Last Friday I was kindly invited to the press night of the play ‘Dirty White Boy: Tales Of Soho’, at the Trafalgar Studios in Whitehall.

It’s based on Clayton Littlewood’s book about the various colourful and sexually graphic characters he encountered when he ran a shop on the corner of Dean Street and Old Compton Street, the Dirty White Boy of the title. He kept a diary, which became a MySpace blog (this being 2006), a newspaper column and finally a book. Then he teamed up with the actor David Benson and turned it into a series of sketches, with Mr L as himself, and Mr B as everyone else. I was fortunate enough to see the duo perform at the Colony Room – a suitably iconic Soho venue – just before it closed.

So now they’ve expanded it further, this time into a full-length stage show. The sketches have become scenes, the characters have dramatic arcs and follow-ups, there’s as much tears as there are laughs, and the scenes are punctuated by songs from a talented young third player, Alexis Gerred. Being not exactly ugly, he also doubles up perfectly as one wealthy character’s rent boy. I’m not so keen on the use of hits by Blondie, Petula Clark, and the Pet Shop Boys as illustrations to the action (though a few years ago I would’ve been; my tastes have changed). But there’s a rather good original number at the start, and his rendition of the Mae West song, ‘My Old Flame’ is absolutely stunning.

Otherwise, it’s as it was in the Colony, with Mr Benson on convincing form as a Quentin Crisp-esque old queen, a pensioner who blows his income on thongs (‘what else is a pension for?’) a motherly transsexual, and even a black drag queen from Chicago.

One aspect of the show that occurred to me is how people in real life often present themselves as types, if not full-blown stereotypes, as a way of dealing with the world. Once you get to know the person, the assumptions dissolve. It’s been said before that camp can be a defence mechanism, but no more so than any other parameter of mannerism or appearance. Choice of hairstyle or clothes, too, will put you into one tribe or another.

Even those who don’t think they’re a type can find themselves ticking boxes unconsciously. I recently saw a photo of people campaigning to save BBC 6Music  and noticed their shared similarities: band t-shirt, jeans, thirtysomething stubble, knowledge of Wire box sets, both Wire the band and The Wire TV series. It’s social type as interface. (Radio-wise, I’m equally mindful of jokes about the stereotypical Radio 4 listener being stuffy and out of touch with youth culture, while the joke about Radio 3  for years was that all the presenters wore black polo neck jumpers.)

‘I am much more than I appear’, we say in our choices of self-presentation. ‘But at least you have somewhere to start. And it’s a comfort. And sometimes, something to cling to.’

It could be argued that Mr L has the hardest job of the night, having to play himself throughout, and – as he says right at the start – he’s no actor. However, his gentle, even-toned, unassuming style of speaking is what holds the show together, and keeps it both original and personal. Had he been replaced with a proper actor, the show would be a lot less special. I hear it’s selling out, and rightly so.

***

Sunday sees me at the Arch Hotel near Marble Arch, for afternoon tea & cake with Ms Alex Paynter and friends. The hotel specialises in eclairs, and I get my introduction to the savoury incarnation. I suppose it’s not far from a kind of stretched vol-au-vent or a canape with extensions.

High Tea at the Arch comes with Bruce Weber coffee table books to peruse, over artisan bread with gentleman’s relish. I gingerly try an Earl Grey-flavoured martini (billed as a ‘MarTEAni’, groan), which turns out to be absolutely delicious, if a little potent.

Not only are the prices reasonable, but they throw in – o joy of joys – their limited edition Election Eclairs.

I’d been envious of my American friend Jennifer’s Barack Obama chocolate bar, and wished UK elections featured more edible merchandise. At the Arch, I’m delighted to report, faces of the party leaders have been printed in edible ink onto marzipan squares, with which to decorate various appropriate flavours of eclair. For David Cameron there’s Blueberry & Coconut, for Gordon Brown there’s Rose with Raspberry & Champagne Jelly, while Nick Clegg’s flavour is Grapefruit & Champagne.

I love this photo of Ms P caught devouring one of the Gordon Browns.

It should be pointed out that her choice of eclair in no way reflects the way she might vote on May 6th.

(Photo by Chris Amies)

Last Thursday. A gentleman from the venue Proud Camden emails me out of the blue. Would I like to put on my own club night there? A bit like Beautiful & Damned, but a bit more dark and twisted and arty? With live acts and dancing?

I say: yes.

To try me out (and for me to try them out), they offer me the smaller room – the South Gallery – for the first Wednesday night of every month. Fine. Except that the first one would be May 5th. A mere 12 days away. We’ll understand if you can’t quite get the numbers in, they say. Just see how you get on.

Three days and much emailing later, I have a bill of four for the 5th: boyish TV magicians Barry & Stuart, dapper musical comedians Moonfish Rhumba, surreal jazz-rockers the Rude Mechanicals, and sassy cabaret songstress Tricity Vogue. As these are some of my favourite acts around, it feels like my own miniature Meltdown Festival. For the next few dates, I hope to include performance poets, alternative burlesque dancers, spoken word. Whatever fits. Or rather, whatever doesn’t fit.

I’ve also hired my very own door person, and even my own sound engineer, thanks to kind friends with connections. And I’ll be the main DJ and host.

Good, I think. Done. Well done. Except that now I have to book an audience too.

It’s far too late to get the May 5th details into the listings of weekly magazines, let alone monthly ones. But I have a kind friend designing a logo, flyer and poster right now, which I hope to get quickly printed and distributed around Camden, even if there’s just days to spare.

Plus there’s still the Internet. And I do forget just how many people read this diary. Twice in the last week I’ve had people at London cafe tables shout ‘Love your blog!’ as I pass. And today a man from the BBC World Service emailed to say they wanted to use one of my entries on their programme. It was too last minute and didn’t happen, but at least it reminded me that my main publicity outlet may be right here.

So!

The new club night is called AGAINST NATURE, after the Huysmans book. Proud Camden, first Weds of the month. Please pass it on.

There’s a Facebook group for the club here. Please join if you want to receive details of the various dates.

***
Here’s what I’m sending out to listings:

AGAINST NATURE
Dickon Edwards invades Camden with his very own twisted speakeasy for dressed-up dandies and vintage vamps. Dance to a decadent mix of easy listening, showtunes, pastiche pop, and all that deviant jazz. Plus a suitably eclectic yet aesthetic gaggle of live acts. Every first Weds of the month.

LINE UP FOR WEDS MAY 5TH:

– BARRY & STUART
Boyish BAFTA-nominated comedy magicians, who regularly perform wonder invoking, laughter inducing, and awe-inspiring trickery. Presenters of such TV series as ‘Magick’, ‘Dirty Tricks’ and ‘Tricks from the Bible’.
http://www.barryandstuart.com

– MOONFISH RHUMBA.
Immaculately-groomed musical comedy troubadours. Finalists in the Hackney Empire New Act and Amused Moose competitions.
http://www.moonfishrhumba.com

– TRICITY VOGUE
Offbeat & sassy songstress with a colourful history of romantic misadventure.
http://www.tricityvogue.com

– RUDE MECHANICALS
Miss Roberts and her exotic cohorts unleash their brand of surreal art-jazz-rock, with the distinct possibility of lessons in toe sucking.
http://www.rudemechanicals.co.uk

Plus elegant DJ and host Dickon Edwards (Beautiful & Damned, Latitude, White Mischief, Last Tuesday Society).

Doors 8pm.
Live acts 9.30pm-11.30pm.
Dancing to 1am.

Advance tickets: £5
Door charge: £5 before 10pm. £7 after.

DRESS CODE (preferred): Vintage & dandy-esque.

VENUE:
South Gallery at PROUD CAMDEN,
The Horse Hospital, Stables Market,
Chalk Farm Rd, LONDON NW1 8AH.
Tel: 020 7482 3867.
http://www.proudcamden.com

Stacy in Pittsburgh sends me a link in the manner of ‘I saw this and thought of you’:

Exercises For Gentlemen: 50 Exercises To Do With Your Suit On

Originally published 1908, now reprinted. Reviewed by the New Yorker here.

“Not that this is a hint.  You appear to be in good shape.”

I’m pushing it, I have to admit. My days of eating precisely whatever I like are long gone. I did dally with jogging a few years ago, but abandoned it for aesthetic reasons: I looked ridiculous. I made one enquiry at the local gym, was taken aside and presented with (a) the information that I have to sign up with a personal trainer, and (b) the cost, and, well, legged it.

I also realised you can get more or less get the exercise you need if you walk briskly for an hour or so every day, ideally via the steep incline of Highgate Hill. On top of which, I always try to take the stairs instead of using lifts. And London is so good for walking. Soho in particular favours the walker: all those little streets and no buses.

I treat the London Library as my all-in-one gym, with its labyrinthine corridors and stairs. You pay a subscription and get access to miles of rare and lesser-known books, all to browse and to borrow, all on open access shelves. Serendipity is a work-out, too. In addition to all that exercise for the mind and legs, there’s the chance of spotting Robert Pattinson. Or Natascha McElhone. Or Alan Bennett. Or, let’s face it, the chance for them to spot me.

Adding comments about the new episode of Doctor Who to the Internet seems highly redundant, but I did think it was wonderful. I thought Matt Smith’s Doctor felt instantly iconic, and that the programme now has that Harry Potter-ish feel about it – world-beating, while still distinctly British. Just the right balance of funny bits and magical bits and scary bits and thrilling bits.

These are hardly unique thoughts, so here’s five things – other art – that the Doctor Who story (‘The Eleventh Hour’) made me think about. Not so common connections, I hope.

1. The Tardis swimming pool being somewhere in the Tardis library. This made me think about the novel ‘The Swimming-Pool Library’. (I imagined the Doctor adding to Amy ‘It’s all gone a bit Alan Hollinghurst in there.’)

2. A huge disembodied eyeball. Three other oversized ocular orbs suggested themselves. There’s Odilon Redon’s eyeball-balloon, in his print ‘L’Oeil, comme un ballon bizarre se dirige vers l’infini’ (The Eye Like a Strange Balloon Mounts Toward Infinity). As used on book covers like Ian McEwan’s ‘Enduring Love’.

3. Another eyeball, this time the sky-bound one in ‘Flan’, the early 90s apocalyptic album and novel by the New York musician Stephen Tunney, aka Dogbowl.

I’m pleased to see that the novel’s just been reprinted. It’s like ‘The Road’, but with more floating eyeballs.

4. One more giant eyeball (they’re like buses): the one behind the door in Clive Barker’s story ‘Son Of Celluloid’ (from ‘Books Of Blood’), which quotes ‘Casablanca’ at its victim: ‘Here’s looking at you, kid’. A tale of a cancerous tumour becoming sentient and doing impersonations of Hollywood movie stars in order to kill people. Outrageous, gory and really rather brilliant.

In fact, because I read too many biographies, I’ve just realised I’m sitting a few blocks away from the house where Mr Barker wrote the story – along with much of his 80s output, including the source material for ‘Hellraiser’ and ‘Candyman’- in Hillfield Avenue, Crouch End, London N8. I’m cat-sitting in nearby Middle Lane. Here’s a panel from the comic adaptation of ‘Son Of Celluloid’:

5. Finally, my favourite tale about sinister voices coming from cracks in the walls. ‘Flies On The Ceiling’, by Jaime Hernandez, from the long-running comic book ‘Love & Rockets’. After an abortion and divorce, Izzy Ruebens finds herself in a dingy rented room somewhere in Mexico. There, riddled with guilt and neuroses, the Devil speaks to her through a crack in the wall. Perfect for Easter:

Another birthday party where I know the host, Ms Shanthi, but few of the friends. Though at least it’s seated. It’s a drinks gathering at the Duke pub, on Roger Street off Gray’s Inn Road, embedded deep within the mishmash of streets between Bloomsbury, Clerkenwell, Farringdon and King’s Cross. Quite a bohemian, arty place. No Sky Sports, no pool table, no TVs.

For some reason, though, the pub stereo plays Robbie Williams’s greatest hits. We muse on ‘Old Before I Die’, his early, desperate attempt to Fit In with the Oasis crowd, followed by ‘Millennium’, when we try to remember what we were doing on New Year’s Eve 1999. I wish I could keep quiet that I know the song uses a sample of Nancy Sinatra’s ‘You Only Live Twice’, but I blurt this factoid out at the earliest opportunity, like a knee jerk reflex. I live alone.

I go to the pub straight from writing an aerogramme near the enormous Mount Pleasant sorting office. The building’s post box has a collection at 7.30pm, the latest in the Central & North London area. I often sit in a cafe near there and write letters, knowing I have this extended deadline in which to post them. At the pub someone tells me Royal Mail are actually planning to sell off Mount Pleasant, as it’s prime Clerkenwell real estate.

Once again, it’s a party where I feel I only know the host, and at first – as ever – I wonder if I’m the Token Strange Person, surrounded by Normals Who Speak Fluent Mortgage. But I manage to chat away for hours with them, and no one sets fire to me. The wine helps. The wine always helps.

People ask me how I know Ms S. I tell them it was at Prom Night, a semi-ironic club night held at the Buffalo Bar in Highbury Corner, where they played the sort of 80s tunes heard in John Hughes movies. Like the US slang usage of the S-word I mentioned earlier, for years school proms were entirely baffling and alien things British people only knew about through watching movies.

Prom Night the club had its own Prom King and Queen crowned at the end. Shanthi was a regular, but when I went it was my first time. I managed to be crowned Prom King – to my joy – while Ms S was roped into being my Queen.

She was utterly appalled.

As a regular, she knew it was only a matter of time before the distaff crown came round to her, but on this particular night she felt dressed down and not looking her best. There’s a photo somewhere of us together in our sashes, me beaming, her looking horrified.

After the photo was taken, she tore off her Prom Queen sash, threw it to the ground, and flounced off. So I donned it and posed for photos as the Prom Queen instead. Anything for a camp laugh. Some time later she apologised, and we became friends. I still have the sash.

At the pub tonight, one young (British) lady tells me her school had a Prom Night in her GCSE year, which I suppose is a sign of the times. She adds, however, that it didn’t go as far as having a King and Queen. I wonder if that’s because the British are still riddled enough with genuine class differences as it is, without having to compete for ersatz ones.

I go on to tell the lady how ‘Hello’ magazine used to have bona fide aristocrats on the cover, with coverage of upper class society debutante balls, ‘coming out’ parties, that sort of thing. That all still goes on today, but it gets a lot less mainstream media coverage. Today, showbiz celebrity has utterly taken over, though it’s still something that can be inherited by birth or by coupling.

So now there’s the case of Peaches Geldof: someone who is famous by an accident of birth like any duchess or princess, it’s just that her surname is her title. Likewise people who go on celebrity TV shows: often they are only famous by association with others, like Lillie Langtree and Wallis Simpson before them. The definition of primary fame may change, but secondary fame is eternal. There will always be a fascination with tapping into the sap of privilege.

I mention to the young lady one upper class cliche during my own student years in Bristol. In 1990, the running joke was that Bristol Uni was full of all the posh people who were not clever enough to attend Oxford or Cambridge.

And then of course, she then tells me she’s a graduate of Bristol. I apologise until I fall over.

More and more often, a bus has waited at an empty stop for me, because the driver has spotted my frantic running and decided to be kind. Obviously they’re not obliged to do this, as it’s my fault for not being at the stop. So by way of returning the kindness, I now make a point of taking home other passengers’ litter, the kind left on seats or on the floor. Free newspapers, empty drinks bottles rolling around, that sort of thing.

I have somewhat less kind thoughts towards a group of passengers on the 134 the other Friday evening.

It’s about 8pm, and the bus is heading from Euston to Camden Town. I’m on the top deck, left hand side, about five seats ahead of the back seat. Which I can hear is occupied by a group of girls, giggling and being loud and raucous in the perennial Friday Night way. Then one girl starts throwing pieces of banana peel down the aisle, getting more laughter from her friends. As all the seats face forward, it is impossible to see the throwing, just the peel.

Then she throws some directly at the head of another passenger. It’s a thirtysomething man sitting with his girlfriend, on the seats opposite and just in front of me. He ignores them.

They do it again. This time, he turns round and asks the girls to stop throwing banana peel at him. He has a foreign accent – French, possibly.

The girls shout back. ‘It wasn’t me!’ ‘I don’t even like bananas!’ Then their tone turns quickly, from unconvincing schoolgirl protest to ugly, second-hand prejudice: ‘At least we’re British, mate. At least we’re meant to be here.’

The Frenchman says, ‘You are nuzzing, you know that?’ And he turns back. His girlfriend whispers to him what I imagine is the French for ‘leave them, Marcel, they’re not worth it.’

The girls get worse.

‘What did he say to me?’ ‘Hey, YOU are nothing, more like. Yeah.’

I put my headphones on and pretend to be listening to music. I’m terrified. I’m hoping this doesn’t get out of hand. I want to intervene and tell the girls off, but I am not that sort of man. On top of which, I think of the man who was stabbed to death on the 43 a few years ago, for asking someone if they’d stop throwing chips at his girlfriend.

They throw more banana peel at the Frenchman. This time, it misses and hits the man sitting directly behind the couple. He’s thirty-ish, unshaven and bespectacled in that Owns Box Sets Of The Wire On DVD way. He turns around and glowers at the girls. English accent. Firm, threatening, every year of his age.

‘Hey. Stop throwing shit. All right? Stop throwing shit.’

‘We wasn’t.’ ‘Wasn’t me.’

The girls now sound resentful, small, put in their place. It seems to do the trick. No more banana peel.

The bus pulls into Camden, and the girls cackle their way down the aisle, down the stairs, out of our lives. I finally get a look at them. Dressed up, made up, and all of 19 or so. I was expecting 13.

The rest of the journey home, I think sadly about the Back Of The Bus dynamic, how nothing has changed since I was at school. The back seat is where loud kids go to be naughty and daring and controlling. Yet cowardly with it, because the other passengers can’t see them. I wonder if the Back Seat does something to them: the psychology of perceived power. A temptation too far. It’s like the attraction of posting anonymous abuse on the Internet.

When I am king, all the buses will have no back seat. They’ll go on into infinity.

I wonder about the girls. They’re not only playing up to an idiot cliche, but they’re too old for it. I wonder about their lives. I wonder if they’ll grow up, and when. I wonder which among them is the Main Girl, which ones are her doting deputies, and which ones are just tagging along out of fear.

I feel ashamed on behalf of the Frenchman. And I feel envious and hero-worshipping of the 6Music-y man who spoke out. Not just because he dared to turn around, stare them out and tell them off, but because he knew how just to say ‘shit’ to mean ‘stuff’, and not ‘excrement.’

It’s a usage I was blissfully unaware of until about the mid 80s, when I saw the hip film ‘Repo Man’ on video. Harry Dean Stanton’s character uses it in this way, and constantly. I remember being incredibly shocked. In fact, it upstaged the rest of the film for me. Movies are the lessons they don’t give you at school.

A few weeks ago I watched an episode of Skins, the popular UK drama. In that, Effy, a middle class, Southern English teenager is in a dream sequence. She meets a younger version of herself who won’t speak. ‘Don’t give me any of that silent shit,’ she says.

In 1985, to hear this from a British girl would have made me implode, frankly. Now it’s just used to make Effy sound like a typical teenager. So I guess it’s now official: the term has caught on.

(Typing this up, I check the OED definition. The usage is in there, but only just. It’s labelled ‘Draft Additions 2009’. Earliest known appearance, 1934, ‘Tropic of Cancer’ by Henry Miller.)

I envy how the man on the bus can speak Fluent Youth back at the girls, and that he can mean it, whereas for me it’d be hilariously out of character.

He’s like those teachers at my school who would use the occasional bit of swearing in their crowd control. A tactic that implied, ‘I may be a teacher but I too can do intimidation and slang. That’s the only two weapons you have, and I have them too, and yet I’m much older. That’s right, look scared.’

I come away from all this with a renewed respect for bus drivers, teachers, the French, and men of my age whose usage of youth slang I normally find unbecoming. Now I want a man like that on my keyring.

Before I get off the bus, I pick up the banana peel.

Saturday evening. To a house party in Harringay, near Turnpike Lane, hosted by Robin & Ellen H. They invited me to their wedding a few years ago, where I was seated at the same table as Alan Hollinghurst. I didn’t say anything to him, as nothing suggested itself other than, ‘I’ve read your novels. They’re very good, aren’t they? Well done!’ Except if it happened again now I suppose could talk with him about Ronald Firbank, and how I was pleased he chose the out-of-print writer to be in the National Portrait Gallery’s Gay Icons show last year. It was a slightly confusing title for an exhibition, because while it featured icons chosen by famous gay people (like Mr Hollinghurst), the icons themselves didn’t have to be gay. So Ronald Firbank ended up in the same show as Elton John’s choice, the England football manager Graham Taylor.

At the house party, Ellen serves up champagne with vodka-soaked raspberries. It becomes quite crowded, and after chatting to the small amount of people I know there (the hosts, Alex S, Tammy H, Jamie M), I slip into my usual mode of standing by myself against a wall, feeling awkward and strange. As much as I like parties, I’ve never been very good about going over and Joining In with someone else’s conversation – it feels bad mannered, even presumptious. So I stand there, hoping vainly (in every sense) that someone will come over to me instead. It’s one reason I take to DJ-ing so easily. DJing is also being aloof and passive and standing near a wall, but in a controlling way, and with a reason. On top of which, you have something to cling to.

Over the last year I’ve become something of a born again letter writer. Various things nudged me: reading collections of literary letters of old, seeing letters in museums, but mostly just missing the pleasure I had from writing letters in the past.

Letters also have a tactile and sensory advantage over the Net experience. More parts of the brain light up when reading handwritten letters, compared to processing typed information on a screen. With letters, I love the extra physicality, the three-dimensional touch of paper, the feel of scratching ink on white (and I do love my choice of pens and pencils). I love seeing the uniqueness of human handwriting: mine as well as other people’s. I also worry that the digital world can dissolve one’s sense of self. This isn’t to disparage the Net in a Luddite way, mind, just to aim for a more varied diet.

If writing letters in 2010 is a romantic gesture, writing airletters verges on the kinky. These cute paper gadgets, also known as ‘aerogrammes’ (and also spelt as ‘aerograms’), are a single sheet of paper which folds up to become its own envelope, with worldwide airmail postage printed on the outside. Designed to be cheap, convenient and private, they were patented by a British postmaster stationed in Iraq in the 30s. From the 40s they became popular worldwide, with pictorial designs to tie in with the latest range of commemorative stamps. For decades, the UK Royal Mail issued a different Christmas airletter every year. I once wrote a fan airletter to the Australian band Even As We Speak. And I don’t think I’d remember it so well if it’d been an email.

But with the mass take-up of email in the late 90s, the appeal of airletters in terms of convenience became redundant. Demand dropped off, and Royal Mail’s last pictorial design was for the Christmas of 2006. In 2010, many countries have stopped issuing them altogether.

When I started writing letters again last year, I was delighted to find UK airletters were still being issued – but only just. They’re not in the Royal Mail’s online shop: you have to either place a phone order (and pay a handling fee), or go into a Post Office and hope for the best. Each time I’ve done that, either they haven’t stocked any, or the counter staff has remarked, ‘It’s been a long time since anyone asked for these…’

Once thin and blue and nicknamed ‘blueys’, UK airletters are now sturdy and white. The standard design is dull, but easily livened up with a little personal customization; I’ve begun to cut out photos from newspapers and Pritt-Stick them into the blank space. More physicality, more a sense of making something, not just typing into the void. At 48p (assuming you bought a discount pack of six), they were still a lot cheaper than sending a postcard or normal letter abroad… until now.

From April 6th, airletters are going up a massive 19p to 67p each, compared with hikes of just 5p for airmail postcards and letters. Clearly Royal Mail sells so few airletters that they need to cover costs. They probably also think the rise won’t draw much of a public outcry. In fact, I suspect this diary entry constitutes the entire amount of umbrage over the increase.

I’ve been buying up packs frantically, in order to beat the price rise. Other people stockpile petrol and tinned food: I stockpile stationery.

After all, who sends airletters in 2010? A smattering of collectors, a few pensioners who won’t touch a computer, and defiant retro-stylists like myself. But I have a letter-loving friend in Australia who writes back, on the pretty pictorial aerogrammes the country still issues, and exchanging Facebook Wall posts with her just doesn’t lift my heart in the same way.

Maybe I’ll be one of the last British airletter senders ever. As long as Royal Mail still make them, and I still have friends abroad, I’ll keep writing them.

Links:
An article on aerograms by Prague-based writer Evan Rail.

A blog post: making DIY airletters via Google Maps and online postage

A few people have asked me if my mother is aware of the major exhibition on British quilting at the V&A, which opens this week. There’s something similar on at Liberty’s too.

Well, yes, Mum is aware all right. She’s up in town to attend both, staying with Linda Seward, who spoke about quilting on Monday’s Women’s Hour.

Mum says some quilters are slightly chagrined that the V&A show includes works by Grayson Perry and Tracey Emin. These are, after all, famous artists who’ve occasionally made quilts, rather than quilters per se. It’s fair enough, though: I’m a firm believer – as is Mum – of the rubbing-off factor of galleries, and the Emin and Perry quilts can only encourage serendipity for the uninitiated. They’ll bring in people who might not otherwise have gone, and who could well leave with their minds’ own patchwork newly illuminated.

Links:
Slideshow of the V&A exhibition with audio commentary (BBC News site).

Podcast of Women’s Hour, 22.3.2010 (mp3 file)

Tues eve: Mum and I have dinner in Islington. She tells me an anecdote from me and my brother’s childhood that sums up at least one difference between us. Tom once told some playground joke to a room of other children, and everyone laughed. I apparently tried doing the same – with the same joke (I’m assuming at a different occasion, though it wouldn’t surprise me if I did it immediately afterwards). Most of them didn’t laugh, and someone left the room in tears.

Yesterday, I look on Twitter and – catching the mood of the hour – find myself trying to think of a topical gag about David Cameron’s wife becoming pregnant. Then I stop myself. Much as I love satire, if I ever managed to write something pithily hilarious about an item in the news –  a straight gag – it would feel strange, even out of character; a snivelling attempt to join the cool boys’ gang. Which just isn’t part of my patchwork.

Saturday night just gone: I DJ at How Does It Feel To Be Loved, at the Phoenix in Cavendish Square. I chat to Charlie M and her friends, talk about Take That with the lovely Alice From Leeds on the door, and down too much white wine. Sunday is entirely spent recovering, I’m ashamed to admit.

The HDIF crowd is a mixture of young and old fans of the playlist – 60s soul and 80s indie. Ian W tells me about new bands that the club has helped to nurture, including one I like the sound of, ‘Allo Darlin’. I was at first baffled that there’s young fans of, say, McCarthy who were not even born when ‘Red Sleeping Beauty’ came out. Partly because the music seemed hermetically sealed to its era, but also because it forced me to admit to my own increasing age. It’s a form of solipsism too; the music that you once thought mapped a time of your history eventually maps you into history itself. That obscure 1989 EP track you thought only you gave meaning to, your little secret, will in fact outlive you. So get used to it. The music will get along just fine without you. Indiepop longa, vita brevis.*

Here’s my set list from the night.

1. The Style Council – Speak Like A Child
2. Lloyd Cole – Jennifer She Said
3. The Siddeleys – You Get What You Deserve
4. Felt – Sunlight Bathed The Golden Glow (the version with the jangly guitar intro)
5. McCarthy – I Worked Myself Up From Nothing
6. The Chills – Heavenly Pop Hit
7. Stereolab – Ping Pong
8. Camera Obscura – French Navy
9. Aztec Camera – Oblivious
10. Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made For Walking
11. Carole King – I Feel The Earth Move
12. The Angels – My Boyfriend’s Back
13. Le Tigre – Hot Topic
14. The Pastels – Nothing To Be Done
15. Chairmen Of The Board – Give Me Just A Little More Time
16. Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
17. Shirley Bassey – Spinning Wheel
18. The Supremes – Stoned Love
19. Spearmint – Sweeping The Nation
20. The Smiths – Ask
21. The Shangri-Las – Give Him A Great Big Kiss
22. Beyonce – Single Ladies (Motown remix)
23. Labelle – Lady Marmalade
24. Dexys – Plan B
25. Chuck Wood – Seven Days Too Long
26. Orange Juice – Poor Old Soul
27. The Wake – Crush The Flowers
28. Strawberry Switchblade – Since Yesterday
29. Sister Sledge – Thinking Of You
30. Dressy Bessy – If You Should Try To Kiss Her

[*After Hippocrates’s aphorism ‘Ars longa, vita brevis’: life is short, but art is forever.]