Sometime last December. A knock at the door. It’s two members of the Jesus & Mary Chain, wanting help with some heavy lifting.

One, Phil King (JAMC bassist at their reunion gigs, including the Coachella one with Scarlett Johansson), has just moved in next door. The other, John Moore (JAMC drummer 1986-1988), hasn’t. Though Mr Moore was once meant to share a Cambridge hotel room with me, and instead decided to sleep on Rowan Pelling’s floor. I didn’t take it personally.

I give them a hand with unloading the car outside – Indie Band Removals, at your service. Am particularly impressed with one of Mr K’s possessions: a framed poster for the 70s film The Final Programme. That’s as cult as cult movies come: a Michael Moorcock adaption featuring the dandyish Jerry Cornelius.  I saw it on TV years ago, and vividly recall the ending: our hero merges with a woman during sex, then walks off into the sunset as a kind of hermaphrodite ape. As must we all.

Messrs King and Moore play together in the John Moore Rock & Roll Trio, whom I enjoy that same December evening, at the Horse Hospital in Bloomsbury. The club night is called ‘You Fill Me With Inertia’, which is a Peter Cook quote from Bedazzled. More cult movies.

While I’m watching the band – and they really do perform your actual vintage rock and roll – a woman comes up to me. ‘I just wanted to tell you how cool you look. Though I know I’m drunk.’

Phil King’s been in so many bands, but one he actually fronted, The Apple Boutique, are having their ultra-rare Creation single ‘Love Resistance’ reissued this very month. Phil’s shown me his copy – a desirable little 3-inch CD. It’s highly jangly, blissful, 12-string guitar-smothered, Go Betweens-y summer pop. Video and more details here.

Recently, I bumped into Phil outside my door, as neighbours do. Though instead of attempts to borrow cups of sugar (did anyone ever do that?), our conversation tends to be like this:

Him: Hi, how are you?

Me: Okay. I’m writing a piece for a fanzine about Felt & Denim.

Him: So am I. Probably the same fanzine.

(It is)

Me: I’m talking about how my band Orlando once covered a rare Denim song at a gig, ‘I Will Cry At Christmas’. It was on the Denim demo, and sounds suspiciously like a left over Felt number.

Him: Oh yes, I remember Lawrence coming into rehearsal with that one.

Which I think is called being trumped.

For the piece I was writing, I watched the video of Felt’s classic Primitive Painters on YouTube. It’s only now that I realise that the one who isn’t the singer is my next door neighbour.

All of which is of no real interest, except when playing Six Degrees Of Dickon Edwards.

[Medical note: First day on a new SSRI prescription. Citalopram. 20mg daily.]

I’m writing this in a brand new bespoke cashmere suit. Wool & cashmere, to be precise, but the cashmere’s definitely there. Just as Alan Partridge shouted ‘Cashback!’ as an exclamation of success, I hereby nominate a dandy variation: ‘Cashmere!’

The suit is by Charlie Collingwood, a young tailor who’s just set up his own business in London, Henry Herbert.  ‘It’d be nice if you could say something in your blog. Assuming you like the suit, that is.’

Can’t argue with that. Turns out that if you Google ‘London’ and ‘tailors’ and ‘suits’ – or something like that – you get my diary pretty high up in the results. Though I’m hardly going to turn this into a full-on review blog, it’s nice to occasionally be of some use to doers and makers I approve of.

(By the way, Googling me today reveals I apparently co-wrote an article on John Mortimer in the Independent. It says so on IMDB. A few more clicks, and it turns out I was in fact quoted by the newspaper in a ‘what the blogs say’ piece on his death.)

So: my new cashmere suit. Charlie first measured me up in his Savile Row office then let me choose the fabric from a selection of swatch books, along with the lining. I felt I needed a ‘dinner party and premieres’ number in black, and hadn’t had cashmere before, so I went for that, along with the usual bespoke tailor’s options: choosing the shape of pockets, number of buttons on the jacket and cuffs, type of vent at the back of the jacket, turn-ups on the trousers or not, and so on.

A few weeks after that he called me in so I could try on the ‘baste’. This is the draft version of the suit, with dotted white lines around the stitching as seen in umpteen old movies. Not all modern tailors do the baste process, so I was rather delighted by this bit in itself. Another six weeks or so later, the suit arrived in a bespoke cardboard box, illustrated with dozens of silhouettes of vintage-looking besuited men in various poses: hailing taxis, reading newspapers, but also typing at a laptop. And above all, getting the vintage feel just right: stylish, timeless, versatile.

Charlie’s two key selling points, his friendliness aside, are his use of entirely British-sourced materials, along with the fact that he delivers them via scooter, in true Quadrophenia Mod style.

There’s a feature on him in the Evening Standard here.

Henry Herbert Tailors have a website at www.henryherbert.com, with a Twitter account here.

I’ve been wearing the suit for a few weeks now. It’s a work of beauty. I’d ask strangers to stroke me and feel the cashmere-iness of it, if such a request didn’t risk misinterpretation.

Hooray for Henry Herbert. May their scooters go forth and beautify.