(Apologies for the slight lateness of this week’s diary. I have had to deal with one of those Trojan viruses that get inside computers. Not by the acceptance of a wooden horse but by the promise of a video of a funny cat. Probably. So this entry is brought to you by the programs Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Scan, and AdwCleaner Adware Removal Tool.)

Friday 20th June 2014. In the evening: to Birkbeck in Gordon Square for a talk by Hari Kunzru. This is one of the advantages of choosing contemporary literature as an option in an English degree: the authors are often available to come to the college and answer questions. Even better, you can have a drink of M & S wine with them afterwards. Little chance of that happening with George Eliot.

HK talks about cosmopolitanism, as in people becoming global citizens. He suggests an alternative term, though, ‘rootlessness’. A refugee, meanwhile, can be regarded as ‘a cosmopolitan without money’. He’s not so keen on the message of David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, which looks for connections and harmony in a fragmented world. ‘Too resolved’, says Mr Kunzru.

(Stuart Nathan writes: ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ was also once a pejorative code term for ‘Jew’. It was intended to be subtly insulting. ‘We have no national loyalty and we infiltrate cities’. You see it in journalism from the 1890s to the 30s.’)

I’m reminded of the line in The Importance of Being Earnest: ‘The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means’. Except now that’s what Commercial Fiction means. The good not ending happily, on the other hand, is what Literary Fiction means. This is not to say that such fiction should be depressing, though: Mr Kunzru’s own novel Transmission has scenes of laugh-aloud comedy.

I’ve just finished American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis. It’s clearly an important novel, but more than a couple of times I’ve felt like saying aloud, ‘please don’t make me read the next bit’.

* * *

Saturday 21st June 2014. To the Whitechapel Gallery, for the Chris Marker exhibition. I’m restless here, because his masterpieces are not stills or artworks but films like La Jetée, which is projected on a huge screen. Such films really work better at a film festival rather than a gallery space. However, I like his colourful designs for travel books about different countries, each cover with a pretty girl of the relevant nationality. Marker was clearly passionate about the faces of pretty women: much like Vermeer, in fact. There’s also a room full of old monitors and TVs showing different videos on a loop, which irritates me, as it’s become something of an art gallery cliché. That said, one is a late 80s pop video I recognise, even with the sound down: ‘Getting Away With It’ by Electronic. I hadn’t realised until today that Marker was the director.

Next door is an exhibit I prefer to anything in the Marker show, perhaps because it’s more physical and site-specific. It’s Continuum of Repair: The Light of Jacobs Ladder, by Kader Attia. A room-size shelving cabinet of books surrounds a smaller glass cabinet of scientific curios. At the centre, the visitor climbs a set of steps to discover an illusion of an infinite ladder, created using mirrors and fluorescent tubes. The gallery captions make no mention of Borges’s ‘Library of Babel’, but it’s a perfect illustration. I still love the simple magic of creating infinity by turning two mirrors against each other. That’s the great thing about infinity: the pleasure is endless.

* * *

Sunday 22nd June 2014. Across the road to the Boogaloo, for a gig by Martin White’s Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra. As was the case last year, about two dozen musicians are crammed into one corner of the pub. Mr White is on the Boogaloo’s upright piano, backed with the MFMO on violins, cellos, brass, woodwind, drums, plus electric bass. Fosca’s Kate Dornan is on tuba, while the bass is played by Rhodri Marsden. The guest acts on this occasion are Chris T-T (who once gave Fosca a lift home), and the 90s band Dubstar. Or rather, singer Sarah Blackwood and guitarist Chris Wilkie playing the songs of Dubstar, specially arranged for this mini-orchestra.

I was something of a Dubstar fan in the 90s: the last time I saw them was at Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 1998. Today I can’t resist writing down the songs as I recognise each one, just like I did in my music fan days: ‘The Self Same Thing’ (a superior version to that on record – they should record it), ‘Elevator Song’, ‘My Start In Wallsend’, ‘Not So Manic Now’, ‘A Northern Bride’ (a b-side), ‘Wearchest’, ‘Stars’, ‘Ghost’, ‘Disgraceful’. Afterwards I chat with Sarah and Chris, and also with the guitarist James Walbourne, here for the birthday of ‘The Rabbi’, one of the Boogaloo’s regular characters. JW turns out to be a fellow Sondheim fan.

* * *

Monday 23rd June 2014. I bump into Ben Goldacre, he of Bad Science fame, outside Highgate tube. Ben G turns out to be a fellow Momus fan. This is how my unplanned encounters often play out: discussions of paths crossed, then of shared acquaintances and shared tastes, then realisations of coincidence. It’s probably possible to play Six Degrees Of Dickon Edwards.

A favourite word of mine is ‘anhedonic’, meaning an inability to take pleasure in things. With supreme irony, using the word gives me pleasure.

* * *

Tuesday 24th June 2014. To the ICA to see Fruitvale Station.  It’s a dramatisation of the last day in the life of Oscar Grant, an unarmed man shot dead by the police in 2009, while in the Californian railway station of the title. Although this incident triggered various protests and outbreaks of rioting, it’s not so well known to Londoners, perhaps because the city has two similar incidents of its own. There’s Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian man killed at Stockwell tube in 2005, and Mark Duggan, whose shooting in Tottenham in 2011 sparked off that year’s London riots. The bulk of Fruitvale Station  is just about a man going about his daily life – the point being that his killing is made all the more obscene by his sheer ordinariness.

Grant is no saint – he’s been in prison and is shown dealing drugs, albeit on a very minor scale – but he’s also shown to be a loving father and kind to strangers on the street, and even kind to stray animals. In this sense, the film is quite an innovative protest: it suggests that real people are rarely all good or all bad, and that situations are always more complicated than they seem. All this helps drive home the point that it’s probably not a good idea for the police to always carry guns. Perhaps this is obvious, but while such incidents still happen, films like this are important. If nothing else, it depicts everyday African-American suburban life, which is rare enough in cinema. And it also teaches this train-loving Londoner that the ‘BART’ is a type of connecting service on the Californian coast, similar to London’s Overground. It stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit.

* * *

Wednesday 25th June 2014. An aphorism by Don Paterson, which hits home:

Well, critic: fair criticism. But at the end of the day, she did; you didn’t.

(from The Book of Shadows, 2004)

* * *

Thursday 26th June 2014. The British Library’s ‘Treasures’ exhibition now has slightly different manuscripts on display. Gone is Angela Carter’s Nights At The Circus. In its place is a page from her Passion of New Eve instead. The notebooks of Beryl Bainbridge and Wendy Cope have been similarly usurped. Now there’s Hanif Kureishi’s diary, plus Olivier’s screenplay for his film of Macbeth, which was never made.

* * *

Friday 27th June 2014. There have always been film posters on the Tube, but in the last couple of years something’s changed. The quotes of praise can now be from members of the public, often on Twitter. ‘Brilliant! – @emmasmith1978’. It’s not just popcorn films, either. On the foyer wall of the Barbican Centre are projections of Twitter praise for Fiona Shaw in the stage play The Testament of Mary. Many of these quotes could well be made up, or planted by publicists. But then, professional critics are no strangers to bias either. Regardless, the phrase ‘everyone’s a critic’ is more true now than ever.

* * *

In Muswell Hill Sainsbury’s. A few days after England crashes out of the World Cup, there’s a rack of forlorn-looking England flag merchandise, all marked REDUCED TO CLEAR. Car flags, bunting, air fresheners, cups, plates. Prices from 9p.

Next to this is a display of more hopeful-looking pots of cream, branded with tennis balls, all set for Wimbledon. Thus the world turns.

* * *

Saturday 28 June 2014. One feels surrounded by festivities, or at least reports of festivities. If it’s not Glastonbury or the World Cup, it’s Pride. Despite bouts of rain, the Soho streets are choked with LGBT revellers. Old Compton Street is impossible to walk through: a mass of bodies, across road and pavement alike. ‘Rather Be’ by Clean Bandit blasts out from several bars as I pass – this summer’s ubiquitous dance hit. Charing Cross Road is closed off to provide a space for ambulances. As I walk down Manette Street, two green-clad paramedics run past me with an empty stretcher.

On Charing Cross I have to squeeze past another crowd, this time not for Pride but for a protest against animal cruelty. Outside the Chipotle Mexican Grill restaurant, activists are chanting: ‘Meat is murder! Stop the slaughter!’

* * *

I’m having problems with procrastination. One tip which many books suggest is to say to yourself ‘be here now’. It’s meant to bring a wandering mind gently back to the work in hand. Only this is unhelpful to anyone who remembers the British music scene in the 1990s. ‘Be Here Now’ just make me think of the third Oasis album, that defining symbol of Britpop excess and indulgence, where all the songs were too long and too over-produced. It’s a manifestly bad piece of work. So to say ‘be here now’ as a motivational tool is to say ‘think about that bad Oasis album’. It’s not helping.

Whenever I see an advert for a spectacles company, with a cheekboney lady in a power suit, hair up, and looking happy with her choice of eyewear to the point of madness, I now think of Sarah Palin. So that’s how pernicious the UK coverage of the US elections has become. Goodness knows what it must be like for Americans, if the British media alone is this saturated with comment and debate on Mr Obama, Mr McCain and their ‘running mates’, families, pets, and favourite choice of hunting rifle. Ignorance and lack of US nationality is no hindrance to comment, of course. And here I am joining in. Bait taken.

It seems odd to obsess so much over another country’s politics, even the US, when there’s more than enough to focus on over here. I just wish they’d concentrate more on, say, Caroline Lucas, who was recently elected Green Party leader. At least British newspaper readers can actually vote for her.

The general switch of focus from Mr O to Ms P seems less about ability to govern and more about appealing to people’s lust for a good story, with interesting characters. Ms Palin is a Good Character in this distant soap opera, so everyone perks up. On Radio 4’s News Quiz, mention of her name is given a sound effects burst from the Hallelujah Chorus, such is her gift to overseas satirists. If Mr O loses to Mr McC, or rather to Ms P, perhaps it’s because he’s just not funny enough, intentionally or otherwise. See also Boris Johnson.

***

Sunday last: afternoon tea at High Tea in Highgate, with Ms Crimson Skye, whom I first met in the Cabaret Tent at the Latitude Festival. High Tea is a new local haunt: homemade cakes, Doris Day and Cole Porter playing on the stereo, friendly young staff with a taste for old things. Right up my street in every sense. It’s popular today: there’s the sense it’s the Last Sunny Sunday of the year, so everyone is out in the cafes and parks. All the Sunday Couples, or in my case, the Couples Of Singles.

Then a drink in St John’s Tavern, Archway, now a trendy but pleasant restaurant & bar with chunky oak tables and a selection of broadsheet supplements by the beer pumps. A world away from the dingy pub in 1993 where Orlando played their early gigs.

And then to Ms Andrei’s flat in Upper Holloway for dinner and a movie. The Magic Toyshop: a rare 80s TV film of the Angela Carter novel. Adapted by the author, so it’s full of deliciously surreal, dream-like moments which a normal TV screenwriter would have cut for fear of confusing the audience. Has a creepy puppet swan and a creepier Tom Bell.

***
A Thursday past: the Boogaloo for Beautiful & Damned, with me DJ-ing there for the first time since I’d left the club night in Miss Red’s hands. Martin White and his Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra play a fantastic set (with Kate Dornan on tuba), and the bar is decked out in a Victorian Circus theme, complete with straw, bunting, an Unhelpful Fortune Teller booth, and lots of people in stick-on moustaches.

One lady is dressed up as a half-man, half-woman, with one gender on each side. I half chat her up, half-heartedly. My old neighbour and room decorator Liz also comes along and has such a nice time that she leaves a thank-you present outside my door: a little bejewelled make-up mirror, wrapped in ribbon and paper.

***

A recent Friday eve – outing to an art show with various Boogaloo associates (Nat, Red, Julia, Ms Annie S, Mr Russell, The General). Venue is a dusty Victorian house in the Kings Cross Road, formerly the shop Hats Plus. The old awning is still in place, still advertising the hat shop’s now-defunct website. Even website addresses can gather dust these days. I teach the word ‘awning’ to two Swedish women.

That Saturday eve – I Dj at the Magic Theatre event, at the Art Deco Bloomsbury Ballroom. Venue is outrageously plush and ornate, and I enjoy Ms Crimson Skye’s burlesque turn on the stage. She sings the Patsy Cline song ‘Crazy’ in a Texan drawl, while stripping from a Hannibal Lecter grill mask and straitjacket, her arms tied behind her back.  There’s also a Dexy’s-esque band with a full brass section, who cover the 80s song ‘Hey You, The Rocksteady Crew’.

Late in the evening, with much wine consumed, two men dressed as what looks like giant pincushions take part in an impromptu Flouncing Competition, on the dance floor. They each spin on their plimsolls and storm off in a camp huff to the nearest exit, their huge costumes bobbing around them. I am definitely enjoying myself.

A Fosca London gig announcement. Oh yes!

It’s the much-threatened Fosca Farewell show. Saturday December 13th at Feeling Gloomy, Bar Academy, Islington. Stage times to come.

The line-up will a five-piece, three-guitar and two synths (plus laptop) assault: Rachel S, Kate D, Tom E, Charley S and myself.

***

Two DJ gigs of mine, at somewhat shorter notice.

I’m DJ-ing on Sat Sept 20th, at a plush dress-up event called The Magic Theatre. This takes place in an Art Deco ballroom in Bloomsbury. Here’s what their website says about the dress code:

“Ladies: The perfect place for all you Cinderellas and Style Queens, Pink Princesses and Leggy Latex Babes… Audrey Hepburns and Barbarellas, TV’s, Saucy Secretaries and Rock Chicks…Whether you’re a Goth Girl, Dowager, French Maid or Precocious Teen Queen, Marie Antoinette, or Marilyn Monroe, the Magic Theatre is YOUR stage. Gentlemen: Retro Glamour, Uniforms, Lounge Lizards, Gentlemen of the Cloth, Fauns, B-Movie Stars, Prince Charmings, Pirates and Dandies of all kinds…Arise, Sir Galahad, kneel before Zod, come out, come out you Peter Pans, Dick Turpins and Darcys…”

I’ll be doing two DJ sets between 8.30pm and 11.30pm. Ticket details at www.magic-theatre.co.uk.

***

I’m also putting in a brief DJ appearance at The Beautiful & Damned on Thursday 18th, at The Boogaloo (near Highgate Tube). Martin White & The Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra will also be playing. The B&D isn’t ‘my’ club any more, as I’m forever correcting people, but it’s still going strong under the auspices of Miss Red and The Boogaloo team. They’ve reinvented it into a kind of cabaret / club night / music hall booth affair. It’s great to see unwitting Highgate pub goers wander in off the street, and wonder just what weird, time-hopping universe they’ve stepped into. Part Red Room in ‘Twin Peaks’, part Sapphire & Steel…

***
Back to the diary.

Wednesday evening: to Trash Palace in Wardour Street, for a club night called ‘Polari’. It includes Jamie McLeod’s exhibition of modern dandies, which in turn includes me. Always nice to swan into a club to see a large framed photograph of oneself on the wall. The club also supplies free quiche.

On this occasion, special guest Sebastian Horsley takes the mic, and prowls and provokes and reads from his book, to a packed and appreciative crowd. Including his mother. He’s in his red sequined suit and brandishes a matching sequined bottle of vodka. Well, a sequined bottle cosy.

I say hello to David Benson, Anne Pigalle, Jason Atomic and Ms Ruta, and meet Clayton Littlewood, author of the ‘Soho Stories’ column in the London Paper. The window by his writing desk (or rather,  laptop perch) looked out from the clothes shop he worked at, Dirty White Boy in Old Compton Street. A particularly good spot in London to watch people and gather (or imagine) stories: Soho media types, the famous, the homeless, the vicious queens, the prostitutes, the tourists, the tramps, the old survivors, the new blood. He’s put together a book version: ‘Dirty White Boy: Tales Of Soho’, which I’m rather looking foward to.

More details at his MySpace page, with excerpts, readings and so on: www.myspace.com/dwbsoho

After Polari, Mr Benson takes myself, Mr H, Mr L and his friend Ms Lois for dinner at one of the Chinese restaurants in Gerrard Street. Sebastian invites me to an orgy on Friday. I politely decline. I’ll be busy playing indiepop songs in Madrid. Many of which are about, well, not going to orgies.