Sunday January 31st

I hereby conclude: I am a member of the TENTH sex.

1. Manly Men
2. Womanly Women
3. Boyish Boys
4. Girlish Girls
5. Boyish Girls
6. Girlish Boys
7. Male To Female Transsexuals
8. Female To Male Transsexuals
9. The Intersexed
10. Arch Misanthropic Pansexual Alien Compassionate Curmudgeons (With Bad Teeth).

I only have friends in gender groups 2 to 10. I don’t know any Manly Men. Shouting from moving cars. Jangling keys. Swaggering. Big puffy sleeping-bag-like coats. The ones who murmer “seems like a nice boy” when I’m buying a bag of chips. And I’m not even wearing any make up. I may as well be a different species to them.

Archway, 3am. A man dashes across the darkened street to me, only to stop himself: “Sorry. I thought you was my wife.”

I’m only male because it’s the default gender. The vanilla pronoun. Worldwide. 51% of the globe is female, but they still have their own Minorities Section in bookshops.

Jo Brand on the differences between male and female stand-up comedians: “If men have a bad gig, they blame the audience. If women have a bad gig, they blame themselves.”

Tomorrow Fosca moves into The Riverside Studios, Hammersmith. Or at least, an old studio annex. Three weeks to do the bulk of the album. Budget: less than nothing. Or rather, Budget: Love. New recruit Val Jones has already delighted us with her Natalie-Merchant-from-Hull vocal style on “He’s No Help”, which I wrote on the bus back from Oxford the previous day. Appropriately, the song contains a Philip Larkin quote.

Must try hard not to be too influenced by Orange Juice’s album, “You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever”.. Archness and whimsy are all very well, but I also like lyrics you can cut and paste onto your own life. Useful lyrics. Sympathetic vicar lyrics. Lyrics that are your only true friends. “Everything’s awful, but this song is on my side”. Songs for the waif-like and the wraith-like. For the well read and ill fed.

Terribly excited about the record. Geoff Travis said I was writing a new chapter of the book Morrissey started. Presumably one where the pages are stuck together. And all for the wrong reasons.