To darkest East London for Andy Roberts’s funeral on a day of sunshine, lightning and eventually Biblical rain. Someone I used to see around is no longer around. Underlying sense of horror in the air, which I’m not prepared for. I’ve been to funerals before, but those were for my grandparents, both elderly. Death is not the great leveller if someone has died far too young, in a road accident. There is normal grief, and there is shock-grief.

It’s hard to say things like ‘superb turn-out’, and ‘fantastic service’ without sounding like you’re actually envying the deceased, or judging a life by counting heads at a funeral, but those two things are certainly true, and it’s proof that Mr R was certainly famous for more than 15 people. Touching, beautiful and poetic tributes, and an Order of Service that comes with a pull-out comics supplement – comics by Mr R, of course. A terrific touch.

I repair to a pub in Limehouse for the wake, drink too much and say too much. At once point I start a sentence with the Freudian slip ‘My boyfriend’s girlfriend…’. (meaning to say ‘my brother’s girlfriend’) Possibly a title for a song. Music played at the wake includes the Hidden Cameras excellent b-side ‘Heavy Flow Of Evil’.

Walking my way up from East Ham tube, I turn a corner too sharply and collide with a large Asian gentleman whose swagger involves swinging his arms. The result is his hand connects directly with my crotch as I pass. He apologises at once, and of course so do I. As I think John Cleese put it, England is where you say sorry to the person treading on your foot.

At the funeral, I relate this incident to Tim Chipping. He imagines the man being far more horrified than I, rushing home to scrub his fingers at once. To some minds I must resemble the sort of person who would rather enjoy such a collision, or even arrange it deliberately. All I can say is it’s the closest thing I’ve had to a sex life for some time.