View from the flat a few days before Christmas.

I pass the Christmas week painlessly enough, cat and flat-sitting on my own in Crouch End. The freedom of having a whole flat to myself including a bathroom (I’ve spent most of my life sharing a shower with other bedsit tenant), plus no worries about heating bills, is reward enough. But Jen also gives me a generous Christmas present to unwrap on the day: a year’s membership to the NFT. It comes packaged with one of the BFI’s DVDs, Richard Lester’s surrealist 60s classic The Bed Sitting Room. It’s only now that I realise the apt nature of the title, given the escape from my normal dwelling.

Another present: a glider postcard from Maud Young. Also pictured is Erika Moen’s excellent autobiographical comic book, ‘Dar’, a present to myself which arrived in the same post.

My present to Jen is a copy of William Burroughs’s unlikely essay on his love of cats, The Cat Inside. It’s just been republished by Penguin:

Christmas Eve: I realise I need to buy Christmas crackers for the duck feeding ceremony in Waterlow Park the next day, as Ms Silke will be joining me.

Well, I say need… Funny how personal Christmas rituals can creep up on you. Yes, every Christmas Day I feed the ducks in Waterlow Park. And if a friend comes too, we pull crackers by the pond and put on the hats and pass around wine and mince pies right there. It’s just become the thing I do.

Me modelling the Budgens Deluxe Christmas Cracker hat. It’s essentially a hair band made from a red bin liner.

Buying Christmas crackers has to be done long before the 24th, which I discover too late. By now all the local supermarkets have sold out, except for Budgens. Which curiously has a tall stack of boxes of 12 ‘deluxe’ crackers (in so much as Budgens does ‘deluxe’) behind the counter. I see other shoppers coming away with a box each, and with big smiles. But curiously, it’s a smile of amusement, not relief.

‘They’re half price,’ says the cashier. ‘Because they’re faulty.’

‘Because they don’t make a bang?’

‘No, they bang fine. But they have all the same joke.’

This makes my Christmas. I spend the next twenty-four hours musing on the significance of this One Joke To Rule Them All. What can it be?

Noon the next day, and I pull the crackers with Silke at the duck pond.

Q. Where do snowmen go to dance?
A. To a Snowball.

Times twelve.

We then walk to Alexandra Park to feed the ducks there too, given it’s close to Crouch End. After the proper spate of snow a few days before, Christmas Day is only White in patches. The snow has vanished from the pavements and grass. But the duck ponds are still mostly frozen:

We also manage to see some proper Christmas Day snow. The tennis courts in Wood Vale have a thick layer of the white stuff, entirely untouched.

The papers today carry a photo of the man of the moment, the failed Nigerian leg-bomber who tried to blow up a US jet on Christmas Day. Though his attempt was mercifully thwarted, it’s still meant for a new range of over-the-top security measures. A full hour before landing, passengers on US flights now have to sit tight without anything on their lap: no trips to the toilet, no video or music, no newspapers, books, blankets or cushions. All thanks to young Mr Leggy.

The photo the papers are using is from seven years ago, when the unkind leg fetishist was a 16-year-old visiting London, as taken by his teacher. He stares directly at the camera with typical teenage defensiveness, while tugging at the brim of his Nike woollen hat as if to draw attention to the brand. It’s that Nike tick that gets me: the ubiquitous symbol of US corporate domination. I wonder if he’s still got the hat, whether embracing it (‘they’re enemies of Allah, but they still make nice hats.’). Or perhaps he’s inverting the Nike slogan with grim irony: ‘Just Do It’.

Everytime I have to take my shoes off in airports (never Nikes), I think about Richard Reid, the equally thwarted shoe-bomber who nonetheless achieved a petty kind of success: the introduction of those x-ray machines for shoes. Like those soap products from Lush which carry a little cartoon of the staffer who made them, I think of the machines bearing a similar cartoon of Mr Reid. Failed terrorists still get to be choreographers of new inconvenience, and so achieving a small scale victory. Somehow, it feels like those nonsensical instances at school, where teachers would adopt a kind of homeopathy approach to justice. ‘Because one child was naughty on the school trip, we’re never having that trip again. It’s his fault.’  The measure made no sense to me then, and still doesn’t now.

Similarly, seeing armed policemen at Heathrow never makes me feel safer about being there. Quite the reverse.

A Frankly Merry Christmas and a Splendid New Year to you.

(This year’s London tree: in the foyer of the 100-year-old Phoenix
Cinema, East Finchley, Christmas Eve 2009. Just before seeing the new
print of  The Red Shoes. Photo by Ms Shanthi.)

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.

I love a good award shortlist, particularly if I’m familiar with the nominees in question. Trouble is, the Oscars are usually about new films that haven’t hit the UK yet, while the Booker is about new hardback novels, which I rarely buy. One could try a library, but once the list is announced there’s usually a long queue of borrowers with precisely the same idea.

The BBC National Short Story Award is much more do-able, however. This year the five stories up for the prize are available in audio form as a free podcast, plus there’s an affordable anthology in the shops. So one can easily gauge one’s own opinion on the stories in time for the announcement  on Monday.

I guess this is my way of getting  X Factor type thrills. Short Story Idol.

So here’s my own ranking, in suspense-attempting reverse order.

5. The Not-Dead and the Saved by Kate Clanchy
A portrait of a mother’s relationship with her son, who battles cancer throughout his life. It’s beautifully written and skillfully compresses its novel-like material in a similar way to Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain. And yet it feels a little too concise, with the son shortchanged of character, never mind shortchanged of life. It also sounds heartless to say this, but I think it’s the least original of the five tales. It veers dangerously close to the  ‘little epiphany’ style, that much-derided short story equivalent of the ‘Hampstead adultery novel’.  That’s the trouble with death: it’s been done to death.

4. Hitting Trees With Sticks by Jane Rogers
A first-person study of an old lady with borderline Alzheimer’s. So we get an unreliable narrator, and then some. Manages to inject enough humour, but I rank this fourth because it feels more like a dramatic monologue than a short story. Favourite part:

The post has come while I was out. There’s a reminder from the optician, and a letter from the council. Of course, the optician’s is right opposite the council offices, so you’d expect that really.

3. Exchange Rates by Lionel Shriver
Or how a man’s relationship with money defines his relationship with his father, and with the world. Very up-to-date, with lots of detail about the changing pound to dollar rate, the UK property ladder, and the things Americans find most expensive over here (everything except marmalade and breakfast cereal, apparently). It has a very Roald Dahl-esque ending along the old ‘be careful what you wish for’ lines, though I’m also reminded of Dorothy Parker’s tales of urban pettiness among 1920s New York society.

2. Moss Witch by Sara Maitland
A botanist encounters an ancient witch somewhere in darkest Scotland. Excellent, original blend of hard science (specifically moss science), fantasy, folklore and flower-lore (or rather, moss-lore). Memorable images, a proper story feel, and Ms Maitland’s unique style of magical realism.

1. Other People’s Gods by Naomi Alderman
A respectable Jewish family in Hendon starts to worship a small pink statue of Ganesh the Elephant God, until the local rabbi intervenes. A story with jokes, satire, memorable imagery, witty asides, charm, and a plot steeped in puckish nerve. Despite the seemingly light nature of the tale, it touches on issues of faith and blasphemy, and keeps the reader guessing how it’s all going to pan out. Pleasantly old-fashioned and classic in feel, despite the reference to a Wii Tennis game.

So I’m rooting for Ms Alderman to win on Monday, with Ms Maitland second.

Mum returns from a quilting trip in Kenya (including a proper safari) and sends me a few photos.

This is a Rothschild Giraffe called Laura. Funnily enough, I visited the eponymous Walter Rothschild’s museum of stuffed animals in Tring a few weeks ago. Favourite exhibits included the elephant seal high up in the dark on top of the display cases, underlit as if he were on a stage reciting a soliloquy. Plus two fleas dressed as Mexican farmers, a gynandromorph bird – male on one side, female on the other – and a bowler hat containing a wasps’ nest. 45 minutes from Euston.

This photo isn’t a trick of perspective – Laura really is that big a girl.

Orphaned baby elephants, wearing blankets for heatstroke because they have no parent to shelter under:

And left over in the family camera from a few months ago, an example of flaneur dickonsius, grazing.  Taken by Dad at the Paddington Bear stall in Paddington Station.

(Sorry it’s taken me so long to do this entry. I wanted to get the links and credits right. This one is all-singing and all-dancing…)

Quick alert: Today is Buy Nothing Day in the UK, which I’m observing. I love how it throws up all kinds of questions, and how it dares people to prove they can go without shopping on a Saturday close to Christmas but not too close. Wish I’d posted this with a bit more notice, but anyway.

***

Friday November 20th: I DJ at the British Library in St Pancras. At 6pm, the last readers are thrown out, the reading rooms are closed, and a conference-style stage rig with shiny new PA and lights, plus ultra-professional crew,  is set up along one side of the entrance hall. On the opposite wall are trestle tables with caterers manning a bar.

The event is called Victorian Values, arranged to coincide with the Library’s current exhibition on Victorian photography. It’s co-promoted by the Ministry of Burlesque and is billed as a 19th-century themed evening of music, tableaux vivant, skits, can-can dancers, and inspired burlesque disrobing – including an opium-induced vision of a Burlesque Britannia. The MC is Des O’Connor  and the acts include Vicky Butterfly (who brings her own wooden theatre booth, hand painted with figures by Lawrence Gullo), Joe Black, Mr B The Gentleman Rhymer, and Oompah Brass, who perform covers of latter-day pop hits in the vintage brass style (tuba, french horn, trombone, trumpets), while decked out in full lederhosen. It’s a lot of fun, frankly.

The oldest recording I play is ‘I’m Following In Father’s Footsteps’ by Vesta Tilley, one of the many male impersonators of the music hall era.

Vesta Tilley

It was released in 1906 on Edison Gold Moulded Records, the world’s first record label. I found it at this website, the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project, University of California.

I love how ‘Edison Records’ first meant wax cylinders; actual discs were still some years off. The song itself was also featured in the BBC TV adaptation of Ms Waters’s Tipping The Velvet.

The newest track I play is ‘What Have You Done To Your Face?’ by Marcella & The Forget-Me-Nots, from 2009. A track so new it has yet to be released in any downloadable or physical form. It’s currently available only as a streaming track at the band’s MySpace page, or via this striking video directed by Alex De Campi, which is the way I discovered it. I didn’t realise at first that the singer & songwriter was the same Marcella from the Puppini Sisters – it’s such a different musical style. Which I guess was the whole point of her starting a separate band. Consider me first in the queue for their debut album.

Just before heading to the Library, I read this story on the BBC news site about Linn Products becoming the first hi-fi company to cease manufacture of CD players, in favour of digital streaming and downloading. It’s a milestone in the history of recorded sound, and a firm step towards the end of the CD age.

So while DJing, I think about the various formats the tracks were originally created for: wax cylinder, vinyl disc, CD, celluloid, video, MP3, online streaming, and how I’m playing them together on the same format (specially made CDRs, compiled from MP3s), in a building built for the very act of archiving. It’s the DJ as librarian.

***

This event is packed out, with people lining not just the area in front of the stage but every staircase and balcony in the entrance hall. Rows of faces look down upon the stage (at the side of which are the DJ decks), like a crowd scene in some exotic city square. Emma Jackson is there, and remarks that the audience is noticeably mixed: alongside the young-ish cabaret and burlesque fans are lots of older Ladies Who Gallery. Good, I say.  A library is the place to mix worlds.

Judging by the roars of approval – particularly for Mr B – the event is a success. I have one Lady Who Galleries approaching me afterwards. She says she was ‘pleasantly surprised’ that the British Library would put on such an evening, and affirms she had a nice time. And who, she asks, did that  song I played about the ‘coin operated boy’, the one the younger ladies present seemed to know all the words to?

Well, here’s the playlist.

MUSIC HALL
I’m playing with time zones somewhat, as music hall songs were written as late as the 1940s, but it is all in the same style.

Ella Shields – Burlington Bertie From Bow
Frank H Fox – Drop Me In Piccadilly (as suggested by Kevin Pearce, taken from his excellent blog on London songs)
Hetty King – Piccadilly (thanks to Mr Pearce again)
Gus Elen – The ‘Ouses In Between
Florrie Forde – Down At The Old Bull And Bush
Marie Lloyd – A Little Of What You Fancy Does You Good
Mark Sheridan – I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside (thanks to Ms Crimson Skye)
Vesta Tilley – I’m Following In Father’s Footsteps
Stanley Holloway – Where Did You Get That Hat (thanks to Billy Reeves)
The Andrews Sisters – Beer Barrel Polka
The Beverley Sisters – Roll Out The Barrel
Shaun Parkes – The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo. Taken from the film Marie Lloyd: Queen Of The Music Hall. Soundtrack unavailable, so I made an MP3 from the DVD.

GILBERT & SULLIVAN

Topsy-Turvy film cast – So please you sir with much regret (mp3 link). The piano rehearsal version which plays under the opening credits: just text on a black background, so the audience has to focus on the song. There is a soundtrack CD, but this track isn’t on it. Cue more DVD to MP3 recording. I love just how this song kicks off the rich, colourful world of Topsy-Turvy before we get to see any visuals. It’s just Sullivan saying, ‘One… two… TWO… two!’ then the song in its purest piano form, with impeccable harmonies by Shirley Henderson and co. Instantly we’re transported.

Topsy-Turvy soundtrack – Paris Galop from The Grand Duke (instrumental)

Linda Ronstadt – Poor Wandering One. From the 1983 film The Pirates Of Penzance. Not released on CD or DVD, so I had to teach myself how to make MP3s from YouTube. Just for this gig. I am the very model of a modern DJ.

Kevin Kline et al – With Catlike Tread. From the same film. YouTube again. Can’t beat a gang of sexy singing pirates.

The Hot Mikado stage cast – Three Little Maids. 1940s jazz style.

Frankie Howerd – The Flowers That Bloom In The Spring. From The Cool Mikado.
The Cool Mikado soundtrack – The Sun’s Hooray (instrumental). The tune of ‘The Sun Whose Rays Are All Ablaze’ covered in a cha-cha-cha style.
The John Barry Seven – Tit Willow Twist (instrumental). Also from The Cool Mikado. Twangy guitar, Shadows style.

The Cool Mikado is a 1962 film by Michael Winner, which sets the G&S operetta in a swinging 60s pop world. It stars Frankie Howerd, Tommy Cooper, Stubby Kaye, Lionel Blair, Dennis Price, the John Barry Seven, and Mike and Bernie Winters (whose character names are ‘Mike & Bernie’). I’ve seen it on video… and it’s absolutely bloody awful. But the soundtrack, released on El Records, is a hoot.

OTHER CABARET-COMPATIBLE TUNES
Various Victorian Musical Box instrumentals – Funiculi Funicula, Behold The Lord High Executioner, Valse Des Fées. From Sublime Harmonie: recordings of rare Victorian cylinder and disc musical boxes from The Roy Mickleburgh Collection, Bristol.

Various Player Piano instrumentals – Burlington Bertie From Bow, Nellie Dean, Hold Your Hand Out Naughty Boy, The Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo. From Mechanical Music Hall: Street Penny & Player Pianos, Musical Boxes & Other Victorian Automata.

Wendy Carlos – William Tell Overture from A Clockwork Orange soundtrack.
London Philharmonic Orchestra – Can-Can (Offenbach).
Moulin Rouge film cast – Spectacular Spectacular, Sparking Diamonds
Michael Nyman – Angelfish Decay
Tipping The Velvet cast – It’s Only Human Nature After All. From the closing credits. Own MP3 recorded from DVD.
The Dresden Dolls – Coin Operated Boy
Momus – Sinister Themes (thanks to Michelle Mishka)
The Divine Comedy – The Booklovers
The Tiger Lillies – The Story Of The Man Who Went Out Shooting. From the Shock Headed Peter stage soundtrack.
Marcella & The Forget-Me-Nots – What Have You Done To Your Face? DJ promo MP3, as kindly provided by the artist.
Peggy Lee – Fever
Marilyn Monroe – Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend (Swing Cats Remix)

Also procured, but not played due to time:

Scarlet’s Well – Mr Mystery’s Mother
Electrelane – Eight Steps
Shockheaded Peters – I Bloodbrother Be
King of Luxembourg – Picture Of Dorian Gray (the TV Personalities’ song, also covered by The Futureheads. This is the most effete version.)
Ciceley Courtneidge – There’s Something About A Soldier
Jessie Wallace – When I Take My Morning Promenade. From the film Marie Lloyd: Queen of the Music Hall.

Jessie Wallace being the actress who plays Kat Slater in Eastenders. Was rather looking forward to playing her (rather good) version of this Marie Lloyd song, particularly alongside Momus et al. However, one of the stage acts covered the song on the night, so I thought it my duty as a Gentleman DJ to omit it. May as well upload it here:

Jessie Wallace – When I Take My Morning Promenade

I don’t think I’ve ever spent so long putting together a single DJ set. But I loved every minute of it.

Far be it for me to add to the tiresome anti-Twitter articles out there, but I have to pin at least some of the blame for my diary hiatus on the popular sky-blue social networking site. And now I know I have to wean myself off it in order to write here again.

I’m worried that Twitter’s ubiquity has meant that many bloggers and online diarists with the impulse to say something to the world have evolved – or devolved – from producing well-considered and chewed-over paragraphs rich with their own personal style, into squeezing out cramped, ephemeral if modish  ‘Tweets’ of 140 characters.

Now, Twitter is very much Where It’s At, so one can understand the attraction. One doesn’t like to feel that the party is in the other room – that Life is going on elsewhere, even on the internet. My fear is that the impulse to Tweet drains the impulse to write in any other way. Which is fine for those gifted souls who can rattle out a book-length treatise before breakfast then happily switch to chatting about The X Factor over hashtags and hash browns.

It’s because I’m ultimately concerned, as ever, with matters of style. Of becoming oneself through one’s writing. And I’m not convinced you can really do style on Twitter. Not my kind of style, anyway. It’s good for posting alerts, or emergency appeals for help (see below), or linking to entries like this (which my Twitter account does automatically).

Otherwise the most one can manage is a brief aside, a morsel from a running commentary, or an attempt to Join In, which is something I’ve never been great at in the first place. I want to say more, and read more. Yes, Twitter is like a big party. Except for me it feels like a party where there’s a competitive edge to be popular, where the more famous guests have whole armies at their command (heaven help you if you displease the gurus in question), where one can only hear half of so many conversations, where one might try to join in but is ignored, or is a bit late, where it’s all too easy to say something one regrets, or is mistaken due to the brevity of the form, or risks a joke backfiring because context is tricky in 140 characters. All of which is fine… for those for whom it’s fine. But who am I kidding? You’ll always find me in the stand-alone-blog kitchen at parties.

It got to the point where I was honing one sentence for over an hour in order to fit it into a Tweet. At which point it came home to me: I am just not an innate Twitterer. I am an unabashed wordy and rococo writer, and I like space to throw my words about. Just as I like big, sprawling cities with no centre, where the unusual can nestle and escape, rather than small towns whose core is held hostage to the less meek on a Friday night. I like blackening whole pages of A4 with fountain pen ink, full of crossings-out, at a desk or cafe table; rather than jabbing into a handheld device while standing in a queue. No, I can’t Tweet and stay stylish. Not when I have this diary. It’s one or the other. Sorry, Twitter.

***

The postal strike is over, at least until the New Year. Handwritten letters arrive once again to delight the heart, and I reply with equal joy (Proper Letters would be my entry in the current charity anthology Modern Delight – particularly airletters and aerogrammes, of which more another time). Proper Letters also serve to dilute the irritation of less personal missives like the following, received today:

Dear Mr Edwards

Your local estate agent Boorish Grasp would like to draw your attention to a garage we have been instructed to sell in [nearby] Highgate Avenue. It features an up and over door, is ideal for storage… and would comfortably house a car. The asking price is £30,000 and is leasehold.

They know my name and address, but are clearly unaware that I am currently living on £8,000 a year, courtesy of National Assistance once more.

(What happened to the book deal? My interest waned, then returned, then I lost faith in my ability to write it. Then I regained faith, only to lose interest in the project again. Then I procrastinated, and so on. But the fact I’m writing the diary means I’m writing again full stop. Today I put a Post-It note on my laptop saying ‘Do Not Open Until Something Is Finished’. It seems to have worked. I’m typing this up from a day’s longhand work.)

I do not own the bed I sleep on, let alone a car. But the letter is a reminder of the kind of neighbourhood I’m lucky to live in. I suppose I have the illusion of success and wealth by postcode alone – which estate agents go by. They skip to the music of postcode and euphemism. I must be dragging down the average income of this street. Mike Skinner of the popular chart rap combo The Streets lives around the block, as does Victoria Wood. Maybe they should do an album together, given they’ve both turned tales of awkward young love into catchy songs, musical formats aside. Maybe Victoria could have a go at the techno-style rapping, and Mike could play the piano while shrugging his shoulders a lot.

The mere idea of me having £30,000 to spend on anything, never mind a garage, still seems a universe away. When I had the night shift job earlier this year, I was on £19,000 p.a. And it seemed like the most money in the world.

In fact, in terms of what I could do, it was. My rent and normal outgoings are so low by London standards that the night shift funded mini-holidays in Tangier, Gibraltar, Sark, Bruges and New York. Always staying in hotels, too.

At a recent party, I met a forty-ish man who said wistfully, ‘Oh I’d love to have a holiday in New York… Maybe one day, when I can afford it. When the mortgage’s paid off.’ He had a full-time job – I suspect earning more than £19,000 – and a house. It was then that I realised I’d rather stay living in a rented furnished bedsit and be able to travel the world than own a whole house and not. Plus I cannot speak Mortgage.

When one reaches one’s death bed, one doesn’t want to be saying ‘At least I saved lots of money’. Or ‘At least I owned a house’. I realise I’m speaking for myself, though.

***

It’s all very well living to please oneself like this, but when bumped down to hand-to-mouth status once more, I find it very hard remembering that being unemployed is a full-time job. That one has to count every penny coming in, and going out, and keeping tabs on when they do, and that one has to hold all these things in one’s head at all times.

So a week or two ago I suddenly realised why I was finding it unusually easy not to run out of money. I had forgotten to pay the rent. For two months. I quickly needed to find £600 from scratch, or risk homelessness, a state from which I doubt I’d ever really recover.

I snapped into action – by my standards – and announced to the world (or at least, Facebook and Twitter) that I was selling off all my musical instruments and equipment. It was something I’d been meaning to do anyway, so now was the time. After 48 hours of sales and donations – the latter which I never solicited but was in no position to turn down – I had cleared the debt. Seeing friends email me anything from £5 to £100, or haggling UP the price of a dusty four-track recorder, quite overwhelmed me. It felt like the end of It’s A Wonderful Life. A thousand heartfelt thanks to everyone who bought or donated.

Mind, I realise this bail came with a condition. Can’t do it again. I’ve used up my ‘Ask The Audience’ option, my ‘Get Out Of Debt Free’ card.

***

I’m particularly delighted that my vintage synthesiser, a 1982 Roland Juno 6, went to Leo Chadbourn, aka Simon Bookish. Who will not only use it to make new music, but just the sort of music I like.

My brother Tom is the star of this rescue, offering to take away my guitars and get them fully ‘set up’ and serviced for resale, using his own Ebay account. He’s a full-time musician and speaks fluent Used Guitar far better than me. I didn’t even know my ‘Strat’ was a Japanese make, and was thus worth less than a USA one, but more than a Strat copy. That sort of thing. It’s taken me seventeen years of playing guitar to realise I’m just not a guitar person. Can’t say I didn’t give it a go.

I can write music; I just can’t play it very well. So if I do feel the need to write songs again, I can easily buy or borrow a cheap right-handed guitar. On recordings, I’ve always preferred to use proper musicians as it is: producers who are also programmers and instrumentalists. For the Fosca albums, the guitar parts were mostly played by Ian Catt, Alex Sharkey, Charley Stone, Kate Dornan, or Tom. Not only would they make fewer mistakes, but I’d get the writer’s thrill of hearing the sound in my head brought into the world via more expert hands and gaining in translation; just as playwrights delight in actors bringing flesh to their boney, tentative words.

I’m also relieved to be spared the whole Ebay selling process: the questions, the chasing for payment, the delivery. It’s too much like taking on work in order to avoid work. If Tom can’t sell the guitars, I’m tempted to just set fire to them ceremonially, like Hopey Glass does in this frame from Love & Rockets. What cathartic bliss…

One guitar – the Orlando Strat – has already gone, but my Gibson SG (the main Fosca guitar) and my Yamaha electro-acoustic are still on sale. Please tell your guitar-playing friends. Both are left-handers, which makes finding a buyer harder, but  Tom is confident there’s no need for firelighters. I’m hoping to be proved wrong about the Hopey Glass option. I do need the money.

Now, for the first time in seventeen years, I find myself coming home to a room with no musical instruments in it. My very first guitar was a 21st birthday present from Tom. So it’s fitting he should take the last guitars away. A sad day? No. A brave step into the future day. An anti-nostalgia day.

What now? I’m enjoying doing what I want with my days, though frustrated at having to say no to anything that might involve spending money, like going for a drink more than once a week. And I’m hoping I’ll find something – the abortive book, a different book, anything, which will bring in slightly more than £8,000 a year. Not too unrealistic a goal, I hope. I don’t need £30,000 for a garage. I now have even fewer possessions to put in it, after all.

My most expensive item used to be the Gibson SG, bought new in 1997 for £1000. Now? Bespoke suits. Which for this Dickon Edwards, is as it should be.

Quick announcement. Dedalus Books is once more applying for funding. They’re going to use their petition from last year as evidence of support, so please sign it now if you didn’t do so last time: http://is.gd/44qPb

***

Sat 11th Oct: With Anna Spivack to see the new play of Prick Up Your Ears. It’s based directly on the Orton diaries and John Lahr’s biography rather than the Alan Bennett 80s film. Matt Lucas as Kenneth Halliwell and Gwen Taylor as the landlady and neighbour.

Gwen Taylor for me will always be her characters in The Rutles: manager Leggy Mountbatten’s mother (‘He hated their music. But he liked their trousers’) and Chastity, the nazi-uniform-wearing Yoko Ono figure (‘a simple German girl whose father had invented World War Two’)

Despite allocating over an hour to get into town via the 91 bus, we end up gridlocked in Bloomsbury and have to race through crowded Soho, arriving at the Comedy Theatre in Panton Street just in time for curtain up.

We needn’t have bothered. The ushers and box office staff are standing outside, telling people the performance is cancelled and handing out details of how to get refunds. Matt Lucas is still out of the show due to his ex-husband’s suicide, which we were prepared for, but his understudy is off sick too. The understudy doesn’t have an understudy, so the play’s off.

We have a couple of drinks at 23 Romilly Street (where many of the old Colony Room regulars now go), before repairing for a bottle of wine at Anna’s flat in Archway rather than hit any clubs or further bars. One of the few ways I’m growing up, I suppose.  More restaurants and quiet dinner parties,  fewer loud clubs and gigs.

So sad about Matt Lucas’s ex-husband killing himself like that. I can understand Mr L pulling out of any play, let alone one about a doomed gay relationship where the non-famous one commits suicide. The tabloids have responded with predictable drool, flagging the word ‘husband’ in the headlines with smug inverted commas. One 21st century twist: the suicide note posted on Facebook.

***

Three weeks since varicose vein surgery. The bruises have faded okay, but am concerned about residual patches of numbness above my ankle. According to the literature, these could fade in 2 weeks, or 2 months, or 2 years, or in some cases not at all. I suppose given the choice between recurring pain (which prompted me asking for the optional operation), and permanent numbness, I’ll settle for the latter.  But I’d rather the numbness would go. And soon, please. Prodding the space above my ankle, I think of cold rubber. The type lining car doors. And the stuff used to make those thin mats in school gyms.

Other diary wishes: I really want the ability to write a decent amount every day, (as opposed to a habit for Olympic procrastination) but also the ability to just write and read faster. When I finally sit down and do it, I take far too long. I envy those people who speed through 800 page books in single sittings. I want to be one of those. I don’t mind having to do umpteen drafts – as long as they’re fast drafts.

***

Current madness: a fixation with the creaking and popping noises made by the casing of my fridge expanding and contracting when the motor is off. A bedsit hazard: I have to sleep and work in the same room. The fridge is only 2 years old. Did it always make those noises? Were the noises always that loud and frequent and distracting? Is it just me?

Other news: am back in therapy. Friday mornings, NHS so no fee, 90 minute sessions for six months. Have mixed feelings about whether I need them. But they were offered (after a year on the waiting list), and I’m clearly in need of something.

To the ICA to see Spearmint play a special gig: a 10th anniversary performance of their album ‘A Week Away’. It’s the record they were promoting when they employed me as guitarist in 1999.

They send me a nicely written (if fairly formal) invite and put me on the guest list. Given I was sacked from the band, I briefly wonder if turning up would make me look like a cuckolded booby. But then I recognise such thoughts as childish vanity of the worst kind. The grown-up option is to be thankful for the invite and to turn up graciously. It’s childish to make an appearance when one hasn‘t been invited, or to deliberately refuse when one has. And besides, I’ve already been to two weddings of former exes this year.

(Since writing this, I’ve remembered that I saw Spearmint a couple of years ago anyway, when they played with Scarlet’s Well at the 100 Club. Both bands had hired and fired me as a guitarist in the past. It felt like attending a festival dedicated to my failure as a musician. But I’m glad I went. I joined both bands because I was a fan, and I remain a fan.)

Surgical symmetry: I have a vivid memory from the Spearmint days of rehearsing while recovering from an operation on my left leg. I can see a rehearsal room in Acton, me strumming away while sitting down, the boyish Spearmint bassist (and later guitarist) James Parsons reminding me to stop crossing my legs as per doctor’s orders.

Ten years later, the ailment returns (varicose veins, same leg, different vein, apparently quite common), and on Sept 18th 2009 at UCLH in Euston I have the operation all over again. A decade ago it was ‘stripping’ out the useless vein under the knife, leaving me in a Tubigrip bandage for weeks. This time it’s a combination of ‘laser ablation and multiple stab avulsions’, still requiring the dreaded general anaesthetic, but without the bandage. I just have to suffer dissolvable stitches and a surgical stocking worn for 3 weeks.

(Naturally, the day after I have it done, I read on the BBC News site that a different London NHS hospital does a while-you-wait, 15 minute, non-anaesthetic, all-laser version of the operation. The latest surgery, the latest Ipod, all weapons in the conspiracy of feeling eternally out of date whatever one does.)

So I attend this tenth anniversary gig while wearing a tenth-anniversary medical stocking – a shade of camel tan labelled on the box as ‘Mexico’. Given I already favour the sort of silk scarves worn by old ladies, it’s all grist to the camp fogey mill.

Musing on ageing at gigs like this is inevitable, particularly as the album in question dwells on death (dedicated to their first bassist, who died before it came out) wasting time (‘A Third Of My Life’ proving particularly poignant), and of artists and bands who never quite made it (‘Sweeping The Nation’).

After years of being quite tousled and curly, James P has had his hair cut to match his photo on the album sleeve a decade ago – ‘a Hoxton fin’ as it was. And he really does look exactly the same.  Singer Shirley Lee is still skinny as a rake (shaking his enviable hips in ‘A Trip Into Space’). The gig also has a school reunion feel about it, with people I’ve not seen for ten years saying hello. Naturally they ask what I’m doing now. And I look at my shoes and try to think what the answer is.

Another old problem of mine recurs tonight. My body clock’s out of whack and I decide to go to bed during the afternoon rather than turn up at the gig with wilting eyelids. The alarm fails and I’m woken at 8pm by Charlie M. She’s in the ICA waiting for me, I’m still in bed in Highgate. A speedy dress and a Tube ride later, Ms M is very forgiving. But I’m mortified and angry at myself. I’ve spent too much of my life not just sleeping, but sleeping at all the wrong times. I’m hoping this diary entry, the first after yet another hiatus, will finally signify getting back on track. With everything.