Slink into dutiful over-indulgence for two days. Any excuse. The 25th is punctuated with visits to friends in the area, plus feeding a cat, in addition to the usual Waterlow ducks. The 26th is a day of happy solitude: loafing around, sitting in Muswell Hill cafes, dozing off.

I now feel I have eaten, drunken and slept enough to keep me going for all of 2008.

***

Notes from the 25th, with photos.

9 AM, Highgate. Mum & Dad’s presents to me include two graphic novels, Posy Simmonds’s Tamara Drewe, and Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. Both are new works by old hands. In fact, I first enjoyed the authors when I was a teenager living with my parents, so it all makes sense. I phone Mum & Dad to chat and say thanks. They’ve also sent me a cheque, which I banked the day before. Going to the bank on Christmas Eve, and to deposit money, made me think of It’s A Wonderful Life.

10 AM. To Avenue Road in Highgate, to feed Jennifer Connor’s cat, Vyvian. Named after the character in the Rik Mayall series The Young Ones. So I recall how Anna S’s cat in nearby Archway is called Flashheart, after the Rik Mayall character in Blackadder. I try to think of a third Rik Mayall-related cat, but fail.

Jennifer’s house is a few doors along from the Romo After-Party House, where the band Persecution Complex – sisters Chesca & Becca Grover and their school friends Ryan & Liz – used to live. Pretty much everyone involved in that whole Romo scene circa 1995 regularly repaired to this quiet Highgate street, after Club Skinny or Club Arcadia chucked out. The walls were coated in tin foil, a nod to Warhol’s Factory, and the PC House had a similarly Warholian open house policy. All kinds of ruffians, ‘superstars’ and characters from the mid 90s music scene came by. Just as well no one was shot.

But oh, the tales to be told. I’ve just remembered the band The Longpigs were among the visitors. Which means Richard Hawley would have been there.

The PC sisters are still making music, currently as The Rum Circus, and have moved down the road, to Crouch End.

Becca got married this year. I was one of the few Old Romos at the reception. Didn’t really know the husband, or indeed most of their new rock band-type friends. It’s not like it is in Richard Curtis films, with the same group of friends staying together for decades, through marriages and funerals. So I now cherish invitations from those I’ve known for more than a few years, even if the later contact is sporadic.

At Becca’s wedding reception I bumped into Lucy Hunt, who grew up in Kettlebaston, a tiny Suffolk village close to my own, Bildeston. Her parents knew my parents, and I caught the same school bus as her when I was about 14. She became a Hunt Saboteur in her later teens, foiling the local fox and hare antagonists. I think the joke about her surname had been well and truly made at the time.

Ten years later, circa 1995, and I met Lucy again at one of my first music industry parties. This time, she was the press officer for the band Ash. I didn’t see her again until 2007. She grabbed me to say hi both times, though. Not the other way around. I prefer it that way.

So much of my life is like this, because I live in constant fear of being told off. Why am I at this party? I got an invite. Why do I have the Diary Angels scheme, asking readers to send me money? Because two readers suggested it, separately. Not me. What am I doing in Sweden, or on the cover of a Dutch newspaper? I was asked. What am I doing on a BBC1 documentary? I got a phone call. Why am I DJ-ing? I was emailed.

It wasn’t me. Not my idea. Not my fault. Don’t blame me. And so on. It’s about time I stopped this craven approach. Let 2008 see more action, more accountability, more instigation, and less arrogance and passivity for its own sake.

So this year I bumped into Lucy H at Becca Grover’s wedding reception. She’s now working for the people behind the Sugababes, or someone like that. I suppose the next time we’ll meet will be about 2019.

Also at Becca’s wedding was an older gentleman I didn’t recognise:

Man: Hi Dickon. You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of the McCanns.

For a few seconds my mind threw up a photo of this year’s most famous missing girl. I’ve been accused of all kinds of things in the past, and refuse to be surprised any more. But the cogs eventually clicked, and I realise he meant a friend of Shane MacGowan’s I know, also called McCann.

This is an absolutely typical occurrence for me. I try to tune my brain into Becca & Cheska Grover mode, and tune out all the other scenes and social circles and lives I’ve dipped into. And then when I bump into someone from the Shane MacGowan ‘scene’, or someone from my Suffolk childhood ‘scene’, I feel I should somehow be confused.

The phrase ‘small world’ is a cliche too far. People aren’t filed away in boxes in the way they are in one’s mind. I just need to tell myself this more often.

‘Mr Edwards! You are NOT at the centre of the universe. Yes, someone you know from Simon Price’s club scene now IS dating the guitar player from a Sarah Records band you last saw in 1992. Yes, you DID know Ms X and Mr Y separately from their respective London scenes, before they met and moved in together. So what!

‘Your name and appearance may be filed away in the minds of many. But – get this – you are NOT at the front of their mental queues! At best, you are a slightly easy to spot footnote. Now get that understood, and get over yourself. Turn that vanity into productive work, or turn it off!’

This is my Christmas Message, by the way. Get Over Yourself, Me.

Now, here’s Vyvian the cat. Who belongs to Jennifer Connor. Who lives with Alex Mayor, the Baxendale member and producer of the new Fosca album. And she’s dating Chris, whom she met a couple of years ago, but whom I vaguely knew in 1997 when he was editing the early Belle and Sebastian videos and who was part of that whole Chalk Farm scene including people like David & Katrina from the Orlando fan club, and Mel whom I saw carrying a baby on Holloway Road the other day, who was in the Debutantes, who share members with Scarlet’s Well, who, who, who…

‘Mr Edwards! You’ve been warned. Shut up and feed the cat.’

***

Okay. Merry Christmas, Vyvian.

It’s Christmas Day. So I’ve bought crackers from John Lewis. They have little sequins on the outside.

Fine. I’ll pull it myself.

There you go, one party hat. No? Pfft. And they say cats are child substitutes. At least babies can wear party hats. Well, if you catch them asleep.

Not sure what this cracker gift is. A kind of miniature specs case. Or a coin case, perhaps. Here’s the joke.

When is a boat like snow? When it’s adrift.

I can find funnier jokes. Next entry, then.