Today, there’s 116 recipients. I know – I counted them all in the programme during a guiltily idle moment. I have to admit it’s a little frustrating that one doesn’t know a bit more about each person stepping up to get the medal and the chat. ‘James Bloggs, for services to the Inland Revenue’ is all you’re given. Personally, I’d have welcomed a couple of lines in the programme adding a little more colour: how long was Mr Bloggs in his job, say? Where did he live? What were his hobbies? His favourite Dannii Minogue song? Anything. A couple more sentences would make all the difference when sitting there and trying to muster exactly the same attention for the 101st recipient as one had for the 1st.

But then, Charles and his attendants have to stand there too, and keep their attention unflagging throughout, for what must be the best part of an hour and a half. I suppose his military escort must be used to standing still and attentive for hours on end (Horse Guards Parade springs to mind). But it can’t be easy finding just the right questions to ask a tax worker from Hull for 30 seconds, knowing that the exchange will remembered and retold for the rest of their life.

On top of which, he must be aware that today he’s his mother’s stunt double, and that many of the honorees will surely be a little disappointed not to get the lady on the bank notes. I get the inkling he chats just that little bit more, and more informally, than The Queen would, as if by way of compensation. And he does it 116 times in a row, with unwavering interest throughout.

Here’s what Mum says about the chat (from a piece she wrote in her local village circular):

Prince Charles expressed a real interest in quilting… I later discovered that this was not just good manners on his part: he has recently bought a house in Wales and has an antique Welsh quilt on his bed and another on the wall in the hall.

In fact, weeks later, Mum receives two letters from the Prince. One to ask if he can get copies of her books (which she duly sends), then a thank you for doing so, with the hint of a possible commission… Seems HRH is truly interested in the craft, particularly the recycling and green-friendly elements, where Mum turns spare scraps of fabric into new patchwork quilts.

Back to the ceremony. When Ms Minogue enters to get her OBE, of course, everyone perks up. This occasion is all about being recognised by the British People, Government and Crown, but some are already more recognised than others. Celebrity or not, though, Ms M stands out, in a Tinkerbelle-like dress embossed with multi-coloured glittery stars.

Though neither does she flaunt her celebrity. According to Mum, while waiting she acts like any of the other recipients in the queue – modest, gracious, pleased to be there. It’s just that there’s a gaggle of media in the courtyard outside who focus on her rather than anyone else.

Another particularly stylish recipient is Jo Malone, founder of the cosmetics and fragrance company that bears her name. When I try looking ‘Jo Malone’ up on Wikipedia, I find out it’s also the name of Parker Posey’s character in ‘The Daytrippers’. It all links.

At one end of the ballroom is a raised platform, where the investiture ceremony takes place. Behind us, on a high balcony, is a chamber orchestra playing classical pieces for the entire duration. We’re in what I suppose is the main stalls, though some of the other guests are seated in raised rows either side. And oh look – to our right there’s Kylie Minogue’s sister, Dannii, with Mum and Dad Minogue.

It’s only once you arrive on the day that you find out whether it’s the Queen who’ll be giving out the awards, or whether it’ll be Prince Charles, who covers for her. Today it turns out to be the latter case. Which suits many of the media fine, as they later get to report Ms Minogue receiving her OBE with the headline ‘The Prince And The Showgirl.’

Charles arrives at the dais escorted by a couple of sworded-up Ghurkhas and a handful of Yeomen Of The Guard, in their ornate flat hats, red tunics and stockings. ‘Beefeaters,’ says Mum later. I correct her, unable to resist an excuse for pedantry. I tell her that Beefeaters are actually the ones who look after the Tower Of London, also known as Yeomen Warders. The Yeomen of the Guard, are a separate gang who act as royal bodyguards, distinguished from Beefeaters by their red cross-belts. I know this because I watch ‘Q.I.’ and live alone. I am wretched.

The investiture begins. One by one, the recipients enter from a room off to the left, have their name announced by a miked-up black-suited staffer who stands at a lectern, then step up to the Prince to be given their medal (or be knighted with a sword – there’s a single Sir being dubbed today). Then the Prince chats to them for thirty seconds or so, before they exit off to the right. Finally, they re-enter the ballroom discreetly from the back, and take a seat for the rest of the ceremony.

In fact, the medal Prince Charles gives them is a lightweight replica, not the actual medal. He places it on a hook that’s been pinned to the recipient’s clothes in advance, while they queue up. So there’s never any chance of the Prince fumbling about with clasps and pins. When the honorees exit to the room at the side, the real MBE is waiting for them in a presentation box. More things I’ve learned, then.

The awards are given out in order of rank downwards, so the knighthoods come before the OBEs and MBEs. Each rank is then divided up into military or civilians, with military going first. And within those divisions, the women go before the men, in alphabetical order of surname. Thus Mum finds herself with the other female civilian MBEs, lined up immediately after Ms Debjani Chatterjee, a poet from Sheffield. They chat while waiting backstage, as it were – Mum tells me Ms C is charming company.

We’re travelling as a strictly un-extended family. Recipients are allowed to bring three guests, so it’s Dad, brother Tom and me. Easily done. I wonder what happens to honorees with larger families – do they draw lots, toss a coin, or argue over a lifetime of point scoring about just who’s been emotionally closer or more supportive to the one getting the medal (‘You’ve never been there for Cousin Eustace like I have’)? Are family tensions thus exposed, maybe even brought to a head?

I also muse on just how we’re meant to behave. As it is, The Edwards family rarely does things in the original four-piece line-up, not since I left home circa 1990. I think of that wonderful line in ‘Little Miss Sunshine’: ‘Off we go! Everyone pretend to be normal!’. I also think of ‘The Daytrippers’, a lesser known (but I think superior) movie along the same lines: a family of slightly unusual characters getting in a car and going off together.

But how IS a family meant to act as a one-off travelling unit, particularly when the sons are grown up? Particularly when one son is a louche bohemian and bedsit loner who writes a decade-old web diary, while the other is happily married, employed, has a house, and rarely travels without his wife. Though Tom does have an unconventional job: he currently plays guitar for Fields Of The Nephilim. Full-time, now.

Tom’s just come back from a sold-out gig at Shepherd’s Bush Empire and a tour in Finland. I’ve just come back from escorting Shane MacGowan from Dublin to New York and back. And Dad’s just come back from a rather less fun trip: he was rushed to hospital after suddenly contracting a dysentery-like virus, suspected to be one of the so-called ‘superbugs’.

But all three Edwards Men have made it to be here. Just. The London traffic threatens to make us miss out at the last hurdle, when we endure a nerve-wracking half-hour in a gridlocked Bloomsbury.

We make it to the Mall, a little late but not too late. We show our passes and drive in past the crowds of tourists and several gates manned by police – a nice feeling – into an inner courtyard. Tom is told by security to leave his car unlocked, with his keys visible on the dashboard. There’s armed officers standing guard, guns on view. It’s fair to say Tom’s not worried about his car being stolen.

Inside the Palace, Mum is led off with the other recipients, while the Guests – me, Tom and Dad – have to walk down a hall and take our seats in a ballroom. THE ballroom as it turns out. Weeks later while staying in the Hague, I idly flick through the hotel room TV channels to catch a news report on BBC World. Then I see the ballroom again. Mum’s MBE ballroom. The Palace is just about to open it to the public for the first time, as part of its guided tour. So Mum’s investiture ceremony is one of the last before this milestone in the room’s history.

‘We do this sort of thing so well,’ says Dad, as we gaze around at the high ceilings and huge paintings. But unlike the other historical mansions I’ve visited – and in the case of Kenwood have worked in – Buckingham has an air of practicality and use. It’s ornate and plush, of course, but there’s the feeling of business (and indeed, busyness) afoot. Investitures, banquets, visiting dignitaries and so on – it’s all work. A working palace.

2,500 words on one morning in July. And that’s after I took out a long rant about the Honours system per se. Just as well. Here we go. In morsels.

***

It’s last November, and among Mum’s post is an envelope marked ’10 Downing Street’. Her first thought is that it contains a parking fine.

Now it’s Thursday July 3rd, and the family is off to Buckingham Palace for Mum’s investiture.

The letter was the offer of an MBE in the New Year’s Honours List. MBE as in Member Of The British Empire, or to give it its full title, Member Of The Most Excellent Order Of The British Empire (Civil Division). One thing I also learn from the ceremony is that OBE – the next one up which Kylie gets in the same queue – is not ‘Order Of The British Empire’. It’s OFFICER of the Order Of The British Empire.

In Mum’s case, the reason was ‘for services to the craft of Quilt Making’. It turns out that a group of Mum’s quilting students had been writing to Downing St for years to secure her an honour, unbeknownst to her. She’s only the second quilt maker ever to be honoured, the first one being the Durham quilter Amy Emms, honoured in 1984. Or as she signed herself in letters ever afterwards, ‘Mrs Emms, MBE.’

Alan Bennett said that having a knighthood in his case would feel like ‘having to wear a suit every day of one’s life’. Not an excuse I can entirely sympathise with. But then, not everyone likes wearing suits as much as I do.

An hour before I’m collected, I’m on the phone to Tom.

Me: I’m deciding which suit to wear. White or pinstriped might pull focus, I think. Plain black okay, do you think?

Tom: Dickon, I don’t have that problem. I’m just wearing… My Suit.

Dad and Tom don’t usually wear suits. Mum doesn’t usually wear a hat. The one she sports today is borrowed, and even that is a tasteful half-hat affair pinned to her bob haircut  – she’s hardly enrolling for the Ascot Flying Saucer Brigade. So the rest of the family are Dressed Up. I’m just dressed.

***

The original investiture date clashed with one of Mum’s teaching engagements abroad. No problem, said The Palace, and simply offered her a different ceremony later in the year. I didn’t know they could do that, but this turns out to be very much the impression I take away about the staff at Buck House: unexpectedly down-to-earth, friendly, helpful, and making Mum and the rest of us feel like we’re the important ones, not them.

That equerry in the film ‘The Queen’, the one who sternly reminds Tony Blair that HMQ must be addressed as ‘Ma’am’ – to rhyme with ‘ham’ and NOT with ‘farm’ -  is, I’m happy to confirm, closer to fiction than fact. The real Palace staff we meet are perfectly lovely. They inform you of the archaic protocol, certainly, but without condescension of any sort.

***

I’ve just returned from New York, where I was shocked to have to show my passport in order to get into bars on the Lower East Side. Thank God things aren’t like that in London, I say to myself the night before, as I file the thing away in my Drawer Of Important Things.

The first thing Mum says to me as I get in the car the next morning is, ‘Have you got your passport?’ Turns out you need it for Buckingham Palace: they’re rather big on security. Funny that. I rush back inside.

***

Back in London after the end of a busy July spent mostly travelling or away from home (NYC, MBE day, Latitude, Southwold, Hague). Returned to find my room had acquired a mysterious chemical-like odour. It’s a bit sulphur, a bit petrol, a bit burnt plastic. Homes do that when you come back after a spell away – they get annoyed and lonely and rebel.

It’s never the case when I come back that I think ‘Ah, home at last! My blissful base of familiarity.’ No, with me it’s more, ‘Have I been burgled? Why does the place have a funny smell?’

So I set about eliminating the suspects. I cleaned the sink, and bleached the drain. Cleaned and tidied the room too, in case there was some neglected cup of tea lurking somewhere and growing its own penicillin: I always forget what mould smells like until I actually see it, and remember. Also took a month’s worth of clothes to the laundrette and dry cleaners. Returning from travel and getting back to normal life, one wants to say you ‘hit the ground running’. In fact, I hit the ground cleaning.

So I now have a clean drain, clean clothes, and a clean room. And yet the smell lurks on. Might just be something next door, which I can do nothing about. I also have a history of over-sensitivity (and overreacting) to fumes – painted walls weeks later still giving me – I think – a headache when visiting friends can’t smell a thing. Ah well. Like most things in life, I’ll just hope it goes away if I ignore it long enough.

After all those adventures in July, my August is a blank. The next big thing isn’t till mid September, when Fosca play Madrid (Sept 12th). Oh, and I’m down to DJ at Volupte in Holborn again on Aug 28th. But that really is it. And I’m glad. I don’t want to feel beholden to anything or anyone for a little while. Am now just keen to get back into a writing routine, if only to find out what I want to do next.

London is sweltering, so I’m lurking in libraries. So many invites to things, particularly birthday parties, all seeming to increase in number just when I want to play Garbo for a while. I want to go to them all, and I want to go to none.

By way of a warm up to my next bout of belated diary reports (MBE finally, a little on Latitude, the Hague), I just opened The Assassin’s Cloak anthology of diaries, and this entry leapt out at me:

30th June 1967

No difficulty with the customs. I simply chose the customs officer that, in an emergency, I wouldn’t mind sleeping with. Got through without having even to open my case. London hot, very little difference in actual temperature from Tangier. ‘How dead everyone looks,’ Kenneth H remarked… We took a taxi home. A great many letters. Invitations to parties which I shall not accept.

– Joe Orton.

***

Typing this on the ferry to Holland, halfway across the North Sea. I have my own cabin, with bed, desk, toilet and shower. For only 5 Euros extra, you can also get access to the luxury lounge, with unlimited tea, coffee, juice, fruit, biscuits, peanuts and Wi-Fi. So I’ve done that. Obviously.

Ticket is £97 return, including the trains from Liverpool St to Harwich, and Hook of Holland to the Hague, with a cabin on the boat both ways. Harwich train was virtually empty: I had the carriage to myself. Definitely the most peaceful, blood-pressure friendly way to travel. This is just… perfect.

Me: Have to dash, I’m off to the Hague.

Ms F: Why? Are you a genocidal war criminal?

Am at the Latitude festival in Suffolk, DJ-ing in the Cabaret Tent and blogging for the official website (www.latitudefestival.co.uk), as I did last year. Except this time I’m camping onsite. Partly so I don’t take the long walk to the main road and back every day (and it IS long), partly because I’ve not gone camping since my teens.

Friends have smirked when I tell them I’m taking the tent option, knowing I patently refuse to own wellies or jeans or anoraks, and thinking the slightest inkling of mud will have me calling a taxi and booking into the nearest hotel. But putting up a tent while keeping the dirt of one’s pinstripe suit and loafers is actually quite simple. You just kneel on the groundsheet and set the tent up around you. No problem. There’s a been a touch of rain, it’s true, but it’s hardly Passchendaele. Yet.

Weds July 2nd – early hours.

As it turns out, the airline crew lets Shane have a small glass of wine after all, towards the end of the flight. The rest of the time, he sleeps.

I drop him off at his Dublin house, as the sun comes up. The lady taxi driver tells him she’s a big fan. A nice touch of symmetry.

Then I groggily catch my connection to Heathrow, make it home for a nap, and eventually report back to the Boogaloo that evening. The jet lag won’t really hit me till after Mum’s ceremony: the adrenalin about that is now keeping me going.

On this particular Wednesday evening, it’s the bar’s monthly film quiz. As I enter I note the current round is about ‘Dragons In Movies’. The projection screen shows a still from Q – The Winged Serpent, a very silly 80s horror flick about a dragon who lives at the top of the Chrysler Building.

Thus, New York goes back to being something from the movies.

Tuesday July 1st.

The journey home is the same heady blend as the journey over: anxiety and luxury. We’re given a stretch limo from the Waldorf to JFK, with full flasks of spirits on board. Except Shane can’t quite indulge to his usual degree. He knows he has to put on a semblance of comparative sobriety in order to make it onto the plane. ‘Please do your best – for my mother,’ I say. I’m not entirely joking. If Shane is turned away, that means I can’t get on the plane either. If I can’t get home by Weds evening, I’ll miss Mum’s MBE investiture. And so begins the anxiety.

It doesn’t help that there’s a confusion over my ticket when we check in at the airport. With all the rescheduling and renaming (Shane’s companion was meant to be someone else), it turns out that my ticket hasn’t been upgraded. Is it really necessary? Well… my sitting next to him on the flight might make all the difference to his travelling at all.

So I leave Mr MacG in the VIP lounge – drinking coffee and orange juice – while I race around like a white-suited fly from kiosk to kiosk and queue to queue, changing money and sorting the upgrade out. All the time I’m worrying that we’ll miss the flight for this reason alone. Aer Lingus computers – you owe me a lower blood pressure.

I get the upgrade processed in time – just – and feel like I need a medal. But then, this sort of thing happens all the time to more frequent travellers. I should be grateful I’ve never experienced the sort of airport-based ordeals that pop up in the news from time to time: flights delayed, hold baggage cancelled, people having to sleep on the floors of terminals.

But there’s still one more hoop to jump.

As we go through the departure gate, a woman from the airport staff takes one look at Shane.

‘Oh no. No no no.’

She grabs a walkie-talkie and marches after us down the corridor to the plane. ‘Excuse me! We got a problem.’

We have to wait there for the plane’s cabin crew manager to come out and meet us. It’s just like the time I was taken aside on the flight over, except this time it’s more serious. We’re not on the plane yet. That makes all the difference.

This cabin crew manager looks terrified, so I take a deep breath and prepare my speech. I also get the sense it’s more the JFK official who wants action, and is expecting Ms Lingus to agree. So I have two people to convince. I keep thinking of ‘Midnight Express’.

Once again I do the Shane Will Be No Trouble, Honest speech. I tell them that the drinking the airlines rightly fear is of the tiresome, explosive, football hooligan variety. Not implosive drinking, the sort that’s an anaesthetic for the pains of the flesh (Mr MacG, 50, has a bad leg and back, at the very least). Not the sort of drinking which helps you sleep more easily on a long-distance flight. Well, that’s his sort. Honest. He won’t be any trouble. I’ll sign something if you like. I’ll be sitting right next to him. I’ll take the window seat, while he has the aisle seat. I’ll go without alcohol myself. We were fine on the flight coming over. (I wish that cabin crew manager had spoken to this one).

Then the JFK lady chips in. ‘Well… I guess they ARE in Premier Class. Both of them.’ And it’s then that I know we’re through. The joint upgrade was worth it.

‘I just want to go home,’ says Shane.

Ms Lingus still needs one piece of reassurance though. She won’t serve him alcohol during the flight. Not at all.

‘Fine,’ says Shane. Deal. So on we go. Panic over.

As Ms Lingus escorts us onto the plane, I resist the temptation to grumble and sulk under my breath about the alcohol ban, particularly after seeing first hand how expensive an upgrade is. The worse thing to do when being treated like a naughty boy is to act like one back. So I strive for a tone of sensible adult graciousness. Though I slightly overdo it to the point of fawning:

‘Thank you for being so understanding. We really appreciate it.’

‘Well, I have to check, you see… We can’t let on anyone if they seem…’

‘Of course. Absolutely. I realise that. But, well, that IS always the way he is. He IS Shane MacGowan.’

‘Oh I know who he is! I’m a big fan.’

Some random extracts from my New York notebook.

On my Monday wanderings, I suddenly realise I’m walking past the theatre where ‘Sunday In The Park With George’ is playing, as in the Daniel Evans London production with the animated projections. I’m reminded how lucky I was to see it in its original home, the Menier Chocolate Factory near London Bridge.

Just looked it up now to see which theatre this was. Studio 54! As in your actual Studio-fifty-legendary-70s-disco-Warhol-tastic-four.

Its full address is 254 West 54th St, between 7th & 8th Avenues. And this is another abiding memory. Ask for directions in New York, and you are given up to four numbers (254, West 54, 7, 8). Which is a lot more difficult to remember than just ’79 Charing Cross Road’. But then, Charing Cross Road doesn’t go on for ever, cutting across all of London through different districts. London streets know their place.

Notes for a Seinfeld-style stand-up routine, with lots of arm waving and shrugging, except in an English accent:

‘Hey, New York, right? I mean, what’s with all the numbers on the street names? I mean, what’s the DEAL with that? What’s going on THERE? ‘Between West 51st and 5th.’ ‘Between 2nd Avenue and Lexington.’ ‘Between Babylon and Ting…’ ‘Between 5th Rock And 53rd Hard Place…’

All the people I ask for directions find it amusing when I have to write down their instructions in my little notebook. But I know if I don’t I WILL get the numbers wrong, and I WILL get lost.

And I do. At one point I mistakenly assume a road for vehicles (the 79th St Transverse) would allow walkers like myself access into the middle of the park, as is the case with the roads going through Regent’s Park or Hyde Park. But no, it just goes under bridges and tunnels and out the other side, and is clearly not for pedestrians. So I find out this the hard way.

‘Here I am in New York, and what am I doing? Spending the best part of half an hour traipsing along an underpass for no good reason. And I’m lost. And I’m alone. And I don’t know how long this road is going to go on for.’

Still, at least it wasn’t at night. And it was a LEAFY underpass.

***

When I eventually do find a way into Central Park, I pass some young people on benches, who in turn pass unkind comment. ‘Get a load of this guy!’

***

Going into a general store to buy a map, a determined young man on roller skates hurtles off the street and into the shop. He zooms over to the fridge, selects a bottle of Coke – sorry, a SODA – pays for it and zooms out again, without the cashier batting an eyelid. This all seems to me very New York type behaviour – but 70s New York, really. Still, apparently roller skating is starting to return to London too (so say the style pages), so maybe I’ll be seeing similar things in the queue at Sainsbury’s before long.

Not queue. LINE.

***

Back to the English Seinfeld:

‘And don’t get me STARTED on the TUBE you have here! Sorry, SUBWAY…! Yes, I KNOW it’s so much cheaper than in London. But no wonder – the seats on the trains have no cushions! What’s going on THERE? And you have, like NO idea when the next train is arriving? And the tube lines have confusing NUMBERS? Not lovely helpful names like Circle or Central?

‘And what’s the DEAL with the map? In London, an interchange means you can change lines at that station, right? In New York – get this – you can only change if the train is going in the right direction! ‘Southbound only!’ I don’t think that happens ANYWHERE on the London Tube! I mean, DID I MISS A MEETING?’

And of course, I only find this out the hard way. I spend a ridiculous amount of time wandering around one subway station looking for a platform that doesn’t exist, finding the map utterly baffling, thinking all New Yorkers must be mathematical geniuses. I’m sure I’d get used to the system with a couple more days’ use, as one does with anything. But at the time, I reserved the right to get utterly upset and confused. Thank you.

The tube stations themselves are brutal and prison-like. Subway barriers are proper barriers. Not lovely London ones you can leap over (‘Ah, the first fare-dodging of spring!’). These barriers are full height steel fences, with doors and grills. But then, that’s what they are like in the movies. I just forgot about the movies. Why was I surprised?

I think of that Quentin Crisp quote, how in Britain people are suspicious and reserved, but the system is kind (ie, NHS, benefits, cushioned seats on tube trains). Whereas in America, the people are direct and open, but the system is brutal. Certainly this first experience of their underground trains makes me think of the latter.

But the people are the opposite. Despite the brutal environment of the stations, I see  young people sitting on the wide exit steps, strumming ukeleles, or toy guitars. Not buskers playing to a hoped-for audience, but playing to themselves. The idea of people even sitting on steps in Tube stations – who weren’t homeless or drunk or mad – would be odd enough in London. Never mind people playing ukeleles or leisurely reading books.

***

In New York, everyone speaks clearly. From businessmen to skateboarders, even with the heaviest of Brooklyn accents and the latest street-based slang, the words are perfectly audible from start to finish. Or they don’t speak at all. No half measures.

No wonder eavesdropping columns like ‘Overheard In New York’ are so successful, while UK versions need to be tidied up or embellished, if not made up from scratch. The irony of a ‘Genuinely Overheard In London’ column, based on true transcriptions of utterations in public, is that it would have to be limited to the conversations of… American visitors.

The only voices you can hear properly in London have American accents. At least, voices heard during office hours, and not counting conversations on mobile phones. It takes alcohol or mobiles to get the average Englishman to speak up. Mumbling, evasion and caginess are national traits.

**

Watch a bit of local TV news while I’m there. As of this weekend, ‘trans fats’ are banned in all NYC restaurants. The city is also getting ready for the Independence Day parade, and I watch a TV interview with the man behind the Macy’s fireworks display. He speaks like a natural TV star, bantering with the presenter as if he were one of her colleagues. A British counterpart would be all ‘um’s and ‘er’s.