The clocks have gone back. At 6am on the Sunday morning, when most people are meant to be spending an extra hour in bed, I get up, put on a suit and tie, and do some work. When the conventional world does something slightly strange, the slightly strange must act conventional.

Earlier this year when the clocks went forward, I didn’t notice for four whole days. I had no appointments, and I wasn’t tuning in for any live TV or radio broadcasts. I was still conversing with friends in the street, online and on the phone, it’s just that none of the exchanges required checking what time it was. So I really was wandering around in a world of my own. I know I cultivate an air of detachment, but even so.

***

Petty annoyance today: anyone erroneously referring to the Queen as HRH rather than HMQ. The Simpsons episode featuring Tony Blair makes the same mistake.

Also: one of the writers in London: City Of Disappearances refers to the ubiquity of Robbie Williams’s song ‘Angel’ (sic). Not nearly ubiquitous enough if they can’t get the title right.

Strange thing is, pop culture types getting institutional acronyms wrong seems more forgiveable than literary types getting pop song titles wrong.

***

In valetudinarian news, I currently have a cold. Feeling woozy and feverish and headachey, with gooey coughs and sneezes into the bargain. Found it hard to stare at a computer screen the last few days, hence the gap in diary entries.

Walked around Highgate today in my warmest of suits and shivered (‘it has a lining’ making me think of Whit Stillman’s Metropolitan). It’s officially winter coat weather.

***
A few left-over photos and words from the Stockholm trip.

Friday Bridge Niklas has sent this one, taken by Photo Niklas. Here I am posing in Gondolen, the vertiginous restaurant:

After the soundcheck, I finally checked in at the hotel. A small room in a town house-like building tucked within a narrow cobbled street, but with a perfectly formed breakfast the next day. You could help yourself to pretty much everything you’d ever conceive as breakfast-shaped. Multivitamins. Pancakes. Cereals. Toast. Juices. Pastries. Scrambled egg and mushrooms. Warm milk. Soya milk. Every type of tea and coffee. A delicatessen table.

It was the same for the catering at the venue. Coffee, tea, juice, bread, fruit, pastries, sweets and more, all laid out along the bar purely for the soundcheck, followed by an evening meal (veggie compatible) for the bands and venue staff together. A club venue in London providing food for a soundcheck is pretty rare, to say the least. UK soundchecks are meant to be gritty, blokey, Herculean ordeals of broken connections, sudden bangs, and someone always saying ‘it’ll sound better when there’s people in the room.’

Watched Hot Fuzz with Swedish subtitles:

Using Ylva’s laptop at the hotel, the three of us rehearsed the songs one more time in a spare moment between dinner and showtime. Made all the difference to our performance.

This is an attempt at artiness using the dressing room mirror at the venue, taken just before I went onstage to sing with Friday Bridge:

I was also DJ-ing for 45mins or so before they went on, and chose to play ‘Crush The Flowers’ by The Wake by way of an intro. With its girl & boy vocals over a springy programmed backing, it seemed to fit okay.

Iain Sinclair is speaking to Alan Moore.

‘While researching From Hell, you met Gilbert and George, didn’t you?’

‘That’s right. I’m on first name terms with them.’

***

It’s Friday evening, and I’m at the Bishopsgate Institute, a building people might notice when walking from Liverpool St Station to Spitalfields Market.

The event is a discussion promoting the paperback release of London, City Of Disappearances, a new anthology of musings on the capital. The book is edited by Mr Sinclair and features contributions from Alan Moore and Michael Moorcock, and all three are here to talk about it.

Though I’m by myself, I am delighted to be recognised by one of the event staff: a charming lady who was also the production manager of the Literary Tent at the Latitude Festival.

I look around at the packed seats to see what Sinclair-Moore-Moorcock fans look like. ‘Bookish yet slightly groovy’, is my verdict. All ages. Students in glasses who have barely started shaving, next to white-bearded gentlemen of a certain age. The attractively bookish. Kathy Acker-like ladies with shaven or coloured hair. Martin Amis-like men with silvery partings and donnish postures. People I might know in a parallel universe, or perhaps will later know in this one. Or may have once known, but can’t quite place them. That kind of quasi-recognition.

There’s two additional performers. Brian Catling, who reads his piece referencing 28 Days Later‘s opening scenes on Westminster Bridge. And bookending the proceedings is some striking ululation-style singing by Kirsten Norrie, who uses a microphone and digital delay pedals to fashion a tapestry of layered vocals.

I’ve seen the indelible Alan Moore before; the leonine explosion of hair (tonight tamed in a ponytail), the Old Testament beard, the deadpan Midlands accent, the Rasputin eyes. Moorcock is also bearded, but less wildly so. I’ve seen younger photos of him looking like, well, Alan Moore, and I wonder if that has something to do with his more reigned-in length today. Perhaps you can only have one author looking like that at one time, or the universe will explode.

Moorcock talks about having ‘a good Blitz’, when to wake up in London and find the landscape changed from day to day was exciting rather than frightening. He mentions how it used to be possible to walk from the old Port of London to the West End in no time at all, because the buildings in between were just not there.

Though you have to be careful with Michael Moorcock’s London. He likes to re-imagine whole parts of the city, notably Brookgate, his fictional district based on Holborn. Iain Sinclair interjects that people who’ve read the hardback version of City Of Disappearances have approached him and reminisced vividly about the places Moorcock mentions. Places which never existed.

‘We are living in text,’ points out Moore. ‘We live by manipulating language’. And it’s this line of thinking that really connects with me. I think about the askew glance of the flaneur. Marks on paper becoming bricks and mortar and back again. The language of property deeds: text as possession of the unpossessable. Cities as thought, changed by thought, with text as both the means and the process. Why writing is important, and why it’s important to write.

I think about the time I was in this building before, twenty-five years ago. The event was The Puffin Show, the annual event of games, activities, author signings and storytelling, held by the Puffin Book Club. The Puffin Club was so much more than a mailing list for a children’s publisher; it was a unique labour of love by Puffin boss Kaye Webb and illustrator Jill McDonald. (More here) It also was my own introduction to the joys of writing. (I’ve just found out that the British Library holds a complete run of Puffin Post, the club’s magazine. My heart lifts in anticipation.)

It helps that Moore also likes to entertain as much as provoke thought:

‘London is essentially a fantasy invented by the Midlands.’

His current project is Jerusalem, a book in which he moves away from examining his beloved Northampton as a whole (which he did in Voice Of The Fire) in order to concentrate on a few specific blocks within the town, close to his home. An area, he maintains, which is just as rich in literary material as all of London.

Iain Sinclair talks about ‘the wonderful audience here tonight’. Not the one with me in, but the one in the enormous vintage photograph mounted in the Bishopsgate Institute’s foyer. It’s from a talk in the same room circa 1911, all Edwardian hats and suits and ties, heads turned in every direction, some smiling at the camera, some wary.

[Dear Reader, if you ever find yourself with fifteen minutes to kill while waiting for a train at Liverpool Street, pop over to the other side of Bishopsgate, walk a few paces north to the Institute and take a look at this extraordinary photo. It’s just inside the main door, on the right hand wall.]

Moore reads from ‘Unearthing’, his contribution to the book about his comic-writing friend Steve Moore. He says that since its publication, there have been repercussions in the other Moore’s life. Not least after it was read by a woman appearing in the essay as the unaware object of Steve Moore’s affections. ‘She’s now less unaware.’

The event is a kind of reunion, as Moorcock and Moore appeared together in Sinclair’s 1992 Channel 4 film The Cardinal And The Corpse. It was from the era, Sinclair says, ‘when TV had the old style commissioning process. As opposed to today’s…’ (he thinks of a phrase to describe the current state of television). ‘…today’s elected disenfranchisement. We’re now into a kind of Post-Disappearance Culture.’

Mr Sinclair goes on to read a piece of his own, inspired by a 1950s newspaper story on Jayne Mansfield’s visit to the East End (‘Jayne Mansfield. Actress. Pin Up. Mammal…’), and dedicates the evening to another contributor, the penniless yet prolific Northern poet Bill Griffiths, who died last month.

Moore says he refuses to see the Hollywood version of his graphic novel V For Vendetta. Though Moorcock has seen it in a Texas cinema:

‘I know it’s a world away from the book, but it was fascinating to see your basic ideas – the basic magic – working on rednecks.’

‘Oh well, rednecks,’ replies Moore. ‘That’s always nice.’

***

As I finish this entry, 11.50am on Sunday 28th October, in the news is a blackmail attempt on an unidentified member of the Royal Family, citing ‘sex and drugs’. Which makes me think of Alan Moore’s From Hell.

The other main story is that today marks Royal Mail’s discontinuation of Sunday postbox collections. Another disappearance.

Katja’s interview with me in the sky-high restaurant took in Dorian Gray-isms in music, the innate tragedy of the aging songwriter chained to playing his hits of yore, young words from an old face. Though in the case of Prince and his concerts this year, he really does appear to have a picture in the attic too. I discussed how Dorian Gray refers to Huysmans, and how Wilde was already famous before he had a book out. In fact, I think I talked more about Oscar Wilde than I did about myself or my own work. Katja writes for two websites: www.digfi.com and www.thejetsetjunta.se.

From there it was off to the venue, Debaser, for soundchecking. Debaser is a small franchise of indie clubs: two in Stockholm, one in Malmo. I guess the equivalent might be the Popstarz / Ghetto clubs in London. The one for the gig was below street level, by a section of the harbour. The main entrance is on the left in this photo, under a canopy. I think it may be the same place I played on my first trip to Stockholm in December 1999, with Spearmint:

‘Debaser’ is a Pixies song. Inside, you could buy cocktails named after other songs by the Pixies. ‘Barman, give me one Monkey Gone To Heaven, one Planet Of Sound, and a Broken Face for my husband.’

I noted from the club’s flyer that Friday Bridge was mistyped as ‘Friday Brigade’. Still, they got my name right:

Also noted Fanfarlo on the listings, whom I last saw playing in Nambucca on Holloway Road. Photo Niklas told me about another band on the listing called Bold Faces. They’re all graphic designers who sing songs entirely about the world of graphic design. ‘I Hate Copperplate Sans’ being one.

A journalist from an arts magazine called ‘00TAL‘ was there. She’d seen the newspaper piece and wanted to book me for their literary event in Stockholm next month. I could sing songs, or read prose, or both. Didn’t take long to say yes. So this might happen on Nov 30th.

The club night at Debaser is run by two sweet and boyishly handsome young men who happen to be identical twin brothers. I was caught out by this, and when the second twin arrived and introduced himself, I said, ‘Um, didn’t we do this a little earlier?’ They were very nice about it.

There was also a cool bob-haired girl engineer who seemed to walk in slow motion between the stage and her control booth, in the way some cool people do. I think it helps if you’re Swedish. I wouldn’t say Swedish people are necessarily any more or less prettier or cooler than the English, but there’s a certain sense of Nordic stillness and detachment that definitely appeals. Even the most crowded streets in Stockholm are without the air of rush, paranoia and tension that you can sense in Oxford St or Camden at the weekend.

I soundchecked the four songs I’d been requested to perform with the elegant electro-Baroque duo Friday Bridge, consisting of Non-Photo Niklas and Ylva the wonderful FB singer, who also designs the sleeves for the record label. The songs were ‘Pigeon’ (the album version of which I sang on, via Tom’s studio and the emailing of sound files), ’21st Century’, a version of Fosca’s ‘It’s Going To End In Tears’, and a uniquely haughty version of the Happy Mondays’ ’24 Hour Party People’.

The day before, while practising the songs by myself back in Highgate, it suddenly occurred to me that ‘Tears’ would sound fantastic covered by the band Client. So I emailed Kate Holmes (aka Client A), whom I’m slightly acquainted with, and told her so. Probably unlikely they’ll do it, but it was one of those ideas that demanded to be passed on.

Even though I’d spent the entire flight going over them, the lyrics still weren’t sticking in my brain. It was likely I would have to have the lyric sheets onstage with me, as I often do for Fosca. Normally, I don’t need to check them. It’s just nice to know they’re there. The trick is to memorise lyrics so they’re second nature. Once you even have to stop and think about what to sing, you’ve had it.

I did reach the second-nature point with the Friday Bridge songs, but typically it only happened two days after the gig, when I was back in the UK. Couldn’t get them out of my head by that point.

Some photos from Stockholm. In chronological order.

My plane got into Arlanda (the Stockholm Heathrow) at about noon on the Friday. I was met at the airport by Niklas and Matt from But Is It Art? Records. It’s so nice to be met at an airport. Though I’ve never had that business where people hold out my name on a piece of card. My appearance is green-friendly – it saves valuable card and ink.

Niklas and Matt drove me into the city, where we had a lovely vegetarian lunch at a Japanese restaurant and discussed the artwork for the Fosca live album. Then it was off to the Stockholm Hilton’s cafe area, ‘Eken / The Oak’, for the first interview. This was recorded for the radio station P3 Pop, by the perfectly lovely Sara Martinsson. I talked about what ‘cult musician’ means, the strange history of Sarah Records, being played on John Peel and what he meant to people, and my obsession with different types of notability. So many small ponds to be a big fish in, that kind of thing. And I made sure I plugged the gig.

After that, I was whisked off to yet another restaurant for the second interview. This was in ‘Gondolen’, towering high up above the city in a long, crane-like structure. Very plush inside, so I guess it’s the equivalent of the Tate Modern restaurant. This is what it looks like from street level:

Here’s myself and Niklas in front of it:

And here’s what it looks like from the inside:

On the left is Katja Ekman, who did the second interview. On the right is the other Niklas from the record label, who took photos of me throughout the day. His photo of Fosca onstage appears on the live album.

Photo Niklas told me he spent some of his teen years on a cultural exchange in England, living in a seaside town on the south coast. Bournemouth, I think. It was one of those seaside places dominated in the 1980s by two curiously polarised species: cream tea-loving pensioners in retirement, and young right-wing skinheads looking for a fight. Foreign students being fairly high up on the list of targets.

Niklas also told me he had a Phil Oakey haircut at the time. Mr Oakey was the singer with The Human League, and indeed still is. In the group’s 80s zenith, he had a curtain of black hair down one side of his face. ‘Can’t attempt that haircut these days’ joked Niklas. ‘Neither can Phil Oakey,’ I replied.

Digression time… I was going to say that the days when pop stars and the teenage boys who bought their records had outrageously effeminate hairdos are long gone. But of course, that’s not true in the slightest. These things go in cycles.

Jumping ahead in my story, on the tube home from the wedding party the next evening, there was a skinny teenage boy sporting the nearest 2007 equivalent to an ‘Oakey’ hairdo. An asymmetrical, angular explosion of dark hair, cut into a jagged yet overgrown style, so it resembled a splatter of paint. I think this look must be partly influenced by Japanese Manga cartoons, and partly by time-honoured angsty, Gothic leanings, which I think is now called ’emo’. There’s a band called The Horrors who are a good exponent of this New New New New Romantic style:

[picture by Chiara Gulin, Italy]

Hair like this is famously handy to hide acne, shyness and general lack of physical perfection behind. But sometimes you get young men who remain beautiful however outrageous their hair, like Ryan Ross from the group Panic! At The Disco:

To be continued.

Back in Highgate. Went straight from Heathrow last night to the Jerusalem Bar off Oxford Street, for Lea and Gemma’s wedding party. Much dancing and a little drinking, my teetotal rule allowing champagne for special occasions. Just have to stop myself becoming a Special Occasions-holic.

After that, I managed to get me and my suitcase home on a packed late tube amid all the Saturday night revellers, including a bevy of pink-cheeked teen boys who’d clearly just been to a gig by Cajun Dance Party. They were all in the same matching band t-shirts.

Typing this on the Sunday morning, sitting in bed, as tired as a rat. Which is one of those family catchphrases, from my Dad’s side (says Mum, whom I’ve just spoken to on the phone). All families have their own catchphrases, proverbs, sayings or similes. Phrases can be heirlooms, or even a kind of DNA passed down, like words running through sticks of seaside rock. Just Googled ‘tired as a rat’, and the only place it appears on the entire Web is from an 1896 novel, Sir George Tressady, by Mrs. Humphry Ward. Which sounds like I’m making it up, of course.

Was hoping to update the diary in Stockholm via my laptop, but couldn’t, for the simple reason I forgot to pack one of those Euro power adaptors. The ones that turn a UK three-pin plug into a European 2-pin plug. The hotel didn’t have one, I couldn’t find any in the touristy shops within immediate walking distance and I wasn’t keen to spend hours travelling about the city looking for one. Not for a 72-hour jaunt. Helpful hint: keep your foreign adaptors packed in your travel case. There’s no need to ever unpack them once you’re back in the UK.

And next time (which may be next month – see next entry), I must pack a Swedish phrasebook. It was my seventh trip to Sweden in eight years, and I think there has to be a rule about how long one is permitted to remain the rude English monoglot. First trip, fine. Second and maybe third, okay. But if kind people from a foreign country have paid your fare and board and invited you over to do something you enjoy (music, interviews, photos) for the seventh time, I really think you should attempt a respectable amount of phrases in the local language.

Poor Mum – she just phoned to ask me about the trip, and of course I found it hard to know (as with clutter-clearance) what to mention and what to leave out. So I gabbled out a monologue for about ten minutes on the phone. My mind tends to get into ‘which reminds me…’ mode, and I start talking about something else by way of context, illustration and explanation. You have to be your own brutal editor, whether it’s going through boxes of old letters, or answering a question. Only write for the reader, and only speak for the listener.

Which is another reason why I started this diary in the first place. To slow down my gabbling thoughts, take a breath, make sense of the chaos, bring order to the whole, and edit it down to what the reader might want to know. That’s the difference between writing and typing; as Capote said unkindly about Kerouac.

The alarm goes off at 4am. Incredibly, I wake up, having managed 4 hours of sleep. Which is a far better world than no hours of sleep. Feel like throwing a party to celebrate.

0440. I totter out onto the Archway Road in darkness and start shivering. I’m just wearing a suit. If I’m shivering and can see clouds of my breath in Highgate, I ponder, I doubt Stockholm is going to be warmer. I nip back and get my winter coat.

0450. No sign of the night bus yet. Need to get to Paddington for 0515 or so, and it means catching two night buses in a row. Keen to minimise any chances of having to rush at Heathrow and – if I’m honest – not keen on night buses full stop, I wave down a black cab and hang the expense. The taxi seems to go via every speed bump in North and North-West London. By the time we get to Paddington, I feel shaken, and indeed stirred. But it’s fine. As I walk to the Heathrow Express platform, I feel strangely exhilarated. Perhaps because it’s my first time leaving the UK all by myself. For 36, read 13.

0657. Sitting in the departures area after a painless checking-in and security check. For the latter, I make sure I queue behind two young Polish ladies taking their time with the business of putting their things in those plastic X-Ray trays. I always think it’s me that’s holding up queues, worrying too much, taking too long to do whatever the ritual requires. Solution: shadow people who are even slower, and hope this will mask your own slowness. I do this in supermarket queues, too. Never mind terrorists; I walk in searing dread of people tutting behind me in queues that I’m fussing too much and taking too long. If only anxiety could be harnessed as an energy source. In my case, it’s infinitely renewable.

Sitting in the departures area, looking around at shops. A rather forlorn, drooping piece of shop decoration stands immediately to my left, in front of The Cigar House. Standing free, it’s a wide cylindrical frame of flimsy golden struts covered in red spheres, tapering into a cone at the top. At first I think it’s a golden Dalek that’s been beaten up. Then I realise it’s a Christmas tree. Or rather, was a Christmas tree.

Airports already have a form of Daleks, of course. Close your eyes, and you can hear the trundling of trolleys and wheeled suitcases everywhere.

Ah, they’ve just announced my flight.

I guessed wrongly about that Martina Lowden bit of the Swedish article. It’s her debut book, not album.

Mr Edwards, Martina Lowden is a swedish writer and the quote you mentioned in your diary is more like: “Martina Lowden frequently quotes Edwards in her much noticed debut Allt.” ‘Allt’ is ‘everything’ in english). Goodnight, Kalle.

I’d love to read the book, needless to say. Fingers crossed for an English translation. I should really learn Swedish, I know.

… i also wanted to say that martina lowden is an author. i have her book “allt” (everything) waiting to be read on the shelf next to my bed . it’s got gold on the edges of the pages, like a bible. haven’t read it yet, but you are supposed to be quoted in it several times, according to the article… hope you’re fine, that you will enjoy stockholm. Elin.

I’m barely out of the UK for 72 hours, but I could have some wandering about time on Saturday. My first time in Stockholm was close to Christmas 1999, while touring with Spearmint. Real snow on the streets in December. An ABBA exhibition in the museum.

Another email:

Since when were you a vegetarian?

It’s been on and off. But I’m very much avoiding meat and fish at present, and have done so for most of this year. Just seems to suit me. The problem is remembering to declare this status whenever someone else has arranged dinner. I keep forgetting, and there’s been times when I have had to eat something with meat in and keep quiet, rather than make a fuss. But when I’ve done so, the taste has felt very odd. Not nauseating or against my nature, but out of character.

My plane leaves Heathrow at 0740. Which means leaving Highgate circa 0445. I’m going to take a series of mini-naps to the sound of Jens Lekman, Stina Nordenstam, The Cardigans…

So what am I doing at the moment?

First thing to announce is the release of the Fosca live album, available via pre-order only, for a limited period.

The new Fosca album proper, The Painted Side Of The Rocket, will be released by But Is It Art? Records of Sweden. It’ll be a CD with lyrics and liner notes and so on, plus a digital release on iTunes. Release date and further info to come. Hopefully, Fosca will play a few gigs when it comes out.

I’m appearing in Stockholm tomorrow, Friday 19th October, as a guest vocalist of the band Friday Bridge. I’m also DJ-ing at the venue before the band go on, and will be doing a few interviews. Then back to London the next evening and straight from Heathrow to my friends Lea & Gemma’s wedding party before going home.

My other major booking is DJ-ing at White Mischief on Nov 10th. This is a big event at the Scala in King’s Cross, and features the band British Sea Power amid all manner of steampunk-inspired goings-on. For a limited time, you can buy tickets with 25% off at TicketWeb, if you enter the promotion code FRIENDS upon checkout.

On the writing front, I’m still reviewing a few albums and films for the magazine Plan B.

Other than that, I’m busy with the aforementioned sleeve artwork, lyrics and liner notes, sorting out new photos for publicity and generally tidying up the remaining mountains of clutter in my room, before pressing on with new work.

By way of a hat-trick for a day about different types of notability, I’m reeling from reportage of the Booker Prize winner, Anne Enright, by the likes of the Evening Standard today.

The banner across the Standard’s front page shows a photo of the McCann parents next to the heading, ‘What I think about the McCanns by the Booker Prize winner. Page 7.’ Their photo, not hers.

The story focusses on a piece Ms Enright wrote for the London Review Of Books where she talks about her reaction to the case. It came out in the issue dated 4 October, which is when I read it myself (it’s rather good: brave, but honest). Not news any more, you’d have thought.

But from the impression given by today’s papers, it’s as if she said those things in her Booker acceptance speech last night. And then got in a time machine to have them published three weeks ago.

The Daily Mail’s headline is ‘New Booker Prize winner Anne Enright’s amazing attack on Gerry and Kate McCann.’

No, what’s amazing is that the Mail failed to notice her LRB piece first time round, when she was a lesser-known Booker-shortlisted author. Not notable enough a status, one must now infer, unless you’re called Ian McEwan.

A shorter entry, then.

I’m told my interview with the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter is a full page.

Here it is online.

Even though I can’t speak Swedish, I can make a fairly good guess at these bits:

Den brittiska popdandyn Dickon Edwards… Den 36-Ã¥rige Dorian Gray-inkarnatione… över telefon frÃ¥n sitt pojkrum i Suffolk… Hans dagbok finns att läsa pÃ¥ www.dickonedwards.co.uk…

And then (in the panel which it links to) there’s this. A new Swedish recording artiste quotes me on her debut album. At least, I think that’s what this means:

Martina Lowden citerar gärna Edwards i sin uppmärksammade debut “Allt”.

Tack, Martina!