To the Roxy on Borough High Steet with Ms Shanthi and her friends Helen & Matthew. It’s a rather cosy lounge bar with sofas and a proper-sized cinema screen at one end, and it hosts all kinds of film events, art house and popcorn alike. Although there’s a membership scheme, you can just turn up and pay on the door. If I lived closer, I’d make it my local.

Tonight’s event is a screening of Patrick Keiller’s 1994 film ‘London’, with a Q&A from the director. It’s followed by the premiere of a similarly themed art piece, ‘LON24’, by The Light Surgeons.

‘LON24’ was made to be part of an installation at the newly refurbished Museum Of London, and is a giddy parade of very up-to-date images: distributors of free newspapers on the street, the Gherkin at sunrise, people getting in and out of modern buses and tube trains, and so on. It does use a lot of ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ style timelapse effects, though, which I find distancing. The slow and static style of Patrick Keiller’s films, coupled with their wordy narration by Paul Schofield, may render them relatively obscure and difficult to market, but it also makes them more personal; which I like.

Funny how speeded-up footage always feels anonymous, and never the work of one particular artist.

Well, unless it’s Benny Hill.

***
Although it’s been a while since his last film, ‘Robinson In Space’, Mr Keiller mentions that he’s in the editing stage of another: ‘Robinson In Ruins’. It was made during 2008, and covers rural areas of Britain that year.

‘I was asked to give it a… “tag line”, he says drily, wincing at the phrase. ‘So I supplied the following:

“A marginal individual sets out to trigger the collapse of neo-liberalism by going on a walk.”‘

He was going to make ‘London’ in black & white, but plumped for colour because ‘it brings out irony much better’.

With a nice sense of symmetry, ‘London’ covers the city from the perspective of fictional flaneur Robinson, and happened to be made in 1992, so we get his angry feelings before and after that year’s general election. It was the last time the Conservatives won until May 2010. And so here we are again.

Aspects of 1992 that ‘London’ reminds me about: the last sighting of bowler hats on older City workers, a Concorde flying over Heathrow, and the old Routemaster buses – although this week’s news says they’re coming back, with a sleek and futuristic redesign.

Most of all, though, I’d forgotten just how regular the IRA bombs were. The film features three: the major one in the City that blew out the windows of several skyscrapers, but also one on Wandsworth Common and one at B&Q in Staples Corner. As the narrator says, Londoners were so used to the devices by now, there were sometimes eight explosions in a single week that year, and people didn’t turn a hair. Even when the bombs actually killed people. There’s also an Eddie Izzard routine from about the same time where he remarks how Tube travellers just shrug at such news and re-jig their route home in their heads.

A London where eight bomb explosions in a week was no big deal. Today, it feels as distant as the Blitz.

I’m writing this in a brand new bespoke cashmere suit. Wool & cashmere, to be precise, but the cashmere’s definitely there. Just as Alan Partridge shouted ‘Cashback!’ as an exclamation of success, I hereby nominate a dandy variation: ‘Cashmere!’

The suit is by Charlie Collingwood, a young tailor who’s just set up his own business in London, Henry Herbert.  ‘It’d be nice if you could say something in your blog. Assuming you like the suit, that is.’

Can’t argue with that. Turns out that if you Google ‘London’ and ‘tailors’ and ‘suits’ – or something like that – you get my diary pretty high up in the results. Though I’m hardly going to turn this into a full-on review blog, it’s nice to occasionally be of some use to doers and makers I approve of.

(By the way, Googling me today reveals I apparently co-wrote an article on John Mortimer in the Independent. It says so on IMDB. A few more clicks, and it turns out I was in fact quoted by the newspaper in a ‘what the blogs say’ piece on his death.)

So: my new cashmere suit. Charlie first measured me up in his Savile Row office then let me choose the fabric from a selection of swatch books, along with the lining. I felt I needed a ‘dinner party and premieres’ number in black, and hadn’t had cashmere before, so I went for that, along with the usual bespoke tailor’s options: choosing the shape of pockets, number of buttons on the jacket and cuffs, type of vent at the back of the jacket, turn-ups on the trousers or not, and so on.

A few weeks after that he called me in so I could try on the ‘baste’. This is the draft version of the suit, with dotted white lines around the stitching as seen in umpteen old movies. Not all modern tailors do the baste process, so I was rather delighted by this bit in itself. Another six weeks or so later, the suit arrived in a bespoke cardboard box, illustrated with dozens of silhouettes of vintage-looking besuited men in various poses: hailing taxis, reading newspapers, but also typing at a laptop. And above all, getting the vintage feel just right: stylish, timeless, versatile.

Charlie’s two key selling points, his friendliness aside, are his use of entirely British-sourced materials, along with the fact that he delivers them via scooter, in true Quadrophenia Mod style.

There’s a feature on him in the Evening Standard here.

Henry Herbert Tailors have a website at www.henryherbert.com, with a Twitter account here.

I’ve been wearing the suit for a few weeks now. It’s a work of beauty. I’d ask strangers to stroke me and feel the cashmere-iness of it, if such a request didn’t risk misinterpretation.

Hooray for Henry Herbert. May their scooters go forth and beautify.

Early December: As I suspected, the BBC Short Story competition is won by my least favourite of the shortlisted five – the one about the terminally-ill son. It was beautifully written: I just think that if you’re going to write about terminal illness without adding anything new, the work needs to be as good as Alan Bennett’s ‘A Woman Of No Importance’, or Douglas Dunn’s ‘Elegies’ or Lee Hall’s ‘Spoonface Steinberg’ or James L Brooks’s ‘Terms Of Endearment’. Still, the runner-up was Sarah Maitland, which was my own second choice after Ms Alderman.

I take no pleasure in finding myself out of sync like this. I don’t care for ‘contrarian’ writers who go against the consensus for attention seeking reasons. ‘Look at me! I hate the thing everyone likes, and like the thing everyone hates.’ But neither do I enjoy finding myself in agreement with the fashions of the day – I’d feel I was doing something wrong somewhere.

Part of me likes the fact that I dislike The X Factor, for instance, because if I liked it, I would have to rebuild my character from scratch. So I’m grateful to Most People for ensuring that the one thing Most People like is utterly awful and vulgar and tasteless and crass and banal and artless and… just baffling. But I feel this instinctively, never deliberately. One person’s snobbery is another’s self-validation.

So when people on the internet organise that Rage Against The Machine single-buying campaign to thwart the X Factor winner, I find myself wanting both sides to lose, on top of just feeling very alone full stop. Rather as I am with football. I like the look of the X Factor winner – a very well-turned out young man called Joe, against the inelegant, tiresome RATM. But I have to admit the song Mr Joe was given was an unmemorable, dull, watery ballad. Whereas hearing that RATM song – with swearing intact – upsetting Nicky Campbell on Radio 5 the other morning was a rather fun radio moment. Anything for a more interesting world.

What I’d really like is to write songs for Joe myself. Or indeed, write for Will Young.  Stranger things have happened. Then again, Will Young was on that short story judging panel…

***

Am staying in Crouch End over Christmas and New Year. Cat-sitting and flat-sitting , this time for Jennifer C and Chris H. Cat in question is Vyvian, who came over from San Francisco with Jennifer some years ago. He has one of those cat passports. J can’t easily lay her hands on it, so my illusions are intact; in my head it has a little cat photo  – with unflattering cat haircut – and a series of pawprints.

Of the five North London cats I know, two of them are named after characters in 80s BBC TV comedies. Vyvian is named after one of The Young Ones, while Anna S’s cat Flashheart is from Blackadder.

***

Today, entirely randomly and because the train from the nearest station to the flat – Hornsey overground – terminates at Moorgate, I wander around the Barbican estate. I marvel at the juxtaposition of old and new architecture at every angle, particularly the ancient St Giles Church surrounded at every side by very 1980s terraces. It looks like it’s been teleported there by some cackling sci-fi villain.

In the Barbican centre someone recognises me and says hello – Francesca Beard. She’s performing a children’s show there. There’s a horrible second where I can’t remember her name – (‘How dare you, brain’, goes the internal voice), followed by a slightly uneasy few minutes as I struggle to think of what best to say on such occasions. In about 2000 I was a fan of her performance poetry (the Fosca song ‘Millionaire Of Your Own Hair’ takes its title from one of her poems) and I saw her gigs fairly often. And then – what? She didn’t stop performing. I stopped going to (and trying my hand at) performance poetry gigs, in my dipping-but-never-committing way. But I did see her at Latitude this year, so her place in my mind’s filing system isn’t as dusty as it could have been.

It’s times like this where my near-autistic inability to connect names and faces in person, coupled with my lack of basic social skills (which words to choose, and in which order? there are so many!), leaves me riven with guilt for the rest of the day.

It’s like the film ‘Memento’. I just wish I could remember fewer cult fictional films about amnesia and more things that actually matter.

About an hour later – today still, Dec 23rd -  I’m in the London Review Bookshop, and again someone behind me says, ‘Hello, Dickon.’ And as I turn to face the person – I’m such a bad actor, and so much of life is acting – I can’t help pulling the very honest but very offensive expression of panic through lack of recognition. It’s David Kitchen, who once worked for Orlando 1995-1997, setting up the band’s information service and website – this diary’s precursor – and whose flat in Kew I regularly visited and once stayed the night at. True, I’ve had no contact with him for the best part of ten years, but that’s no excuse.

(And it’s only now that I realise that the flat I’m staying in is owned by one of David K’s London circle of friends from that time, Chris H. He edited the first Belle & Sebastian videos, while David worked for B&S in websitey ways. I wish I could have mentioned this connection to David today, rather than grasping for things to say and apologising for not remembering his name.)

What confuses me is that in my mind I know exactly who David K is and what he looks like. It’s when I’m presented with him in the flesh, unexpected, out of the blue, and after a ten year gap, that my mind can’t cope. If I was told that I’d be meeting David K in the LRB today, I’d have no problem recognising him at once. And yet, I still feel that it’s my fault, that I’m a terrible, selfish, self-centred person, and the encounter upsets me for the rest of the day. I only hope he doesn’t mind as much as I do.

Even when I can connect names and faces, a surprise chat with friends from the past can never be easy. ‘What are you up to?’ ‘Something not involving you.’

One fear of mine is that when I die, there’ll be a test.

I envy Doctor Who. At least he gets played by a different actor every time a chapter of his life passes. I have enough of a struggle learning the script for my current role, never mind roles gone by.

And again the thought is, is it just me?  Is this a medical condition, a syndrome, a kind of dyslexia? A younger man’s Alzheimer’s? It certainly feels like it.

The first properly hot, dry day in town after so much rain, so the insects are out in force. Walking down Dartmouth Park Hill today, the pavements are crawling with ants, flies, and indeed flying ants.

I pass by the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, currently hosting Anthony Gormley’s hourly parade of Britons. The woman up there at this hour is an entirely ordinary-looking thirty-ish lady dressed in casual summer clothes, smiling while chatting on her mobile phone. I guess she’s calling her mates (‘I’m on the plinth’). In contrast to those who make big statements, raise worthy awareness, hire wacky costumes or treat the plinth like Britain’s Got Talent, I realise she is closest to the spirit of Mr Gormley’s idea: an unfussy celebration of everyday contentment, simply taken out of the crowd and put on display. It’s surreal in its sheer real-ness.

I read EM Forster’s sci-fi novella from 1909, The Machine Stops. Startling to think that the author of Howard’s End and Room With A View predicted virtual reality and the internet era, albeit as a warning against dependency on technology. He doesn’t quite get email right, though: letters have been replaced by ‘the pneumatic post’. The lady on the Plinth is the counter-argument to Mr Forster’s story: she clearly has a  certain amount of dependency on her mobile phone, but it facilitates her first-hand life, rather than replaces it. One assumes she will meet the people she calls at some point.

(All of which says rather more about me than it does her. I do have a mobile phone, and it’s something of a lifeline when away from home. But when back in London I rarely use it, even switching it off for days on end. I realise it is me that is the strange one.)