Feeling curiously fragile and anti-social lately. Well, more than usual. Extreme Garbo-itis. Trying hard to conserve money, which is rather whittled away when going out and buying drinks. Even two drinks an evening makes rather a dent in one’s resources when living on National Assistance. Which is a pity, as I keep being invited or alerted to all kinds of nice events.

It’s made harder now that I’m no longer working regularly at Archway Video. Still, I’m earning dribs and drabs by doing pleasant computer-based work for them, such as updating their website, typing work, compiling charts. All of which I rather enjoy and do so in the comfort of my own room whenever I like. Mr Benson has got me doing similar work for him too. I’ve just transcribed an interview he did with Quentin Crisp in 1996 for Gay Scotland Magazine, so he can put it on his website. I’ve been listening to his original interview tape for reference. Talk about work one can take pleasure from.

It’s such a cliché for writers to carp on about sub-editors distorting rather than enhancing their words, but the published article does contain a particularly baffling revision on the part of the magazine staff. In Mr B’s hand-typed manuscript, as on the tape, Mr Crisp quotes Saint Theresa:

St Theresa said, “We must treat all people as though they were at least better than ourselves.” Isn’t that a wonderful thing to have said? But God is so angry. All that power, and so mean with it. If I were God – and I never understand why I’m not – I should say, “Shop around, I don’t think you’ll find a better bargain than here.”

In the finished magazine, however, the quote reads “We must treat all people as though they were at least better than themselves.” Thus changing the whole sense of the saint’s message.

Perhaps the sub-editor thought ‘ourselves’ was a typo; that the quotation was just too humbling to be correct. Magazine Sub-Editor Finds Saint’s Words Too Saintly Shock.

And I’m back on the dreaded Life Laundry again, selling heaps of CDs and books on Amazon Marketplace rather than Ebay, where one can just look up the item, see what other people are asking, and muse on whether it’s worth selling your own copy, or just chuck it out.

Today, someone in Mottingham has bought my copy of Kylie Minogue’s Enjoy Yourself, original PWL CD version. I thought ‘Mottingham’; was a typo, but it appears to be somewhere dark in South London. They need all the vintage Kylie they can get down there.

Someone else in Dorset has just bought my copy of The Divine Comedy’s Promenade. It’s the original Setanta release, with a bonus 2nd CD EP of “A Promenade Companion”. I sold it for £5.99, a price off the top of my head, and it went within minutes of listing it. So I have a horrible feeling I’ve ripped myself off. I suppose I should obtain a Rare Records price guide, but I can’t be bothered. So it serves me right if I lose out. Moreover, I’m aware that just because one prices an item at what it’s worth, doesn’t mean it will actually sell quickly, or at all.

Still, I cheered up when I saw a book I’d purchased for 50p in some dusty basement currently listed on Amazon for £200 ‘Sandel’; by Angus Stewart. The bestselling novel of unconventional love, says the cover, by a photo of a solitary naked young man against a black background. “Coolly witty” – Sunday Times. “Bizarre, accomplished” – Times Literary Supplement. So says the jacket in 1970. Mr H thinks it would never get re-published in the Current Climate. Where Mr Jonathan King is regarded by some newspapers as several degrees worse than Mr Milosevic.

So, gushing over homoerotic rarities aside, I’d like to recommend the following events, even if I can’t attend them all myself.

Tonight: Mr Martin White, accordion master, playing at The Book Group, a comedy night hosted by Robin Ince at the Albany on Gt Portland Street. Also features the excellent comedian Dan Antopolski.

Thursday:Kash Point at Moonlighting, 10-3. Theme of which is Leigh Bowery Tribute Night. I rather thought every Kash Point was just that, but this occasion features the late Mr Bowery’s widow Nicola in her first Minty performance since, oh, 1892.

Friday: The Boyfriends at The Islington Bar Academy, N1 Centre. A very English, very London guitar band featuring some of the capital’s most charismatic male specimens.

Saturday: Kenneth Williams – TV Gems and Rarities, presented by Mr David Benson. 8pm, The Plough Inn Theatre, Wood Street, E17 / Walthamstow. Then Club Bohemia 8.30pm-2am, Buffalo Bar, Highbury Corner. If I go to the former, I’ll miss the marvellous band The Irrepressibles at the latter. I’ve seen them before, though. The singer has a wonderful falsetto croon, slightly reminiscent of The Tiger Lillies.

Being unsure how The Tiger Lillies spell their name, I check the Web and find an amusing unkind review of a Boston concert. It’s a fine example of how a bad review for some can be a good review for others. A good note to leave this entry on.

The Tiger Lilies [sic] weren’t much better-they were worse. A white-faced eunuch with an accordion strapped to his chest came out on stage and began singing falsetto songs about children masturbating and other trite Theatre Major shock matter that seemed more like an obvious (unskilled) perversion of a Tim Burton children’s book and Marlene Dietrich’s back catalogue than anything original or conceptually redeeming. Well, they are from Britain, so I guess they at least have some sort of excuse.