Lost Days: Birthday

Whenever I fail to write a diary entry covering the day before, it’s either because absolutely nothing of note happened that day, or because I’ve not managed to get near a computer before my energy sags and the broken bedsprings beckon. Experience has also taught me that it’s not advisable to write an entry just before bed if I’ve been drinking steadily in the evening. It does rather show.

Drinking in order to get over the nervousness of the blank page, though, is a different matter altogether. You just have to get the balance right. Or rather, get the imbalance right.

I do want to debrief myself for the sake of marking Time before Time marks me. Hence ‘Lost Days’. Nothing of interest happened to me yesterday (I shopped, I read, I ate, I tried to write). So this is the time to catch up on the days where things did happen.

Sept 3rd 2006: My 35th birthday passes without too much blood on the carpet. Ms Kirsten takes me out the night before to Soho lesbian venue The Candy Bar, where I drink so much that some of the clientele start to resemble convincing clones of Pete Doherty and Leonard DiCaprio, which is nice. Though to be fair, those gentlemen don’t look entirely unlike boyish girls themselves. Made a complete fool of myself saying “Do you know you who I am?” to a few people, staggered onto a night bus and loudly addressed the entire top deck that this was my last ever ride on such interminable carriages of drunken drivel. I’ve done enough Night Buses for one lifetime, I declared to no one in particular. Ticked that off. Taxis or walkable Highgate nights or early nights from now on. Well, that’s how I felt then and there and in that state, anyway.

Awake on my birthday at about eleven, ridiculously hungover from the night before. Dad rings, and I’m ashamed that I can barely string a sentence together to speak to him. Feeling that the price one pays for over-indulging is spending most of the following day in an even more dazed state than usual, I’m finding nights on the tiles are increasingly poor value. Still, one improvement of sorts is that I no longer throw up when over-indulging. It’s been years since the contents of my stomach have taken a wrong turning. I’m a less messy drunk these days. This is not quite the stuff of redemption, but I like to view it as a small mercy of sorts.

Ms Charley Stone has kindly arranged to buy me lunch in Highgate Village to help take my mind of this depressing anniversary, so off I stagger to Cafe Rouge. Where I am greeted by something of a surprise party: not just Charley, but Kirsten, David B, Anna S, and Rhoda B too.

As I sit down with barely a word, I think they seem slightly miffed that I don’t appear to look grateful or even surprised. I am, I’m just not very good at looking it. This is one of the many entries in that bulkiest of volumes called The Trouble With Dickon Edwards. It’s a character trait which some have claimed is a touch of Asperger’s Syndrome. The bit about being unable to pull normal expressions and show normal emotions when socializing. Even more so when I’m hungover and am thus not entirely sure how to exist full stop. During the course of this lunch, I am treated to my first ever Bloody Mary, which rather perks me up somewhat, particularly when David B mixes it to a suspiciously potent strength.

Given I feel increasingly removed from the human race, I’m utterly grateful for this kind and undeserved attention, just as I am for the many text messages and emails I get wishing me a happy birthday. More than I’ve ever had before, it seems. Rhoda’s card to me is a printed gem: “Good News! You’re Pregnant!”. Charley’s is along the same lines: a suitably gushing snow-covered Christmas card with the words “Merry Christmas” crossed out and “Happy Birthday” inserted in biro.

In the pile of presents, to which Ms Suzi has contributed in absentia, I get a copy of my colonial correspondent Lord Whimsy’s beautiful book, a classy little notebook from Rhoda, a bottle of champagne (if you’re ever inclined to buy me a present between now and the grave, Dear Reader, you can’t go wrong with nice notebooks or champagne), a fantastic 1945 anthology from Dad called “Come Not, Lucifer”, comprising various gothic tales by Poe, Melville, Le Fanu et al, all illustrated by R.A. Brandt; vouchers to spend on Ebay from Tom, and various CDs including the album by The Organ, a new band fronted by a strikingly androgynous young lady who sounds like Morrissey, which is obviously right up my cul-de-sac.

The champagne is still in my fridge, unopened. I think a part of me is hoping for some suitably happy occasion to come along. Well, speed the day, O world.

In the evening, I repair to The Boogaloo as ever, having treated myself to a copy of the new Morrissey track-by-track book by Johnny Rogan (typically dull but anorak-pleasing) and a paperback of Alan Bennett’s Untold Stories (typically brilliant). Anna and David are there, as is Jonathan Norton, who gives me a CD by the band which Ultrasound used to be, Sleepy People, and who tells me I currently look like Nicholas Cage.

Not exactly a stadium-filling turn-out, heigh ho, but as Claudia A points out to me on the tube the next day, I probably should have given people more than one day’s notice of this birthday drinks do. If you want London people to come to your gathering, you have to ram it into their heads regularly over the preceding weeks.

[In which case: Beautiful & Damned, Thursday Sept 21st, Boogaloo, 9pm.]

Taylor Parkes turns up, and I point out that he’s in the Rogan book’s index, there between “Parker, Dorothy” and “Parsons, Tony”. I tell him this juxtaposition just about sums him up, and he calls me a c—.