Saturday 19th April 2014. To the Hammersmith Eventim Apollo, as it’s currently known, for a concert by Adam Ant. My brother Tom is playing guitar in Mr Ant’s backing band, as he has done for the past couple of years.  Mum comes along too, making it our first family reunion in London since Dad died. Young Ms Holly also joins us, from the extended family on Tom’s side.

The Apollo is one of the largest theatre-style venues in London, and I’ve somehow never been to it until tonight. Built in the 1930s, it has a stunning Art Deco interior that has been recently refurbished. The upstairs bar looks like something from Grand Hotel: you half expect to bump into Joan Crawford as a pushy stenographer.

We have a slight panic when we get there and realise that our tickets are standing only, but Mr Ant’s crew help us to exchange them for seats in the upstairs circle (with our grateful thanks to Roy from the merchandise stall). Mum is 70, and is unlikely to be tempted to join a mosh pit. I’m 42, but increasingly prefer a seat myself.

That said, musing on the requirements of getting older is moot. Mr Ant’s main output was in the late 70s and early 80s, and many are here because they bought those records when they first came out. So they aren’t exactly spring, or even summer chickens themselves. But I look around and see a healthy amount of all ages and genders, albeit with the lion’s share in their 40s and 50s. There is indeed a mosh pit down the front – even a few people crowd surfing.

Tonight is also about one particular album: Dirk Wears White Sox, the first Adam Ant long player, which was released in 1979. Mr Ant is on top form tonight, and not only performs every song from the album in order, but goes straight into a decent amount of selections from his whole oeuvre, my favourites of the night being ‘Whip in My Valise’, ‘Kings of the Wild Frontier’, and ‘Wonderful’. He performs for a straight two hours. No encores, no stopping. He even has a costume change onstage, behind a vintage screen, singing as he dresses (much as I saw Grace Jones do).

Dirk Wears White Sox is by no means a catchy album: it’s more of a cult favourite from the period just before he became a pop star. Much of the material is more experimental  than post-punk: Tom confirms to me afterwards that ‘Animals and Men’ is particularly difficult to learn. It’s full of shifting, jazzy time signatures and lots of jagged stop-start moments. The more typical post-punk songs sound very Franz Ferdinand now, of course, with that familiar slurping disco beat under the spiky guitar riffs. (Or perhaps that should be ‘very 2004’, when Franz Ferdinand’s debut came out.)

The moment when ‘Cartrouble’ shifts from Part One into Part Two, and the guitars suddenly change from wiry to widescreen, is even more startling when it’s live and turned up a thousandfold, and you’re sharing the moment with a whole temple of acolytes. In the past, I’d been a little wary about the validity of ‘classic album’ run throughs like this. But tonight I realise such concerts can be a joyous celebration of music history and of being alive full stop – still being alive – for artist and audience alike. A celebration of art and life, no less.

We stick around afterwards and chat with Tom at the aftershow party (held in the circle bar). Some public faces there: Keith Lemon (who obligingly poses for a photo with Holly, who’s a fan), Bill Bailey, Mark Lamarr, Mark Moore, Kevin Rowland. Lots of dandyish, well-dressed men in suits and hats, and women in Vivienne Westwood-esque takes on punk cabaret: a few berets with little polka dot veils.

* * *

Monday 21st April 2014. The dregs of the Easter weekend. I grumpily buy a Smarties chocolate egg from Muswell Hill Sainsbury’s, mainly because they’re left overs, bumped down to 40p.

Work this week:  revising the essay on Late Victorian flâneuses, for the Fin De Siecle course. Also mopping up the last set texts of the academic year, such as Lara by Bernadine Evaristo. Glad to have finally read Jane Eyre. It didn’t quite become a personal favourite, but I can see how it’s pivotal to the general span of literature. My favourite book that the degree introduced me to this year is Vathek, closely followed by Rana Dasgupta’s Tokyo Cancelled.

* * *

Tuesday 22nd April 2014. I see Daisies at the ICA. It’s a 1966 cult film from Czechoslovakia, as it was called then. The director died a month ago, so the ICA are showing it as a tribute. Very of its time, like The Knack mixed with Bunuel. The story is essentially this: two childlike young women muck about in various surreal settings. There’s some moments of beauty, some of silliness, and some unnerving ones too. It definitely has its own identity – sheer psychedelic abandon.

* * *

Thursday 24th April 2004. This week’s new film is The Double, seen today at the Prince Charles Cinema. Jesse Eisenberg stars, last seen as a monotonous computer expert in The Social Network. It’s directed by Richard Ayoade, who was last seen as a monotonous computer expert in The It Crowd. So Mr Eisenberg’s character this time is, well, no surprises.

But here the computers are very different, as is the whole setting: a kind of nocturnal Orwellian world where technology seems stuck at an early 1970s level, all primitive screens and chunky beige keyboards. The architecture meanwhile evokes 1960s Eastern Europe: lifts that never work, brutal underground trains, tower blocks and wastelands. The aesthetic may owe a lot to Terry Gilliam’s Brazil and indeed his short Python spin-off film, The Crimson Permanent Assurance (most of the office workers are elderly men), but it has its own original stamp. Sadly the world of the film doesn’t seem to gel with the story about doppelgangers. The aesthetic upstages the plot, while the plot doesn’t know which rules it’s meant to be following. The ending is baffling, but whether it’s meant to be baffling or has just made a mess of its own logic it’s hard to tell. It’s very nearly a great film, just not quite.

* * *

I fume at an article in the Guardian about ‘Britpop casualties’. It’s based on interviews with members of UK bands from the 1990s, whose careers were not quite as successful as Blur and Oasis. The article seems less interested in music and more interested in the failure of those who dare to make it.

I’ve seen schadenfreude-laced features like this before, the gist of which is ‘don’t ever be in a band, be a music critic, that’s better’. In this latest article, there’s a sickening sense of crowing over the misfortune of the singer from Marion (drugs, near-death) and the one from Menswear (mental illness). As Wilde said, it’s the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Well, such journalists will never, ever know what it’s like to play a gig or hear their record on the radio or see the sheer bliss on the faces of people at the front row of a concert, and know that they made those people feel that happy, for that day. I saw Menswear play the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in the 1990s. They were absolute stars, and were loved as stars. They were on bedroom walls all over the world. I knew people who were absolutely, giddily besotted with Menswear. If such fans and even former band members now look back and think it was all rubbish, or that it now sounds impossibly dated, that changes nothing. Those bands added to the amount of joy in the lives of strangers. That’s as valid a life achievement as any, and should be celebrated as such.

Rock journalists who forget this have forgotten what it’s like to be a fan. To focus instead on narratives of hubris and failure does them no favours. Music writing should be more about pop, and less about tall poppy syndrome.

Saturday 12th April 2014.

This week’s work: finishing off the research and writing the first draft of the latest essay, the last one for the Fin De Siècle course. I set myself a goal of 350 words a day. That sounds fairly meagre, but it takes a much longer time to do than other types of writing. Every paragraph has to be carefully researched, with footnotes and references and bibliographies, all of which must be checked against a style guide. Then every paragraph must have its own topic sentence, backed up by quotes from primary texts (novels and stories), and then honed further through ‘engagements’ with secondary texts, as in works by scholars about the primary text in question. ‘Architecture and Gender in Meg and Mog Go On Holiday’, that sort of thing.

When I started the degree, I thought ‘engaging’ with secondary texts meant drawing on a kind of arrogance. I thought it meant writing about how some professor with dozens of books to their name is wrong, and you, an unpublished undergraduate, are right. But a couple of years on I’ve found out how to respectfully disagree with an academic work, in order to define your own position on the subject. It takes a while to build up the confidence to do this, but then it starts to present itself as an option. You notice connections that seem obvious to you, which are perhaps not obvious to anyone else. And then you feel useful.

This week’s example is when I study Charlotte Mew’s short story about walking in London ghettos, ‘Passed’ (1894, from The Yellow Book). There’s a mention of Marylebone that has led one critic to assume it is the location for the whole story. An image in a shop window is said to ‘rival, does wax-work attempt such beauties, any similar attraction of Marylebone’s extensive show’. This is surely not meant to be a comment on Marylebone as a district, but a reference to Madame Tussaud’s. Tussaud’s was Marylebone Road’s ‘extensive show’ of waxworks in the 1890s, and is still going strong there today. None of the writing about the Mew story seems to have realised this, though admittedly it’s not a very well known story.

It’s moments like this which change my attitude from just some student regurgitating the work of others and ticking the boxes to get a good mark, to someone that can politely Make A Contribution, as one tutor’s catchphrase has it. The great thing about literature (and all art) is that there’s an infinite space for criticism as it is. Originality is just a matter of practice and perseverance, as with so many things. Eventually, after feeling intimidated by all the writing that’s ever existed, you find out there was room for you after all.

* * *

Monday 14th April 2014.

Much celebration of Britpop in the media, marking the twentieth anniversary of Blur’s Parklife, along with the first Oasis album. Kurt Cobain’s death is being reheated too.

For me, 1994 was the year I moved from Bristol to London, aided by Clare Wadd from Sarah Records who let me use her car as a removals van. So as of February I’ve clocked up twenty years in the same rented bedsit. Still some way to go to beat Quentin Crisp, who managed twice that. I’ve not managed to match his complete lack of cleaning surfaces either: I’ve just wiped the surface of my fridge.

Even back then I remained amazed at anyone living in London who could afford anything bigger than a bedsitting room, at least if they were by themselves. Though with today’s prices, the idea of buying a house in London now seems to be beyond normal people, let alone the likes of me. ‘A house is a machine for living in’ was Le Corbusier’s great ideal for architecture. Now, a house is a machine for making money.

* * *

Tuesday 15th April 2014.

To the ICA cinema for the film Her, written and directed by Spike Jonze. It won this year’s Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, though it’s really a new take on quite an old sci-fi concept – a man falls in love with his computer. If you see it as a version of The Sexy Robot, there are countless examples in cinema which go back to Metropolis in the 1920s. The Sexy Robot is also a close relation of The Sexy Alien, so it’s not surprising that the mechanical mistress in Her is voiced by Ms Scarlett Johansson. I last saw her in Under The Skin, arriving from outer space and helping herself to a series of unfettered Scotsmen.

In Her it is her, as an advance type of operating system, who is picked up. We see her being bought from an Apple Store-type showroom in a slightly more futuristic Los Angeles, by the lonely Joaquin Phoenix. We even get a glimpse of her instruction booklet. It’s a thin piece of paper folded up too many times, like the ones that come with prescriptions. This must be intentional: Mr Phoenix is not so much looking for a new version of Windows 95 as he is a cure for a broken heart.

The Johansson character is therefore a vocal version of the Microsoft Word Paperclip, except less irritating. Curiously, she doesn’t have an animated graphic of her own. The world of the film is one where the voice is everything. Typing appears to be obsolete, and computers are controlled by speaking, via the use of wireless earpieces (which also act as microphones, somehow). Ms Johansson can ‘see’, thanks to those tiny cameras that are already in computers now, and she draws pictures on Mr Phoenix’s iPhone-like screen. She also chooses her own name – Samantha – yet she never selects an image to represent herself. Not even a photo from one of those Buzzfeed quizzes, like ‘Which Kitten Are You Today’?

I suppose one reason is that Samantha is meant to be an upgrade of Siri, the popular virtual assistant for the iPhone. As I understand it, Siri has no visual avatar either, just a symbol of a microphone. So Mr Jonze prefers Ms Johansson to exist purely as a voice in the mind of the audience, to the point where a sex scene between the leads is represented by a completely black screen. It’s a version of phone sex without any phones, where their voices narrate their own imagined intimacy. This is an unusual yet cheering moment: if that form of coitus really is the future, then that’s the end of unwanted pregnancy and sexual diseases right there.

The irony for me is that last week when I saw a film, also at the ICA, there was a blank screen moment which turned out to be a fault with the projector. This time it happens again, but now it really is intentional.

This is both the triumph and the frustration of Her: it comments on the way things seem to be heading, but does so via a medium – cinema – that can’t adequately represent the move towards relationships that only exist in cyberspace. The trouble with limbo is that it is neither here nor there.

I wonder how the film will age. It might be as prescient as Orwell’s 1984, or it might look as dated as those 1960s films which expected us to all have flying cars by 1998. I was so looking forward to those flying cars.

Saturday 5th April 2014.

I finish the essay on Austen and Beckford, and start researching one on the Fin De Siecle. This one is about the female flaneur of 1890s London (the flaneuse), and whether such a person could exist on the same terms as a male stroller. In the Sherlock Holmes story ‘A Scandal In Bohemia’, Irene Adler uses a male disguise to turn the tables on Holmes and Watson. After being followed for most of the story, she stalks them right back, and defeats them.  But it’s significant that Irene Adler calls her male clothes her ‘walking clothes’.

The poet Amy Levy had a different solution to exploring the fin-de-siecle streets: her ‘Ballad of the Omnibus’ claims the view from the top deck of a bus as her own. It’s also interesting she chooses the bus over the steam-powered underground train, not just because of the view but because the Tube – then as now – encouraged its passengers to gaze at each other. As a result, the bus provided more freedom from objectification than the Tube.

It’s certainly an issue this week, anyway, with discussions in the press over the ethics of the Facebook group ‘Women Who Eat on the Tube’. It’s a club where women are photographed without their consent, having their lunch on the Underground. The fact the group was set up by a man didn’t help his unconvincing defence on Radio 4’s Today programme, where he called it ‘a field study’. Monday coming sees a protest event in London called ‘Women Who Eat Wherever The F*** They Want’. So here’s to the ladies who lunch.

What might change now is the use of smartphone cameras to belittle people.  In the same way that the Highway Code came along years after people were driving cars, codes of conduct for smartphone ‘stranger-shaming’ (as it’s called) will probably be required before long. The anger over Women Who Eat On Tubes might the beginning of this.

* * *

Monday 7th April 2014.

To the BFI IMAX to see Derek Jarman’s Blue, the 1993 film. It features a single frame of blue set to an impressionistic soundscape of Jarman’s diaries and poetry, mostly on the subject of his deteriorating health through AIDS, particularly his bouts of blindness. Back in 1993, Blue was something of a broadcasting event: Channel 4 screened the film without a single advert break, as part of a ‘simulcast’ with BBC Radio 3 FM, so people could get the full benefit of the stereo effects. This was before TVs came with stereo sound. It’s difficult to think of Channel 4 working with Radio 3 again, at least not on such an uncompromising arthouse film project.

The IMAX event is introduced by Jarman’s partner Keith Collins, who now has incredibly long hair, while Simon Fisher Turner, its main composer, mentions that at the time of the Blue TV broadcast, he only had a black and white set. So for him it was Grey.

I’m slightly disappointed that the full height of the IMAX screen isn’t used, but I suppose that would have meant a special reformatting.  But the sound is perfect, and the whole event feels properly immersive, so that’s the main thing. Momus and the Durutti Column are also on the soundtrack, and it’s not often you hear their music in an IMAX cinema.

One of the final lines in Blue is ‘No one will remember our work / Our life will pass like the traces of a cloud’. For all the sadness of the subject matter, the uplifting message is that Jarman’s work is now more popular than ever.  There was a book of his sketchbooks last year, a book of poetry out this year, plus the major BFI season, which ends with this IMAX screening. And there’s more to come. I bump into Charlie M in the foyer. She’s involved with another new Jarman book, this time about his Super 8 films.

* * *

Tuesday 8th April 2014.

To the ICA cinema for a new experimental film, Visitors. It’s by the Koyaanisqatsi director Godfrey Reggio, and like that earlier work it consists of a parade of images without dialogue, set to a foreboding Philip Glass soundtrack. Whereas the 1980s film had speed-ed up cityscapes in colour (much imitated in TV adverts ever since), Visitors  is in black and white, in slow-motion, and is made up mostly of close ups of human faces against a black backdrop. There’s also some disembodied hands, seagulls, tower blocks against clouds, a lunar landscape, and a gorilla. But its main triumph is the use of black and white in digital high definition, which I’ve not seen before. It gives the faces a kind of spooky, polished, almost metallic texture. Even the gorilla.

At one point the projector breaks while the sound continues. We sit in the darkness for a good ten minutes before anyone realises it’s not intentional. I quite enjoy the moments when something goes wrong in a film screening. It means you can play Which Audience Member Is Going To Get Up And Do Something (A tall man in a white t-shirt nearest the back, in this case).

* * *

Wednesday 9th April 2014.

Mr O’Boyle, the owner of the Boogaloo bar on Archway Road, shows me how the venue has been redecorated. The red colour scheme has been changed to a greyish-green. On the wall near the bar there’s now a framed photo of myself with Shane MacGowan. It’s from our trip to Tangier in 2007. We’re sitting at a table in the El Minzah hotel, with me in a white suit, trying to look like Paul Bowles.

When I returned to the Minzah in 2009, I saw that a copy of the same photograph had been put up above the wine bar. What particularly pleased me was that it was next to one of Rock Hudson in the 1970s. Hence my expression in this photograph (taken in Tangier, 2009, by Ms Crimson Skye):

 

* * *

Friday 12th April 2014.

Sue Townsend dies. Creator of Adrian Mole, the greatest diarist in fiction, and as a fictional character up there with the best in any medium full stop. According to the appendix of a reissued edition, the first two Adrian Mole books were the number one and number two bestselling British novels of the 1980s.

She had an unfair reputation that she was somehow past her best after that, partly because Mole was so associated with the 1980s, but also because the idea of him getting older couldn’t compete as a concept: self-deluding teenage boys are funny, self-deluding men less so. But when you read the later books this proves to not be true: he just became more like Mr Pooter or Alan Partridge (and indeed the Partridge ‘memoir’ I Partridge owes a lot to Adrian Mole’s adult diaries).

I enjoyed the way the aging Mole updated his definition of being an ‘intellectual’ from understanding most of what Malcolm Muggeridge said on TV, to understanding most of what Will Self said on TV. And The Prostrate Years manages to be funny about chemotherapy – by no means an easy thing to do.

There’s a quote I remember from The Wilderness Years, when Mole is in his early twenties. It has a painfully familiar ring to it:

‘I have thrown my condom away. It had exceeded its Best Before date.’

Saturday 29th March 2014.

My main work this week is finishing an essay on Vathek and Northanger Abbey. I’m also reading Jane Eyre for the first time. I had no idea the childhood chapters would be so grim. It makes Oliver Twist look like the Mickey Mouse Club.

* * *

I have a new article published in issue 10 of New Escapologist, which is out now. The theme of the issue is ‘the absurd’. I chose to write about the Theatre of the Absurd in connection with Harold Pinter’s London. I researched it properly, too – probably too properly.The magazine can be bought from this link:

http://newescapologist.co.uk/2014/03/30/issue-ten-out-now/

* * *

Monday 31st March 2014.

I never know the kindest way of saying ‘no’ when someone approaches me and says ‘do you remember me?’  My heart always sinks when this happens and I know I make a mess of it. My idea of hell is a school reunion. Never mind the point-scoring about careers: I dread the inquisition of ‘remember when?’

An old school friend contacted me recently. He said he always thought of me as being ‘the one who was obsessed with ISBN numbers’.  I had forgotten that little hobby entirely, though it more or less sums my teens up. So I can barely remember myself, let alone others. Too much alcohol under the bridge. Even if I do remember a shared event, my account is probably different to theirs anyway. All one can do is debrief oneself on the page when the memories do come, but always with the assumed disclaimer that events can be mis-remembered.

* * *

Some advice from others, on the dilemma of being asked, ‘Do you remember me?’

From someone I won’t name, as they regularly use this advice themselves:

‘Say “I do, but I can’t remember where from”, even when you don’t.’  

This is a sensible solution, as it forces the other person to fill in the blanks. The context is often the real problem anyway.

Martin White’s suggestion:

 ‘Just say ‘yes’. And walk off.’

Joking aside, I think I’ve actually done this in the past, out of sheer panic.

And from Keith TOTP:

‘Say nothing. When they go to introduce themselves shout “NO! I’m thinking”, then say nothing. Repeat until they leave.’

What I do remember is a story from Tom Baker’s memoir. A woman approaches him in a bar, smiling.

‘Tom! How are you? It’s been an age!’

He struggles to remember who she is.

‘Um… Was it Doctor Who? Touring in rep?’

Her face falls. ‘We used to be married.’ And she storms off.

* * *

Tuesday 1st April 2014.

To the Hackney Picturehouse to see Under The Skin. It’s a sold-out screening. The audience is rapt and well-behaved. Ms Scarlett Johansson plays an unkind alien, who devours the men of Scotland one by one for no very good reason. Her victims are not deep fried – perhaps that would be too easy. Instead, she seduces them in her large van, which we assume has a sticker saying ‘No Horny Scotsmen Left In This Vehicle Overnight’. She then takes them to a house of decrepit awfulness, even for Glasgow, where they disrobe and walk calmly into her fridge – a large tank of black liquid.

Now, whether this is the same alien black liquid from Prometheus we are not told. Actually we are not told very much about anything. So it’s like Prometheus in that respect as well. There does seem to be a new vogue for science fiction films that don’t fully explain themselves. The greatest example of this genre is Mr Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Mr Kubrick knew exactly what to do with a mysterious black liquid. He had it frozen into a nice firm monolith, and everyone was happy. As a general rule in life, it’s better to be on solids.

The ‘alien succubus’ plot is not new. Without checking the TV Tropes website I can think of the film Species, an episode of Torchwood, and an episode of The Outer Limits. However, Under The Skin does do new things. It’s a twist on the connection between space alien-ness and the loneliness that can come to anyone – a theme that hasn’t been done this well since The Man Who Fell To Earth. There are three memorable special effects scenes, two involving skin, and one involving an eye. Half the film is Ms Johannson asking for directions in an English accent (thus resembling a one-woman Edinburgh Festival). The other half is her wandering around the landscape lost, not saying very much full stop. Deacon Blue’s ‘Real Gone Kid’ plays in a bleak kitchen, as it always must.

I can’t say I prefer the film to Sexy Beast by the same director, but I do admire its nerve.

* * *

On the Overground train from Hackney Central to Camden Road, about 11pm. Two young women on the seat opposite are kissing passionately. Both are swigging from cans of lager when they’re not swigging from each other. One has dyed blue hair, so I wonder if a screening of Blue is the Warmest Colour has gone down particularly well.

In London, I’m used to seeing pairs of gay men snogging nonchalantly on the Tube like this. But I think this is my first female couple seen frolicking in the open. They might even be newlyweds – the laws allowing gay marriage came into effect this very week. But as happy as I am for the changing times, my awkwardness around heavy petting is equal-opportunity too, and I move to a different carriage.

* * *

Wednesday 2nd April 2014

To Vogue Fabrics, 66 Stoke Newington High Street, for the launch of La JohnJoseph’s new novel, Everything Must Go (available at http://itnapress.com/titles/everything-must-go-by-la-john-joseph). The book is a surreal gender-bending black comedy about a road trip in a futuristic world. The blurb on the back cover mentions Ronald Firbank twice. It’s safe to say it’s my sort of thing.

The venue has a speakeasy feel. You have to walk down a black corridor from what looks like a residential door, then continue down some steps into a dark basement. There is a stage area at the far end, plus a DJ booth and a modest bar on the left side. No taps or fridges, just cans of lager & cider, plus bottles of spirits and mixers. A small stuffed rocking horse rests on the counter.

I catch readings by R Justin Hunt (who also serves drinks) and Bertie Marshall, one of the 70s punk scene’s Bromley Contingent.  La JJ is in lipstick and earrings, blue blouse and leopard skin skirt. He signs my copy of the novel. I’m hoping to cite it in my thesis about literary camp next year.

* * *

Thursday 3rd April 2014.

London is covered in some sort of high pollution, apparently caused by sand from the Sahara. I think of those old comic book adverts for Charles Atlas, where muscular men kick sand in people’s faces.  I think I can taste the smog at the back of my throat, but that may also be a symptom of being exposed to hysterical headlines.

I meet Danika H and her partner Cherie at the British Library café. I last saw Danika in New York at Lawrence Gullo’s wedding, nearly five years ago. Since then we’ve been exchanging aerogrammes (I think Australia’s postal service still makes them). This week she moves from Australia to the UK. I welcome her and Cherie to London, and apologise for the smog.

Even though it’s past 4pm, the BL café is swarming with people. Empty seats are like gold dust. While I’m waiting for Danika, one woman swipes a chair from my table without even asking – she does it stealthily when I’m looking away, choosing her moment. On the table is a sign: ‘Diners only until 3pm – No computers, meetings or student’ [sic].

This must be the usual peak time of the year, as the library has installed a bank of extra lockers, by the basement toilets.  ‘Just until Easter’, says the man in the cloakroom. It’s a time when classes have ended and students have to go somewhere to do work under their own steam: revision, dissertations, essays. And I’m one of that number too.