One cure for procrastination seems to be occasionally switching my comfortable office swivel chair for my landlady’s less comfortable but non-swivelling wooden one. If you can swivel, you can get away from the desk all too easily. All I want is to do with the so-called adjustable chair is turn the swivel off. It can’t be done; the chair is not adjustable enough. It’s a demonstration of how an excess of freedom can stifle as much as external oppression. Too much freedom just feels better.

The record label have given me till Thursday in which to write a book. Thankfully, I have written most of it already, as it’s a 60 page selection of various writings of mine, to be given away with the first 100 copies of the new Fosca album. Working title: The Portable Dickon Edwards. There will be the complete Fosca lyrics, my favourite Orlando ones, sundry rare bits and pieces from the past, morsels from the diary, the sleeve notes to the new album which turned out to be too long for the CD booklet, and a new essay ruminating on ten years of Fosca. Why Fosca? Why did I bother? Who am I again? Can I get a refund? I’m not the same Dickon now as the one who started Fosca in 1997 (and restarted it in 1998), so it’ll be interesting to contrast these versions of myself.

The Orlando lyrics are copyright the mighty Universal Music corporation. So I made a few enquiries to get the appropriate clearance for printing them in this little book, limited run though it is. I was worried about being either denied or getting no response at all from Universal, but Geoff Travis – who signed Orlando – got back to me at once, said it was fine if it was non-profit, and gave me the correct wording, i.e. ‘Orlando lyrics printed by permission of Blanco Y Negro / Universal Music’. He remains one of the few people I’ve met in the music business who actually likes music.

I checked it was okay with Tim Chipping too. As the editor of a music website, he has to deal with the process of getting permission from labels and publishers all the time, and it transpires some of them are trying to get websites to pay to feature their bands’ videos. I can understand the urgency of finding new sources of revenue in this era of expecting music for free, but that really has to be going the wrong way about it.

Have to take my hat off to Radiohead, who recently played devil’s advocate on the whole digital-versus-CD concern. They released their latest album on the Net for free. Or rather, they asked people to pay what they thought they should, which amounts to much the same thing. A few months later they released the album as a proper CD, available in the shops. And lo and behold, it goes to the top of the charts. It’s the slowest time of the year for album sales, but even so I think it’s proof people really do want to pay for things, if the things have a physical, tactile presence. There’s something innate, even atavistic, about the exchange of currency for something solid. Despite all evidence to the contrary, most people really don’t want to run their lives on the internet.

I recall Matt Haynes of Shinkansen Records mentioning to me circa 2001 that he thought listening to music on computers was ridiculous, and it wouldn’t catch on. He was half right.

The musical focus now is on that most un-downloadable of experiences, the live concert. Ancient bands are reforming every day for money-spinning, nostalgic tours, and promoters have realised they can get away with charging higher ticket prices than ever. I look at the prices on offer, and find myself thinking, ‘£40 minimum for Bjork at Hammersmith? But all she does is come onstage, play some songs, and then leave. No concert is worth £40. Except Barbra Streisand, but she’s different. She’s brought style to overpricing.’

One reason I got into gigs more than going to the theatre was because the former was so much more affordable. Now it’s cheaper for me to sit down and see Jane Horrocks in Alan Ayckbourn’s Absurd Person Singular in the West End, with all its sets and costume changes, diversity of character, humour, narrative, poignancy and social satire, than it is to stand and get a bad view of The Somethings at the Astoria.

But of course, this all says more about the changing world of me than it does about the changing world of anything else.

The new Fosca album, The Painted Side Of The Rocket, now has a release date: March 5th.

Here’s all the concert dates in Sweden:

March 26th – Landet, Stockholm
March 27th – Arena, Karlstad
March 28th – Blekingska Nationen, Lund
March 29th – On Our Honeymoon, Stars’n’Bars, Gothenburg

Fosca on this tour will be myself, Rachel Stevenson and Charley Stone. It’s great to have Charley back in Fosca after nearly ten years. It’ll be a different sound to before, but I rather like shaking the arrangements up, finding which riffs and hooks need to be heard at which points, and who should play them. It keeps things fresh.

Niklas from the record label asked if we’re doing any ‘warm up’ or ‘follow-up’ gigs in London. The thing is, I’ve retired Fosca from the indie club & gig circuit. But I’m happy to play a more unusual venue, like a museum or library. Or a festival – we never get asked to play UK festivals. And it’d be nice to play one absolutely, definitely final Fosca show with Tom & Kate, and Charley too.

***

Mum says:

Your name and diary were bandied about on Radio Suffolk yesterday as when they googled me they got your diary extract when you wrote about me getting the MBE, so they quoted you on air….

Hullo there, Radio Suffolk. And thank you for having my mum on.

***

Diana Athill is currently doing the media rounds, aged 90, with her latest memoir. In which there’s rather a lot of sex: she lived in a menage a trois for years. I heard her on the radio the other day talking about the time she realised her sex life was at an end, in her 60s. The combination of wistful sadness and arch relief. And there I was thinking exactly along the same lines, at 36.

Despite my New Year’s determination, the first days of 2008 have fallen through me like so much fine sand. It’s the sheer lack of energy, and finding it so easy to lose the argument against getting out of bed at all.

Tried one of those self-hypnosis tapes, or rather self-hypnosis audio downloads. One such hypnotist, Glenn Harrold, has an unexpectedly thick East End accent. It is Self Help by Reggie Kray. Find Your Inner Calm Or Else. Unleash Your Potential, Or Am I Going To Have To Pay You A Visit? Depression Is A Slag.

Fun is work of a kind, yet I have no problem finding the energy for that. So there’s a kind of fraud to this tiredness. It’s partly fear of the work not being good enough, or the fun not being fun enough. I find this ridiculous line of thinking occurs to me more and more. I say no to going to a club or gig, because I’m not 100% convinced it will be 100% enjoyable for 100% of the time. And so I end up doing nothing at all.

Once I properly get into writing, I find it hard to stop. Hence entries becoming longer and longer. Once I put it off, I start to become addicted to putting it off. It’s just as well I’ve never gotten into hard drugs.

Much of it I’m convinced is from living alone. Never mind love and companionship: people do need someone, if only to kick them out of bed and monitor their dawdling. Check they’re not wasting their day. A good hug, or a good slap. Or indeed, a good slug. ‘How was your day?’ as much a threat as anything else. Do something productive with your day, if only so you can look your companion in the eye.

As ever, jokes present themselves without asking. Have bought the autobiography of an M.E. sufferer. But I haven’t found the energy to get around to it.

(see also: not finishing a book on speed-reading)

A bookish appeal. Dedalus Books, the independent UK purveyor of esoteric international literature for 25 years, is in danger of losing its Arts Council funding. It would be a real shame if the publisher went under.

Please take a moment to join Ali Smith, Tibor Fischer et al in signing this online petition:

http://www.gopetition.co.uk/online/16111.html

Another way to support Dedalus is to buy something from its unique back catalogue, sooner rather than later, before it’s too late. I’ve just put together an Amazon List of my own recommended Dedalus titles, including their splendid Finnish Fantasy anthology.

More details in the Guardian here.

***
Recent adventures: met with Laurence Hughes and visited the Millais show at the Tate Britain. Quite a rollercoaster selection, from the fascinating to the overly familiar, to the commissioned portraits and shamelessly commercial (the Pears Soap advert), to his lesser known intricate drawings and sensitive landscapes. Didn’t realise Millais had such varying styles in his Pre-Raphaelite prettiness, what with those famous depictions of ladies in wistful Bronte-esque poses, equating loneliness with long tousled hairdos.

And then there’s his contribution to the era’s fashion for outrageously idealised portraits of children, the so-called Fancy Pictures. As an unkind friend of mine once described, ‘They’re called Fancy Pictures because if you see enough at one time, you fancy you’ll be sick.’

There’s only of a few of those though, mercifully, and the exhibition succeeds in contrasting the works Millais did purely for money, with the ones he considered his real works of art. And the good stuff – not least the gorgeous Highland snow scenes and vibrant colours of the coats and dresses in his portraits – makes you want to burst into spontaneous applause.

***

Fosca mail:

From: Stephen, Alexandria, United States
Message: It’s a forlorn hope I realise, but it would be wonderful to see Fosca here in the US. I’m sure the band would be welcomed in New York, DC, Boston, San Francisco etc? Would you even consider a visit to the US if it were at all possible?

If it were possible, definitely. But Fosca would need backing from major labels or publishers to fund US touring. I’m happy to go touring if the practicalities are accounted for. Which is the case in Sweden, where the label But Is It Art Records is booking us a small tour.

The Stockholm date has already been announced:

Wednesday 26th March: Stockholm Landet, LM Ericssons väg 27.
With Friday Bridge.

Here’s the rather nice flyer:

And here’s the kind of email that reminds me why I bother:

Fosca has meant so much to me since I first heard ‘The Agony Without the Ecstasy’ live [at Sweden’s Benno festival] in 2001… I went straight to the Pet Sounds record store the day after the gig, bought On Earth to Make the Numbers Up, and went to the nearby café. There I sat with my discman and a cup of tea… It is one of the best experiences of discovering new music I have ever had.

***

Thanks to all those who sent me Christmas cards. Particularly those whose contact details I’ve managed to lose somewhere amid the changing of computers and my general hopelessness. So if you’re reading this, Johnny Johnson, and Jason & Sam, please get in touch…

Have just seen I’m Not There. Or, That Bob Dylan Movie Without Bob Dylan But With Cate Blanchett, as it might as well be known.

(acutally, Dylan himself IS in the movie. Right at the end. Like The Beatles in Yellow Submarine.)

I really like the bits of Mr Dylan’s work I really like, which I’m pleased to say coincides with the bits I really like in this film. It sounds like one of the quips spouted by Cate Blanchett’s Dylan. What do I think of I’m Not There? I really like the bits I really like.

I’m not too bothered about the whole entire Dylan life and works, though I appreciate he’s one of the few songwriters whose cultural importance crosses the boundaries of mere music. He is the original Crossover Artist, in so many senses. Trad folk to protest song, critical to commercial acclaim, folk revival to 60s pop & rock, acoustic to electric, non-practising Jew to Born Again Christian, lyricist to poet. He can’t sing, and yet he really can. He looks odd, and yet he looks fantastic. He is distinctly himself, yet he’s had distinctly different phases in his life. His words and interviews tempt accusations of being pretentious, being a fake, being a traitor, and yet he comes across as profound, untouchable, soulful. Mr Dylan is a mass of contradictions, confusions, and slippery reinventions. Arguably far more so than Mr Bowie.

I’m Not There is pretty much Velvet Goldmine 2: This Time We’ve Got The Songs. Both films (by director Todd Haynes) have the same musical montage format, the same use of surreal interviews, the same nerve of writing their own narrative rules. And both draw on techniques from classic European cinema (Bunuel, Godard, Fellini), not so much in homage, but because they don’t make ’em like that anymore. Certainly not in the US, where arthouse currently tends to mean quirky, kooky, wordy, intimate. And above all – non cinematic.

It’s fashionable at the moment to avoid surrealism, unless you’re making a film in subtitles. Otherwise you run the risk of what’s happened to David Lynch and (more quickly) Wes Anderson. Their latest works really should have critics praising them from the rafters. Instead, the press have equated these directors’ latest leaps of imagination as too imaginative, tarring them as self-indulgent and self-parodic. And that dreaded recommendation: ‘for fans only’.

On paper, Mr Haynes runs the same risk he did with Velvet Goldmine:

‘Excuse me, Mr Haynes. Do you have a license for this use of surrealism and montage?’

‘Yes, Officer Critic, I have it here somewhere. It’s the songs of the iconic musician who’s inspired the movie.’

‘Oh, I see. Yes, that would work. A nice handrail for people to grip amongst the oddness. The back catalogue as roadmap. Every critic likes a Bowie song or two, don’t they. Well, apart from those young ones at NME who’ve got it in for Morrissey. But I digress. It’s clearly about Bowie, so you do need the songs.’

(awkward pause)

‘Ah, you’re not going to believe this, Officer. There’s a note here under the dashboard. David Bowie has withdrawn permission for me to use his songs. All of them. Even cover versions.’

‘Bit of a blow. So what are you going to do?’

‘Well, there’s always T Rex, Lou Reed, New York Dolls…’

‘Not really the same, though, is it?’

‘No. Sigh. Still, Bob Dylan’s okay about doing the same with him. I told him I’m going to have him played by lots of different actors, including a small black boy, that extremely intense and serious guy who plays Batman – he’s going to play Dylan when Dylan’s extremely intense and serious – plus a confused-looking Richard Gere, and a blonde Australian woman. He said fine, here’s the songs.’

‘Conclusion?’

‘Bob Dylan is officially nicer than David Bowie. At least, nicer to me. Being nice isn’t everything, but it can help when you’re trying to explore new territory. Look at Michael Palin.’

Whatever the reasons behind Mr Bowie’s decision to deny Mr Haynes, there’s no doubt Velvet Goldmine would have been more artistically successful with his songs included. And I’m Not There just wouldn’t be the same without the Dylan songs.

[Side Note: On his entertaining BBC Radio 5 slot, film critic Mark Kermode has a Julie Burchill-esque tendency to boast he’s the opposite of all the other critics. He slates The Queen, but praises Basic Instinct 2. Tackling I’m Not There last week, he pointed out it’s about time people realised Velvet Goldmine is severely underrated. Much of its poor critical reputation, he said, was down to music journalists. ‘And music journalists, bless them, know nothing about films’. The following week, Kermode was on holiday, replaced by Andrew Collins. Who is a music journalist turned film critic.]

The other handrail is Ms Blanchett’s casting and performance. It matters that it’s not just any woman, and that she’s playing not just any man. Ms Blanchett has a unique position: she’s glamourous and beautiful enough to appear on the usual magazine covers, but she also commands a high level of respect from all quarters of the press.

I saw a recent paparazzi feature where Ms B was photographed in the street, pasted alongside similar shots of other famous actresses and singers. The captions were typical, passing judgement on what these ladies were wearing, whether it was a mistake or a good thing, whether they were looking too fat or too thin, and what condition their skin was in. The usual stuff.

Only with Ms Blanchett, the caption read something like, ‘We could say something unkind about her dress, but everyone has too much respect for Our Cate, don’t they?’

I found this very interesting indeed. A gossip magazine, not known for its restraint, finding a boundary to keep from. They’re more likely to print a sticker poking fun at a disabled child (Jordan’s son in Heat Magazine, leading to complaints from their own readership) than comment unkindly on a photo of Cate Blanchett. Certainly not in the same way as they judge her fellow Oscar nominees Angelina Jolie, Halle Berry, Kate Winslet, Nicole Kidman and Keira Knightley.

So why does Ms Blanchett get this unusual level of Dylan-like respect and untouchability? I think it helps that she started off playing Queen Elizabeth 1st, and then the Elf Queen in Lord Of The Rings. Become associated with queens, and people are more likely to behave themselves in your presence, as if you were an actual monarch. Just ask Judi Dench and Helen Mirren.

It also helps that Ms Blanchett’s beauty has an uncommon but magnetic quality about it. She’s not beautiful in a threatening way, but in an intelligent, aloof and enigmatic way. She’s also on that hallowed list of women whom husbands are allowed to fancy without too much gnashing of teeth:

‘Darling, I’m leaving you for a thin blonde who appears on magazine covers.’

‘Who is the hussy? I’ll tear her apart!’

‘It’s Cate Blanchett.’

‘Oh, fair enough. Can I come along?’

Johnny Depp is on a similar list. For both sexes.

Cate Blanchett also has a genuine tabula rasa quality, careful not to let her own personality interfere with the characters she plays. And yet she manages to keep an air of modesty in interviews, rather than reel out the usual actorly answers about motivation and research, the pain of immersing oneself in the role and so on. All actors have outsized egos, yet she manages to keep hers in check, remaining aloof and intriguing rather than dull.

On top of which, she’s arthouse compatible. See also Tilda Swinton, currently travelling in the opposite direction, from Derek Jarman to Disney’s Narnia and George Clooney.

So getting Ms Blanchett to play Bob Dylan makes complete sense. Particularly when she gets to do my favourite Dylan. The ‘gone electric’ dandy of 1965-66, with the best songs (note to proper Dylan fans, please do NOT email me long rants about this!), the best suits (chucking out jeans in favour of shopping in Carnaby Street), and the best hair. Dylan at his sexiest and – those words again – most stylishly decadent. And he gets the best jokes, shouting at Christ on a crucifix ‘I prefer your earlier stuff!’

The Blanchett Dylan is the only one in the film that takes on proper impersonation, as opposed to just interpretation. Just as well: too many men impersonate Dylan too easily. I’d argue that from now on, only women are allowed to do Bob Dylan impersonations. Let it be so.

I also love the idea of the ‘Judas’ Dylan having performed a U-turn on his own gender as well. That by going electric, he’s literally emasculated. Just like a woman, as I’m sure it’s been said.

And though I know the character is male, I also love how the film equates a butch, androgynous woman with being stylish, godlike and funny with it.

[Side note: This week, I’ve also been to the V&A to see the Lee Miller exhibition. Another Queen Butch, Ms Miller was beautiful in that aloof, almost transgendered way. She lived several lives too, from commercial model to Surrealist muse, to bohemian photographer, sending back stills of the Holocaust to Vogue, snapping herself washing in Hitler’s bathtub after the Allies had liberated Munich. You can imagine Cate Blanchett playing Lee Miller. ]

For me, I’m Not There is what creativity should be all about. Playing to your vision, never pandering to the audience. Cate Blanchett should play more men – she does it better than many biologically male actors. And Ben Whishaw, the pretty fellow who plays the Rimbaud Dylan, should play a few women. Though I understand he’s going to be Sebastian Flyte in the new Brideshead Revisited, which is girlish enough for most. Not a part Vinnie Jones is likely to audition for.

If it were down to me, there’d be more casting against gender and race in movies full stop. Now, this isn’t me being deliberately perverse. I just see the world this way.

Idly scanning a news site a few weeks ago, I saw the headline ‘ACTOR FREEMAN TO PLAY MANDELA.’

‘Yes, that’s such a brilliant and provocative idea,’ I thought. ‘The actor from The Office and the Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy movie, playing the South African leader. Casting a white Englishman, known for his Everyman-ish qualities, to take Western audiences through the experience of being on the other side of colonialism, imperialism and racism. A white Mandela (or blacked-up in post-modern, satirical reference) who transcends race, who keeps both sides happy, fighting for reason and humanism without blame. And being very decent and lovable about it, like Martin Freeman does. Makes perfect sense. Excellent idea.’

Then a few seconds after these thoughts – you’re probably ahead of me – I realised the headline meant Morgan Freeman, not Martin. So that’s a insight into the way my brain works.

Anyway, all humour aside, everyone knows what Morgan Freeman is going to be like as Mandela. You can already see the trailer in your head, if not the whole movie. I don’t actually need to see the film. Whereas I’d definitely pay to see Martin Freeman as Nelson Mandela. Just as I paid to see I’m Not There, to see Bob Dylan as a small black boy, and as a woman.

And I really liked the bits I really liked.

Back to whatever it is, then. Who am I again? Dickon Edwards? Well, it could be worse.

New Year’s Eve 2007 was a heady DJ stint at the Last Tuesday Society Masked Ball, 1AM-3AM. I deliberately timed my journey so midnight would see me alone on a tube train. Out of sheer curiosity, really. Complaining about a cliche of enforced jollity is now a cliche itself, so that’s no use. Getting an offer of DJ work sorts the problem without favouring one set of friends over another. Work can be an alibi from the terror of decision. Problem solved.

Would there be a countdown over the tube train’s PA speakers? Would revellers charge through the compartments and hug everyone at the stroke of Big Ben? Actually, no. I did hear a countdown to midnight over a radio speaker, but it was the one in the driver’s compartment, just about audible through the locked door to the first carriage, where I was sitting. So now I know Tube drivers wish each other Happy New Year over their intercoms, as they work through the night. Indeed, on the only night of year when the trains don’t stop running. God bless them for that.

Found my way to the Arts Theatre, which by now was resembling the opening scenes of the movie Bright Young Things. People draped over packed staircases everwhere, all in elaborate masks and dinner dress. I was handed my own free bottle of champagne, plus a glass, plus payment in advance (always a plus), and left to get on with DJ-ing. Can’t really complain with that.

That Nicole Kidman version of ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ from Moulin Rouge sounded too cluttered after all. I even checked the decks in case another song was accidentally playing at the same time. That sums up Moulin Rouge – like several records (and indeed films) all playing at once. Like the film, the music demands absolute surrender, not joining in. But the rest worked fine: Garland, Sinatra, Minelli, Bassey.

Became a bit of a drunken idiot after I finished, talked a lot of rubbish to strangers, finished the champagne, tried dancing with the prettiest person in the room, forgot how to stand up and dance at the same time, ran away, woke up at home with mysterious bruises. So, a New Year’s cliche after all. But it suited me fine.

***

Photo of Mum in the Suffolk Free Press here. Radio Suffolk are putting her on a show where she has to choose her favourite records. She asked me, ‘What’s my favourite records again?’

Which seems funny at first, and very Mum, but it does make more sense than carrying around a personal Top Ten list in your head all the time. Or in the case of Room 101, your least favourite things. The more one thinks about it, the more silly it is. You don’t HAVE to have a Favourite Film Ever, or a Favourite Song Ever, to get through life. But lists – and their more glitzy cousins, awards – are always interesting, and TV schedules and magazine supplements would have an awful lot of space to fill without them. In 2007 there was a programme celebrating the anniversary of the BAFTAs. An award that gave itself an award.

What you’re meant to say graciously (and rightfully) about awards is that it’s not about winning, it’s about celebrating what’s on display. Awards and Best Of lists are filters and signposts to help make sense of the crowded menu, to pass on recommendations, alert people to something they might like. Just as Mum’s MBE is on one level a celebration of quiltmaking, hardly the most hyped craft in the world.

***

List Culture is now mixed in with Feet Of Clay culture, to the point where BBC3 has just broadcast something called The Most Annoying People of 2007. The show was in two parts, each lasting over two hours. As if it was Schindler’s List. Which in a way, it was.

But this time there’s a sense that even those steeped in such celebrity love-to-hate worlds are themselves getting cold feet (of clay). At the end of the Extras Christmas Special, Ricky Gervais (also on that BBC3 list) finds his thinly-veiled autobiographical character undergoing a career low: appearing on Celebrity Big Brother. He breaks down, and makes a speech to camera about it all:

If it all stopped, people wouldn’t take to the streets going ‘Oh quick! I need a picture of Cameron Diaz with a pimple!’ They wouldn’t care, they’d get on with something else. They’d get on with their lives… And f— you, the makers of Big Brother. You can’t wash your hands of this. You can’t keep going, ‘Oh, its exploitation but it’s what the public want.’ … And f— you for watching this at home. Shame on you. And shame on me. I’m the worst of all.

All of which is opening Mr Gervais up to accusations of hypocrisy, given his own love/hate obsession with celebrity, but I admire him for it.

It also reminded me of Stephen Fry’s appearance on Room 101 a few years ago, in which he put the show itself onto the list of things he most dislikes, thus cancelling itself out. Why spend energy and time celebrating dislikes, when you could spend it on the things you like instead? There’s letting off steam, there’s cathartic release, and there’s moaning for its own sake.

If 2008 could see more contribution per se, rather than grumbling as a contribution, if there could be more celebration of contributions, of liking things honestly, without resorting to gushing or craven comparisons (eg ‘I love Amy Winehouse because at least she’s not Jordan’), of ignoring and boycotting annoyances rather than celebrating how you dislike them, it wouldn’t be a bad year at all.

Gossip itself is natural enough. From Lives Of The Saints through to biographies of Ted Hughes through to Heat magazine, it’s all curiosity of a kind, it’s all finding out what happens next. Just with varying levels of dignity, pettiness and mean-spiritedness. Tabloid gossip is oral history by undignified proxy.

Indeed, Mum’s craft goes hand in needle with generations of women sharing tales of personal folklore, family goings-on, errant relations and so on. The novel and movie How To Make An American Quilt plays on this, being less about the fabric of quilts than the fabric of relationships and telling tales. I’m not saying the Daily Mirror’s 3AM Girls should put out an embroidered version of their gossip column, but… actually, that would be fantastic if they did.

Of course, much of this advice (moaning about moaning) is me advising myself. Here’s hoping. And here’s to a year of contribution and creation.

Sitting here preparing CDRs for tonight’s DJ stint at the Last Tuesday Society’s Masked Ball, in the heart of the West End. Even at 8pm in comparatively sleepy Highgate, the New Year’s Noise has started outside. The increased banging of car doors, shouts in the street, vehicles careering too fast in side streets, parties to get to, parties to get from. Where’s the party? Everywhere.

So I’ve plunged myself into the core of it all – DJ-ing from 1am to 3am at the Arts Theatre, near Leicester Square.

Trying to decide which version of ‘Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend’ to play. The Monroe original is too stop-starty, and isn’t quite as danceable as one might think. There’s a recent remix which splices Marilyn’s vocals with a modern swing arrangement, which I’m toying with. But then there’s Nicole Kidman’s version from Moulin Rouge, which is certainly full of rhythm (and which I suspect the Monroe remix is trying to ape). Possibly goes a little far in the giddy sweetshop direction. On New Year’s Eve, though, giddiness is rather the point.

***
New Year’s Resolution: never write in the diary about something which hasn’t happened yet. It can tempt fate.
Earlier this year, there was my being collared by a woman who wanted me to model suits for Paul Smith. I gave her my details, but did she get in touch? Did she Prada.

More recently, I mentioned here that the Guardian Guide emailed me, asking for a few words about my ideal ‘Midnight Track’ for their NYE club listings. They also wanted them by the next day. I duly replied at once. They said thanks.

Bought the Guide yesterday, only to see my bit wasn’t used after all. Oh well.

Here’s what I wrote:

BUGSY MALONE (Original Movie Soundtrack): You Give A Little Love / Finale

A dissonant piano chord rings out and the party noise stops. Then a simple, childlike vaudeville riff gingerly nudges the song to life, and songwriter Paul Williams (voicing the male cast of the 1975 childrens’ film Bugsy Malone) offers a wounded but triumphant melody of hope: ‘We could have been anything that we wanted to be / You give a little love and it all comes back to you….’ It’s the end of the movie, the end of the big custard pie fight, it’s charming and winning, it’s the styles of the 1920s via the kids of the 1970s, and it’s as powerful as ever. What better song to mark the passing of Father Time than this jaunty and defiant celebration of the child-adult axis in life? And you can dance to it.

***
Still, my mum is elsewhere in the same Saturday Guardian, in the New Year’s Honours List. I note that the Guardian goes with ‘quilt maker’, while the Times prefers ‘quiltmaker’.

***

Thank you, Dear Reader, for granting me your attention in 2007. See you in 2008. Take care. Don’t talk to any strange men. Do talk to a few strange hermaphrodites, though. At least you know where you are with them.

O, you bloated interregnum between Christmas and New Year’s Eve! You mute limbo of inertia and fetid leftovers! You Sunday Squared, you!

Where was I last time? Oh yes. Talking of leftovers, here’s the rest of my Christmas Day photos.

11am: Avenue Road. Vyvian the cat suddenly throws himself into a nearby cardboard box. I didn’t put him there, honest. He wants to play.

11.30am. Walk from Avenue Road to Waterlow Park, via Hornsey Lane. It’s raining heavily. Stop on Archway Bridge. Also known as Suicide Bridge. So this is the view looking towards Central London on Christmas Day 2007.

A Wet Christmas, needless to say. Given the time of year, I’m on a bridge favoured by the suicidal, and I’ve banked a cheque on the 24th, I can’t help thinking of It’s A Wonderful Life. ‘No man is a failure while he has friends.’

As I’m musing on this, a car comes by and drenches my entire lower half via this very puddle:

1145am. Meet Silke in Highgate Village, and we walk to the duck pond in Waterlow Park. I have this annual ritual of feeding the local waterfowl on Christmas Day. Don’t ask me why, or indeed how long I’ve been doing it. This time, Ms Silke is also spending Christmas by herself in Highgate, so I invite her to join me.

Here, defiant in the pouring rain, we throw bread to the coots, moorhens and mallards, pull crackers, wear party hats, and drink hot mulled wine from Silke’s Thermos. Joggers pass by us with bemused expressions. It’s quite a Capra moment.

(Actually, I think going jogging in the rain on Christmas Day is equally eccentric, but anyway).

Pulling crackers in the freezing rain:

Mulled wine in Emily Strange & Virginia Woolf mugs:

Afternoon: Sleep off the effects of the wine. Have bought some special gluten-free, dairy-free dark chocolates, in the hope of preventing any IBS stomach aches. They are so delicious that I wolf the entire box down in one session. Thus giving me, yes, a stomach ache.

Read the Alan Moore LOEG Black Dossier, including the further adventures of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. Treats for bookish trainspotters: one alias for Orlando’s many female incarnations is ‘Vita’ (Ms Sackville-West being the original muse for Orlando). There’s also a reference to a period spent as a ‘bloody orange cat’ (a nod to Ms Hale’s series of children’s books, Orlando The Marmalade Cat).

6pm. Off to Claudia Andrei’s in Archway. Claudia has been forced to snake-sit for her upstairs neighbour. Turns out the lady in the flat above couldn’t fit her pet snake’s tank in her car at the last minute. So poor Claudia has had to feed the thing over Christmas. And she has a phobia of snakes. I would offer to feed it for her, but I’m even more fearful of the things. Rather negligent of the neighbour to leave it to the last minute, really, telling Claudia it’s her or nobody. With snake power comes snake responsibility.

I’m easier to feed. Claudia cooks me dinner, we pull more crackers, and enjoy the rip-roaring disaster movie that is the Doctor Who special:

Claudia and Sevig:

8.30pm. To Lucy & Dale’s new flat in Muswell Hill, for TV console party games: quizzes (Buzz) and karaoke (SingStar). Charley Stone and Alex P are there, as are Lucy’s sister Pheobe and mum Jill, plus alcohol, and we all have a suitably dizzy, fizzy time. Dale cooks me yet more dinner while I sit out the Rock Guitar game. A toy guitar, with buttons instead of strings, is connected to the console. You have to get the buttons in the right order for the likes of ‘Smoke On The Water’ to play out, in time with the screen. If you make a mistake, the game makes clunky feedback noises. Sadly, there’s no Jesus & Mary Chain version, where to NOT make clunky feedback noises would be the mistake.

Somewhere in all this, I tell Charley that Fosca are touring Sweden in March, and that neither Kate nor Tom can make it. Would she – as a member of Fosca herself circa 1998 – be willing to help out and play guitar for us? She says yes, all being well. A ten year symmetry in line-up.

The two of us walk home at about 1.30AM, back to Crouch End and Highgate. I have been fed and watered several times over, and now I have a guitarist for the tour who’s talented and fine company, and whom I’ve managed to stay friends with since 1994. No man is a failure, indeed. Thank you, O Christmas Day Friends, O London Family. Ducks, cats, rain and puddle water included.

A proud day. My mother gets an MBE.

There she is in the New Year’s Honours List, alongside Kylie Minogue, Michael Parkinson, Ian McKellen, Jacqueline Wilson, Hanif Kureishi, Richard Griffiths, Julie Walters, Leslie Phillips, Ian Anderson (of Jethro Tull), and the president of The Lute Society.

In today’s Times, she’s between Llewelyn Goronwy Edwards, ‘councillor, Ceredigion County Council, for services to local government in West Wales’ and Francis Egerton, ‘lately opera singer, for services to music’:

Lynne Edwards, quiltmaker, for services to arts and crafts

From the East Anglian Daily Times:

Lynne Edwards of Bildeston, near Ipswich, is to receive her MBE for services to Arts and Crafts for her reputation as an international renowned quilt maker.

I can never think of the word ‘renowned’ without being reminded of the opening line in The Da Vinci Code. Also, shouldn’t that be ‘internationally renowned’? And it’s probably a matter of taste and newspaper style, but I think ‘quiltmaker’ looks better as one word, rather than two. Like ‘storyteller’.

Anyway, never mind me, for once. The EADT goes on:

Mrs Edwards, a trained teacher, has been making quilts for over twenty years and is regarded as one of the finest patchwork and quilting experts in the world. She has written a number of books to pass on her vast knowledge of techniques.

All of which is a pushover to having me as a son, frankly.

Congrats, Mum. See you at the Palace. She’s taking me, Tom and Dad along.

John Julius Norwich’s Christmas Cracker is an annual selection of quotes and clippings from his commonplace book. He prints it up as a thin, elegant booklet and distributes it to the counters of a few London bookshops (Daunts, Waterstones Piccadilly).

From the latest Cracker, here’s some ‘howlers’ found in school compositions. They made me laugh a little too loudly in public places, so be warned.

John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind from a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

Slink into dutiful over-indulgence for two days. Any excuse. The 25th is punctuated with visits to friends in the area, plus feeding a cat, in addition to the usual Waterlow ducks. The 26th is a day of happy solitude: loafing around, sitting in Muswell Hill cafes, dozing off.

I now feel I have eaten, drunken and slept enough to keep me going for all of 2008.

***

Notes from the 25th, with photos.

9 AM, Highgate. Mum & Dad’s presents to me include two graphic novels, Posy Simmonds’s Tamara Drewe, and Alan Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier. Both are new works by old hands. In fact, I first enjoyed the authors when I was a teenager living with my parents, so it all makes sense. I phone Mum & Dad to chat and say thanks. They’ve also sent me a cheque, which I banked the day before. Going to the bank on Christmas Eve, and to deposit money, made me think of It’s A Wonderful Life.

10 AM. To Avenue Road in Highgate, to feed Jennifer Connor’s cat, Vyvian. Named after the character in the Rik Mayall series The Young Ones. So I recall how Anna S’s cat in nearby Archway is called Flashheart, after the Rik Mayall character in Blackadder. I try to think of a third Rik Mayall-related cat, but fail.

Jennifer’s house is a few doors along from the Romo After-Party House, where the band Persecution Complex – sisters Chesca & Becca Grover and their school friends Ryan & Liz – used to live. Pretty much everyone involved in that whole Romo scene circa 1995 regularly repaired to this quiet Highgate street, after Club Skinny or Club Arcadia chucked out. The walls were coated in tin foil, a nod to Warhol’s Factory, and the PC House had a similarly Warholian open house policy. All kinds of ruffians, ‘superstars’ and characters from the mid 90s music scene came by. Just as well no one was shot.

But oh, the tales to be told. I’ve just remembered the band The Longpigs were among the visitors. Which means Richard Hawley would have been there.

The PC sisters are still making music, currently as The Rum Circus, and have moved down the road, to Crouch End.

Becca got married this year. I was one of the few Old Romos at the reception. Didn’t really know the husband, or indeed most of their new rock band-type friends. It’s not like it is in Richard Curtis films, with the same group of friends staying together for decades, through marriages and funerals. So I now cherish invitations from those I’ve known for more than a few years, even if the later contact is sporadic.

At Becca’s wedding reception I bumped into Lucy Hunt, who grew up in Kettlebaston, a tiny Suffolk village close to my own, Bildeston. Her parents knew my parents, and I caught the same school bus as her when I was about 14. She became a Hunt Saboteur in her later teens, foiling the local fox and hare antagonists. I think the joke about her surname had been well and truly made at the time.

Ten years later, circa 1995, and I met Lucy again at one of my first music industry parties. This time, she was the press officer for the band Ash. I didn’t see her again until 2007. She grabbed me to say hi both times, though. Not the other way around. I prefer it that way.

So much of my life is like this, because I live in constant fear of being told off. Why am I at this party? I got an invite. Why do I have the Diary Angels scheme, asking readers to send me money? Because two readers suggested it, separately. Not me. What am I doing in Sweden, or on the cover of a Dutch newspaper? I was asked. What am I doing on a BBC1 documentary? I got a phone call. Why am I DJ-ing? I was emailed.

It wasn’t me. Not my idea. Not my fault. Don’t blame me. And so on. It’s about time I stopped this craven approach. Let 2008 see more action, more accountability, more instigation, and less arrogance and passivity for its own sake.

So this year I bumped into Lucy H at Becca Grover’s wedding reception. She’s now working for the people behind the Sugababes, or someone like that. I suppose the next time we’ll meet will be about 2019.

Also at Becca’s wedding was an older gentleman I didn’t recognise:

Man: Hi Dickon. You don’t know me, but I’m a friend of the McCanns.

For a few seconds my mind threw up a photo of this year’s most famous missing girl. I’ve been accused of all kinds of things in the past, and refuse to be surprised any more. But the cogs eventually clicked, and I realise he meant a friend of Shane MacGowan’s I know, also called McCann.

This is an absolutely typical occurrence for me. I try to tune my brain into Becca & Cheska Grover mode, and tune out all the other scenes and social circles and lives I’ve dipped into. And then when I bump into someone from the Shane MacGowan ‘scene’, or someone from my Suffolk childhood ‘scene’, I feel I should somehow be confused.

The phrase ‘small world’ is a cliche too far. People aren’t filed away in boxes in the way they are in one’s mind. I just need to tell myself this more often.

‘Mr Edwards! You are NOT at the centre of the universe. Yes, someone you know from Simon Price’s club scene now IS dating the guitar player from a Sarah Records band you last saw in 1992. Yes, you DID know Ms X and Mr Y separately from their respective London scenes, before they met and moved in together. So what!

‘Your name and appearance may be filed away in the minds of many. But – get this – you are NOT at the front of their mental queues! At best, you are a slightly easy to spot footnote. Now get that understood, and get over yourself. Turn that vanity into productive work, or turn it off!’

This is my Christmas Message, by the way. Get Over Yourself, Me.

Now, here’s Vyvian the cat. Who belongs to Jennifer Connor. Who lives with Alex Mayor, the Baxendale member and producer of the new Fosca album. And she’s dating Chris, whom she met a couple of years ago, but whom I vaguely knew in 1997 when he was editing the early Belle and Sebastian videos and who was part of that whole Chalk Farm scene including people like David & Katrina from the Orlando fan club, and Mel whom I saw carrying a baby on Holloway Road the other day, who was in the Debutantes, who share members with Scarlet’s Well, who, who, who…

‘Mr Edwards! You’ve been warned. Shut up and feed the cat.’

***

Okay. Merry Christmas, Vyvian.

It’s Christmas Day. So I’ve bought crackers from John Lewis. They have little sequins on the outside.

Fine. I’ll pull it myself.

There you go, one party hat. No? Pfft. And they say cats are child substitutes. At least babies can wear party hats. Well, if you catch them asleep.

Not sure what this cracker gift is. A kind of miniature specs case. Or a coin case, perhaps. Here’s the joke.

When is a boat like snow? When it’s adrift.

I can find funnier jokes. Next entry, then.