Sunday: hot and sunny in all the unpleasant ways. Men and women exposing flesh that really should be put away. I am in full black suit, surrounded by men in t-shirts and shorts. I know, I should have worn the white linen ensemble.

To the Bloomsbury Bowling Lanes to see a few bands with friends in: New Royal Family, Low Edges, Luxembourg. I forget it’s a Sunday, when one must always allow extra time for more infrequent tubes and buses, and closures for engineering works. Highgate tube is closed, so I have to take a bus. Arrive not only too late to see the NRF, but to be told that I look unusually colourful. A touch of sunburn from the unexpected bus journey, where no seat isn’t steeped in sunlight. Thus my mood is already ruined for the evening.

The Low Edges and Luxembourg are entertaining enough, and I’m sure I would enjoy them if I was in more of a mood to enjoy anything at all. It’s an 80s themed event, and each band is charged with playing an 80s cover version. The Low Edges do Huey Lewis’s ‘Power Of Love’. Luxembourg do ‘Manic Monday.’

I have mixed feelings about this sort of thing. There’s dangers of cheap, jokey irony that I can take or leave, but that’s more to do with the organisers, who I don’t know, than the bands, who I do (or at least, some of their members). The organisers keep having party games in between the live acts, mucking about with samples of A-Ha’s ‘Take On Me’.

It’s like hearing young people you don’t know quoting ‘Withnail at I’ lines at each other. Funny for some, less so for others.

Jarvis Cocker has been doing the 80s hit ‘Eye Of The Tiger’ at his gigs. Some think this is brilliant, some thing it’s hilarious, others think it’s bizarre. I’m not sure what I think.

I chat to a few friends, but ultimately feel terribly lonely and out of place with it all. I end up sitting by myself in a corner reading my pocket copy of Rilke’s ‘Letters To A Young Poet’, for goodness’ sake. Well, it’s as good a guide to solitude as any. Though Mr Rilke could do with a few jokes. Get over yourself Rilke, I say.

It’s hard, because I want to support those I know in bands. But I enjoy gigs per se less and less at the moment. Private views, films, book launches, plays, yes. Club nights and gigs less so. Particularly if I have to get there by myself.

I think it’s to do with not enjoying the shared experience element. I currently look for exclusive, personal connections in art between the perceiver (reader / listener / viewer) and the artist. The one-on-one experience, like reading. The group experience less so.

At gigs I feel I have to play the part of The Audience Member. I can’t enjoy the band as much as I’d like, because I’m thinking about how best to get home, who to talk to, what I can afford at the bar, and whether to approach that attractive person in the crowd that almost certainly doesn’t feel the same way about me. It’s meant to be Fun, but increasingly I come away at best self-conscious and out of place, at worst depressed and lonely.

It would make all the difference if I’d come with a friend, and left with a friend. Right now, I crave either solitude or one-on-one company like never before. One among the many – even a crowd of friends – is something I’m feeling oddly at sea with, despite my aloof reputation. Which is fine, but I have to stop spending time doing anything I’m not 100% enjoying, and hope my friends will understand. If anything, being so aloof I’m not actually there helps cultivate the image, the myth.

Which is a real shame, as so many of my friends are all in bands or putting on club nights or holding birthday gatherings. I’m spending so much time saying sorry.

That said, there are still a few bands I’d like to see live right now, even if it means going alone. Xiu Xiu. The North Sea Radio Orchestra. And I’m always up for a spot of theatre and musical theatre, which I’ve not done enough of in recent memory. Looking forward to a Sondheim revue this weekend, plus my first trip to the Globe next month, for Love’s Labours Lost.

Walking home past the temple-like St Pancras Church, which is lit up at night, I see the usual homeless man playing his unfortunate part to type – puffy jacket, sunken expression, baseball cap, filthy blankets – bedding down under the vast columns. But further along, also under the columns, there’s another sleeping bag. A pristine white one. And in it are a couple: a thin woman wrapping elegant arms around a man. It’s the clean white sleeping bag – possibly a duvet – and elegance of the woman’s bare arm that convince me they must have a home to go to.

Hard to tell with the man. He has the same sort of scruffy half-beard favoured by fashionable and monied gentlemen who work in television, as well as actual tramps. Women are far more helpful. Few women of Primrose Hill would like to be described as dressing like a homeless person. Whereas much of the male staff at Channel 4 would be over the moon.

Maybe the woman just fancies tramps. There’s someone for everyone.

It’s about 30 degrees C at 11pm, so a bout of al fresco lovemaking is a perfectly good explanation. I feel the need to take a closer look, so unusual is this sight. And yet, though this is a public space on a vast and busy street, it feels like invading their privacy. I walk on quickly, embarrassed. And of course, feeling very much alone.