Am staying with Lawrence Gullo and his partner Fyodor at their home in Newburgh, upstate New York. Occasion: their wedding this Saturday Aug 22nd. They’re actually getting legally married in the state of Vermont next month, but this is the ceremony and reception for friends.

Arrive at Newark airport Thursday evening, having travelled with fellow wedding guest David Ryder-Prangley. Spend most of the journey working on a poem to read out at the reception.

Am reminded that poetry is by far the easiest medium to do badly. I do six drafts longhand, then run it by the happy couple on Saturday morning for approval, just in case they’d rather I plumped for the Shakespeare or Whitman I’d brought by way of back-up (Sonnet 116, and ‘We Two Boys Together Clinging’). My own effort is, after all, a little personal and political, linking respect for transgenderism with Ovid’s myth of Iphis.

A Newburgh water tower, as seen on Friday when out with Lawrence and Fyodor shopping for the wedding:

The weather is absolutely sweltering, even plantation-like. Crickets outside my window sound like serenading eletric razors; the sheer volume of the creatures calls for earplugs at night. It’s not a constant, even sound, either: some crickets get nearer and louder from time to time, with all varieties of whirring and buzzing imaginable.

Tepid rain showers punctuate the days. Lawrence’s house is full of electric fans on full-pelt. Drinking water constantly is par for the course. When I get out of Lawrence’s car to walk to a local diner for breakfast – the car being a  hybrid-fuel Prius with perfect air-conditioning, my glasses steam up.

Inside the diner (more perfect fridge-like air conditioning), I have pancakes with syrup, and am attended by a waitress who walks among the tables with a top-up jug asking, ‘Coffee, hon?’ Just like in the movies. The diner has an amazing mural:

More guests arrive at the house for Friday evening, when there’s something of an alternative batchelor party (for both grooms). Various turns include burlesque – an Aussie lady morris dancer who disrobes levels of vintage costume made by her seamstress girlfriend  – and a beautiful be-wigged Brooklyn drag queen. One turn is a hilarious lecture on How To Dance Goth.

On Saturday morning, the marriage ceremony takes place in the nearby park. The grooms declare their vows:

Then they join their hands and present them for binding by the guests. Each guest adds a ribbon to the union:

And I get to wear a garland of frangipani. I smell wonderful, frankly (photo taken by Eileen, Lawrence’s mother):

Monday: meet Dad as he returns from the Caption convention in Oxford. Because his train gets into Paddington, I do what all Londoners should do at that station when meeting out-of-towners. I show him the statue of Paddington Bear. Along with the character’s merchandise stall, covered in books, soft toys and toddler-sized duffel coats.

We go to the Cartoon Museum in Bloomsbury, only to discover it’s closed on Mondays. I get a sense of deja vu from this time last year, when I was in New York and traipsed across most of Central Park in order to visit the Met. It was a Monday, and the Met – despite being the size of a football stadium – was closed that day.

I’m off to New York again this Thursday coming, for seven days. This time, I’ll ensure my museum stints avoid the first day of the working week.

***

In Gosh Comics, I pick up Issue 5 of Pride & Prejudice. It’s not a parody or homage but an entirely straight – and beautifully drawn – comic strip adaptation of the Jane Austen book. What really delights me is that it’s published by Marvel as a proper serialised A5 colour comic, and that it’s displayed alongside the latest issue of Spider-Man, X-Men, the Hulk and so on. So a novel that famously enticed readers despite a lack of any real heroes or villains is now translated into the one medium most accustomed to them. The Austen effect still triumphs: the staff at Gosh tell me it’s been flying off the shelf.

***

Walking along Royal College Street today, I pass a couple of elderly Irish men sitting outside a pub. As I approach, one calls out at me.

‘Walk straight!’

And then, after I’ve passed by:

‘Can I shag you?’

In the evening I recount this to Ms L, who works behind the bar at the Boogaloo. I do so hoping she’ll be amused. In fact, she takes a physical step back and stares at me, unnerved.

I’m reminded of Ms D telling me about someone she met recently.

‘This person asked me, “Do you know Dickon Edwards? I’m his nemesis.” And they weren’t smiling.’

I found this incredibly funny. But Ms D was appalled, verging on upset.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone’s nemesis before,’ she said. ‘I wondered if I should call the police.’

(‘Are you Jesus?’ I had at Latitude from two young men in the woods, when I was walking around in my white suit. ‘I forgive you,’ I shouted back.)

I suppose I do attract a certain… oddness from some people – as opposed to odd people per se  – from time to time. But they soon tire of me: I’m too busy stalking myself inside my own head, trying to nail my thoughts down, preoccupied with controlling my own madness, never mind anyone else’s.  There’s always an angle, a tilt, which part of me is at and which the rest is not; and it’s never by the same degree for more than a moment. So this predicament is a two-way barrier, for better or worse. I’ve said it before, but one ambition of mine is to have a syndrome named after me.

To act weirdly around an already weird person isn’t stalking, after all: it’s tautology.

Charlotte Mew’s favourite joke, as quoted by Penelope Fitzgerald in an old copy of the London Review of Books:

A hearse driver runs over a man and kills him. A passer-by shouts, ‘Greedy!’

Ms Mew was also known as Lotti. I hadn’t realised until now the connection between the two names: Lotti being short for Charlotte. Similarly, when DJ-ing at the club Decline & Fall, one of the organisers, Beth, told me she now prefers to be called Lily. I thought this was a full name change until she pointed out that both are derivatives of Elizabeth. What with Betty, Bess, Liz and so on, it’s a pretty good value name. Dickon comes from Richard, but that surprises some people too.

The way to settle this, when people unhelpfully say ‘Oh I don’t mind, call me any of my fifteen nicknames’, is to find out people’s Coma Name. As in the name paramedics need to know when trying to bring round an unconscious patient. They haven’t got time to try all the permutations (‘Mr Edwards?’ Dick? Rick? Ricardo?’)  – they need to know the one most likely to break through in those crucial ebbing moments. Dickon is very much my Coma Name, even though Richard is on my passport. I should really attach a note there, in case I pass out while alone in a foreign land. No Richard to resuscitate here.

***

The first page of the longhand draft of Angela Carter’s Nights At The Circus is on display in the British Library’s permanent ‘Treasures’ exhibition. It’s the final item in a long chronological line-up of literary artefacts, which take in Lewis Carroll’s original notebook of Alice In Wonderland, the one he gave Alice Liddell. Out of all the works on display, Ms Carter has by far the neatest handwriting: ‘clear, upright and not quite flowing’, as Susannah Clapp put it on Radio 3 recently. She was presenting a series about Author’s Postcards. I love Radio 3.

On publication in 1984, Nights At The Circus failed to win the Booker, or to even make the shortlist. Now it’s rubbing shoulders with the Magna Carta and the First Folio.

Also on display, temporarily, are a couple of letters from 1933, as part of the library’s Codex Sinaiticus Bible show. They illustrate the UK Government’s public subscription campaign to raise £100,000, in order to buy the ancient Bible from the Soviets. One letter is from a 7-year-old boy in Durham, enclosing 2/6. ‘Dear Director of the British Museum…’ The other accompanies a postal order for six shillings, from an unemployed miner in Tonypandy, Rhondda. The miner adds, in beautiful handwriting: ‘The destiny of our own Nation is certainly safe because of the place it gives to the word of God.’

These days it’d be all PayPal and online donations. I miss the world of letters. Emails in museum cases seems unlikely: there’s no such thing as The Original Email. Hearing about the late John Hughes becoming a pen pal with one of his fans in the 80s was the final straw for me. Getting messages via the Internet is not the same. So this past week I’ve written at least one Proper Letter a day, to friends and family. I feel better for it. The physical acts: the pen or pencil pushed across the paper, the folding, the stamp, the posting. It’s anchoring me to the world just that little bit more.

Douglas Adams once said at the Dawn of the Internet Age that he preferred email to letters because it was cheaper, faster, and involved less licking.

I like the licking.

A mention of me in Kieron Gillen’s blog, recounting his time manning a stall at the San Diego Comic-Con. He refers to the Phonogram tribute zine for which I wrote a short story:

A particularly broken period happened when we were slumped on the table, talking about the Zine and how much we liked Dickon’s contribution. This turned to how well he rocked a suit. A woman passing the table thinks we’re talking to her. We say we’re actually talking about Dickon, then proceed to explain to this clearly bemused and uncaring woman exactly who Dickon is. As she headed away from the table towards the Top Cow booth, we were shouting facts about Dickon after her (‘HE HAS NICE HAIR!’ ‘HE WAS IN A BAND CALLED ORLANDO!’). This reaches an apex when I inform her ‘I ONCE SAT ON THE SAME SEAT AS HIM’ – pause – ‘AFTER HE HAD STOOD UP’. Because right then, it seemed possible that she would think that I was sitting on the same chair as him whilst he was sitting on it, and wanted to make things perfectly clear.

==

I was lightly interviewed the other day in The Guardian, as part of an article by Dave Simpson on music scenes, specifically scenes that tried and failed. I was initially wary about contributing, as Mr S had featured Orlando once before in a piece on Bands That Were Hyped But Failed, an unflattering label which one hardly wants to reinforce. He’d also written an entire book about tracking down all the umpteen members of The Fall who were sacked (or forced to quit) by Mark E Smith. So I can’t help thinking of a quote by his cartoon namesake:

Homer: Kids, you tried your best and you failed miserably. So the lesson is, never try.

As it turned out, it wasn’t a piece about How Dickon Edwards Tried And Failed To Be A Pop Star, The Hubristic Booby, Now Let’s All Have A Good Laugh. It was more about the scenes Mr Simpson had selected, of which Romo was one, and could I talk about that. This time I was feeling Happy To Be Of Use, whatever the agenda, and did my utmost over the phone to stress the positive aspects of Romo, along with being realistic and honest about its shortcomings. And especially, on how 1996 really was the wrong time for it: the singer of La Roux is very much a glorious Romo child of Tilda Swinton in my eyes. May she pout long and prosper.

Most of all, I tried not to sound like those aging ex-band members who speak as if they were going through some silly little phase, stressing that they’re all right now, they’ve grown a beard and got a proper job and, yes, aren’t bands stupid. Those who feel it’s far better to point and sneer and feel superior and no longer be creative.

Matt Everitt, once the drummer from Menswear, is a BBC 6 Music news reporter these days. His biography on the station’s website mentions Menswear as ‘a third division Britpop band of no fixed ability – which paid the bills until a chronic lack of ability caught up with them.’

This gets me so annoyed. Why editorialise? Why not just mention the band, and leave the judgement side to others? Menswear had fans. They even had fanzines. Whatever the received opinion is these days, and I admit they were hardly the most innovative group around, they did inspire passion, devotion, love, and they sold out Shepherd’s Bush Empire. That’s an achievement, not a silly youthful phase to play down for the rest of one’s ever-greying life, just so one can feel timidly superior with the try-nothing crowd.

Between creating original primary material (however derivative, forgettable or juvenile) and safely mocking the creativity of others; between trying and sneering at those who try, I’ll always side with the former. God knows there’s so many truly awful bands out there, but I still support them for trying and sticking their heads above the parapet.

Unless they were that band in the adjoining room who were going through ‘Knocking On Heaven’s Door’ over and over again during one particular Fosca rehearsal in Camden a few years ago. They can, well, go to hell.