After being out of sorts for the last few weeks, and thus letting my diary lapse somewhat, today I wake up full of energy and a renewed interest in living life. Funny how depression can be like that.

Sometimes depression feels like admitting defeat, many days spent going to bed and thinking, ‘I’ll feel better the next day.’ For much of the last fortnight, this hasn’t worked at all. I’ve woken up feeling just the same, and have just tried to put a brave face on it, stumbling through the day, clinging to distractions. Comfort food, comfort TV, comfort radio. Whole days of nothing slipping through one’s fingers like sand. Unable to get out of bed for hours on end, and then before I know it, it’s getting on for bedtime. A terrible existence.

At such times, I don’t feel 35 at all. I feel either 15, or 85, or both.

It would be fine if this meant I had the energy, innate connection to new technology and trends, and untrammelled hope of the better kind of teenager; or the wisdom, experience, better dress sense and healthier perspective of the idealised pensioner. The pensioner that is always working.

But no. On days like much of the last fortnight, I get the bad sides of both. From the 15-year-old I have the moaning, carping, sulking, and frustration, plus the sensation of never quite recovering from childhood solipsism. The time in one’s teenage years when you realise that the world really doesn’t revolve around you, that other people regrettably do exist, that you’re on your own from now on. Father Christmas does not exist, but paying rent does. I’ve never quite recovered from that time. Or at least, I must have missed that class at school when they actually tell you HOW to grow up, as opposed to forever shouting at you to do so.

And from the negative aspects of the archetypal 85-year-old, I have the poor health, lack of energy, creeping small-mindedness (if not downright prejudice), resentment of anything new, and a searing mistrust of the young.

So it’s the worst of both worlds. I can be this way for days on end, oscillating from resentful, unproductive teen to resentful, unproductive pensioner. As if it somehow makes sense. As if I enjoy it (I don’t). As if it’s an easier option.

Well, it seems like an easier option at the time. But, in the same way that putting on a t-shirt, jeans and trainers takes the same effort, energy and time as putting on a suit and tie (or at least, it would do for me), depression is a lie.

Depression is as hard work as, well, hard work. Just as being unemployed is a full time job. The energy and time is the same. Not doing any work is hard work too. The time is still spent. The mind is still working.

So the trick is: telling yourself you can’t be bothered to NOT work. Getting on with work without realising you’re getting on with work. Losing oneself in the flow of it. Thinking, but without thinking about the thinking.

My self-help book would be called ‘Take Yourself From Behind’.

I’ve had more than a few messages from strangers on the dreaded Facebook, asking if I’m the Dickon who:

(a) went to the National Youth Theatre in 1991,

or (b) went to Cambridge University and appeared in many stage productions at the ADC Theatre there,

or (c) worked at Euro Disney.

Answers: (a) No. (b) No. (c) No.

So I’ve decided to make things far less confusing for Facebook users.

I’m going to round up all the other Dickons and have them shot.

Only joking, other Dickons.

Thing is, I’m not keen to be tracked down by people from my own past, let alone those from the past of strangers who happen to share my first name. I’m still working on making sense of my present. When I’m happy with that, I’ll be able to properly approach my past.

Until then, such point-scoring school reunions can only go like this:

Them: Dickon! The Dickster! Long time no hear from. Well, then. I’ve got fifteen kids, seven houses, a yachting business in Diss and my own private elephant. And you?

Dickon: Taxi!

Managed to see a GP today after all. She thinks it might be arthritis, and has sent me off to pose for the Whittington Hospital X-Ray Dept tomorrow. It’s a condition more common in the elderly, but having developed varicose veins five years ago, I wouldn’t be at all surprised. If anyone could contract gout in 2007  London, it’d be me. Fits with the image.

In the meantime, I’ve hit the ibuprofen pills (with the doctor’s blessing), and the pain has disappeared entirely. Contrary to what some pop combo wailed a decade ago, the drugs really do work. Good old drugs.

I’d previously laboured under the impression that Neurofen’s type of ibuprofen was somehow better than the cheap supermarket versions. Not so, confirms my GP. Boots, Co-Op, Sainsburys, Neurofen, it’s all the same.

By buying Neurofen over any other type of ibuprofen, you are merely paying for the shiny logo. Though I suppose it could be argued that there’s a healing power in logos, too. Good graphic design can make an aesthete feel better, just as the Olympic 2012 logo makes many feel sick.

I’ve got yet another new ailment to moan about. It’s increasingly difficult not to believe someone out there really does own a voodoo doll.

I’ve either sprained or actually dislocated the big toe on my right foot. And now I can barely walk properly. Presumably it’s by sleeping or sitting for too long in a strange position. I’ve done this to the toe before (and it was definitely from sitting at my desk too long), but in the past it’s righted itself in a few minutes.

Not this time, however. Yesterday, I was shocked to discover I couldn’t even go to the nearest corner shop to buy provisions, without limping very slowly and with a large amount of pain. I was fighting back tears all the way, and must have been an even odder sight on the Archway Road than normal.

So I just went straight back to bed and hoped it would get better.

Now it’s a day later and the toe is still the same. Still can’t put pressure on it without a lot of pain, so I still can’t walk properly.

I’ve a horrible feeling it’s a dislocation, which will have to be snapped back into position without anaesthetic; a procedure that somewhat frightens me.

Off to the GP this afternoon, then. I may have to resort to calling a cab to get there.

A Sunday colour supplement-style pic:

***

From Monday’s London Paper (or as it calls itself on the masthead, ‘thelondonpaper’):

New DVD Reviews
If…
You’ve probably never heard of Lindsay Anderson… He’s Britain’s most underrated director.

Catch And Release
Hands up who’s a bit bored with Kevin Smith doing slacker cameos.

Admittedly, the If…. review does go onto to praise it to the hilt as the classic film it is, but I actually barked aloud ‘Oh REALLY!’ when I read the above sentences on the Tube.

So let’s read between the lines here. Yes, I know it’s probably a silly idea to deconstruct DVD reviews in a free local newspaper. But I’m fascinated about the culture of received opinions and media consensus, and what some now call ‘being on the same page’.

The anonymous reviewer is assuming a couple of things about the average London Paper reader. As their publication is one of the free dailies thrust aggressively into the hands of passers-by, or picked up by bored commuters when left on the seats of buses and underground trains, the readership is presumed to be pretty much anyone walking about in London.

Going by these reviews, the average Londoner:

(a) is meant to be have never heard of Lindsay Anderson.

(b) is meant to know who Kevin Smith is.

(c) is meant to respond well to the phrase ‘Hands up who’s a bit bored with…’ As opposed to feeling they’re being treated like a school pupil. Or that a gun is pointed at their head. Which may as well be the case with the newspaper’s pushy distributors on the streets, but I digress.

This kind of faux matey, playing-to-the-gallery journalism assumes everyone’s just like the reviewer, or that the reviewer assumes he knows what the reader is like. It’s as if they’re writing with a big list pinned up on the nearest wall, detailing just which names the readers are meant to have heard of. Kevin Smith, yes. Lindsay Anderson, no.

Who wrote this mighty list in the first place? Who has decreed just which names are osmotically lodged in the memories of strangers, and which ones need a little explanation?

This increasingly common style of review writing is not only unhelpful, it insults the reader’s intelligence. And it’s arguably a dangerous line of thinking.

It bullies the reader into becoming part of some homogenous crowd, where everyone is familiar with the same limited number of books, films, artists, musicians, celebrities. A fixed quota of names to have heard of. If you’re not aware of them, or if you know about anyone else at all, you are not just ‘out of touch’. You are The Other. And then it’s only a matter of time before the burning pitchforks appear.

So yes, I have heard of Lindsay Anderson, who is hardly ‘Britain’s most underrated director.’ The BFI have always had If…. in their Top 20 Critics’ Poll. But according to the London Paper, you’re not meant to have even heard of the director. Which therefore makes me ‘Other’ from their average reader.

I know who Kevin Smith is too. I like Mr Smith’s Clerks and Mr Anderson’s If…., because they’re both brilliant and original films about different types of boyishness (on one level), and are both very much products of their respective times and settings.

I also know If…. has four dots in the titular ellipsis, not three.

There’s worrying about going over readers’ heads. And there’s asking them to duck.

A reminder of this Fosca gig next week:

Spiral Scratch Presents
Fosca + The Besties + A Smile & A Ribbon + The Parallelograms
Wednesday 1 August 2007
The Windmill, 22 Blenheim Gardens, Brixton, London SW2 5BZ. 020 8671 0700.

Doors 8pm. Fosca onstage 10.20pm.

Tickets £4 advance, on sale now. Go to:  www.wegottickets.com/event/19272

It’s Fosca’s first London gig for over a year, and our first headliner in our own home city (well, for me and Rachel) for much longer. Please buy a ticket and come. We don’t play live very often. And I’m not sure when we’ll play another one, to be honest. There’s too much heavy lifting.

Here’s one taken when I wasn’t aware the camera was snapping away. So it’s a non-posing pose. Except of course, I never really stop posing.

And why shouldn’t I? Britain has 4.2 million CCTV cameras, more than in the rest of Europe put together. Everyone’s on camera. So the least one can do is make an effort to be worth looking at.

Holloway Road, close to where I live, was recently declared the most CCTV-covered street in Britain. I like to think this is due to the fabulous dress sense of the average pedestrian there, rather than the high incidence of unkindness. If not, then it should be.

So it’s this Canute-like attitude which I recognise in my expression below. It’s how I like to think I really am, or should be more often. Strange but essentially harmless. Wanting the best for all. Blowing kisses at the drug dealers. Flirting with squirrels.

Brompton Cemetery, July 2007. Photo by Gillian Kirby. More to come.

Have agreed to do another movie review column for Plan B Magazine. May as well be voluntary work (all they can afford to pay me barely covers half my travel costs getting to the screenings), but it helps pad out the file of published writings, on real paper. And I do like to go to the movies.

Tonight’s film was Evening, a lachrymose drama where women get upset over something that happened one fateful night in 1952 (or whenever), and ‘their lives are changed forever’. That sort of film. Sails rather close to the TV Movie world at times, despite the screenplay by the man behind The Hours. In fact, one aged version of a character suddenly turns up at the end to make a little speech, tying everything up. Which is exactly what happens at the end of The Hours. So Evening is essentially The Hours without the suicides, musings on literature, or Philip Glass on the soundtrack. Instead, there’s the usual nondescript echoey piano tinkings common to such dramas. And it’s all filmed beautifully: you come out whistling the sunsets.

Vanessa Redgrave and Claire Danes are both great, but miscast as old and young versions of the same character. It’s not just the lack of physical resemblance (Ms Danes is half a foot shorter than Ms Redgrave – was her character stretched on a rack between the ages of 35 and 70?), but their acting styles and mannerisms couldn’t be more different. Even when Ms Redgrave was Ms Danes’s age in films like Blow-Up and Morgan: A Suitable Case For Treatment, she was still aloof, starchy and brittle. Ms Danes is gregarious, sweet and quirky. It’s like comparing an angsty stick of celery to an angsty strawberry.

That said, I think it’ll fare well with fans of well-made female melodramas. There were more than a few snuffles in tonight’s audience, so I suppose Evening can be safely filed away under Actorly Weepies.

***

Am collared in Leicester Square by a woman brandishing an Amnesty International clipboard, after my Direct Debit details. Very much a sign of the times: these aggressive figures are also known as ‘charity muggers’, or ‘chuggers’. Usually students, I think. Either way, I find them immensely objectionable. In fact, I make a mental note to boycott all charities that stoop to employ such depressing tactics. Which is ironic, as it’s often charities that ask you to boycott various firms and organisations for their unethical practices.

So no more Amnesty International donations from me. Not until they stop leaping out at people on the street with clipboards and shouting at them for daring to walk away. It’s arguably a kind of oppression of one’s human rights, curtailing the ability to walk around freely without having to dodge clipboard fiends. I’ve a good mind to write to Amnesty International about themselves.

***

Funny how during these busy days people either have no time at all, or devote too much time to things they probably don’t need to do. Harry Potter fans are camping outside bookshops three days before the new novel comes out. I can understand the camaraderie of fans together, standing in the same place, for maybe for an hour or two at the most. And dress-up parties at midnight sound fun enough. But when I see people camping in the rain for days, I feel like John Lennon did in the Imagine documentary, confronting a fan camping out on his doorstep, politely asking him to desist, inviting him inside for a cup of tea, then sending him home.

Still, I suppose it has precedence in the times of Dickens, when his novels were published in installments. The story goes that people standing at New York harbour asked passengers arriving from England if Little Nell was okay. Now it’s the welfare of Little Harry that their descendents are seeking to know.

This year’s Latitude was something of a civilised success on the whole, both from my point of view and from overhearing those who went, whether it’s the chatting of young waitresses in Walberswick cafes or the chatting of people on the Internet. The young have even given it a nickname. Just as Glastonbury is ‘Glasto’, Latitude is ‘Lat’. Not bad for a festival barely two years old.

The multicoloured sheep by the main bridge have also achieved a kind of instant icon status, a newly-forged tradition much like the Doctor Who Christmas Specials. Second time around, and it feels as if they’ve been there for decades. Latitude is now The Festival With The Coloured Sheep. On no account must the sheep go. It’d be like the ravens and the Tower of London.

My only complaints were really with my own lack of organisation and foresight: staying in Southwold meant I had to miss a lot of late-night acts. Being a performer on all four nights as well as a reviewer also called for a bit of schedule juggling, though I’m pleased that I came up with more than the minimum of the required writing, and was always on time for my DJ slots. I didn’t let anyone down.

However, I do slightly regret the occasions I drank too much and became a bit Kenneth Williams-y in public. Not funny and entertaining, but embarrassingly wracked with self-piteous wailings about why I am still not The King Of England. I apologise to all those around me at the time.

At one point I was lying on the grass (in full suit and tie) near the queue for the Southwold Shuttle Bus, utterly drunk, crying to myself, moaning that I wasn’t allowed to jump the queue (which I entirely agreed with, but I needed something to moan about) and muttering about, oh, how lonely and empty my life was, and how come most people preferred to watch The Arcade Fire than watch me DJ-ing with other people’s records (again, I entirely agree with them), and oh, why am I still not yet The King Of England?

Of course, this was all haughty, cod-diva showing off, even to myself, fuelled mostly by alcohol. I was enjoying every minute of it, though it wasn’t until some days later that I realised this.

A concerned girl came over to me during one of these ridiculous rants to the sky:

Concerned Girl: Are you… are you okay? Where are your friends?

Me: (triumphantly, arms aloft) They’re… all… on the internet!

The truth is I quite enjoy being lost in life: at least you know where you are.

Otherwise, I had a perfectly wonderful time. Last year I was a mere freeloading Guest Pass holder. This year, bona fide work, twice over, every day. My face was in the programme twice (The Beautiful & Damned DJ act appeared in two different tents), plus I was employed to blog for the official festival website. Next year, the front cover. Or if wet, The King Of England.

My haughty showbiz thanks to the tirelessly kind souls behind the Latitude scenes: Ms Tania H, Ms Sarah and Ms Rachel from the Cabaret Arena, Ms Jen from the Latitude website, Ms Tamsin and Mr Jason from the Film Arena, Ms Anthea and Mr Ben from the Press Tent. And all the ones whose names I’ve forgotten. God bless them all. (Applause, exit stage left.)