Have actually been earning a little pocket money from selling off CDs and books and DVDs, in spite of all my charity shop efforts. But good, I think, as this clearance business has been like a full-time job for the past few weeks. So I’ve treated myself to Adrian Tomine’s new book Shortcomings. Bought from Gosh opposite the British Museum, because they have it at a discount. And because Gosh Comics is run by lovely people who will actually tell you if a book isn’t worth the money – they stopped me buying something else I was musing over.

This is from the page it fell open at just now. It looks like I’ve contrived the selection, as the topic is very Dickon Edwardssy, but it’s completely random, honest.

Shortcomings is a graphic novel published by Faber and reviewed favourably in the Telegraph. Interesting that I feel the need to note this. Yes, you say, it’s a comic book. But hey, Faber logo on the spine and Daily Telegraph praise. It is, as the Half Man Half Biscuit lyric goes, ‘broadsheet compatible’. A gushing review from a tabloid isn’t the same. Everyone wants their art, their albums, their films or books, to be ‘broadsheet compatible’. One person’s snobbery is another’s standards of acclaim. And vice versa.

Which brings me to thoughts about the Telegraph’s wonderful obituary section. Not only were they one of the few broadsheets to NOT fall for the Ronnie Hazlehurst Wikipedia ‘hoax’, but their regular obits tend to be peopled with, well, the sort of people who don’t have Wikipedia entries in the first place.

These are people who have entries in Who’s Who, that increasingly anachronistic tome which Wikipedia addicts might re-title ‘Who The Hell Cares?’ People who will never appear in Heat Magazine’s ‘Spotted’ section (a benchmark of a different sort of notability), yet will get a whole edition of Desert Island Discs dedicated to their life. I’m not talking so much about authors and scientists, but deputy headmasters of fee-paying schools. Minor bishops. Civil servants. Or people who just went hunting a lot, like Cynthia Pitman this week:

Cynthia Pitman, who has died aged 94, was a lifelong hunt follower who was still riding to hounds in her mid-eighties, always at the head of the field and undaunted by weather or terrain; in her hunting colours and black top hat, she cut a slight but unique figure as the oldest woman in Britain regularly to ride in pursuit of the fox.

For some 70 years in season, she hunted for three days a week, rain or shine, and always rode out sidesaddle (she could not ride astride), cubbing in tweeds and bowler but, after the opening meet, dressed in full skirt and hunting jacket — blue and buff with the Duke of Beaufort’s hunt, black with the Vale of the White Horse. The whole outfit was crowned by a top hat of gleaming black silk.

Among her favourite hunters was Munster Bank, a bay gelding on whom she was painted by the foxhunting artist Lionel Edwards in the 1960s, and her last horse Douro, bought from the Queen through her brother, the late Lieutenant-Colonel Sir John Miller, a Crown equerry.

The phrases I love are ‘bay gelding’, ‘cubbing in tweeds’, ‘some 70 years in season’, ‘she could not ride astride’, ‘a Crown equerry.’ I wonder if more people today can speak Klingon than can speak Hunting?

What I also love is that at no point in the article are the terms ‘social networking’, ‘website’, ‘blogging’, ‘Facebook’, ‘content’, ‘solutions’, ‘MySpace’, or ‘YouTube’. I love this. It’s healthy. Just as I try to read something written by someone dead (or over 70 and thus of another world) before I write an entry myself.

I’ve said this before, but if you’re of the blogging generation, I advise never writing an entry immediately after you’ve read something on the Internet. Dip into a book from another age. A decent old book will – perversely – make your style fresher and more engaging to read. There are millions of blogs already consulting each other like mad. They’re sharing interests, but they’re also sharing the same faddy writing style. And I believe there is a real danger of Internet Inbreeding.

If Virginia Woolf were in her twenties now, what would her diary be like? Would it be a blog?

Feeling a bit emo, need to get a room of my own. Laters! ;)

***
I’m now typing this in Highgate Library. I’ve just asked the librarian if it’s okay to use a laptop. She says yes, and that she saw me on the TV, talking about blogging. I really must mention that more, whenever people ask me what I do.

***

Tuesday was mainly spent shopping and idling. Mooched around John Lewis – now with its own Food Hall in the basement courtesy of Mr Waitrose, who breeds new branches almost as quickly as Mr Tesco. The difference between Tesco breeding and Waitrose breeding is that Waitrose will know which type of wine to choose for the reproductive occasion. Breeding with ‘good breeding’. Retail franchising with a whiff of the pedigree certificate. And here I actually AM turning into Will Self.

Ah, I’ve just found out Waitrose IS the food division of John Lewis, so that’s my first educational tidbit of the day.

Bought the fabled curtain tiebacks – ‘burgundy noodle’ style’. A bit expensive, but all the cheap ones had tassles, and for some reason I wasn’t feeling… tassle-tastic. Maybe because I’ve seen too many burlesque dancers. You have to pay more if you want no tassles on your tiebacks. It’s like the old joke about a competition: first prize is a set of tassles, second prize is two sets.

Also bought something called Manuka Honey, because my mother says it might help my constant stomach ache. You find it in health shops, carrying different numbers of ‘UMF strength’, and costing rather a lot. I chose a pot with a UMF of 20+, feeling uncertain whether I should eat it or wear it as a sunscreen.

Have also bought a new toaster. And promptly partook in the modern ritual of setting off the smoke alarm with my first slice.

***
Watched a fascinating programme (by which I mean downloaded), called TV Is Dead? The title makes me wince; I’d prefer Is TV Dead? It’s too much like the statement-as-a-question manner of speaking which young people favour, yeah? Or maybe that’s the point. (Fosca’s new label is called But Is It Art? The question mark irked me initially. But then, I now think Fosca isn’t a great name for a band either. It’s very one-word 90s like Sleeper and Feeder. Still, as with Prefab Sprout, after a while a clumsy name gets lost in the identity of the band. At least, that’s the hope. Were I naming a band now it would be called The Somethings. The Deluded Egos. The Childish Alibis. The Jobless Excuses. More Men With Guitars, Sorry. Actually, that’s a great name for a band. ‘More Men With Guitars, Sorry.’ )

The TV programme revealed that many young people can’t even name the main terrestrial channels. That all the elaborate channel idents and branding measures still don’t have much of an effect: young people just flip through the channels or listings for a programme they like. They know what they like, and they don’t know or care who puts it on.

Peter Bazelgette, head of the company behind Big Brother, remarked how TV used to be about very posh people instructing the masses. Three channels for years, one of which was off most of the time. The phrase ‘what’s on the other side’ now the stuff of history.

Now it’s the other way around – TV is crawling on bended knees. ‘Choose me! Select me! We are just like you! We even have your accents!’

I would have added that the posh and old-fashioned people are still in charge, they’ve just moved behind the scenes – Bazelgette himself, for instance. The accents of TV voices may now be Geordie (‘Deee Eeeet in the Big Brother House’) or Northern Irish (‘and noy on BBC2…’), and one of the C4 engineers working the faders and buttons was revealed to be a young man with an enormous Mohican haircut and black t-shirt. But the producer (of a programme about embarrassing diseases) turned out to be a stylishly dressed (by which I mean, vintage style) and poshly-spoken lady with a Liberty notebook. This pleased me. I’ve got the same notebook myself.

I can tell a notebook at twenty paces. The comedian Robin Ince used an Adrian Tomine notebook when trying out new material for his last stand-up show. Which is where we came in.

These entries aren’t getting any shorter or faster, are they?

Back at my desk in Highgate. On Sunday I walked to the station from the hotel via Norwich City Centre, thinking about the pop songwriter Cathy Dennis, of all things. She’s from Norwich, and has just been in the news for not being Ronnie Hazlehurst. Various newspaper obituaries cited him wrongly as the author of ‘Reach’ by S Club 7, which was really one of hers. Turns out the journalists all copied from Wikipedia’s entry on Ronnie H, taking errors and jokey vandalism as fact.

This is less a criticism of Wikipedia’s reliability – the first thing anyone knows about the site is that it’s not the lone destination for any serious research – and more a worrying indication of laziness among journalists, who surely must have plenty of industry-only, professional reference sources at their disposal. So not only do they not know the first thing about Wikipedia, but they don’t know the first thing about research per se. If you’re paid to check things properly, you check things properly. Bad enough that broadsheet newspapers were among the culprits, but the BBC did it too, Hazlehurst’s own employer for 20 years. I wonder if this now means that as well as giving us all those theme tunes, the late Mr H has unwittingly improved journalistic standards in the Internet age? I hope so. Embarrassment amongst one’s peers is a serious weapon of change.

It’s true ‘Reach’ was a jaunty BBC TV theme tune, backing the credits to S Club 7’s second series, the one when they went to L.A. Just entirely the wrong period and wrong style. Hazlehurst’s very 60s / 70s TV jauntiness is a completely different flavour to Cathy Dennis’s very 90s /2000s Motown-esque pop jauntiness

I could have helped said journalists avoid egg on their faces. I am Dickopedia. I know that ‘tripsolagnia’ is sexual arousal from having your hair washed. I know that the screenplay to the violent new David Cronenberg movie was written by the man who co-devised Who Wants To Be A Millionaire and Canned Carrott, and that it’s the first movie to combine branches of Londis, Finsbury Public Baths, blood, gore, tattoos, and nude men fighting with knives. And I’ve always known that Ronnie H didn’t write ‘Reach’. I know Cathy Dennis did. Because I like to read the writing credits of pop hits, and tend to remember if it’s her. Or if it’s Betty Boo. Or Diane Warren.

I once met Cathy Dennis in 1997. She was on the same bill as Orlando at a swanky event in a Park Lane hotel, celebrating music management. There was Mike Scott, Cathy Dennis, and representing up-and-coming acts, Orlando and The Stereophonics. Not at once. Mike Scott was scary. The Stereophonics were unabashed blokey rockers, and of course went on to be very successful with it. Cathy Dennis was doing a song from her curious Britpop-tinged phase of the time. It was either The Kinks’ ‘Waterloo Sunset’ or her own ‘West End Pad’. Maybe she did both.

We were backstage. She came over to us, and was very charming and pretty and looked like this:

‘Hullo Orlando,’ she said.

‘Hullo Cathy Dennis,’ I replied. ‘It’s a pleasure and privilege to meet a fellow pretty East Anglian songwriter. Don’t worry about this weird Britpoppy phase of your singing career. You’ll soon be writing massive hits for anyone who isn’t nailed down. And many of those who are. By the way, in ten years’ time, one of your hits will be mistakingly attributed to Ronnie Hazlehurst when he dies.’

‘The Two Ronnies guy?’

‘The same. The Guardian, Independent, Times, even the BBC will say so.’

‘Why would they do that?’

‘Something called Wikipedia will be invented. It will become the first port of call for many knowledge-seekers, but some journalists will also make it the last port of call. And they will look very silly. And in that same week I will be walking through the city that spawned you, and inventing this conversation for the purposes of diary entertainment. Though I did really meet you. You lovely Norwich pop genius, you.’

‘Funny old world. Isn’t that Dave Lee Travis over there?’

(it was)

At this point, my thoughts snapped back to my surroundings in Norwich. To my left was a huge Salvation Army band marching past through the pedestrianised shopping area; a proper parade. To my right was a Dalek. A proper black one with someone inside, shouting ‘Exterminate!’, delighting tourists outside the huge glass-fronted Forum:

***

A Sunday train means engineering works, so my journey back to London involved a fairly quick train through Diss (the Quiet Zone carriage, though people were still making loud mobile phone calls), then a slow double-decker bus from Ipswich to Marks Tey, then a very slow train at the other end stopping everywhere. And then a tube.

Arrived home feeling exhausted and fragile and keen to have a quiet night in, but instead changed my suit and dragged myself down to a pub in Clerkenwell to see Neil Scott, the talented designer of this website. He now lives in Glasgow with his partner Laura, but was in town on a rare visit. Chatted to Neil and Laura and their friends, including Jen D and Angelique. Jen had just come straight from The Scala, playing drums with Scarlet’s Well for a David Shrigley event.

Felt my energy sapping after an hour, made my excuses, and went home to an early night. On the tube, someone shouted out my name. This happens more often than not. I recently took the very first 210 bus on a Sunday morning from Golders Green to Highgate, having just travelled through the night from Nottingham. And of course, someone on this dawn-raid 5am bus knew me (hi Tony). He was off fishing.

It’s great being recognised, forever bumping into people who know you – in my case down to a cartoonish appearance and 15 years of dipping in and out of diverse London scenes – but when you’re feeling fragile and thin-skinned and tired and barely capable of speaking or thinking straight and just want to Garbo it at home, it can make you feel a bit guilty. I’d rather not have people thinking I’m being rude when I’m just being tired.

I suppose this is the one side of getting older that I’ve really noticed lately. I’m getting invites to a lot of under-35 type events, but I now have over-35 energy. No, more like over-85 energy.

***

Still have this recurring stomach ache. Saw the doctor on Friday, who prodded me about and suspected it was a flaring up of the IBS I had a few years ago. Brought on by stress.

‘Anything stressful happen of late?’

‘Well, I turned 36 and started really worrying about where my life is going for the first time, and what I should be doing with it, what I’m actually good at and indeed good for, and about the best way I should be earning money, seeing as I have less than none and no ‘job prospects’ of any sort whatsoever.

‘Then I started worrying about the sheer mass of clutter and possessions I’ve accumulated, and began a major clear-out process that’s been ongoing and still isn’t finished, unearthing some upsetting items from the past here and there. And sometimes not knowing what to throw out and what to keep was upsetting enough. And then my roof leaked. And then it fell down. And then I had to move out for a week. And now I’m back but it’s all new, and if feels like I’ve just moved house, with things still in boxes to go through.’

‘So… I guess the answer about anything stressful happening is…yes?’

He’s given me the same pills that cleared the IBS up back then. Can’t wait for them to start working; the stomach ache is still ongoing and unpleasant. And it makes everything slower and more difficult.
***

A lot to do today, and it’s already nearly 3pm. Been sitting here typing, web-surfing, emailing. Must stop and get on. Photos to select and send to the Swedish newspaper and the White Mischief people. Lots of Fosca business. Outstanding laundry. Preparation for Stockholm on Friday. Things to buy for my newly-regenerated room.

I need those things that tie back curtains and hold them in place. I’ve always wondered what they were called, and had assumed there was a special word, like a ‘valance’ is the drapery bit around the bottom edge of a bed.

So I asked Liz. She said they’re called ‘curtain tiebacks’.

And there’s so much stuff I’ve not written about in this diary: events, emails, plugs for other things.

This entry is too long. Sorry. I’ll try to do smaller bits, and more often.

Sitting up in bed back at the hotel. The DJ-ing was fun, though I think my set was the best part of 3 hours. It ended at 0130, and I’m exhausted. Hope the nice Norwich people enjoyed it. Sarah had a 1920s theme for her party, so it was heels, beads, vintage stoles and feather headbands aplenty.

On the way to the venue, our car had to give way to a fire engine rushing to get past. When we got to the restaurant, someone said Norwich City Hall was on fire. Can’t find anything about it in the news online, though.

Nearly walked in on an event in an adjoining function room: some kind of Sylvia Plath-related fringe poetry event. The people attending had to share the same bar as Sarah’s party, so I got to see 2007-dressed people suddenly having to queue for the bar with people in 1920s attire. Both parties looked bemused by each other’s presence.

Rather nice food – I was the only vegetarian there. Didn’t know anyone at the dinner, of course, but I was happy enough chatting about London, about growing up in East Anglia, about bohemian living in London and so on. Couldn’t really help on the rugby front, but I understand England beat France. People were checking their mobile phones for the match result during dinner. And yes, the rugby fans were gentlemanly enough, even though some of their dance moves were rather… physical. Chairs were involved.

Ordered pavlova for dessert, thinking it was a kind of mousse and not a meringue. The lesson was learned when it arrived.

Projected Pandora’s Box and Phantom Of The Opera (Lon Chaney) while I DJ’d. Still fantastic to watch; I’ll never grow tired of them. With Pandora’s Box, you come out whistling the hairdos.

Bed now.

On the train to Norwich from Liverpool Street.

Some Norwich lads in a corner of this carriage are giggling loudly amongst themselves.

I’ve just put on some headphones in order to enjoy a video file on my laptop (a torrent of The South Bank Show on Will Self, from 1998) and thus drown them out, when one of them comes over and leaves a slip of cigarette-rolling paper on the little fold-down shelf in front of me. It bears a phone number scrawled in luminous green highlighter pen. ‘My friend’s phone number,’ he says, grinning, and points to where he was sitting. Unshaven, podgy, t-shirted, and slightly too old to be a lad, he looks like he could be in the recent films Knocked Up or Superbad.

I guess they’ve had some banter amongst themselves along the lines of, ‘See that blond bloke? He looks gay! You fancy him! I’m going to give him your number. Ha, and indeed, Ha.’

Naively, I had thought my appearance was at minimum risk: no make-up, unusually open-necked shirt (cravat in my bag). But the hair and the white suit are enough.

Oh, they’ve started smoking pot now. On a train carriage. The stench is unmistakable. And now they’re on their phones. ‘Yeah – we’re on the train – we’ve got a ‘roach’!’

The conductor appears, and walks straight past them. Surely he must be able to smell the pot smoke? Maybe he can, and he’s a coward like me. Or maybe it’s just me that’s the weird one. For all my supposed interest in things decadent, I’m prudish about people smoking – smoking anything – on trains. I think on the one hand, ‘Yeah, fight the system, boys!’

But on the other hand I think, ‘You’re prats.’

***

Later. Sarah, the lady who has booked me to DJ tonight, collects me from Norwich station and drives me to the venue in her rather stylish sports car. It’s a restaurant called The Library, and indeed used to be a library. Shelves of books on the walls. Very much my cup of tea. Actually, at this point I’m indeed carrying a plastic cup of tea bought from the station, which I’ve barely drunk and am keen to finish. It’s a decision I regret as we wind around the slopes and cobbles of Norwich in her fast car, but I just about manage to keep the tea from spilling onto my white suit. A lesson learned.

I test the PA set-up, worry a little that one speaker doesn’t work, then Sarah does something that fixes it. She’s treating me to dinner with the other guests.

‘I have a large amount of friends coming who happen to be rugby fans,’ she says. ‘They want to watch the match on the screen before you show your silent movies.’

‘Ah,’ I say, and try to remain calm.

‘It’s okay,’ says Sarah. ‘I’ll sit you next to some people who work for the BBC.’

Still, mustn’t assume anything. Rugby is a curious sport: so brutal, yet with the higher class ‘Gentleman’s Sport’ image of it too.

I always think of the party I once attended which was full of female rugby players. One boyish leather-jacketed lady who played for the team in every sense suddenly grabbed me and snogged me in front of her girlfriend. Like the lads on the Norwich train, it may well have been a joke at my expense. But unkind joke or not, she was handsome in a cool gender-busting way, so I was happy. The smirking lad who approached me on the train was not cool-looking. Well, unless you prefer the guy from Knocked Up over, say, James Franco. Which is exactly what the girl from Knocked Up does, of course, much to my personal disbelief. But oh, I digress, I digress, I digress.

There WAS a cool-looking boy on the train, across from me. Floppy hair, straight out of a Dennis Cooper novel, silently reading To Kill A Mockingbird.

The rugby jokes about ‘trying for a conversion’ have already been made.

My mother went to see Superbad with my Aunt the other day. They loved it.

***
Am typing this in the Norwich hotel before going off to dinner and DJ-ing with the rugby gentlemen. Wish me luck.

This hotel is in Unthank Road. I was singing ‘Unthank my heart…’ as I walked along the street to get here, to the tune of Toni Braxton’s ‘Unbreak My Heart.’

Back in Highgate, to a highly redecorated room. Liz and Khalil have transformed the place like DIY gods of mythology. New bed, fridge, sink unit, and they’ve re-plastered the holes I’d sheepishly covered over with white gaffer tape before hiding them behind a Liberty drape for the last five years. Liz remarks that my under-sink cupboard contained more cleaning products than she’d ever seen in one home. Mimicking Kevin Costner in Field Of Dreams, I had hoped that by simply buying enough bottles and sprays of Mr Sheen, Mr Muscle, Ms Cillit Bang and all their garishly-coloured family, the place would somehow clean itself. In my absence, these products, which had started to gather their own ironic layer of dust, have now finally been put to use, if not by me. And this suits all parties fine.

I now have blindingly fresh white walls, some sections newly papered with a kind of 1930s monogram pattern that – if you squint – just about combines my own initials. There’s touches of red punctuating the whiteness, in a beaded Moroccan lampshade and tasteful linen curtains. They’ve even left me a fresh red rose in a vase on the mantelpiece. The overall effect is less Quentin Crisp in Chelsea and more Kenneth Williams in Tangier.

In fact, Liz has kept my Quentin fridge magnet for the new model, but wickedly she’s deliberately affixed it upside down, like a Satanist inverting a cross. I can no longer claim the Crisp alibi that my room hasn’t been cleaned in thirteen years, that the dirt doesn’t get any worse after the first four years. Now I say that the dirt doesn’t get any worse if you’re lucky enough to have a kind landlady and DIY-skilled neighbours.

***

Wednesday last – to Sudbury with Dad. Growing up in Bildeston two decades ago, the only escape by public transport was the bus to Ipswich. And just two of those a day, I think. Now one can easily get to the other towns in the area: Hadleigh, Stowmarket and Sudbury.

When we go to catch the Sudbury bus, I’m surprised to see the three other buses are parked in the square at the same time; Bildeston being the routes’ starting point. As a child, if you saw any bus at all, it could only be THE bus. The concept of having to check the front of the vehicle for its destination would have seemed the stuff of science-fiction. The flipside is, many village Post Offices are closing or have closed. Hence the improved bus services.

Day return from Bildeston to Sudbury: £3.60, which I first consider a bit pricy. But when it transpires Dad and I are pretty much the only passengers for the entire journey, I decide it’s not really a bus at all, but a very cheap and very big taxi. 30 mins to Sudbury, the same to Stowmarket. Ipswich is 45 mins. But my parents now tell me there’s also a ‘fast track’ Ipswich route that connects some villages for the first time. Villages tucked between the folds of the map, suddenly shaken out and mixed in with old neighbours by new routes. For villagers who can’t drive – or can’t drive anymore – it must make a change to their world. They might see for the first time places they have lived nearby for a lifetime, but had never cause to pass through, let alone visit. Now the bus windows offer them the view less travelled.

***

Am off to Norwich tonight, employed as a DJ at a birthday party. They enjoyed my sets at Latitude and tracked me down on the Web. Though I’m tending to say no on the DJ front, it was a rare gig out of London, with travel and a hotel thrown in. The weekend after this it’s Sweden: interviews and singing with the band Friday Bridge. My suitcase remains not entirely unpacked.

Just realised I’ve never flown by myself before. Well, the last Tangier trip had me returning alone while Shane and Victoria stayed on, but I’ve not done the whole lone traveller bit there and back. There’s always been companions to pass the airport longueurs with. So I’m going to take my laptop along and try and keep this diary up-to-date during such moments. I may well babble.

(Thinks the reader, ‘no change there.’)

Still in Bildeston, Suffolk, on a rather dreary day.

Have gently requested that my parents get me a new quilt cover. The one I’m sleeping under while staying here is the one I had as a child: kid-friendly jokey graffiti slogans on a brick wall. I think there was a small graffiti-loving craze in the late 70s and early 80s, which I’d latched onto. I wouldn’t mind if it was more Michael Rosen or Puffin Club-like. The Puffin Club had style and soul. Michael Rosen was, and indeed still is, a god. It’s not that the quilt cover is childish. It’s that it’s the wrong kind of childish: ephemeral, dating badly, and chained to its time in unstylish ways.

Many of the jokes on the quilt are ancient David Brent-esque puns on advertising slogans of the day. Sample graffito: ‘It’s quicker by snail.’ A play on the British Rail slogan of the time, ‘It’s quicker by rail.’ The slogan is long gone (and was probably on the way out even then), along with British Rail itself. But the quilt cover remains. Social history of a kind. Maybe.

Likewise, ‘Say it with flowers – Give her a Triffid.’ Here it’s two references for the price of one; the first part refers to a flower company’s ad slogan – probably Interflora – while the second nods to the popular TV sci-fi series of the day, Day Of The Triffids.

What fascinates me now is that there will be people reading the above who won’t need the explanations. And there will be readers who will. I love feeling like a kind of ambassador between worlds.

It has also made me think about the differences in the kinds of jokes that make kids laugh, and those for adults. And then of course, you have the studenty types of humour – Look Around You, say – versus broader sitcom fare like My Family. And then the comedy that pretty much unites kids, studenty adults and normal adults as one: Little Britain. And why this is so.

Now I’m starting to turn into a blonder, more louche Jonathan Miller; which was always on the cards, frankly. If I go on any more like this I’ll be presenting BBC4 lectures on how you can look at the socio-economic background of Mighty Boosh fans and make guesses at their favourite newspaper and bands.

Anyway, I remember sitting through some such adult sitcom at an early age, and being absolutely baffled by the laughter at the spoken jokes. Actually, it was probably something like ‘Mind Your Language’, which I wouldn’t laugh at as an adult either. And there’s the ironically funny thing. Now deemed tiresomely xenophobic if not downright racist, any clips from ‘Mind Your Language’ today are shown in a ‘what were they thinking’ capacity by knowing documentaries.

Childrens’ jokes, on the other hand, are far less likely to be susceptible to trends and fluctuations in popular consensus. Jokes for kids are nearly always excruciating puns:

Q: What’s a frog’s favourite drink?
A: Croaka-Cola

I vividly remember I had to say this particular joke to some rough boys at school once, who’d heard I was The Joke Boy and demanded I told them one.

In 2006, I am on a train journey, where my reserved seat means I’m opposite a mother and her two young sons for the best part of two hours. One boy is reading out jokes from a book. Chatting with the family and glad to be of use to the mother, I play the part of the stooge for him, saying ‘Who’s there?’ to his Knock Knocks, and ‘I don’t know, what IS green and goes up and down?’

‘A gooseberry in a lift.’ says the boy, entirely without smiling as he turns the page. Just as kids enjoy reading the Beano, but silently. Reading and laughing aloud being  strangely incompatible during childhood.

***

Current ailment: an unpleasant, dry kind of stomach ache, recurring for the last ten days or so. Sporadically painful and putting me off eating and writing. Trying Alka-Seltzer, considering painkillers. Everything else is absolutely fine. I always seem to get one thing at a time. It’s particularly depressing when you wake up free of pain, thinking it’s gone, and then the ache kicks in after about thirty seconds. Ow.

***
Just sent off my liner notes for the next Fosca CD. Not the new album, but the live set from Saffle. You wait years for a Fosca album, and two appear at once.

I’m told the concert recording is being considered by the Swedish radio show ‘P3 LIVE’, for possible broadcasting. When that’s been decided either way, it’ll be a free download, with special CD versions for promotional goings-on. Hence my liner notes. We’re also trying to gauge if people might be interested in paying a small amount of money for a CD version, even if the recording is available free online. More info as it sneaks in my direction. In the meantime, Fosca fans should keep an eye on the label’s website.

***

On the tube to Liverpool St (last Thursday), I see a baby literally throwing its toys out of the pram. Insert David Cameron joke here.

Next to look out for: a dog running past with a string of sausages in its mouth, pursued by an angry butcher.

***

An email I rather expected: Time Out say no to my application for that Staff Music Writer job. Ah well. Hope Emily gets it. As I was told by one kindly author, when one door closes… you’re ready to hack another door down with an axe. It’s put me in the spirit of hustling for work, and pitching ideas for projects. Less of the ‘don’t you know who I am’ attitude and more emphasis on the things I can do, how well, how fast and how regularly.

***
Quite a lot to write up of late.

To a design studio in Giesbach Road, Archway, to be interviewed and filmed for a project about the philosophy of blogging. Jonathan Hawkes is the interviewer, his company is called Evolve. I speak about what blogging means in terms of the future of consciousness. What keeping a digital diary, published free on the Web, means culturally, economically, spiritually. And why I started keeping this one in 1997, when it was considered a very odd thing to do indeed.

I give my answer to the latter as ‘osmotically’. Osmosis being the natural process of particles moving from an area of high concentration to one of less concentration. In my school biology class, I was taught the process via lengths of something called Visking Tubing. If you want anything from school to stick in the mind decades later, make it a joy to speak aloud. Visking Tubing.

In my case, I moved to blogging mainly because the Web seemed less populated than the real world, which I’ve never really understood properly. Depression can take the form of not so much wanting to stop living, as wanting to go someplace better. Somewhere you can call your own. And preferably, somewhere affordable. Hence the New Frontier of blogging in 1997. No Blogger, Livejournal, or MySpace; just simple HTML.

The last time I had my picture taken in Giesbach Road it would have also been about 1997. Erol Alkan’s old home a few doors down. Or rather, his bedroom in his parents’ place. That long ago. I can see him taking a photo of me playing his acoustic guitar there, and the photo then being on his wall, part of a montage. I have very short blond hair in this photo. The one on the wall, the one in my head. And I can also see a time when the beautiful Neil Codling from Suede came to visit.

Amongst the clutter of the last weeks’ clearance I find a sheet of Orlando lyrics that I must have faxed to Tim in the studio. Underneath it, I’ve written ‘Am at Erol’s’. This would have been Giesbach Road.

Today, Erol is a highly-acclaimed London DJ and remixer. I don’t see him so much, but I did bump into him under Suicide Bridge the other day. He gave me a hug.

Me: Hey, congrats on playing that big Trafalgar Square event with the Chemical Brothers!
Erol: Well, I would have done. But they forgot to set up my decks in time.
Me: Ah well. I presume you still were paid…?
Erol: Oh, my agent handles all that.

I wince at setting this exchange down. What bad form it is to refer to the money side of things. It’s an attitude I’m trying to get out of. But how nice to have an agent to deal with the unpleasant detail of payment. It’s about time I got one.

There’s been a few instances in the last few weeks when people I know and like have asked me to DJ at their events:

Event Organiser I Know And Like: Will you DJ at my club night in New York?

Me: Gosh! Yes, of course! Never been to the US, let alone NYC.

Organiser: Thing is, I can’t afford to pay your air fare. But maybe you can set up other gigs at the time to help top it up?

Me: Um, it’s unlikely.

Organiser: Well, how about my next London night? Can’t pay you much more than what you’ll have to spend on the tube there plus the taxi home, though…

So I had to say no to both offers, the second because I’m already doing White Mischief in November, plus a private party in Norwich next weekend. Add to the Stockholm appearance on the 19th, and that’s more than enough DJ bookings for a while. Apart from anything else, I’ve become rather fond of going to bed at a decent hour.

It really is about time I started earning proper, regular money. Or at least, earn the income I give the impression I already earn. Pass me that axe.

Oh all right, the fluffy, spongey axe.

Am in Bildeston, Suffolk once more. Just me and Dad. Mum’s in Cornwall. This time it’s a practical reason; my Highgate place is being redecorated, re-plastered and generally upgraded. It makes more sense for me to move out for a week than try to sleep amongst it all. So here I am.

Just completed an hour-long interview on the phone with a Swedish daily newspaper, Dagens Nyheter. I’m being flown to Stockholm on Oct 19th for about 24 hours, during which I shall sing with the band Friday Bridge, DJ briefly at a club, and give interviews about the new Fosca album.

Nice to be able to get on with the present after two weeks of dithering and mithering over my past. There’s still about 15 boxes left to clear, but I’ve gotten rid of about 1000 books, 500 CDs, 20 DVDs, all my videos, my TV, VCR, Freeview box, turntable, stereo, speakers, and my noisy old desktop PC. And after that, I’ve cleared about five boxes stuffed with paperwork.

Have tidied up my vanity products by buying stackable vanity boxes from Muji. Because I’m very vain about vanity boxes.

After mentioning that I was chucking out photos I’d taken from the Orlando v Kenickie tours of 1996 & 1997, I get emails from Emma Kenickie and Tim Orlando asking that they’d like to have such doomed snaps if they’re going, or at least see them before oblivion beckons.

My first thoughts are, well, it’s not as if Kenickie and Orlando were rarely photographed at the time. But of course, it’s the fact they were taken by me on my own camera that piques interest. And once it’s mentioned but not shown, I’m like one of those irritating ‘Wicked Whispers’ gossip columnists, all tease and no delivery. ‘Which Peter Pan of Pop was seen kissing a mystery elf in Hornsey Londis at elevenses? Shhh!’

These days, everyone has a camera or camera-phone, or expects there to be one close at hand. Perhaps this new lust for photo-recording everything engenders a yearning to back-date. Tim says he didn’t take photos himself on those tours, but if it were now, such a tour would be photo-documented within an inch of its life. And I wonder if Emma was camera-less too, that packing a camera was in fact an unusual idea back then, at least for bands that were already regularly photographed by the media. Maybe I was being weird as usual, what with my camera and my text message device (pager) and my email address in 1996. Right things, wrong time.

To my mind, the photos I’ve jettisoned were blurry and red-eyed and dull and unflattering to those depicted. Contrary to what Bucks Fizz sang (or was it Stephen Poliakoff?) the camera often lies.

But of course you just can’t win, and I ponder being in fearful conversations like these:

‘I found an old photo of you from 1896. It’s not great, but don’t worry, I’ve thrown it out rather than embarrass you or imply that it’s all been downhill since then.’
‘You weird fool! I’d love to have seen it. I’ll be the judge of whether it’s embarrassing or rubbish, thank you very much. Some friend you are.’
‘Hmph. Look, okay. Here’s one of you I didn’t throw out, which I really like.’
‘Oh, I’ve already seen that one. It’s rubbish.’

Versus this:

‘I found an old photo of you. Here you go.’
‘You weird fool! What are doing keeping rubbish photos of me for so long? And so badly taken! You’ve just reminded me that I was having a terrible hair day that… year. Thanks a lot. Some friend you are.’

It’s my fault, I know. Mention photos at all, and people want to see them. My boxes become Pandora’s. I think the best approach is just to keep quiet about the photos you do have to throw out – for whatever reason- but keep the rare ones you like, and share the ones you keep. So I’ll do that from now on. And sorry, Tim and Emma.

When it’s 3am and you’re on your hands and knees going through endless piles of old things, feeling uncertain about which ones you need to keep, and becoming increasingly tempted to just throw everything out rather than go insane, there’s inevitably a few casualties in the Out pile. And some I’m already regretting myself.

One person’s nostalgia is another’s clawing open of old wounds.

Now, okay, the above sentence doesn’t apply to those Kenickie tours, which were on the whole a pretty happy time for me. And indeed, happily pretty. Certainly it was an absolute privilege to tour with Kenickie, and to do so twice. But there’s times when the phrase does apply to some sections of my past, and it can be hard not to let the painful bits upstage the fun bits. Thus comes the appeal of trashing everything from the same period regardless, like the culling of uncontaminated animals during epidemics.

And as I sit there, thinking of all these things, sighing over the endless sifting, I notice that I’m late for the Neil Gaiman talk in Piccadilly. As I run for the tube, I am absolutely seething with anger that all this dithering, all this endless poring over items from the past has made me late for something I really do want to do TODAY. And the thought of just binning everything I haven’t touched for years and getting on with the rest of my life appeals greater than ever. What use is a past if it’s literally stopping me living in the present?

Besides, there were other people at those gigs with cameras, I tell myself. Or, they write and tell me:

your latest entry gave me goosebumps, partly cos of the idea of the old pics you were looking at – i was doing the very same at the end of last week! (and of the same Kenickie tour too). So if you fancy a gander at old pics on t’web rather than cluttering up physical space, you and Tim might (i said ‘might’!) enjoy reading this post…

Hail and farewell to old photos – the past making way for the present. Just as well, as most of them are pretty badly taken.

Backstage on tour with Kenickie, 1996 / 7. Some ghastly prefab Uni room acting as a backstage area. Lauren L and Marie grinning madly at the camera, Emma carrying drinks. A lot of alcohol is about. The Orlando tour bus:- thank god we got one that was effectively a long, moving dressing room, where you can walk around. You go to sleep in a bunk and wake up in another town. I think we were all surprisingly well deodorised for a bus of men, too. Here’s Momus with flowing blond hair, on the same reel of film. Orlando fans in feather boas. Including a schoolgirl Kate Dornan, of course. Again, I only keep what I consider to be the bare essentials, just enough to tell the tales. Besides, sometimes it’s more fun to make things up. Particularly when witnesses tell me I’ve got it all wrong.

From another box: a list of all the gigs I attended, May 1990 to July 1992. The band Heavenly, seen in concert 19 times. I hitch-hiked around the country to see them on tour. Notes: ‘threw flowers. Stayed at Jason’s. Stayed at Marty’s. Stayed at Amelia’s. Gave cuddly toy devil to Amelia’. Said devil then appears in a Heavenly photo shoot in the NME. Other bands, too. The Field Mice – 7 times. Brighter – 5 times. This would have been when I was at Bristol Old Vic, trying to learn a trade. What I did learn, of course, was that going to gigs and following a favourite band when you’re 19 means everything to you. Something about that age really connects with the whole fandom experience.

Here’s a flyer for a gig at Tufnell Park Dome, where an early version of Orlando is the SIXTH support to the TV Personalities. Other bands: Blueboy, The Carousel, Comet Gain, Timbertoes (TMC’s band). This would be about 1993. Fourteen years later, and I’m… supporting the TVPs in Sweden. Though this time Fosca is second on the bill. That’s progress.

Thing is, I could write a 500 word entry from the thoughts generated from that flyer alone. But there’s piles and piles and boxes and boxes of such things. I’m too young to spend my entire waking life curating my past. I must grit my teeth and be brutal, and move on. Otherwise, this will be just become a Dickon Looks Back life.

Which would be fine if I were in prison.

But… not just yet!

***

Yes, the best thing to do is throw the stuff out now. Quick notes, but say goodbye.

Best not to think of what others might say. Because you just can’t win. Some people out there might be annoyed you’ve ditched a photo, or jettisoned their letters. But others might be equally annoyed that you’ve held onto them, decades later. I recently showed a friend the first letter they wrote to me. They were appalled I’d kept it. So, one man’s doting archivist is another’s creepy stalker.

‘I kept that love letter you sent me in 1894.’

‘Oh you haven’t! I was on heavy medication at the time and wrote a lot of nonsense…’

I think I’ve said that before, haven’t I? Proof positive I need to press on with new adventures.

***

Just read – quickly – through another pile of letters. A lot are about a fanzine I wrote called ‘Studbase Alpha’, saying terribly nice things about my apparent writing talent. And now, of course, I view such work as little more than jejune, self-deluding tosh. But then, I often think that about old diary entries I’ve written. From, ooh, days ago.

What’s useful to me now is that many of these letters to me represent remote affection, however fleeting. So I note a few quotes to keep me warm in my lonelier moments.

Maybe this was the last real age of letters, the early 90s. I’ve started to write handwritten cards and notes to people recently, sitting in cafes, re-learning the art. I miss the days of real pen on real paper. The postal delay of sending and receiving. The romance of the recognised handwriting on the envelope.

***

More school reports. ‘Fantastic.’ ‘Outstanding.’ ‘An outstanding start to Dickon’s Upper School career.’ ‘Really excellent! He has a tremendous appetite for work.’ ‘A creditable success story.’

Career? No money was made. What good is a good school report if it doesn’t lead to an outstanding real career? I worked too hard, too early, and burnt myself into a nervous breakdown halfway through the sixth form. From Oxbridge potential to the dole at 17. The therapists I’ve seen always mark this breakdown as The Big Traumatic Event, from which all my failure to get on in adult life stems.

The darkly funny thing is, the day I dropped out of school and considered, well, suicide, I went into Ipswich to see the latest big movie, hoping that might cheer me up.

It was Dead Poets Society.

***

In fact, the lesson learned from today’s clutter-shifting is this:

A good school report is actually a bad school report. Because to read back on some glowing praise from teachers, you can only see your life as a downhill plunge, like a child prodigy. What you’re MEANT to get is a bad report, so you can react against it in later life. Similarly, the successful comedian is always meant to have been the class clown at school. ‘I was always telling jokes, to stop being beaten up.’

Read a recent interview with Paul McKenna, the motivational author and hypnotist.

He quotes one of his school reports which said: ‘If he carries on like this, he’ll never amount to anything.’ When, several years later, he published his first book, he sent a copy to his English teacher with ‘F— you’ written inside the front cover. ‘Very childish, I know, but also very satisfying.’

So a good report is actually a bad report. And vice versa. If not, you make up some other ‘conflict’ for the newspaper profiles. Their Struggle. So many celebrity biographies are essentially the same story. First they were not successful. And then they were. The End. From The Conflict to The Happy Ending. It’s the tried and tested template.

Whole sections of bookshops are now devoted to ‘Abuse Lit’, thanks to Dave Pelzer’s A Child Called It. They all have the same typeface and the same cover: misty photo on a white background. ‘First I was not okay, now I am.’

It’s all Mr Larkin’s fault, of course. I think it was Alan Bennett who remarked if your parents DON’T f— you up, then you’re f—ed good and proper. My failure was to live the wrong way round: the successful pupil, told he would indeed amount to ‘anything much’.

But I can now fit the template. Because my ‘bad report’ phase is this state I’m in today. Not amounting to much. So (ideally!) the biography goes, ‘First Dickon won, then he failed, then he won again’. It’s a glib currency, but a currency nonetheless. Some people prefer the tried and tested path over any unknown scenic route. Not everyone, but it helps those who do. And then you take them somewhere new.

I refuse to go by Mr McKenna’s ‘f— that’, though. I prefer ‘get knotted’.

Off to the refuse depot this morning, with a minicab’s worth of possessions and bin liners stuffed with demons. I do have friends with cars, but don’t want to trouble them. They’re all getting on with their present lives and careers. It’s just me that’s literally hemmed in by the past, living pretty much as I did when those school reports were written. I even have the same TV and stereo. Until today. About time.

And all it took was the roof falling in on me, directly on the spot where my head has been ‘at’ for so long. My pillow.

My original aim, to clear out all the unprocessed paperwork before Thursday, is looking rather optimistic to say the least. There’s just so MUCH of it all.

How much do I keep?

How much must anyone keep?

Just threw out a huge file of work from Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, my one and only period as a full-time student, 1990-1992. It represents two year’s worth of note-taking on their Technical Theatre course, covering the techniques of lighting, sound, stage management, and so on. A waste of time? Well… I’m unlikely to start on that particular career path now, so I guess it has to go. I wasn’t particularly good at any of it, and I have no innate desire to jump-start such meagre skills.

I can’t possibly keep it, because if I do it means keeping everything else I’m not using at the present. Like every school exercise book.

Here’s a CV written circa 1993, when I was looking for work. Any work. Used it to get an office job, from which I was sacked a few months later for non-attendance due to sheer despair. Do I keep it?

This is what comes of viewing the boxes as me, rather than the person I used to be. And it’s turning into a tear-stained, madness-inducing exercise. I feel completely all at sea. And drowning. Help.

What do I do with the school grades and certificates of GCSEs? The school reports? How many photos? I know one must be brutal with anything not being used right now, but… will I ever need to mention my GCSE results at any point in the future?

The clutter-clearance books (which are taking up too much space…) say you must throw out everything connected with any periods of your life that represent frustration and unhappiness.

Fill in the wry retort yourself.

Oh, okay then. Some school report quotes. Great Cornad Upper, Summer Term, 1986.

Maths: ‘Sometimes Dickon forgets that he is not the only pupil in the class!’

English: ‘He has a great talent for this subject. He has a range of vocabulary, a precision of technique and a maturity of thought and expression which makes his work a pleasure to read. There is, occasionally, a tendency to over-elaborate…’

Chemistry: ‘… he must learn to be a little less intense… Relax a bit, it’s good for you!’

Geography: ‘I think he would benefit by spending a little less time debating more minor issues…’

Incredibly the PE report is favourable, and mentions me knowing my limitations but still doing my best. The Headmaster singles this out for his comment on my whole term.

I’m going to have a cup of tea, then go for a walk. And then I’m going to try and tackle the piles again.