I’m rather enjoying the office job, not just for the rumuneration, but also the way it connects me with the world, forcing me to be aware of what’s going on outside of my little bohemian bubble, even if it is through the surreal prism of a night shift every other 7 days. I feel I could sit a quiz on the work of the UK Environment Agency (building flood defences, helping the endangered British crayfish and the black poplar tree) to the state-funded projects and start-up enterprises of the East Midlands. I know all about the Curve Theatre in Leicester, and the Quad Cinema in Derby, though I’ve never been to those places in person. New York, Tangier, Stockholm, Paris, yes. Leicester, not yet.

Favourite fact about the Curve: the piazza area in front of the theatre has been christened Orton Square, after the playwright of naughty diary fame.

Favourite Orton tidbit: In Monty Python’s Life of Brian, John Cleese’s centurion arrests Brian with the words ‘You’re f—ing nicked, me old beauty!’ As Mr Cleese says on the DVD commentary, this is a deliberate quote from Orton’s Loot. Richard Attenborough delivers the line in the 60s movie version.

Slept from 9am till 6pm today. Much needed after a few days when sleep deprivation was starting to make me hallucinate around the corners, Fight Club style. So I’m more connected to the world in information terms, yet more out of phase with it physically.

Have gotten up, replied to emails and filled out some work-related paperwork (tax declarations, printing out, reading and signing forms for health and safety and computer usage), and written this entry. And now it’s time to go to work… again. Time just leaks away. I need to get faster… at everything.

(The Blockquote button in WordPress is really very awkward to use. I just want to indent a paragraph so it looks like a quote from an email. But highlighting the text and pressing the button just chews up the entire entry, moving bits of text all over the place. Italics seem to be a less anxiety-inducing option. Any advice from WordPress users out there?.)

From the mail box:

Dear Mr Edwards, regarding the new single… can we have MP3 versions of the new songs too? I have dutifully ordered the single, but it would be nice to round off my ipod’s fosca playlist with the new songs.

I’m told the songs will also be available to download via iTunes and KlickTrack, from December 5th.

I’ve also suggested to the record label that they provide free mp3 versions to those who buy the vinyl. They say it’s not as easy to automate on the website as it might sound, but that they’re looking into it. Something to do with getting a password…

Oh, and the vinyl is limited to 300 copies.

We were rehearsing the new single in Rooz Studios, Old Street last night, so all being well we’ll play the songs on this Extended Farewell Tour. I might actually learn the lyrics, too.

The lyrics to ‘My Diogenes Heart’ were written on a sheet of hotel notepaper earlier this year. The Crystal Plaza, Stockholm, to be precise – their logo sits prettily at the top of the page. Charley thinks I should sign it and put it up for winning in a competition. Maybe on the next Swedish tour…

Speaking of which, returning to Sweden one last time now looks like a probability. Plans are being drawn, pins stuck in calendars in early 2009… We’re looking at Stockholm and Gothenburg, obviously, but also Uppsala, Malmö, Norrköping, Linköping and Jönköping. That’s a whole lot of coping (sorry).

Dear Mr. Edwards,
I am sitting in my living room listening to “The painted side of the rocket”. An exceptional album I must say. I just want you to know that it would mean the world to me, and other Swedish Fosca fans, if you came here! Know that you do have a fan base here… And the other thing I wanted to say, is that if you really do
come here, and if you have any influence, please try and make it accessible for people under 18 too?

Hopefully we’ll be playing some sort of instore gig in Stockholm, where there won’t be any age restriction.

Good to see Taylor Parkes is writing about music again, even if he does think ‘waggish froth’ is a bad thing.

Speaking of which, Fosca have a new single out. Just one more. It’s called ‘The Man I’m Not Today’ and comes backed with ‘My Diogenes Heart’. Available on vinyl only from the But Is It Art website.

Funny how as we’re winding up the band, we keep doing new things for the very first (and last) time. This is our first time on vinyl. We’re also playing Germany for the first time, just like we played Spain for the first time a few months ago. Then we’re performing in Islington with a five-piece line up that’s never played before and probably won’t play again: me, Rachel Stevenson, Charley Stone, Kate Dornan and Tom Edwards. It’s our last UK gig ever.

FOSCA – CONCERT DATES

Friday December 5th: Hamburg -  Astra Stube.

Saturday December 6th: Berlin -  Cafe-Royal.

Saturday December 13th: Islington, London – Feeling Gloomy club at Bar Academy.

There’s a possibility of us extending this faltering farewell tour to include Sweden one more time in early 2009. And perhaps Finland too. And then that really WILL be it for Fosca. Best to go out while I’m still passingly pretty, in a certain light:

Favourite news story from last night: a company who makes signs for estate agents is seeing a drastic drop in revenue. The ‘For Sale’ signs are no longer selling.

The piece comes with a photo of the company boss in his warehouse, frowning at the camera while surrounded by endless piles of orphaned boards, like that scene from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Or if you’re like me and can’t stop yourself adding this tidbit, that scene from the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark that rips off – sorry, pays HOMAGE to – that scene from the end of Citizen Kane. The warehouse of infinite hubris.

I’m always puzzled why people oblige the press by not just indulging their lust for a quirky story on the recession, but posing for a photo too. Similarly, the young lady involved in the Russell Brand / Jonathan Ross / Andrew Sachs hysteria. Lots of specially-taken photos of her looking sad. Make-up on and hair done as for any other photo shoot, but asked to pull an unhappy expression. Stage-managed tristesse, titivated outrage. What does umbrage LOOK like, after all?

The sign man’s appointments diary: ‘Photographer coming round to capture me in the warehouse looking sad.’

I suppose getting your face in the press just feels flattering, whatever the reason. One for the family scrapbook.

‘Here’s your Uncle Dave in the local paper a few years ago. He complained about a speed camera. That’s why he’s in front of a speed camera, pointing and looking sad. He had his hair cut specially.’

My little necessary evil – my mobile phone – is doing its utmost to sabotage life and generally vex me. It’s frequently insisting that it can’t connect to a network. In the middle of London. Thing is, I don’t know whether it’s the cheap Motorola W377 phone or the O2 Pay As You Don’t Go SIM card that’s to blame. I’m tempted to just hurl the thing into the Thames and be done with it. It does remind me how much we take these gadgets for granted. The minute they break down – that’s it, party cancelled. At least, the more impromptu type of party.

And how very 2008  I’m left with a phone that can take a photograph, or play Sudoku, but which can’t make or receive a phone call.

I would like to heartily endorse a different gadget, though. I’m writing this entry on a brand new Samsung NC10 ‘netbook’, or ‘ultra-portable’ mini-laptop. It’s like a Travel Scrabble version of a normal computer: half the size, half the weight, yet the keyboard is close to full size. Which was the ‘deal breaker’ for me: writing on a Blackberry or anything smaller is just too fiddly. Thebattery seems to lasts forever, and as is typical with these things, the hard drive is actually three times the capacity of my iBook, just because it’s been made three years later. Oh, and at half the cost – £299.

Because the iBook is just that little bit too heavy to lug around when travelling – or at least, too heavy for me – I’d had my sights on a mini-laptop for months. As soon as I can afford it, I promised myself. Of course, the day I COULD finally afford it – after my first pay cheque with the new job – the device I was after effectively obsolete.

‘But I thought the Asus Eee won all the awards for Best Little Computer Of The Year,’ I protested to the shop assistant.

‘It did,’ he replied. ‘But that was a month ago. This is the next one.’

It IS very cute, though…

***
A recent Sunday. Lawrence G’s last day before deportation. I meet him in Marine Ices, Chalk Farm, along with Talulah and David R-P. Even though it’s him that’s leaving, I come away with presents: flowers and scarves.

In the Gents toilets, what looks at first like a folded-up nappy changing table turns out to be a state of the art Dyson hand drier.  You lower your hands vertically – cautiously – into the radiator-like apparatus, then an almighty jet of air blasts any hint of wetness into another dimension.

I get back to the table and babble excitedly to Lawrence and Talulah about this sci-fi experience.

‘That’s what I love about you,’ says L. ‘Only you would get so excited about an electric hand drier.’

At which point David joins us

‘Wow!’ he says. ‘There’s this amazing hand drier in the gents…!’

***
A discovery from re-entering the world of work:

All moments are stolen moments. Work, sleep, leisure, creativity, romance, shopping, enjoying the latest developments in electronic hand driers. Even doing nothing is a stolen moment. You just realise it’s a deliberate nothing.

What’s exhausting me is not so much the work itself but the strain of learning it as I go along.  I’m still trying to take on board and remember all the various quirks and details of information that are second nature to those who’ve been here for a while. So far, I’ve been concentrating on turning up on time, remembering my entrances and exits and cues, and generally trying not to walk into the scenery.

Further across the floor is Mr D, who’s already taken me for a post-work drink. At 7am. There’s a pub in Borough Market – the Market Trader, I think it’s called -  that opens in the early morning, with last orders at 9am. We catch a bus across Tower Bridge to get there, watching the sun come up over the Thames. All the iconic London landmarks at their best, in the comely pink prism of dawn.

On the Stansted Express, a steward comes past pushing an unwieldy refreshments trolley. He has a heavy foreign accent.

‘Tea? Coffee? Morphine?’

With its dated orange hand rails and slightly faded upholstery, the Stansted service might not be a patch on its faster and more up-to-date Heathrow counterpart, but offering passengers morphine does seem a bit extreme. So I ask.

‘Yes, morphine. Blueberry morphine.’ And he produces a tray of muffins.

After which, I spend the rest of the journey musing on fruit-flavoured narcotics, and narcotic-flavoured sweets. Strawberry Heroin. Cherry Cocaine. GHB flavoured Maltesers. I think one of the reasons I’ve never become a junkie – apart from the cost and the whole going-to-jail-forever bit – is that drugs simply don’t taste as nice as, say, Galaxy Caramel bars.

It was the same when I first tried alcohol as a teen. ‘Is this what all the fuss is about? But where’s the sweetness?’

Accordingly, my first drink of choice was cider. Even now, though I’ve grown into supping the occasional lager (in the shape of bottled beer), the appeal of real ale – ‘proper’ beer – still baffles me.

The train steward’s trolley bears a Fair Trade sticker. Like recycling, fair trade products have taken that same journey towards acceptance: via initial associations with radicalism, stopping by left-wing co-operative cafes, church groups and arts centres, before entering the mainstream consensus of being Obviously A Good Thing. My new job’s free tea and coffee facilities are Fair Trade only too. I wonder if there’ll soon be divisions and hair-splitting among what’s labelled ‘fair trade’, the way nutritional information makes even unhealthy foods sound good for you: ‘Our Fair Trade is more Fair than yours.’

When choosing an ice cream-based dessert at Marine Ices in Chalk Farm the other day, I go for banana split. Somehow, I’m convincing myself that I’m meeting one of my Five A Day portions of fruit, and that this allows the clear bad-for-you indulgence of ice cream. It’s akin to smokers who see Marlboro Lights as a dietary aid. Loopholes in contracts with oneself.

***

In the days after Barack Obama makes it as President, a few newspapers remark upon how it’s now officially okay to be nice to Americans.

Young Mr H is from Queens, NYC. We’ve been Companions for the past two weeks now. I know that’s not very long, but those weeks have made very happy indeed. I’m generally in favour of happiness. I don’t know about you.

So yes, I’ve had no trouble at all in contributing to the whole Being Nice To Americans effort. I like to think I’m doing my bit. God Bless America…

Regular employment AND a love life? As Mr Obama is so fond of saying, Yes I Can. Even me. The next step is to update the diary more regularly. Seeing as both Mr H and my employers are avid readers, it’s the least I can do.