Before I rant on about the continuing problems of continuing with Fosca, I want to post a couple of recent photos.

Here’s one taken by Noted Author Travis Elborough, in the Boogaloo. Mr Elborough has written a bestselling book about the old London Routemaster bus. He also wears rather nice pointy boots. In this photo I am clearly drinking, and am either drunk or about to become drunk. Our mutual friend Ms Jennifer Connor is on the right. I think it’s rather like one of those distorted scenes from ‘Love Is The Devil’, the film about the painter Francis Bacon.

And here’s one taken by Ms Connor, in Pond Square, Highgate. Which is haunted by the ghost of a chicken that killed the other Francis Bacon. The 17th century F.B. who didn’t refuse a knighthood (“So AGING!” is what the 20th Century Bacon said, refusing his own chance to be a ‘Sir’).

As part of an experiment in food preservation, Sir Francis of old stuffed a Highgate chicken with snow, caught a terrible chill, and died. The half-plucked chicken’s ghost has been seen howling and flapping around Pond Square in the centuries since. If by chance it appears in this photo, do let me know. I do like a good chicken ghost story.

This is also a handy guide to How To Spot Dickon Edwards From Quite A Long Way Away.

Dad writes to comment on my entry on the changing attitudes toward recycling. He lists the three Stages of Innovation, which apply to anything from the Internet to the Horseless Carriage:

1) Eccentric / mocked
2) Trendy / worthy
3) Official / commonplace.

Onto some ranting. Living alone and aloof as I do, I find all too easy to succumb to the general sense of wondering ‘what’s the point?’ about anything. You know the sort of line of thinking. Life is just too hard. So much annoys or goes wrong, or so it can seem if I let one of my spiralling funks descend. Hence the need for Diary Angels.

But this is more about Dickon the Eccentric Writer, Dickon the Wandering Flaneur, Dickon the Gentleman and Dandy. I can do those things from now to the age of 99. And I intend to. Dickon the Indie Band Leader is a different matter. Music is far more complicated, both to make and to disseminate.

If you have something to say to the world, choosing to do so by music can be wonderful, but can also be a gamble. You can reach far more people than if you were to put out your message in, say, a book, but you can also reach far fewer. And musical success is about so much more than just the music. There’s the right timing, the right packaging, the right media buzz, the right hair, the right comparisons, the right gigs, the right string-pullers behind the scenes. So much has to be aligned in just the right way. And then you realise that not everyone likes your style of music, or indeed music at all.

I’m in danger of sounding like the Mark Gatiss ‘failed rock star’ character in The League Of Gentlemen. But then, I’ve met similar figures in all spheres of creativity. At some function or other I was collared by a very forlorn gentleman who used to have a column in a national newspaper, but was booted out in order to make way for some brasher, younger columnist. He’d failed to make himself into a Name, he said. He thought it was enough to just be a good writer.

All creativity is narcissism in the end. I’m just more honest about it than most.

My CV has only one sentence:

“Don’t you know who I AM?”

(another one for the Book of Dickon Quotations, there)

I’ve also been chatting to some of the older figures in both the music world and book world. At a recent music industry launch:

Record Label Man: You’re best out of the music game, Dickon. These days, it’s full of self-deluding fools. I think you should get into the author scene – your image would have more effect. So many successful songwriters are just failed authors, anyway.

And then, at a recent book launch:

Publishing Man: You’re best out of the literary scene, Dickon. These days, it’s full of self-deluding fools. Have you thought about being in a band? Your image is very striking and would have more effect in the music world. So many successful authors are just failed rock stars, anyway.

The publisher had no idea about my past, suffice it to say. And he thought I was about 25.