More and more often, a bus has waited at an empty stop for me, because the driver has spotted my frantic running and decided to be kind. Obviously they’re not obliged to do this, as it’s my fault for not being at the stop. So by way of returning the kindness, I now make a point of taking home other passengers’ litter, the kind left on seats or on the floor. Free newspapers, empty drinks bottles rolling around, that sort of thing.

I have somewhat less kind thoughts towards a group of passengers on the 134 the other Friday evening.

It’s about 8pm, and the bus is heading from Euston to Camden Town. I’m on the top deck, left hand side, about five seats ahead of the back seat. Which I can hear is occupied by a group of girls, giggling and being loud and raucous in the perennial Friday Night way. Then one girl starts throwing pieces of banana peel down the aisle, getting more laughter from her friends. As all the seats face forward, it is impossible to see the throwing, just the peel.

Then she throws some directly at the head of another passenger. It’s a thirtysomething man sitting with his girlfriend, on the seats opposite and just in front of me. He ignores them.

They do it again. This time, he turns round and asks the girls to stop throwing banana peel at him. He has a foreign accent – French, possibly.

The girls shout back. ‘It wasn’t me!’ ‘I don’t even like bananas!’ Then their tone turns quickly, from unconvincing schoolgirl protest to ugly, second-hand prejudice: ‘At least we’re British, mate. At least we’re meant to be here.’

The Frenchman says, ‘You are nuzzing, you know that?’ And he turns back. His girlfriend whispers to him what I imagine is the French for ‘leave them, Marcel, they’re not worth it.’

The girls get worse.

‘What did he say to me?’ ‘Hey, YOU are nothing, more like. Yeah.’

I put my headphones on and pretend to be listening to music. I’m terrified. I’m hoping this doesn’t get out of hand. I want to intervene and tell the girls off, but I am not that sort of man. On top of which, I think of the man who was stabbed to death on the 43 a few years ago, for asking someone if they’d stop throwing chips at his girlfriend.

They throw more banana peel at the Frenchman. This time, it misses and hits the man sitting directly behind the couple. He’s thirty-ish, unshaven and bespectacled in that Owns Box Sets Of The Wire On DVD way. He turns around and glowers at the girls. English accent. Firm, threatening, every year of his age.

‘Hey. Stop throwing shit. All right? Stop throwing shit.’

‘We wasn’t.’ ‘Wasn’t me.’

The girls now sound resentful, small, put in their place. It seems to do the trick. No more banana peel.

The bus pulls into Camden, and the girls cackle their way down the aisle, down the stairs, out of our lives. I finally get a look at them. Dressed up, made up, and all of 19 or so. I was expecting 13.

The rest of the journey home, I think sadly about the Back Of The Bus dynamic, how nothing has changed since I was at school. The back seat is where loud kids go to be naughty and daring and controlling. Yet cowardly with it, because the other passengers can’t see them. I wonder if the Back Seat does something to them: the psychology of perceived power. A temptation too far. It’s like the attraction of posting anonymous abuse on the Internet.

When I am king, all the buses will have no back seat. They’ll go on into infinity.

I wonder about the girls. They’re not only playing up to an idiot cliche, but they’re too old for it. I wonder about their lives. I wonder if they’ll grow up, and when. I wonder which among them is the Main Girl, which ones are her doting deputies, and which ones are just tagging along out of fear.

I feel ashamed on behalf of the Frenchman. And I feel envious and hero-worshipping of the 6Music-y man who spoke out. Not just because he dared to turn around, stare them out and tell them off, but because he knew how just to say ‘shit’ to mean ‘stuff’, and not ‘excrement.’

It’s a usage I was blissfully unaware of until about the mid 80s, when I saw the hip film ‘Repo Man’ on video. Harry Dean Stanton’s character uses it in this way, and constantly. I remember being incredibly shocked. In fact, it upstaged the rest of the film for me. Movies are the lessons they don’t give you at school.

A few weeks ago I watched an episode of Skins, the popular UK drama. In that, Effy, a middle class, Southern English teenager is in a dream sequence. She meets a younger version of herself who won’t speak. ‘Don’t give me any of that silent shit,’ she says.

In 1985, to hear this from a British girl would have made me implode, frankly. Now it’s just used to make Effy sound like a typical teenager. So I guess it’s now official: the term has caught on.

(Typing this up, I check the OED definition. The usage is in there, but only just. It’s labelled ‘Draft Additions 2009’. Earliest known appearance, 1934, ‘Tropic of Cancer’ by Henry Miller.)

I envy how the man on the bus can speak Fluent Youth back at the girls, and that he can mean it, whereas for me it’d be hilariously out of character.

He’s like those teachers at my school who would use the occasional bit of swearing in their crowd control. A tactic that implied, ‘I may be a teacher but I too can do intimidation and slang. That’s the only two weapons you have, and I have them too, and yet I’m much older. That’s right, look scared.’

I come away from all this with a renewed respect for bus drivers, teachers, the French, and men of my age whose usage of youth slang I normally find unbecoming. Now I want a man like that on my keyring.

Before I get off the bus, I pick up the banana peel.

Saturday evening. To a house party in Harringay, near Turnpike Lane, hosted by Robin & Ellen H. They invited me to their wedding a few years ago, where I was seated at the same table as Alan Hollinghurst. I didn’t say anything to him, as nothing suggested itself other than, ‘I’ve read your novels. They’re very good, aren’t they? Well done!’ Except if it happened again now I suppose could talk with him about Ronald Firbank, and how I was pleased he chose the out-of-print writer to be in the National Portrait Gallery’s Gay Icons show last year. It was a slightly confusing title for an exhibition, because while it featured icons chosen by famous gay people (like Mr Hollinghurst), the icons themselves didn’t have to be gay. So Ronald Firbank ended up in the same show as Elton John’s choice, the England football manager Graham Taylor.

At the house party, Ellen serves up champagne with vodka-soaked raspberries. It becomes quite crowded, and after chatting to the small amount of people I know there (the hosts, Alex S, Tammy H, Jamie M), I slip into my usual mode of standing by myself against a wall, feeling awkward and strange. As much as I like parties, I’ve never been very good about going over and Joining In with someone else’s conversation – it feels bad mannered, even presumptious. So I stand there, hoping vainly (in every sense) that someone will come over to me instead. It’s one reason I take to DJ-ing so easily. DJing is also being aloof and passive and standing near a wall, but in a controlling way, and with a reason. On top of which, you have something to cling to.

Over the last year I’ve become something of a born again letter writer. Various things nudged me: reading collections of literary letters of old, seeing letters in museums, but mostly just missing the pleasure I had from writing letters in the past.

Letters also have a tactile and sensory advantage over the Net experience. More parts of the brain light up when reading handwritten letters, compared to processing typed information on a screen. With letters, I love the extra physicality, the three-dimensional touch of paper, the feel of scratching ink on white (and I do love my choice of pens and pencils). I love seeing the uniqueness of human handwriting: mine as well as other people’s. I also worry that the digital world can dissolve one’s sense of self. This isn’t to disparage the Net in a Luddite way, mind, just to aim for a more varied diet.

If writing letters in 2010 is a romantic gesture, writing airletters verges on the kinky. These cute paper gadgets, also known as ‘aerogrammes’ (and also spelt as ‘aerograms’), are a single sheet of paper which folds up to become its own envelope, with worldwide airmail postage printed on the outside. Designed to be cheap, convenient and private, they were patented by a British postmaster stationed in Iraq in the 30s. From the 40s they became popular worldwide, with pictorial designs to tie in with the latest range of commemorative stamps. For decades, the UK Royal Mail issued a different Christmas airletter every year. I once wrote a fan airletter to the Australian band Even As We Speak. And I don’t think I’d remember it so well if it’d been an email.

But with the mass take-up of email in the late 90s, the appeal of airletters in terms of convenience became redundant. Demand dropped off, and Royal Mail’s last pictorial design was for the Christmas of 2006. In 2010, many countries have stopped issuing them altogether.

When I started writing letters again last year, I was delighted to find UK airletters were still being issued – but only just. They’re not in the Royal Mail’s online shop: you have to either place a phone order (and pay a handling fee), or go into a Post Office and hope for the best. Each time I’ve done that, either they haven’t stocked any, or the counter staff has remarked, ‘It’s been a long time since anyone asked for these…’

Once thin and blue and nicknamed ‘blueys’, UK airletters are now sturdy and white. The standard design is dull, but easily livened up with a little personal customization; I’ve begun to cut out photos from newspapers and Pritt-Stick them into the blank space. More physicality, more a sense of making something, not just typing into the void. At 48p (assuming you bought a discount pack of six), they were still a lot cheaper than sending a postcard or normal letter abroad… until now.

From April 6th, airletters are going up a massive 19p to 67p each, compared with hikes of just 5p for airmail postcards and letters. Clearly Royal Mail sells so few airletters that they need to cover costs. They probably also think the rise won’t draw much of a public outcry. In fact, I suspect this diary entry constitutes the entire amount of umbrage over the increase.

I’ve been buying up packs frantically, in order to beat the price rise. Other people stockpile petrol and tinned food: I stockpile stationery.

After all, who sends airletters in 2010? A smattering of collectors, a few pensioners who won’t touch a computer, and defiant retro-stylists like myself. But I have a letter-loving friend in Australia who writes back, on the pretty pictorial aerogrammes the country still issues, and exchanging Facebook Wall posts with her just doesn’t lift my heart in the same way.

Maybe I’ll be one of the last British airletter senders ever. As long as Royal Mail still make them, and I still have friends abroad, I’ll keep writing them.

Links:
An article on aerograms by Prague-based writer Evan Rail.

A blog post: making DIY airletters via Google Maps and online postage

A few people have asked me if my mother is aware of the major exhibition on British quilting at the V&A, which opens this week. There’s something similar on at Liberty’s too.

Well, yes, Mum is aware all right. She’s up in town to attend both, staying with Linda Seward, who spoke about quilting on Monday’s Women’s Hour.

Mum says some quilters are slightly chagrined that the V&A show includes works by Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin. These are, after all, famous artists who’ve occasionally made quilts, rather than quilters per se. It’s fair enough, though: I’m a firm believer – as is Mum – of the rubbing-off factor of galleries, and the Emin and Perry quilts can only encourage serendipity for the uninitiated. They’ll bring in people who might not otherwise have gone, and who could well leave with their minds’ own patchwork newly illuminated.

Links:
Slideshow of the V&A exhibition with audio commentary (BBC News site).

Podcast of Women’s Hour, 22.3.2010 (mp3 file)

Tues eve: Mum and I have dinner in Islington. She tells me an anecdote from me and my brother’s childhood that sums up at least one difference between us. Tom once told some playground joke to a room of other children, and everyone laughed. I apparently tried doing the same – with the same joke (I’m assuming at a different occasion, though it wouldn’t surprise me if I did it immediately afterwards). Most of them didn’t laugh, and someone left the room in tears.

Yesterday, I look on Twitter and – catching the mood of the hour – find myself trying to think of a topical gag about David Cameron’s wife becoming pregnant. Then I stop myself. Much as I love satire, if I ever managed to write something pithily hilarious about an item in the news –  a straight gag – it would feel strange, even out of character; a snivelling attempt to join the cool boys’ gang. Which just isn’t part of my patchwork.

Saturday night just gone: I DJ at How Does It Feel To Be Loved, at the Phoenix in Cavendish Square. I chat to Charlie M and her friends, talk about Take That with the lovely Alice From Leeds on the door, and down too much white wine. Sunday is entirely spent recovering, I’m ashamed to admit.

The HDIF crowd is a mixture of young and old fans of the playlist – 60s soul and 80s indie. Ian W tells me about new bands that the club has helped to nurture, including one I like the sound of, ‘Allo Darlin’. I was at first baffled that there’s young fans of, say, McCarthy who were not even born when ‘Red Sleeping Beauty’ came out. Partly because the music seemed hermetically sealed to its era, but also because it forced me to admit to my own increasing age. It’s a form of solipsism too; the music that you once thought mapped a time of your history eventually maps you into history itself. That obscure 1989 EP track you thought only you gave meaning to, your little secret, will in fact outlive you. So get used to it. The music will get along just fine without you. Indiepop longa, vita brevis.*

Here’s my set list from the night.

1. The Style Council – Speak Like A Child
2. Lloyd Cole – Jennifer She Said
3. The Siddeleys – You Get What You Deserve
4. Felt – Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow (the version with the jangly guitar intro)
5. McCarthy – I Worked Myself Up From Nothing
6. The Chills – Heavenly Pop Hit
7. Stereolab – Ping Pong
8. Camera Obscura – French Navy
9. Aztec Camera – Oblivious
10. Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made For Walking
11. Carole King – I Feel The Earth Move
12. The Angels – My Boyfriend’s Back
13. Le Tigre – Hot Topic
14. The Pastels – Nothing To Be Done
15. Chairmen Of The Board – Give Me Just A Little More Time
16. Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
17. Shirley Bassey – Spinning Wheel
18. The Supremes – Stoned Love
19. Spearmint – Sweeping The Nation
20. The Smiths – Ask
21. The Shangri-Las – Give Him A Great Big Kiss
22. Beyonce – Single Ladies (Motown remix)
23. Labelle – Lady Marmalade
24. Dexys – Plan B
25. Chuck Wood – Seven Days Too Long
26. Orange Juice – Poor Old Soul
27. The Wake – Crush The Flowers
28. Strawberry Switchblade – Since Yesterday
29. Sister Sledge – Thinking Of You
30. Dressy Bessy – If You Should Try To Kiss Her

[*After Hippocrates’s aphorism ‘Ars longa, vita brevis’: life is short, but art is forever.]

A binge of Alice In Wonderlands during the last week. First, I see the new Tim Burton take at the Muswell Hill Odeon, then off to the NFT for the 1933 talkie with Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle and WC Fields as Humpty Dumpty. This bill also includes the 1903, 8 minute long British silent adaptation by Percy Stow – with a live piano player doing the score. Finally, back to the NFT a few days later for Dreamchild, the 1985 portrait of Alice Liddell aged 80, with a script by Dennis Potter and creatures by Jim Henson.

Links between the 1903 and 2010 versions: both Percy Stow and Tim Burton insist on squeezing a dog into the proceedings, the one obvious animal that Lewis Carroll left out. Burton has a bloodhound voiced by Timothy Spall, while Stow has a nameless ‘Dog’ that Alice meets along the way, clearly the family pet muscling in. The mutt in question became a massive star in the proto-Lassie adventure ‘Rescued By Rover’, a huge international hit in 1905, and according to the BFI ‘possibly the only point in film history when British cinema unquestionably led the world.’ The Brits have always been good with dogs.

The 1903 Cheshire Cat is hilarious: a real cat – probably the family pet again – looking immensely annoyed while superimposed on a hedge, as Alice gesticulates around it by way of reaction.

I enjoy the Burton overall, though I bristle at the Carroll characters crowbarred into a regulation third-act structure, with a Big Final Battle at the end, two armies and a Tolkein-ish Jabberwock dragon voiced by Christopher Lee begging comparison with the Lord Of The Rings films. A comparison which is not going to do it favours. It’s also a sequel with a misleading title: it really should be called ‘Return To Wonderland’.

I saw a recent TV interview with Mr Burton, where he said he needed a proper story structure, as Carroll’s books are just a series of surreal encounters. Well, yes, but there is still a story: Alice is chasing the White Rabbit to find out what he’s late for, while trying to find her way out. That’s story enough. It was good enough to get generations of readers turning the page (or not checking their watch).

Whereas at the Muswell Hill Odeon I notice several children getting restless, with their mothers checking the time on their phones – that tell-tale flash of light in the stalls. All that expensive spectacle and colour, all those big names doing the voices (Barbara Windsor as a swash-buckling dormouse!), it shouldn’t sag for a second, but at times it really does. Still, the lead actress is one of the best live action Alices yet, while the actual tumble down the rabbit hole is as fresh and exciting as any – with a grand piano falling after her.

The 1933 black and white take is more faithful, conflating scenes from both the books while adding a few inspired ones: the Dodo dries off Alice from her swim in the pool of tears, by reciting ‘dry’ facts from history at her. The actors wear grotesque rubbery masks, even for the human-like characters like the Duchess. Alice is a rather bland American incarnation, something referred to in the other film I see. In Dreamchild, the 80-year-old Alice Liddell manages to secure a cut of the 1933 movie’s budget, in return for her endorsement. ‘But Alice can’t be American’, a British fan complains in the scene.

Dreamchild is more of a spin-off than an adaptation. But it certainly is one of the most emotional and thought-provoking dramas connected with the material. The Jim Henson creatures are straight out of The Dark Crystal – sinister and ambiguous. The tale of the aged Alice Liddell in 1930s New York is interspersed with flashbacks to Victorian Oxford, portraying the relationship between Ian Holm’s Lewis Carroll and the pre-pubescent Liddell, along with sequences from the books with the Jim Henson creations. And as it’s Dennis Potter, there’s lots of lovely 1930s songs, themes of ambiguity, sexuality, and the merging of memory with fantasy.

The film dares to celebrate that the books were a gift of love from a lonely bachelor to a little girl: something that was already pretty controversial in 1985. We see Alice’s mother tearing up Carroll’s letters to the child, before he gets a kind of redemption, as the 80-year-old Liddell finally accepts his feelings for what they were. We see her younger self cross over to him during a picnic on the riverbank, to give him a chaste but fond hug of thanks. It’s a powerful moment, and I wonder if it’d be harder to make such a film now.

A quotation from a Peanuts cartoon. Lucy is giving advice to Charlie Brown at her little wooden psychiatrist stall:

Lucy: Charlie Brown, life is like a deck chair on a cruise ship. Passengers open up these canvas deck chairs so they can sit in the sun. Some people place their chairs facing the rear of the ship so they can see where they’ve been. Other people face their chairs forward – they want to see where they’re going. On the cruise ship of life, which way is your deck chair facing?

Charlie Brown: I’ve never been able to get one unfolded.

I note this today because it’s on a programme about politicians being funny. Denis Healey used it in the Commons to describe John Major.

***

While wondering about my own creative direction, I find myself drawn to an article in Spin magazine. It’s about people who used to be in bands – though far more celebrated than mine – before giving up music altogether. Justine from Elastica is now an abstract painter in California, having married a university professor. Once the Queen of Britpop, she says she ‘wanted out of England’ and has no plans to return to music. ‘That’s the great thing about anonymity,’ she says. ‘You have the freedom to reinvent yourself.’ An attractive, dignified sentiment, but it has the air of regret. That music was a mistake, and she’s much better now.

It’s certainly true of her former bandmate Donna, who went from being one of those people who take heroin while making music, to just taking heroin, to getting clean, and now – an equally familiar path – finding God. She’s a trainee priest at the Ichthus Link Church. ‘I realised how selfish I’d been.’ Is making music really more selfish than being a priest, if you’re having hit albums? I wonder here about the ‘selfishness’ of band reunions, too. But then, all decisions are selfishness of a kind. Charity can be vanity, too.

Tanya Donelly of Belly (and Throwing Muses, and The Breeders) is now a postpartum doula. Which I had to look up. It’s a sort of post-birth non-medical midwife. She says she found the rock band life incompatible with being a mother. I was going to say, well, Courtney Love managed it, didn’t she? Bad example.

My favourite quote, though, is from Miki Berenyi, formerly the singer with Lush and now a copy editor at Web User Magazine:

‘My job now isn’t as fun or exciting as it was to be in a band, but on the other hand, I don’t have to worry about complete strangers approaching me and telling me I’m a c—.’

This is what’s now known as Tall Poppy Syndrome. It’s particularly associated when contrasting the UK with the US, hence Ms Justine’s solution. But in my case, I’ll always attract that sort of thing, recognition or no. Even when I’m trying my hardest to seem normal.

Last week I was taking a break between bleachings and walked around the city with cropped dark-brown hair. I was also wearing my glasses, which I thought must surely have made me even more invisible. Fat chance. Two girls on the Archway Road:

‘OY! Harry Potter!’

(Once more unto the bleach…)

A quick alert. This Saturday 20th I shall be Guest DJ at the club night How Does It Feel To Be Loved, which plays C86-type 80s indiepop (and compatible current bands like Cats On Fire and The Drums) alongside 1960s soul and girl group pop. Mr Watson who runs the club has asked me back there once a year or so for the last seven years, and I always enjoy myself thoroughly. Expect songs by McCarthy, Felt, early Prefab Sprout, The Pastels, and whatever takes my fancy at that moment.

Club Night: How Does It Feel To Be Loved?
When: Saturday March 20th, 9pm-3am. I’m DJ-ing at 10.30pm, finishing midnight.
Venue: Basement bar, The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP. Behind John Lewis in Oxford Street. A short walk from Oxford Circus tube station.
Price: £4 members, £6 non members. Membership is free from www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk

***

The NME has just published a list of 20 cult musical heroes, including Dan Treacy, Richard Hell, Alex Chilton (who’s just died, sadly) and Billy Childish. Their blog asks for readers’ own choices, and among the comments someone – presumably a foreign fan – says this:

…one who might deserve attention in NME, Mojo…et al is Dickon Edwards of Fosca! Its about time NME makes a huge special about Fosca, not even Pitchfork has found out what really could be a hype with enough deep to survive the attention.

By ‘enough deep’, I’m guessing they mean lyrical depth. Very kind of them, anyway.

Realistically – not an adverb that trots convincingly from my lips – I doubt very much that the UK music press will ever write about Fosca between now and the heat-death of the universe. I think Fosca are – were – just too wrong-sounding for many. If it wasn’t the lyrics, it was my wrong voice, or the wrong musical format, or the wrong production. But then, all I hoped for was to record those songs and release them into the wild. And I did that.

Seems hypocritical to write about being arch and strange and expect large amounts of perfectly well-adjusted people to connect with that. There’s a reason why Ronald Firbank is constantly out-of-print while Saki isn’t: uncompromising archness needs to be at just the right level of uncompromising. Saki’s characters were effete and haughty and dandyish, but he wasn’t at all like that in person: he ended up in command of troops in WW1. Firbank, meanwhile, was so arch he could barely stand up. It’s okay to be weird, as long as you’re capable and functional and productive with it. That’s the part I often struggle with.

That said, I have my more useful moments. I’m the dandy handyman, as Mr Ant never sang. The other day I unblocked the communal shower’s nozzles from a build-up of limescale, saving my landlady from calling in a plumber.

I used a long, jewelled cravat pin.

Whenever anyone lets me have a play on their iPhone or Blackberry or similar handheld do-everything gadget, I find myself searching for excuses not to like it. ‘My fingers are too large – it’s too fiddly’, I say. Or ‘It’s too expensive – I’d only lose it or have it stolen.’

The real reason is that I fear I’d never put the thing down once I bought it. I do have a mobile phone, deliberately chosen for its cheapness and ugliness. So I find myself switching it off most of the time, and I often leave it at home altogether when I go out. Which rather defeats the object of a mobile phone, but if the alternative is to be one of those people who never put their phone away at all – and I fear I would be – then it’s for the best.

Actually, I realise it’s increasingly strange in the city to NOT have one’s phone to hand all the time. So I’m hoping I can just work this omission into my image of a fogeyish weirdo not entirely in phase with the world.

I do have a vade mecum, though: a pocket notebook and pen (either a traditional-sized Moleskine or a passport-sized Moleskine Cahier, depending on the jacket). In fact, the other night I was standing in the audience at a cabaret event, jotting down notes, when an audience member pounced on me. What was I writing, he demanded to know. And who was I, anyway?

Had I been using a phone to take photos or record video, or to update Twitter or Facebook, I’m convinced his interest would not have been piqued. Tapping at a shiny, glowing gadget in public is now an invisible act. Writing discreetly in a paper notebook, meanwhile, is more likely to attract attention by the laws of scarcity value. Though admittedly I often draw the attention of strangers anyway, and the notebook may well have been an excuse.

Today Harper Collins announced they’re publishing Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall as an application for the iPhone, bundling it with video interviews of the author by way of extras. My initial reaction was to wonder how many people actually read whole novels on a mobile phone. Then again, I had similar doubts ten years ago when MP3s started to appear, and I was convinced that listening to music through a computer would never catch on.

But that was before the era of the iPod. Portability is everything. iPhones, Kindles and iPads are thin and light, and until now Wolf Hall was only available in hardback – one the size of a house brick.

(Actually, I can remember when mobile phones were like house bricks, too.)

The author Christopher Fowler wrote in his blog recently that he hoped the e-book revolution would see publishers catering for people who still prefer paper books, but who don’t have the kind of biceps for carrying fat doorstoppers as we saunter about town. He suggests they put out cheap paperback editions at the same time as the hardback, as small and as slim as production can manage (maybe Gideon Bible-thin paper). He cited a limited edition of Susanna Clarke’s epic Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, published in one edition as a set of three thinner, more portable paperbacks, reminiscent of those Victorian multi-volume novels. Count me in.

Until then, I have to admit being attracted to ebooks purely out of lack of butchness.

Sunday: with Ms Silke to the NFT, now rebranded as the ‘BFI Southbank’. Though all the signs around Waterloo and the South Bank still point to the National Film Theatre. We see ‘To Be Or Not To Be’, the original 1942 version with Carole Lombard and Jack Benny. Pleased to discover that many jokes I’d assumed were added by Mel Brooks in his 80s remake are in fact in the original, like Hitler saying ‘Heil myself.’ It’s one thing to make jokes about Nazis in Poland, quite another to do so while it was all still going on – and when it looked like they were winning. The opening sequence – a lone Hitler suddenly appearing on the streets of Warsaw in early 1939, stopping traffic and getting shocked stares from the crowd, while underscored by a wry newsreel narration – is just wonderful.

Afterwards to the ICA bar for Stephen Harwood’s birthday cocktails, repairing after that to the Retro Bar in the Strand. Both unchanged for years, though the ICA is in trouble. There’s news afoot of debts, redundancies, threats of closure and general angry finger-pointing at ICA boss Ekow Eshun. Were it down to me, I’d appeal to the Queen and Prince Charles about the rules stopping the ICA putting up adverts, or indeed any indication there’s something going on at all, on the building exterior on the Mall (close to Buckingham Palace). Many passers-by aren’t even aware they’re walking past a famous arts centre. A friendly, classy redesign of the ICA’s logo and all its advertising is equally overdue – the kind which rejuvenated the Barbican a few years ago.

I’d also redo the bar and corridors to give it a more cosy, ornate salon and club feel: red walls, drapes, Greek columns, ferns, mirrors, artists’ tiles, plush chairs and sofas. An ICA to out-Palace the Palace. I’ve been a guest of Buck House myself, and much as I was grateful for my mother’s MBE, I did think HMQ’s place could have done with a bar. So that’s my ‘vision’ for the ICA, if Mr Yentob is reading (again). Make it the New Palace Of Glittering Art (With Special Offers On Cocktails).

***

Ms Silke has a Joe Orton-style montage of photos and clippings on her wall. Favourite actors, rock stars and writers are mixed in with her friends and relations. She’s put a photo of me between Lord Alfred Douglas, Richey Manic and Lassie.