Am looking after a kitten in a Golders Green house for one night. The owners are a US couple, a detail borne out by one notable omission in the kitchen. There is no electric kettle. Just a coffee machine.

Neither person is a tea drinker. When visitors have asked for a cup they use the microwave oven to boil a cupful of water. Asking around the modern hive mind that is Twitter and Facebook, I learn that this substitute method is quite common for US households entertaining British guests.

In fact, I now know that in the US electric kettles are a distinctly rare kitchen appliance. Stove top kettles are a more likely choice for the mere 4 per cent of Americans who drink tea. One reason is the difference in mains voltage – 120v in the US, compared to the UK’s 240v – doubling the boiling time for electric kettles in the States. But there’s the whole ritualistic connotations of boiling an electric kettle that the US doesn’t have: it’s what you’re meant to do during a TV advertising break (fewer of those in the UK per hour of TV, making it more of a big deal). It’s something you can easily set up in a room without a cooker: offices, student rooms, hotel rooms.

Suddenly fascinated by this subject, I chat to people online and find that one US store, Target, does stock affordable electric kettles on their website, though they’re not always in the physical shops.

From a Brit who lived in LA: “After months of no joy at even Target I finally bought a new one in a Persian market on the westside of LA. Ridiculous.”

From a Brit in Arizona: “Been here 4 yrs and only spotted electric kettles within the last six months, at Target. In Arizona you make ‘Sun Tea’, teabags in water and leave it outside to brew.”

Target’s item description has one sentence that would never appear on a UK listing:

“- Boils faster than a microwave”

And by way of a counterpart appliance, I had this from an American in the UK:

“It took me nearly a decade to find a reasonably-priced decent waffle iron in Britain, which is standard kit in any US kitchen shop.”

But for me the most defining aspect of the electric kettle is its importance during one of the most stressful and defining experiences in life: moving house.

As one Brit reminds me:

“When you hire boxes from a moving company, the ‘how to pack’ instructions tell you to leave the kettle till last.”

And from another Brit:

“That’s exactly how it is: electric kettle packed last, and first item to be plugged-in. That first cup makes it feel you’ve arrived.”

Thanks to everyone on Twitter and Facebook for the enlightenment. Quotes from Stuart Nathan, Sophie Heawood, Caroline Corbett, @eighths, @cybermango.

Weds 15^th: to the Last Tuesday Society shop for a talk by Philip Hoare on Decadence. Specifically Decadence as personified by Oscar Wilde, Noel Coward and Stephen Tennant. Maud Allan gets a look-in too, as part of the ‘Cult Of Wilde’ in the early twentieth century, when Wilde’s name and work were synonymous with deviancy. Public arbiters of moral decency used him as a warning, while those into anything naughty used him as a beacon or a code.

Mr Hoare points out how Wilde’s appearance changed from being fairly deviant itself – long hair and stockings – to short hair and conventional suits when he was actually getting up to the deviant activities. The other change was that he had become known for making art as much as being a work of art. Coward had his outré appearance too: the dressing gown and cigarette holder. But he’d become famous as a writer first. The image was a way of branding his work; a trademark, sealing it and enhancing it. Stephen Tennant, however, was someone who was famous in the 1920s for looking striking but failed to do much he could point to. When he got older and lost his looks, he tried to become a novelist but failed to even finish his debut attempt, Lascar. Mr Hoare says Tennant rewrote it so many times, it’s impossible to put together a version for publication.

The talk is sold out, and I wonder how many are here for Tennant per se. Certainly Hoare is the main Tennant expert, being the author of the only biography, Serious Pleasures. It’s been out of print for the best part of twenty years, so people who’ve read it are now a kind of cult themselves: enthusiasts of lesser known camp figures. John Waters and David Walliams are fans of the book.

In his slideshow, Mr H shows an image that’s not in the biography: a still from a 1928 home movie. Tennant is dressed as a blind beggar boy, languishing by a river in rags and white face make-up. Somewhere between Narcissus and Ophelia, he looks shockingly beautiful yet otherworldly, like a character from a film by Jean Cocteau, Kenneth Anger, or Derek Jarman. What’s particularly unexpected is that the camera is held by Oswald Mosley. If only he’d stuck to making films.

Earlier today: to the NPG to catch the Ida Kar exhibition. Kar photographed Stephen Tennant several times, one of the 1960s pictures making it into the Hoare book. None are on display at the NPG, which is a shame as it’s subtitled ‘Bohemian Photographer’. If anyone was good at just being bohemian more than anything else, it was Tennant.

Still, I enjoy looking at the umpteen proper writers and artists she snapped, from Stanley Spencer sitting under his umbrella (indoors) to a teenage Sylvia Sims, looking like the sort of girls that go to the LTS balls. Vintage yet curiously 21^st century.

There’s also a portrait of Laura Del Rivo in the early 60s, who I don’t know much about. Alert eyes, unkempt bob hairdo, wearing what looks like a smock and smoking a cigarette. Actually, she looks a little like Patti Smith, except ten years earlier and British. She wrote ‘The Furnished Room’, a novel set in the bedsits of Bohemian London, so I really should get hold of it.

Just as Beaton’s image of Tennant in the black mackintosh inspired Philip Hoare to find out more, I come away from this portrait keen to read Ms Del Rivo’s book. Like all art, and like concerts, a good portrait should leave the onlooker wanting more.

*title suggested by Dad

Primrose Hill has lots of fashionable looking young men wandering about with guitar cases. I wonder if they’re the latest modern rock stars, or just those who think they’re the latest modern rock stars. Being  entirely out of touch with matters Rock these days, New Rock Fame is wasted on me.

The neighbours are nice enough, though, one beautiful young couple (more unrecognised famous types?) helping Dad when he gets lost. They call up a street map on their iPhone. Dad’s never seen an iPhone before. ‘He was stroking his phone!’ he says later.

We talk about the strange social license to collar people with unfamiliar gadgets  (not many iPhones in Dad’s village). An example is those cigarette substitute devices that exhale water vapour and are allowed in bars. There must be a point where the number of times the user has to explain the gadget to strangers becomes so tiresome that they either give up nicotine for good – which is the point of the thing – or it backfires and they return to real cigarettes, anything rather than be an accidental attention seeker.

This is the burden of the Early Adopter. I get it myself when I use my Kindle on the Tube, sometimes to the point where I wish I’d brought a normal book so I could be left alone. On top of which, ads for the Kindle are all over the Tube itself, so one feels like an unpaid advertiser, as well as an unpaid beta tester.

***

The British Library Cafe used to be a Best Kept Secret for meeting one’s friends or just killing time: affordable refreshments, free internet, power points for laptops & phones, free jugs of water, proper air conditioning, nice clean loos, no piped music, excellent exhibitions nearby, and until recently, lots of free tables. There’s now the sense of a secret slightly over-shared. And with that, that curious mix of happiness for others, yet slight selfish sadness for oneself. At least when one can’t get a table.

Since they brought in free Wi-Fi, the cafe is so crowded that there are posters asking people to not take up a bigger table than they need. They also hint (very nicely) that table occupiers really should buy something from the cafe too. During busy periods it feels fair enough: it’s about fairness for the customers rather than mean-spiritedness by the management. If you buy a meal in a cafe, it seems only fair that you have your own table at which to eat it. The BL’s armies of all-day laptop loafers just need to bear this in mind, that’s all.

Actually, many of them already seem happy to sit on the floor and use the power points meant for vacuum cleaners.

Dad and I come here today straight after visiting another great London Secret – St John’s Lodge Gardens in Regent’s Park. Unofficially known as London’s own secret garden (and intended for quiet meditation), it has just one entrance, tucked away off the Inner Circle so that the people who go there don’t do so by passing through. They either know about first, which is good, or they’re lost, which is better.

Today, on a sunny early June afternoon , there are just two other visitors in the whole garden. One of the statues is for someone ‘Who Shared This Garden’s Secret”. Not shared too much just yet.  I want to tell everyone I know about this garden. And not tell them, too.

Bumped into a Diary Angel today in Camden, so was instantly shamed into updating the diary.

Am housesitting in a family house in Primrose Hill, with Dad staying here for a few days too (the owner is a friend of Mum’s).

Primrose Hill is such a world away from the district next door, Camden. From the market clutter, filth and ubiquitous tattooed teens sucking fried noodles from trays, to pretty Victorian terraces, sparse traffic, low noise, spotless pavements, even spotless pigeons. Not always a happy history, though: around the block in Fitzroy Road is the flat where Sylvia Plath gassed herself. Today I found out that English Heritage wanted to put a blue plaque there, but her daughter Frieda had it moved to her previous flat in Chalcot Square, where she wrote The Bell Jar. Rightfully so, I think. Death may be more of a story than art, but it’s less of an achievement; despite what she says in ‘Lady Lazarus’.

Dad & I spent this afternoon in the new science fiction exhibition at the British Library, Out Of This World. Certainly kept him happy. For my part, I’m always fascinated with original manuscripts on display, including Ron Grainer’s pencilled score for the Doctor Who theme tune, a page from the longhand draft of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (for a while it was considered something of a spoiler to label the novel as science fiction – I presume no longer), and one for Philip Pullman’s Northern Lights (his handwriting is like a school teacher’s, which makes sense). Also:  a Steampunk K9, a suggestion that the first time machine in fiction may not have been HG Wells’s, and a quiz about spot-on predictions in novels; Asimov’s pocket calculator being the most spooky. The main literary forecaster of the Internet still seems to be EM Forster in The Machine Stops.

First of two days spent in the surreal business of being a movie extra. The film in question is Gambit, starring Colin Firth, Cameron Diaz and Alan Rickman. It’s a remake of the 1966 Michael Caine crime caper, though every film buff I speak to is only dimly aware of the original. Few seem to have actually seen it (I make a mental note to rent the DVD).

Being an extra is hardly the world’s most difficult job: mostly sitting around, catching up on reading, chatting or flirting with one’s colleagues, and sleeping. You also get fed, and (I’m hoping) paid. Today’s call time is 5am, tomorrow’s is 4am, so everyone grabs naps when they can. In one section of today’s location -an ornate, high class restaurant – crowds of spare extras are dozing, heads on each other’s shoulders. As the men are all dressed in suave suits, it’s like a scene from Inception.

So I pretend to be having an expensive evening meal at 7 in the morning (red grape juice for wine, some food real, some plastic), while the proper actors perform their dialogue somewhere behind the back of my neck, to the left. And again. And again with different lighting. And again with different lenses. And again with the cameras set up on the other side.

At one point the director asks us to be a little more animated. So myself and the man opposite on my table start to have a heated (yet entirely muted) debate about the life cycle of lobsters, using increasingly florid hand gestures. We are not then asked to be less animated, so I presume it was okay.

Tomorrow’s alarm set for 2am.

Saturday May 21^st: I manage to honour three invitations in one evening. First: Sam Carpenter’s birthday drinks at The Constitution pub in Camden (7.30pm-8.15pm), then Charley Stone’s birthday concert at the Silver Bullet venue in Finsbury Park (8.45-9.30pm), before heading to the Phoenix in the West End to be guest DJ at How Does It Feel To Be Loved, where I stay till it ends (10.15pm till 3am).

Afterwards: I walk all the way from Oxford Circus to Archway. Nearly 4 miles. Partly because I need the exercise, partly because I’m drunk, but also because I like to avoid night buses whenever possible. I feel utterly safe walking the streets of Central and North London in the dead of night. It’s night buses that can be an ordeal.

Ms Stone’s night  is ‘Charlapalooza’, featuring performances from the Keith TOTP All-Stars, the Deptford Beach Babes and the Abba Stripes, all of whom she plays guitar for.  Her present from David Barnett is a huge poster of her own Rock Family Tree, linking all the bands she’s played in over the years. Fosca is one of them.

Also at the gig are other London Rock Women of note: Charlotte Hatherley (Ash, Client, solo), Debbie Smith (Echobelly, Curve) Deb Googe  (My Bloody Valentine),and  Jen Denitto: once of Linus, now drumming for the Monochrome Set.  Jen D says I’m directly responsible for her being in the MS, via singer Bid’s other band, Scarlet’s Well.

I get a vicarious thrill hearing of friends’ gig-going and gig-playing, as if they’re carrying on with All That so that I don’t have to any more.  From the reports of the Suede shows this week, to news of my brother Tom, who’s currently touring as guitarist for Adam Ant.  I don’t envy his guitarist success (never feeling like a proper guitarist myself), but I do envy his earning a living from doing something he loves, and travelling too. Particularly Paris. The last time I was in Paris was a Fosca gig in 2001 – a marvellous floating venue in the Seine. I have a real urge to go again. Here’s hoping a reason to do so presents itself. Or better still, the money to go there presents itself.

Still not much luck in finding a regular source of income. Offers of work from kind friends keep falling through, from paid blogging to film reviews. I’ve pitched articles to the Guardian without even getting a reply, which makes me feel some random self-deluded lunatic. Maybe I am. But at least I’m a well-dressed random, self-deluded lunatic.

***

Last Wednesday I was invited to Treadwell’s Bookshop, now in a new location off Tottenham Court Road. The event was the reading of an academic paper by Dr Stephen Alexander, titled ‘Elements Of Gothic Queerness in The Picture of Dorian Gray.’ Stimulating stuff, reminding me just how rich Wilde’s novel is. You can link it to so much these days: the tragedy of a young man who doesn’t age pops up in Twilight and the new Doctor Who, for instance. Dr Alexander focussed on the theme of coveting yet resenting objects for their static nature: something that certainly connects with today’s obsession with worshipping the latest version of a must-have gadget. In fact, posters for the original iPad showed Dorian Gray as an example of an e-book to read on it. I’d love to know what made them choose it.

Not only was I delighted to be invited, but it turned out Dr Alexander – whom I didn’t know until now – actually dedicated his paper to me, after my appearance in Eliza Glick’s book Materializing Queer Desire.

I’ve never had an academic paper dedicated to me before. It’s so flattering. And it helps to remind me that I might not be the complete  waste of space the Job Centre insists I am.

Problem is, they’ll say, one can’t earn a living from being a muse.

Well, unless you’re in Muse.

My DJ set at HDIF:

1. Stereolab: Peng 33 (Peel session version
2. Carole King: I Feel The Earth Move
3. The Shangri-Las: Give Him A Great Big Kiss
4. Chairmen Of The Board: Give Me Just A Little More Time
5. The Wake: Carbrain
6. The Chills: Heavenly Pop Hit
7. The Siddeleys: You Get What You Deserve
8. Dressy Bessy: If You Should Try To Kiss Her
9. Camera Obscura: French Navy
10. The Smiths: Ask
11. Spearmint: Sweeping The Nation
12. The Pastels: Coming Through
13. Le Tigre: Hot Topic
14. Prince: Raspberry Beret
15. The Supremes:  Stoned Love
16. Ride: Twisterella
17. Stereolab: French Disko
18. Blueboy: Imipramine
19. Sister Sledge: Thinking Of You
20. Nancy Sinatra: These Boots Are Made For Walking
21. April March: Chick Habit
22. Shirley Bassey: Spinning Wheel
23. Gloria Jones: Tainted Love
24. Mel Torme: Coming Home Baby
25. Dexys: Plan B
26. Orange Juice: Blueboy
27. Blondie: Rapture (a tribute to the real Rapture in the news)
28. Felt: Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow
29. The Cure: Boys Don’t Cry
30. Style Council: Speak Like A Child
31. Labelle: Lady Marmalade

I’m guest DJ-ing tonight (Saturday May 21st) at How Does It Feel To Be Loved.

It will be at:

The Phoenix
37 Cavendish Square
London
W1G 0PP

Nearest tube: Oxford Circus.

Runs 9pm-3am. My set is 10.30pm to midnight.

Entry: £4 members, £6 non members. Membership is free if you register (quickly!) at

http://www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk/membership.html

I shall be playing 80s indiepop, 60s girl groups, and everything that vaguely fits. Including Blueboy, who were recently the subject of a rather good piece at the London Review Of Books blog here:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2011/05/10/stephen-burt/young-and-quite-pretty/

To become a UK citizen, the British government requires all applicants to make the following Affirmation of Allegiance:

“I (name) do solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that on becoming a British citizen, I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth the Second, her Heirs and Successors, according to law.”

(Source: http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/britishcitizenship/applying/ceremony/)

There’s also a lengthy Citizenship Test to take about Life In The UK. Sample questions are:

– Where are Geordie, Cockney and Scouse dialects spoken?

– What and when are the Patron Saints’ Days of the four countries of the UK?

– What are bank holidays?

Well, they’re what we’ve just had, two previous weekends in a row. As a child, I associated bank holidays with a couple of things that always popped up on TV: James Bond films, and ‘Disney Time’, a special programme of clips from Disney movies, linked by a British presenter (Jimmy Tarbuck is the only one I can remember. There must have been others).

This most recent bank holiday weekend felt like a real life Disney film followed by a real life Bond Movie.

On the Friday, a royal Prince – William – married a non-royal girl – Kate Middleton – making her a Princess (Actually, due to those funny rules about heirs and bloodlines she was made a Duchess, but it was good enough). I can’t help thinking of the last woman to get a Royal Wedding at Westminster Abbey – Sarah Ferguson – and how she was excommunicated from this event, while her children were invited instead. It’s suggested that she had her revenge by supplying her daughters with particularly bizarre hats.

Modern ways: I don’t have a TV, but watch the service on the internet, while enjoying the real-time jokey comments from people on Twitter. I enjoy the Abbey music and the sense of history, but find myself wincing at the more jarring anachronisms.  The service includes the phrase “I pronounce you man and wife”, rather than the more up-to-date ‘husband and wife’.

After that, I go down to the Not The Royal Wedding street party in Red Lion Square, Holborn. It’s organised by the pressure group Republic, who are keen to abolish the British monarchy by campaigning through the proper democratic channels, rather than anything that might get them arrested. Actually, that seems to be easier than ever right now: anarchists in Soho Square are bundled away by the police while the wedding is going on, purely for singing “We All Live In A Fascist Regime” to the tune of ‘Yellow Submarine’. Thus rather proving their own point. The reported charges are pure Thought Crime: “on suspicion of planning a breach of the peace”.

One time-honoured tradition of Royal Weddings is the souvenir mug, and the Republic movement has their own for sale today: it bears the slogan “I’m Not a Royal Wedding Mug”. They sell out by the time I arrive. But the Republic lot are keen to point out that they wish William and Kate no ill will personally. This isn’t about heckling a couple in love’s wedding – how mean-spirited that would be – but gently raising awareness that many Britons aren’t happy with  the whole monarchy set-up. Keep the weddings, and the titles, though. Says one female organiser “I am anti-monarchy, but I still want to see the dress. I’m still a girl.”

Also at the party is a stall where one can pledge allegiance to something British other than the Queen, in a reference to the aforementioned UK Citizenship requirements. The pledges take the form of triangular bits of paper pinned to the railings of Red Lion Square – a witty take on bunting. There’s quite a few pledges to Doctor Who by children, some to London, and quite a lot to tea. I pledge my own allegiance to Tim Berners-Lee, the British inventor of the Web, without whom these words wouldn’t have their readership, there’d be no Royal Wedding on the Internet, or Twitter, or Facebook, or so much of what the world depends on today. Bring out the bunting for British inventors, I say.

One of the organisers recognises me and takes my photo:

Then on the May Day Bank Holiday Monday, with the news of Osama Bin Laden, we got the Bond film: a villain craving world domination tracked down by the good guys in his secret lair, then meeting a violent end. It’s not reported if the soldiers who dispatched Bin Laden did so with a corny Roger Moore pun, but The Sun obliges with its front page the next morning: “BIN BAGGED”.  The news shows footage of young Americans in Times Square shouting “USA! USA!” in jubilation at the news.

English people are obviously glad to hear of a terrorist leader put ‘beyond use’ as they say now,  but cheering and shouting “ENGLAND! ENGLAND!” in the streets for any reason other than football is thought to be A Bit Much. That most English trait of all: fear of bad social etiquette. Celebrate a wedding, not a killing.

Tuesday April 12^th: Ms Kirsten calls me out of the blue and takes me to lunch at Cafe Rouge, Highgate. A schoolteacher, she used to live in Crouch End, but has since relocated to Cheshunt, just north of London. She’s bought a house there and is now trying for a baby with her girlfriend, with help from a clinic. Not quite IVF, but it’s something similar, with similar initials.

Ms K misses London and is a little worried how her new neighbours will accept a lesbian, mixed-ethnicity family: Cheshunt is not quite the groovy California of the film The Kids Are All Right. I forget how easy it is for a dyed-in-the-hair Londoner such as me to take the city’s tolerance for granted. Though I know I quip about being stuffed into a Wicker Hermaphrodite the moment I step outside the M25.

***

Wednesday 13^th. A grim joke: my job advisor is losing her job. This is the NHS Working For Health service, which provides job-seeking support for people with mental health problems (in my case, depression). Like a lot of public services at the moment, the whole department is being closed down.

It’s very hard not to get enraged about this, in a country with more millionaires than ever, which can still find the money to keep one controversial foreign war going (Afghanistan) while starting a new one (Libya) without a second thought. Brent Council this week pushed through its plans to axe half its libraries. I do wonder if there’s going to be some great change coming. Perhaps not an actual revolution, but one does yearn for a shake-up of the way things are. It’s certainly hard to watch Messrs Cameron & Clegg piling on their unctuous insincerity every time they appear on television, without dreaming up scenes from the life of Robespierre.

***

Wednesday evening: Another memorable Boogaloo night. It’s the wake of John and June Parkhouse. An older gentlemen, John was the regular at the bar since it opened in 2002, and he was a regular for a long time before that, when it was known as The Shepherds.

(Note to some websites: John was a regular, not the owner of The Shepherds – I just confirmed this with the Boogaloo. I can just about remember the old owner myself, and his enormous dog).

Every evening at about half past ten, John would very quietly and very slowly walk in and take his seat at the bar, regardless of whatever loose decadence and noise was going on that night (such as Libertines secret gigs). I remember he was kind enough to sign my nomination papers when I ran for council election in 2006.

John’s wife June died two days after he did, and apparently they left behind little in the way of family or funds. But there are different kinds of family: tonight the Boogalo staff return the favour with a memorial and benefit night for John and June.

The host and DJ is Crouch End’s own Simon Pegg, who knew John  from the Shepherds days. The special guest performer is his friend Chris Martin from Coldplay, who’s come all the way from New York just for this.

Mr Martin performs a few solo acoustic numbers. One (‘Green Eyes’) has Mr Pegg on harmonica. Another is a brand new song – called ‘Wedding Bells’, I think. He also plays the Oasis number  ‘Wonderwall’, after a request from a woman in the audience. It’s not clear if she was joking or not: I rather like the idea of going to a secret gig by Mr Coldplay and asking him NOT to play a Coldplay song. But he says to her, ‘I’ll do it if you join me,’ and they sing the Oasis hit together.

Though I’ve never been a great fan of Coldplay’s music (mainly through its sheer ubiquity), Mr Martin is perfectly sweet and funny, while Mr Pegg is a rather good harmonica player. And a top DJ to boot – he spins ‘Duel’ by Propaganda along with lots of 80s pop.

I also say hello to Matt McGinn, the Coldplay roadie who’s set up an army of acoustic guitars for Mr Martin to choose from (CM makes a joke about his false modesty). I last saw Mr McGinn when he was the roadie for Kenickie, and my band Orlando toured with them.

James Walbourne’s here too, playing a set with his own group The Walbourne Bros. He’s the dazzlingly good guitarist who’s been in several Boogaloo house bands over the years, as well as the Pretenders and Edwyn Collins’s band; the latter alongside my brother.

At least one of Ant and Dec are at the gig, though no more than two.

I chat to another regular about my decision to do a degree at Birkbeck College. He tells me that before it was The Shepherds, The Boogaloo was originally known as… The Birkbeck Tavern. All these years I’ve been going to the pub, and I only find that out now. Maybe it’s a sign…

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.