Saturday December 19th 1998

Fosca are playing Club V’s New Year’s Eve party, Upstairs at the Garage (I’m a creature of habit), playing with Linus and “The Lesbian and Gay Community”, a band who apparently use instruments made up of bits of guitars I smashed in the former noisy Fosca. I wondered what happened to those guitars.

I’m mainly doing this for myself. I hate trying to Enjoy Myself for it’s own sake. So for once, I can think about rehearsing and singing rather than the dreaded Stroke of midnight, where everyone Strokes each other with all the sincerity of a politician kissing babies. And I sit hugless in some corner. Not this time. It’s the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd. New member this time is Ms Farzana Fiaz, who also plays in a band called Anglocanadien. She’s recently cut her hair short, something people seem to be doing a lot since joining Fosca: Rachel and Cressida both now looking not unlike Twenties flappers. Farzana tells me of the time she sported an actual quiff at school, being a big Morrissey fan. She hums me an old Morrissey tune that’s bugging her that day, over the phone to me, and I name it, “Break Up The Family” off the album “Viva Hate”. She nags me about getting my act together, and I have to listen because she also takes classes in boxing.

I go dancing at Uncle Bob’s Wedding Reception Xmas Bash, where we play Pass The Parcel and, like Nero, bop the night away while war is raging in the wings, innocent Iraqis maimed and dying in this season of peace on earth and goodwill to all men, their crime being born into the wrong place at the wrong time. Taylor remarks that if Iraq gassed us all right now, in the throes of juvenile party games, it’d be a interesting and apt way to go.

Shouting on the bingo-caller’s mic is Billy Reeves, who formerly wrote wonderfully urbane and wry lyrics in the band theaudience, and is now doing similar Svengali-like pop activities with the likes of Martine McCutcheon off Eastenders (who, pre-fame, used to be in a pop group called Milan…. I bought their single, “Lead Me On”… it wasn’t bad, either) and Fosca’s own Cressida Johnson. It’s difficult to imagine the writer of such excellent lines as “the car was never tested/and neither were you” is the same rowdy DJ shouting “NO, that’s the BOYS’ present, give it to the GIRLS, now quick, the music’s stopped, unwrap it, …. hurry UP!”. The boys’ prize turned out to be a toy Uzi.

I go to see Charley play with Gay Dad at the swanky bar of the New London Theatre off Drury Lane. It is a building I was last in at the age of 13, to see “Cats”. Well, Mr Lloyd-Webber’s silly show is still going strong there, and as I walk to the venue, I have to sidestep clusters of German tourists marching the other direction, singing “Oh well, I never, did you ever see a cat so clever”

Got abused by a stranger with a ponytail and bad breath.

Him: “Weren’t you in that shit band on Warners? What were you called again?”
Me: “R.E.M.”

He knew Orlando’s label, but not the name… that’ll give you an idea of what sort of people were at the gig. Charley is a star as ever. Quite cat-like, in fact.

I enjoy The Pastels at the Garage immensely, and Marine Research days later at the Dublin Castle, mainly because both bands are enjoying themselves so much, and it’s hard not to be uplifted by unfettered onstage exuberance. Stephen Pastel even puts his guitar down and dances for “Speeding Motorcycle”. Amelia gives me a homemade Christmas card after her band, Marine Research, play. I’ve already made her one. It’s a photo of me. On the Wilde memorial. Hosanna In Excelsis!