Though I’ve yet to visit it, I find out that the new King’s Cross concourse does have at least one unique shop: the first European branch of Watermark Books, an Australian chain. They are exploiting the fact they’re right next to the Harry Potter platform, and rightly so. What stops stations losing their individuality and becoming ‘non-places’  is hanging on to unique associations like this. Paddington has its little bear statue, St Pancras its Betjeman statue. It’s a shame these are often tucked away within the stations, but I like that they give people something unique to look for.

***

It’s only March, but I’ve finished attending lectures for the first year of my course at Birkbeck. Next up is four weeks of the Easter break, then there’s a final two seminars in late April. After that the only remaining sessions are workshops in which to prepare for the first exam, and a few introductory lectures about the modules in the second year. I still have to deliver two essays by early May and revise for the exam taken shortly after that, but the regular lectures are over.

It’s been an experience without a single regret. I still don’t feel like an academic, and I still view MA and PHD students as lofty creatures living on a higher intellectual plane (never mind the professors), but the degree now feels do-able, as opposed to something that other people can do, not me. That’s the big difference. It involves work, of course, and putting in the hours, but this is work that I feel happy about doing, which I even look forward to.

We’ve just been given our optional module choices for the second year. Each of the four years is made up of three modules (modules being different subjects, effectively). The first year has comprised three compulsory modules: London in literature, how to study poetry, and an introduction to literary theory. Next year we have do two compulsory modules: one on ‘The Novel’, and one on medieval and Renaissance texts. The third we get to choose ourselves, from an attractively diverse list.

I’ve already handed in my form for this. My first choice is a creative writing module, specially designed for Eng Lit students, but I’ve since been told I probably won’t get to do it in the  Second Year. Third Year students take priority over Second, there’s only fifteen places, and it’s such a notoriously popular subject. Everyone seems to want to do creative writing.

My alternative module choices are, in order, ‘Fin De Siecle’ (Wilde’s Dorian Gray, HG Wells, Dracula), ‘Queer Fiction’ (recent novels by Sarah Waters, Alan Hollinghurst etc), and ‘Narratives Of The Body’ (Angela Carter, Woolf’s Orlando, some films, even some modern dance pieces).

A few of the set texts are particularly interesting choices for literary study:

– The Dark Knight (2008), as in the second Batman film by Christopher Nolan, for a module on US culture since 1900. To be studied alongside F Scott Fitzgerald and Sylvia Plath.
– Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2009), for the same.
– the films Blade Runner and Aliens, both for the module on The Body.
– Persepolis (2000) by Marjane Satrapi; the Iranian graphic novel. For the compulsory ‘The Novel’ module.
– Fun Home (2006) by Alison Bechdel. Another graphic novel, for the Queer Fiction module.
– Tangles (2011) by Sarah Leavitt. A graphic novel I’ve not heard of, for the same module. So new that the Guardian only reviewed it a few weeks ago.

It’s interesting that all three graphic novels are autobiographical. In terms of proper graphic fiction, we’ve just been studying It’s Dark In London (1996) as the final text in the compulsory 1st year module about London In Literature. It’s an anthology of graphic short stories inspired by the city, edited by Oscar Zarate and including such names as Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Iain Sinclair, Dave McKean, Stella Duffy, and Alexei Sayle. It’s just been republished with extra material and a rather beautiful new cover.

Being closer in format to the genre of underground comics, as opposed to the Marvel or DC-style comics, the book is in black and white throughout. The Alan Moore contribution, I Keep Coming Back, is a companion story to From Hell, which we’ve also looked at – particularly the mythical London tour of Chapter 4. The Moore story in the anthology includes a large close-up panel of an East End pub stripper’s pubic hair, comparing it, rather unforgettably, to an exclamation mark.

I overhear two older ladies in the lecture room, fellow mature students, talking about the collection. It is the first graphic novel they’ve ever read.

Lady 1: “This ‘graphic novel’… (she sighs) I wish it wasn’t quite so graphic.”

Lady 2: “Well… I just kept wanting to colour it in.”

Have been forcing myself to get up at 7 and get to the college library or computer rooms for regular ‘homework’ sessions at 9. My body doesn’t like early mornings, but my mind does – I seem to think more clearly first thing.

Today: Spent a final three hours on the Finisterre essay before submitting the thing for good (deadline was today). Must have been about my tenth draft.

On top of the unfortunate penalty fare incident the other week, I had another piece of essay-related bad luck on Sunday night. I left the memory stick – which had my essay on – in one of the college computers. Even though I rushed back the next morning – getting there at 8am – the stick had gone. Thankfully I’d printed the latest draft out, so it just meant having to type it into a new Word file from the printout. Took me a morning, but it meant I could revise it as I went.

Kind people on Twitter recommended I scanned it by OCR, and used Dropbox but, being on a deadline, I really wasn’t in the best mood for learning how to use new software for the first time. And I’d covered the printout with yet more revisions in pen, so an OCR scan would have been tricky. Typing it up then just sending the file to my Gmail was actually quicker, as I knew what I was doing. I generally do things faster when I know what I’m doing.

But a lesson was learned. I’m not the sort of person that can remember a memory stick.

Someone told me a ‘computer proverb’ regarding this: ‘If it doesn’t exist in three places, it doesn’t exist.’

***

Also today: read the latest set text for the London module – the play London Assurance (1841) by Dion Boucicault  – and attended a lecture on it. A kind of Victorian take on Restoration comedies, but with the kind of inverted witticisms that would influence Wilde.

Also attended yet another study skills workshop on essay writing – can’t have too many. A fairly college-heavy day, then.

Petty ailments of the season: a twitchy left eyelid, return of the slight numbness in my left hand that plagued me last year, and general unfitness & tiredness. I’ve already had the hand looked at by a specialist – nothing serious, perhaps go in for physiotherapy if it’s a problem (it isn’t). An NHS search online suggests that the twitchy eyelid is probably down to caffeine, alcohol or stress, or all three. So I’ve started switching to decaff coffee and camomile tea.

Spent the afternoon preparing for the Writing London module’s seminar. This time – the film Finisterre. Went over my notes and the tutor’s handouts, and watched the film again courtesy of the Birkbeck DVD reference library – you have to sit and watch it on the premises, using one of the computer stations and headphones. Didn’t realise the Astoria Theatre was in the film – people are seen queuing outside for a concert in 2003 by The Hives (I think). The Astoria is now vanished, of course, erased into the crater that will become the central Crossrail platforms.

By the time of the seminar, I’d typically scribbled down enough things to say to take up the whole session. Once again my problem was knowing how to edit my class contributions to that tricky area between not saying anything and saying too much and making my classmates hate me (thankfully I’ve not yet reached that dreaded moment when the tutor says ‘Someone else!’). So I limited my pipings-up by pointing out that the film’s script – everything said by the main ‘narrator’ of Michael Jayston – was written by Kevin Pearce, and that his role is often overlooked in articles on the Saint Etienne films. Then I offered the idea that the film was not so much about The Tourist Gaze, more The Thoughtful Fanzine Gaze, and mentioned Mr P’s 1993 book Something Beginning With O (now worth £65 online, I’ve still got my copy and it’s not for sale). And I mentioned how some of the references to songs in Finisterre are pretty obscure indeed – I suggested that I was probably the only person in the class who knew that the phrase ‘Use A Bank I’d Rather Die’ was a song by McCarthy (and I was).

Chatted online afterwards with Mr Pearce himself about it. He finds the idea of having his words studied for a degree ‘surreal’. Too modest. I can heartily recommend his blog about London songs, The London Nobody Sings and his more recent online music fanzine Your Heart Out. 

Next week we do Henry IV Pt 1. Which will be a lot harder. I’m definitely not a Facebook friend of the scriptwriter there.

***

Afterwards, to the Odeon Tottenham Court Road to see The Iron Lady. It’s not worth the hype, and not as good as the recent BBC TV films on Thatcher, particularly Margaret with Lindsay Duncan. And certainly not three times as good as The Queen (see previous entry).

Attempting to cover a whole lifetime of such a famous life in a single film can only frustrate. It’s far better to zoom in on a particular incident like the 1997 Diana crisis in The Queen, or the 1990 leadership challenge in Margaret. Plenty enough there. Zoom out any further, and surfaces are skimmed.

But what people are really going to see is Ms Streep being excellent as usual, just playing the part, and that’s what you get. Just as Resident Alien was really about seeing John Hurt playing Quentin Crisp again. Both films are not proper films, they’re turns. Is that enough? Yes, if that’s what you come for. Undemanding, no surprises, nothing you didn’t know, you just enjoy the turn.

Spent a few hours after I woke up today, tinkering with the Coleridge & Hughes essay before finally uploading it. Slightly regretting the ‘Shard as visionary fragment‘ pun now, but glad I got it out of my system. It had reached the point where I was taking the same words out only to put them back in again, over and over again.

What I am definitely proud of is just getting it done on time, and not missing a single class yet.

Currently reading Woolf’s A Room Of One’s Own. Stuffed full of engaging ideas, highly readable (particularly for a lecture) and – not a quality always associated with Ms W – quite funny in places. I can’t read the bit about ‘Shakespeare’s sister’ without thinking of the Smiths song that took its title from the piece, or the band that took their name in turn from the Smiths song.

Tonight’s classes: a seminar on gender in poetry (Mina Loy, Plath, Carol Ann Duffy), followed by a lecture on the uses of literary theory. Stayed around in the Birkbeck student union bar afterwards with fellow student Matthew and young MA friend Joseph R. Gin & tonic at only £2.50, plus you can stand on the roof outside and look over Bloomsbury.

Picking up new words to bandy about in essays all the time. Tonight’s is ‘valence’ – the capacity of something to unite, react, or interact with something else.

Not to be confused with ‘valance’, the skirt-like drapery thing that goes around the edge of a bed.

Or indeed, Holly Valance, who recently came fourth for draping herself around the edge of Strictly Come Dancing. 

***

Press release in my email box: “The Iron Lady has taken three times the box office achieved by The Queen“. What are they implying?

Radio listening: Enjoyed Mark Kermode’s review of the new Thatcher film, which quickly turned into a lengthy argument with his long-time foil Simon Mayo: ‘I’m saying you can’t make a film about Thatcher without doing the politics.’ ‘Yes you can’. ‘No you can’t. ‘Well they did’. ‘But it doesn’t work!’ And so on for about twenty minutes. I’ve yet to see it myself, but one thing to say in The Iron Lady’s favour – it’s certainly got people talking.

Writing this at 1am on the morning of Monday January 9th.

I think I promised myself I’d get my college coursework out of the way before I wrote another diary entry. I’ve only just finished it – the deadline is the evening of the 9th. The feeling of getting something done on time is such a calming one. What happens at the end is not that one feels exhausted, but has energy left to spare, in the way that a runner keeps going for a few yards after they’ve hit the finish. So here I am with the diary.

Catching up…

Mid December: My first term at Birkbeck College ended with my first two essays back: both 69%. That’s the highest possible mark for an Upper Second, and still a pass. But it’s not a First. And I now know that I really want a First. Even if it’s the lowest possible First, ie 70%. Just one point away. Still, I have the first year to learn how to get better at this – that’s the whole point. None of the first year marks count towards the final degree, for this reason.

(69. Such a pleasant number in the bedroom, so frustrating in the classroom.)

I need to focus on the positive feedback I received, and I include it here by way of self-encouragement rather than vanity. Honest.

“You write extremely well…”

“Really well-written, compelling piece of work… Fluent and confident… perceptive… relevant and illuminating… A very impressive achievement.”

“You have valuably extended the stock of collective wisdom and knowledge.”

That last one was from a workshop I attended, in which I chipped in quite a lot about grammar and style. Shame that didn’t count towards my degree.

***

On Xmas Eve I saw Carol Morley’s Dreams Of  A Life (superb) at the Islington Screen On The Green. They now have a bar inside the main screen room, at the back behind the stalls. I think it may even have served bowls of olives and ciabatta bread. The seats were comfortable (not tipping up) and detached, with plenty of leg room. Rather like a first class aeroplane section.

I spent Christmas Day in Highgate, phoning my parents in the morning then feeding the ducks at lunchtime in Waterlow Park, as I’ve done for some years now. I was joined for this by Ms Silke once again: mulled wine in a flask by the pond. Dinner was courtesy of my kind friend Ella Lucas, at her place in Highgate, with her friend Natascha.

Accidentally, my two Xmas Day 2011 companions (Silke and Ella) both got me the same Christmas card – an Aubrey Beardsley illustration from Le Morte d’Arthur, as printed by the V&A. I’m very happy that I’m definitely the sort of person to give Aubrey Beardsley cards to. Because I am.

I spent AbyssMas – the period between Christmas and New Year – meeting with my parents who’d come up to stay for a few days, and also catching up with friends like Laurence Hughes.

December 30th saw me DJ at the Last Tuesday Society’s New Year’s Eve Eve Ball – a particularly decadent affair even by their standards. Venue was Mass in Brixton, a huge labyrinthine old church. There were fireworks and countdowns to Midnight to welcome in… Dec 31st.

Spent the real New Year’s Eve recovering from a particularly bad hangover after the LTS ball. Steeled myself to welcome in 2012 at the Boogaloo with Ms Kirsten and her friends, but went straight home after about an hour there.

Since then I’ve been working on the college assignments – poetry by Hughes and Coleridge. Have been lurking in the London Library a lot.

***

Enjoyed the start of the second series of Sherlock as well as the second Downey Jr Sherlock Holmes film (seen with Dad). Bought and devoured the Fist Of Fun DVDs – Stewart Lee’s commentary being as entertaining as his footnotes for his solo book. Also enjoyed Stewart Lee’s new ‘EP’ book, for that reason.

And I’ve been spending too much time on Twitter. I’m just not the sort of person that should be on it very much, I think. Found myself getting in an argument with the fake Wendi Deng account, the one that some journalists thought was the real wife of Rupert Murdoch. I mused to the Fake Ms Deng – not thinking they’d reply – about the hoaxer’s need for validation, about the morality of appropriating someone else’s image and identity, asking them what they thought about the Gay Girl From Damascus case, and why people pretend to be other people on the internet, all that. They – whoever they were really – told me it was ‘just a bit of fun’ and I was analysing things too much. Probably right.

I stood on Highgate Hill today and thought about the London 2012 skyline: the Emirates stadium, the Shard, and now the Olympic Park sculpture by Kapoor, like a huge red figure ‘8’ on the horizon.

My college piece was about Coleridge’s ‘Kubla Kahn’. I read it on one level as a study of the (usually male) desire to build showy edifices for no good reason. I mentioned how it’s quoted in the opening of Citizen Kane, and referred to the Millenium Dome and the Shard: possibly the ultimate illustration of Coleridge’s ‘visionary fragment’, ho ho.

Today: Last lecture at college. We’re looking at a literary essay on the St Etienne film Finisterre, as part of the module on London in literature. Rather unexpectedly, the lecturer shows clips of Notting Hill and Love Actually alongside Finisterre itself. Her argument is that although Richard Curtis’s films present a rather sugary ‘tourist gaze’ version of London, Finisterre is doing the same thing, despite its more arthouse, cliché-free aesthetic. It’s still saying ‘come to London – it’s really great, even the bits which aren’t so great.’ Interesting theory, but I’d say Finisterre also plays with enough notions of detachment and uncertainty to keep that aspect in check. So sad that the New Piccadilly Café, which features in Finisterre, is now gone, but pleased it’s immortalised on film.

Then to two Christmas parties in a row: both in Victorian libraries with connections to Virginia Woolf. First, the end of term party for Birkbeck’s English and Humanities department, held in the Keynes Library in Gordon Square, once home to Maynard Keynes and Woolf and Vanessa Bell, and now part of the Birkbeck campus. No less than three Bell paintings on the walls.

Then a quick tube journey to catch the London Library‘s party in St James’s Square. As they only invited selected supporters, I feel extremely privileged to be asked along. I chat to the head librarian, Inez Lynn, and the press  officer, Aimee Heuzenroeder, before getting mince pie crumbs on the carpet. Drinking wine amongst history & books, twice in one evening, all over by 9pm. I would say this is fast become my idea of a good night out, but the night before I was amongst the last ones to be thrown out of the Boogaloo at closing time, so things haven’t changed all that much.

Stephen Fry has just written an excellent blog entry about the London Library here, which mirrors much of my own feelings about the place.

I’ve officially confirmed which degree course I’m going to do. BA English, at Birkbeck University, starting this October. Four years, part-time, evening classes, and I still have to find paid work to support myself while I’m doing it.

***

Monday March 28^th: I’m interviewed at Birkbeck for my other choice, BA Creative Writing. One of the interviewers is Jonathan Kemp, author of London Triptych. I’m offered a place on that too, so it’s down to me to make the big decision. After closer studying of the courses, it turns out English has the option of taking some creative writing-type modules, so in typical cake-and-eat-it approach, that’s what I go for. These are both incredibly popular courses, and after much rejection by the world of work lately, it feels so gratifying to find acceptance in the world of academe, twice over.

The Birkbeck building is at 43 Gordon Square, so I’ll be poring over the works of Ms Woolf close to where she actually lived.  The houses have been knocked together and are now something of a warren of classrooms and corridors. If you get lost there, as I did, you can find yourself in an underground cinema (home to Birkbeck’s film course) or a secret pocket-sized cafe.

***

Sunday April 10^th: To an elegantly crumbling room at 33 Portland Place, now recognisable as the location for Geoffrey Rush’s consulting chambers in The King’s Speech. A few weeks ago, at one of the Last Tuesday Society’s balls, I bumped into Rachel Garley, partner of the late Sebastian Horsley. She said she wanted to give me one of Mr Horsley’s suits. I was honoured, and agreed.

So here I am in the King’s Speech room, with a long mirror, a rail of clothes and a dozen other gentlemen standing around in their socks and pants – other suit recipients – trying on the accoutrements of the deceased dandy. I know one of the others, Clayton Littlewood, whose book of modern Soho anecdotes, Dirty White Boy, featured Sebastian H on the cover.

In my case, Ms Garley has picked out an ensemble specially for me: a silver velvet 3-piece with pink lining, plus a large-collared white shirt and a fat pink tie. There’s a photograph of Mr H wearing it in his Guardian obituary.

Ms Garley’s plan is to have a big dinner at the Ivy in Mr H’s memory, with all the men wearing his suits and all the women ‘dressed up the way he liked them’ (stylish with decolletages to the fore, I think). But this will be in the autumn, as it’s getting too warm for velvet suits. Well, for other men anyway.

While this suit-giving (I refuse to say ‘gifting’) ceremony is going on, we’re told the jacuzzi room in the floor below is being used to shoot a porn film. It’s exactly what Mr Horsley would have wanted.

I wear the suit straight to a party that evening: a food & drink do for Dedalus Books in Camberwell. There’s a connection: Sebastian Horsley wrote an unkind foreword to Dedalus’s Decadent Handbook. I recall that he still turned up to the book’s launch party, though.

At the party, the suit is anecdotal gold. Or more precisely, anecdotal silver. People ask me about the suit – and who can blame them – so I get to tell the tale. And if they’ve not heard of Sebastian Horsley, I tell the tale of him too. I’m worried about going full Ancient Mariner, though, with so much to say about such a man, and such a life. How to know when to stop?

I suppose I could just say, ‘It was a gift from a deceased dandy’ and leave it at that. But if they do leave it at that, I rather think I’m at the wrong party.

***

Meanwhile, the Scottish Ballet are mounting an interesting new production of Alice In Wonderland. Their Humpty Dumpty is based on Leigh Bowery, while the Mad Hatter is inspired by Sebastian H. From a piece in the Herald Scotland:

The Hatter who’s on stage in the Alice ballet owes his eye-catching appearance to the late Sebastian Horsley, the self-styled Soho dandy who died last year. ‘Horsley was a tremendous peacock, wonderfully eccentric, full of flair,’ says [designer Antony] McDonald with undisguised relish. ‘There are so few genuine eccentrics around these days.’

Their costume designs are here.

In fact, I mention the Scottish Ballet show to Rachel and the others while I’m at the suit ceremony.

Rachel: I didn’t know that. How did you hear about it?

Me: I have a Google Search alert. It sends me an email whenever Sebastian’s name turns up in a newspaper.

Rachel: Oh yes. He had one of those, too.

The daffodils are out, spring is in the air and there’s a spring in my step.

My self-esteem has just taken the largest boost it’s had in a long while. I’ve just been accepted for the BA English course at Birkbeck University. Bloomsbury campus, evening classes only, four years, starting in October.

Some friends have said there was never any doubt I’d get the offer, which is very kind of them. But as my formal education stopped at the age of 17 when I abandoned my A-levels, I was worried that Birkbeck would insist I take those again first, or do a Certificate of Higher Education. Thankfully my various doings with words over the years have been enough to convince the tutor who interviewed me today, in a sunny office in Gordon Square. I’m officially capable of doing a Proper Degree.

I’m now waiting to hear back regarding my other choice, BA Creative Writing. If CW accepts me as well, I have to decide between the two subjects. Creative Writing might be better in helping me get novels and scripts written and improved, but English would give me an all-round expertise in everything from Chaucer to Hanif Kureishi, closing the gaps in my knowledge and improving my writing. I think I’ll have to speak to the tutors and ask them how the courses differ in more detail, before I make my choice.

However, if CW doesn’t have me in the first place – creative writing courses are notoriously popular – well, it’s all… academic.

Either way, I’m doing a degree. It feels so good to be accepted and believed in by a university, after a lot of recent rejection from the World Of Work and feeling the weight of my past failures. My 40th birthday is a few weeks before the term starts in October. For the first time, I’m actually looking forward to it.