, Dylan’s words are replaced by ‘Happy Birthday Dickon’. Very clever stuff.

My parents and brother send me generous amounts of much-welcomed money, along with a copy of McSweeney’s Quarterly No. 13. This is the big literary comics anthology edited by Chris Ware. Staying on that tip, I use some of the money at Gosh Comics, to buy a similar anthology: Ivan Brunetti’s Anthology Of Graphic Fiction, published by Yale University. I also pick up a copy of Gaiman’s Stardust, the version illustrated by Charles Vess, so I can compare it with the forthcoming film. Am meant to be attending a press screening on Thursday, though Sebastian Horsley is having his book launch the same evening.

Oh, and they had sold out of Scott Pilgrim Vol 1.

Films seen recently include Disney’s Fantasia. Whenever I come back to this, it’s a different sequence that appeals. As a child, I first favoured the Mickey Mouse ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ segment, then the ballet with the crocodiles, hippos and ostriches. Today it’s the opening Toccata and Fugue that connects with my 36-year-old self, with its backlit live-action orchestra mixing into a dazzling parade of abstract, dreamy animation.

But I still like the hippos.

My 36th birthday. Up at 6am again, so the day has hope. No appointments today. I can pretty much do what I like, as long as it doesn’t cost very much. Perhaps a mooch around town, and then to the London Library. Somewhere where quietness has been subscribed to. I need to have a serious think about things, so it helps to go where the serious thinkers go.

Looking at the number 36 written down, thoughts of what I want to do with the rest of my life spring up. There was a George Melly documentary on TV the other week, screened in memoriam. He was interviewed during his last years, and said there were many things he wished he’d done: been more of a poet, painter, novelist, alongside all the singing, memoir writing, journalism and generally living large.

‘But I’ve never done anything I didn’t want to do,’ he said, uttering the phrase like a credo.

Now, civilisation was pretty much built on a good deal of people doing things they didn’t want to do, throughout history. As I write, all over London people are off to jobs they’d rather not do, indeed might hate with a passion. But they are jobs they can do, which need to be done (one hopes) and which pay the bills.

That’s fine for those who can adapt easily to the World Of Work. But for those of us who are shaped slightly wrongly for much of the world’s fixed slots, it’s not so easy to do. If I’ve learned anything after thirty-six summers, it’s that there’s no point in working purely for money if you hate what you’re doing. Apart from anything else, hating a job means in my case that I won’t do a good job, so I’ll soon be sacked, and then it’s been a waste of time all round.

Some birthday messages to myself. Maybe to others, too.

You should probably spend less time on the Internet. If you just keep your diary updated, and stick to one place on the Web, people will know you’re still alive and are more or less okay, and that’s usually all they need. You have enough real friends in real life, and should spend more time consolidating these friendships. Friendship is sacred, if it’s truly meant.

Don’t dwell on those who find you ‘interesting’ from afar, or those in whom you’ve awoken some spark of remote obsession. All unsolicited attention flatters, but its active cultivation will do no favours to admirer and subject alike. Instead, spend more time on those who truly know you and love you.

Concentrate on learning to properly swim in one social pool, rather than paddling in the shallow end of so many. This one is going to be tricky at first, but stick with it.

At 36, you’re meant to more or less know where your abilities lie. You’re told – by people you don’t really know – that you can write well. Well, write. Write more. Write better. Read up on technique. Practice. Maybe take a course. Write stories. Screenplays. Lyrics for others. Don’t get to your grave having only written about what other people have done, reviewing other people’s music, books and films. Not if you know you want to do your own. So make your own. Make many. Do it. Work at it. Become faster. Get feedback. Improve.

Last night: I watch the film Beyond Therapy. It’s a late 80s comedy directed by Robert Altman, adapted from a stage play. Altman is clearly not best suited to the material, because the film really doesn’t work. It’s certainly not worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as Short Cuts. Jeff Goldblum plays a bisexual trying to have it both ways. He lives with Christopher Guest (whose convincingly swishy performance is close to the one he does in the fantastic Waiting For Guffman), but he also wants to date the lady from Airplane. And everyone’s seeing therapists.

Jeff Goldblum does his usual thing, speaking… as if… he hasn’t… had much… sleep… the night… before. And the dialogue overlaps in that chatty Altman way. But the scripted jokes become lost and the audience is left high and dry.

I was sitting there thinking I could fix the script myself, or even fix the direction. Not daring to suggest I could outdo Robert Altman, but I could see which bits were not working, and was thinking what could be changed, given it’s an adapted play. Any filmic tendencies need to be quietened down, so the words and the performances can engage more directly.

But the other sides of directing tend to put me off: the long hours, the painstaking repetition, and the diplomatic nature; having to be overly nice to so many people even in the most stressful of circumstances. I wouldn’t have the nerve to be a tyrant, a la Von Trier. I actually rather like actors. Still, that’s one thing on the big To Do list.

An over-used phrase to say when having watched a bad movie is ‘that was ninety minutes of my life I’ll never get back.’ But in the case of films like Beyond Therapy, which left me thinking how I could fix the thing, it was ninety minutes well spent.

‘I would have preferred the film to have done this’, some critics say. So make your own film, I say.

***

Saturday evening: to a fun garden party at the home of Jen C and Alex & Bill M, in Highgate. Home-made cupcakes, marshmallow-flavoured Rice Krispie cakes, a raffle with prizes, and games of badminton on the lawn. I chat to Senay S for the first time in years; great to see her again. Actually it’s a Baxendale reunion, with Tim B and Alex M all there.

I mention to American Emily that I’ve applied for that Time Out job.

‘So have I!’ she replies. And we imagine we probably know a few other applicants somewhere along the line.

‘Hope you get it.’

‘No, I hope YOU get it.’

I don’t envy whoever has to sort through the applicants. Must be hundreds.

We talk about the ‘things to improve about Time Out‘ blurb which the advert asked for, and Emily thinks the Guardian Guide has stolen much of Time Out‘s potential audience. The Guide is a cute little mini-supplement packaged with the newspaper’s Saturday edition, containing arts reviews and a decent smattering of local listings. It’s handy in size, and manages to be vaguely fizzy and in touch without feeling too trendy. And it steers clear of getting into the ‘praise one thing for not being another’ tone which in some quarters is mistaken for ‘lively’.

Right. Off into town I go.

Have applied for a job at the insistence of Charley S, who forwarded the advert. Staff Music Writer at Time Out magazine, London edition.

Needless to say my hopes are at ground level. I suspect they’ll be inundated with applications from more aggressively networking types. But it’s a writing job, I could do it, and I do have something of an unusual, toe-dipping background on various London scenes over the years. I like to think I can produce entertaining, unusual musings on music of all stripes, which people would go out of their way to read. So I give it my best shot.

As for music of all stripes, I’m off to the Royal Albert Hall for Ligeti at the Proms this week. On the bus to the venue, my iPod Nano will be playing… actually, what AM I listening to at the moment? Let’s see.

Cocteau Twins. Dory Previn. Dresden Dolls. Dressy Bessy. The Hidden Cameras. Joy Division. My Bloody Valentine. New Order. Nico. North Sea Radio Orchestra. The Supremes. The new Edwyn Collins single. Philip Glass. Prefab Sprout’s first album. Talulah Gosh. Virginia Astley. The Breeders’ session for John Peel, circa 1990. Xiu Xiu’s incredible cover of the Pussycat Dolls’ ‘Don’t Cha’. Alan Bennett’s diaries. A radio dramatisation of Clive Barker’s play, The History Of The Devil. An audiobook of Saki stories. And the most recent edition of Radio 3’s Late Junction, featuring classical, folk, avant-garde, experimental jazz, new tracks by David Sylvian and Robert Wyatt, and field recordings of birdsong.

Though I have little interest in many of the latest radio-friendly alt-rock sensations clogging up festival bills, I like to think I could write knowledgeably about them, if required. I’m a research junkie: my brain lends itself easily to the location, absorption and recall of new information. If anything, I overdo the research in my all-or-nothing tendency.

For the time I interviewed the directors of Brothers Of The Head, I went to the British Library and read the obscure, out-of-print novel their film adapted, and took notes. Then I read every single interview and article about their work that I could find, and put together a huge file on them that would lend itself to a book-length biography, never mind a 2,000 word interview. Oh, and I read a new book on professional interview technique, which couldn’t hurt. So I can do it, when I want to. Even if I overdo it.

I’m also experienced in reigning in the Dickon-ness in favour of a house-style, homogenised hack approach; playing to the zeitgeist gallery and using ‘we’ to mean ‘me. It just means a small acting job. Still, any job is an acting job of sorts. Even the ones where you’re cast as yourself.

The advert asked for a short critique of Time Out’s current music coverage. A lot of publications do this. ‘How would you improve things?’ they ask. I wonder what they really want to hear?

Last time I applied for a similar full-time position for another magazine, they asked the same question. So I launched into a list of suggestions. Not only did I not get the job, I notice not one of my mooted revisions was even slightly taken on board. The magazine seems pretty much the same as it always was. So maybe the right answer is to posit a few very minor tweaks, nothing radical.

Or maybe it’s a trick question? That you’re really meant to say: ‘I couldn’t possibly question the decisions of the present editors. The magazine is perfect as it is. You have always been right, will always be right, and I look forward to obeying your every command, for money.’

What most bugs me at the moment with Time Out is the pointlessly cynical tone of many of their reviews, where they praise one artist by burying another. Last issue, a piece on the band Dragonette mentioned the singer’s appearance on Basement Jaxx’s ‘awful’ ‘Take Me Back To Your House’ hit. It’s Time Out‘s ‘awful’, not mine. Over the page, there’s a tiny, 50-word blurb on an artist that still finds it important to take a pop at Mika, by way of unfavourable comparison. What’s good about this artist? They’re like Mika if he was good, goes the gist.

But I like that Basement Jaxx song, and I like Mika. So these snidey digs are not only unhelpful, they backfire entirely. There’s more to music criticism than simply assuming the reader is on-message with your own specific dislikes. It’s a cynical style more used to web forums and blog comments, and has no place in a listings mag for a city that represents a wealth of tolerance and possibility for those who love it.

Time Out has a job to provide filters and signposts for the capital’s confusion, but narrowing choices shouldn’t mean narrowing minds.

So that’s what I told them in my application. They did ask.