To L’Escargot on Greek Street for a Christmas dinner with the Teaists. The Teaists being an assortment of bohemian types who meet in the city’s expensive but stylish dining parlours (The Wolseley, The Savoy, The Waldorf etc), even when some of their number are living on the dole.

One definition of style is to dress well on little money, while those who are swimming in riches dress like they’re on a minimum wage. The Teaists are often the most stylishly dressed people in the room, while fashion dictates that the richer you are, the poorer you’re meant to look. Prince Charles hasn’t worn his coronet since his investiture, though (I’ve just checked) he’s allowed to wear it whenever he wants. I’d wear my coronet on the 134 bus.

Style is spending your last crumb of Income Support on a charity shop waistcoat, rather than food. The food will come anyway. You hope (rather than beg) some kind soul will offer to treat you, in return for the currency of interesting and unusual company (which is what the Fosca song ‘The Millionaire Of Your Own Hair’ is about).

Even though the Teaists spend money like any other customers, they still manage to solicit the odd steely gaze from waiters. Gazes that say ‘What are you doing here?’ and ‘This is a respectable establishment.’ Sometimes there’s bemused smirks, other times it’s expressions of sheer terror, akin to the pensioners in the tea room scene from Withnail & I. Maybe it’s because the Teaists are of a unusual mixed-generational range (at all points between 20 to 40); maybe it’s the odd haircuts, or the vintage mix-and-match clothes; maybe it’s just the whole atmosphere of Otherness.

I realise this is starting to sound like the lyrics to a Suede song, though I’d never say the Teaists were ‘trash’. More like harmless if gently exotic variations to the decor. The scenic route.

Present for this Christmas outing (champagne, wine, three courses, snails) is Lawrence, Xavior, Hazel, Tallulah, Mathieu and Suzy. Tallulah is a young lady I associate with glamorous clubs like Kash Point and Stay Beautiful, and a strong contender for the ever-discussed notion of the female dandy. She asks me if I’m aware of a band called Blueboy. Of course I am: Blueboy were on Sarah Records, I was a big fan, I was close to the singer for a while (who died earlier this year), and they were the first band I ever supported (Orlando, Camden Monarch, April 1993). They later appeared on Shinkansen Records, as did Fosca.

Turns out that young Tallulah is currently dating the Blueboy guitarist, Paul.

Now, this at first seems such a ‘small world’ collision of my past and present lives, it reinforces the notion that behind my back, all the people I’ve ever known are getting off with each other.

But it makes more sense when I’m told they met as fans of The Chap magazine. Blueboy were a link between two unique and distinctive indie labels of the late 80s / early 90s period: the pastoral, pristine ‘twee pop’ of Sarah Records and the dandy-compatible, elegant and jazz-tinged El Records. From El Records, it’s a short step to The Chap, and thence to the dandy side of the dressing up spectrum, and so to the sort of clubs Tallulah goes to.

Arrogantly, I used to think I was the one person linking so many scenes, capable of shifting from the world of Momus to the world of Shane Macgowan, from Doctor Who fans to Beau Brummel fans, from the Field Mice to Romo, from the jumpers and jeans of the Belle and Sebastian ‘cutie’ types to the flamboyant costumes of London’s polygendered peacocks.

But then someone shouts ‘Oy! Rhydian!’ at me on the street, and I’m reminded that, no, I’m really not at the centre of the universe after all. (Rhydian being a bleach-haired singer on TV’s X-Factor).

Oh, and those pretty black-clad boys I met at the Shane MacGowan party turned out to be in the band The Horrors, whom I have approved of aesthetically in the past. I just couldn’t recognise them in person.

The one I spoke to said his name was Rhys. I went up and complimented him on looking fantastic, completely oblivious that he was in a popular band of the moment. Just as well I didn’t suggest he should be in a group. But I feel slightly smug that I thought he looked like he was in a band. Too many people in bands dress down, as if they’re hoping no one will notice they’re on a stage.

I wonder if the drummer of (say) Blur gets recognised like this? ‘I just wanted to say… I really love your look.’

***

Also at the Teaist dinner, Hazel gives everyone presents of books – lovely old Penguin editions. Mine are Henry James’s The Europeans and DH Lawrence’s The White Peacock.

She raves about Ted Hughes’s Collected Letters, which she’s just been reading. In the Telegraph, Sam Leith suggests that, thanks to email, such volumes are on the way out:

Hughes being, realistically, of the last generation that wrote letters consistently enough and well enough for it to be worthwhile or even possible to collect them into a book. I reckon in two decades’ time the Collected Letters will have ceased to exist as a literary object. But cheer up. No doubt something good will come along to replace it.

Well… there is the ‘blook’. The book based on a popular blog. Not quite the same thing, though.

Thing is, even though I’ve written plenty of paper letters in the past, and kept the other person’s correspondence, I’ve never kept copies of the outgoing letters. That’s what you were meant to do if you had any interest in the art of letters at all: put carbon sheets between the pages, make copies, keep the replies, and file it all carefully away. Seems a world away now. I wonder if those carbon sheets are even still available.

Emails, however, automatically keep both sides of the exchange preserved, and take up no room whatsoever (one CDR can hold a lifetime’s output of text). It’s just that few write emails in the style of the old letters.

Except when it’s a commission. The Swedish mag 00TAL has asked Martina Lowden and myself to discuss diary writing and fiction via email. The plan is to publish the emails in a future issue.

The Swedish radio programme I was interviewed for – a special on Sarah Records by P3 Pop – is online here.

I’m told it was broadcast on 19th Nov and will remain online for another week or so.

This Year’s Model, whose album booklet features stories by Vic Godard, Jessica Griffin and myself, has just been given a very nice review at Indiepages.com.

Here’s a scanned version of that Dagens Nyheter interview, which appeared in October. DN is Sweden’s biggest selling morning newspaper.

***

Have installed an imaginary word-processing filter that automatically deletes any sentences smacking of self-pity. Which explains the gap in recent diary entries.

Still, it’s something many diarists and bloggers could do with. I believe one’s moans and gripes can indeed be lanced by writing them down; it’s publishing them for others to read that’s unnecessary. So I now use my Silvine Exorcise Books for that sort of thing. Get it down, and get it out. Then write something people might actually be interested in reading.

***

A: The trouble is, every time I sit down to write, the Microsoft Paperclip pops up and says, ‘You appear to be steeped in your own suppurating self-pity. Would you like some help?’

***

Fed up of missing things due to feeling too ill or too tired. Last straw has to be missing the Puppini Sisters video shoot, in which I was going to be an extra. Kicked myself for pulling out of that one, particularly as extra work is one job where disguising your tiredness and ailments is fairly easy to do, what with all the time spent doing nothing.

So, doubly keen to vanquish the dreaded IBS pains, I’ve now switched to a vegan-esque dairy-free, caffeine-free, gluten-free, every-bloody-thing-free diet. It means a lot of munching on rice cakes, a food which my mother accurately describes as ‘amiable polystyrene’.

Find it strange to read that raw fruit and veg are considered avoidable in some anti-IBS diets. Smoothies and cooked vegetables are actually preferable to the fresh stuff, when encouraging the entrails to recover. It seems there really is no such thing as a universal ‘good for you’ food.

Well, apart from water. That’s one thing people pretty much agree on, despite what WC Fields said.

The first time I tasted soya milk, at the age of 18 or so, I instantly said a prayer for all the masochists who drink the stuff out of choice. Now my taste buds have altered to the point where I really don’t mind it either way. Which is just as well.

Peppermint tea is the other staple of this new regime, but is surprisingly easy to get in cafes. Including the BFI Imax cafe, the British Museum cafe, and even Munchkins, the touristy fish and chips cafe opposite the Museum. These being the three stops Dad and myself made on Monday, when he came up to visit. Must find a suitable non-tourist cafe to replace the New Piccadilly, though.

We saw the new Beowulf animated movie at the Imax, in 3D. Utterly enjoyable fare. Seeing it on DVD (or downloading it) really can’t be the same experience at all. It’s unabashed spectacle, hooked on proper storytelling. Something happens because something else has happened. That’s what makes a story a story, as opposed to a parade of random spectacles for the sake of it. The trouble with so many recent blockbusters is that something happens – AND then something else happens.

Beowulf has its roots in a very old story indeed, though this version has a few twists that have predictably annoyed the Anglo-Saxon academics. They forget that movies are movies, and books are books. The only real insult to an original text is to make a dull movie. Produce a dazzling piece of cinema – such as the Lord Of The Rings trilogy – and all deviations from the books are forgiven.

***

Last Sunday evening was Shane MacGowan’s 50th birthday party at the Boogaloo. Mr MacGowan’s actual birthday is on the 25th, which he shares with Quentin Crisp and Jesus Christ, but given the Pogues are on tour till Christmas, I assume this was the most convenient date for all concerned. Like The Queen, it always helps to have more than one birthday. I was invited, and it was great to see the Boogaloo extended family assembled, including John & Sharon, Ms Red, Eddie, Jemima, Bernie, Sophie, The General, Ronnie, and Ms Lou.

Shane sang Van Morrison’s ‘Gloria’, though the backing band (Bap Kennedy and co) rather cunningly turned it into the Nips’ ‘Gabrielle’ halfway through. Spider Stacy (Pogues) also performed a couple of numbers.

At the pub I also recognised: Jem and Darryl (Pogues), Shanne Bradley (from The Nips), Kevin Rowland (Dexy’s – pencil moustache), Tim Burgess (Charlatans – glasses and stubble), and Chas Smash (Madness).

There were also a few striking young men in eyeliner, deliberate hairdos and skinny black attire. If they weren’t in some famous band, they dressed like they were. Some papers said members of The View and Arctic Monkeys were there, but although I’m aware that these groups exist and are popular with today’s loose children, my passing interest stops short of identifying their members’ countenances, particularly in a dark room full of similar trendy young things.

Maybe I could just about recognise the Arctic Monkeys singer. He reminds me vaguely of Chris Gentry from Menswear. Ask your Britpop dad.

Ms Kate Moss sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Mr MacGowan, via Ms Victoria Clarke’s mobile phone. And there was a proper cake, with candles, which he duly extinguished before the happy gathering.

***

Email on Jake Thackray, one of those recording artists on my To Do list:

There’s a very good 4CD box set called Jake In A Box which can usually be found cheap in the sales…otherwise I’ve only seen iffy compilations. If you can find individual albums, the usual favourite is his debut, The Last Will And Testament Of Jake Thackray. I think you’d like him.

Thank you. It’s on the ever-extending list.

***

Sad to find out the Charles Dickens Museum is going to be closed this Christmas. Last Boxing Day it was the only London museum open, and I went along to enjoy readings from A Christmas Carol (with mince pies and wine) by one of his descendents, the author Lucinda Hawksley. So my Boxing Day is now something of a blank canvas.

My New Year’s Eve, however, is claimed by the Last Tuesday Society. They’ve booked me to DJ at their Masked Ball, at the Arts Theatre in Covent Garden.

A kind of compromised good news. My wallet has been handed in after all, though the UK notes are missing. The odd thing is, the UK change and the Swedish notes are still there. Still, I’m grateful to get any of the money back at all. My neighbour David thinks I may be able to claim some of the missing UK cash, via my travel insurance (which the festival bought on my behalf).

***
Had my last chat at the Tavistock yesterday, regarding my past course of therapy and whether I should look for a new course. I’ve been recommended to research a kind of shrink’s shopping list, to see if it might do me some good: cognitive, cognitive behavioural, cognitive analytical, psycho-dynamic, ‘solution-focussed’, and more.

I think therapy in some cases is just a substitute for the kind of close friend who really checks up on you, gives you a slap on a regular basis, stops you wasting days and months on sheer dithering about what best to do with your life. Not everyone takes to such ‘tough love’ friendships, certainly not myself. But God knows I need something along those lines, even if I have to pay for it.

***

One modern problem is knowing just how best to keep in touch with one’s friends. Myspace, Facebook, Livejournal, texting, mailing lists. By the time you’ve checked all these things and sorted through the various messages for events, it feels like you’ve not done anything else with your day. I can just about stay on top of emails, and that has to be it. It’s not that I feel I’m slower than the rest of the world, it’s that I find my mind can’t cope with checking and processing so many different messaging accounts, and keeping up with them. I find myself putting so much energy into worrying about what’s expected of me (must I reply? what if they reply back? how long is this chat going to go on for? how I can I get out of this and get some fresh air?) I feel I’m in danger of dying from an overdose of pure choice.

***

Sometimes, my thinking bristles like this:

Thank God I don’t like football. Because if I liked it, I would have to keep up with it. And that would be awful, because I don’t like it.

***

London Life:

A: Help me!
B: Okay.
A: Not you!

***

Emails:

hello there…my name is Joz, from Indonesia.. i just want to say thanks for the music that fosca made…can’t stop hearing “The Millionaire Of your own hair”, brilliant!!!

I always like the thought that bits of me – my recorded voice and words – have reached far-off lands without the rest of me, and have been of some use. Particularly as Fosca have enough trouble getting any kind of attention in the UK, let alone Indonesia. Thank you, and please tell others.

***

From: Sue George, London

Dear Mr Edwards, I always read your online diary when I remember to and I was particularly fascinated by it this time. When I was youngish (18? 19?) I saw the first TV showing of the Naked Civil Servant and was so inspired that I looked Quentin Crisp up in the phone book and wrote him a fan letter to which he replied! …Even now, he is an inspiration to me. Does Xavior Roide do these Quentin Crisp walks for the general public or simply for his friends? I am sure I am not the only person who would love to go on one.

The walk was an impulsive bit of fun, but I think he had belated interest from bohemian acquaintances requesting another outing. If Xavior does it next year, and assuming it’s an open invite, I’ll mention it here.

I should also mention this exciting piece of TV news:

An Englishman in New York 2008, ITV1 – A sequel to the award-winning 1975 drama The Naked Civil Servant. John Hurt reprises the role of Quentin Crisp (aka “the stately homo of England’), following his life in the 1980s and 1990s when he lived in New York.

I also see that you have linked to an essay by Matt Houlbrook. I am currently reading his book Queer London which is one of the most fascinating books I have read for years. Do you know it?

I do now, and have just borrowed it from the London Library…

Another mail:

The live Fosca CD arrived last night… This has been my first exposure to the new, guitared-up Fosca, and if this is an indication of how the new album is going to sound, then I’m even keener to hear it than before. There’s a real celebratory feel about the new songs, and indeed the new treatment of older numbers… you’ve never sounded so emphatic and alive…but maybe that’s because I haven’t seen Fosca live before. Is it always like this?

Oh, we come alive like Mr Frampton. I think my own sense of being the odd band out adds a certain defiance to the mix. Or an attempt at it, anyway.

Fosca have never sounded better, and I really hope that the new album is going to get the recognition it looks like deserving – let me know if there’s anything I can do to help with this, like plugging it on the various internet forums I use, or submitting reviews.

Please do tell the world, and try to get it reviewed wherever you can. Contact the record label (But Is It Art Records) and talk to them for press copies.

I should mention that the live album is now available to download free, albeit without the limited edition artwork.

… you really should play live more often. Even if it means moving to Sweden. Live likes you, and you seem to like it.

Actually, going by the live album sales, it turns out Fosca are bigger in the UK than Sweden after all.

I’d really love Fosca to play live more often myself. It depends on many things beyond my control (such as four differently busy people finding the same time slots free, and then matching those to gig offers, and then having to organise equipment transportation and hard cases and rehearsals, and getting paid and oh, we really need a manager…). But I hope it happens.

From: Allan, Hackney
Message: Do you have a Jake Thackray affinity?

No. Should I? Where’s best to start?

No word from the lost property people.

In my case, my wallet was not so much ‘lost’ as ‘left’. I know exactly where it was: on the floor in front of my seat on the plane. I’m absolutely convinced it would have been found by now by the plane’s cleaners, and that the finder would hand it in rather than pocket it. I was also hoping the finder would take into account that people who travel on low cost airlines tend not to be millionaires. That they could really, really do with the money back.

Perhaps I’m part of some divine plan, where a cleaner has found themselves in dire need of extra money – the exact amount in my wallet matching the fare to visit their dying relative, say – and this is the way their prayers were answered. Perhaps they’ll see my photo on my card inside the wallet, and think the blond hair means I am a part-time Angel.

In which case, I forgive them. All part of the heavenly service. He said through gritted teeth.

It’s rather hard to shrug ‘heigh ho’ about this one. The best part of £300. All my wages earned on the trip. At a time when I’m barely earning at all. But heigh ho. Heigh ho.

***

So that aside, I had a pretty splendid trip, really.

I did the three sets okay, the musical back-up for Martina Lowden being the main reason I was there. She read a piece in Swedish, telling me it involved a fox, snow, and Love despite everything. I sat to one side and picked out slow, shimmering Robin Guthrie-type melodies in single echoey notes, using digital delay and chorus pedals, trying my best to play under and around her words rather than against her. Though I couldn’t understand her text, I could still use her tone and rhythm to respond in shades of melody.

After I got home, Martina emailed me to say ‘I’m still smiling bigger and brighter than I’ve done for weeks.’ So that made me feel happy.

For my solo set, I played ‘Storytelling Johnny’ and ‘Confused And Proud’, before host Madeleine Grive pulled me back onstage to do a third, ‘Rude Esperanto.’ Just me, my guitar and my laptop. Because the venue was a theatre with fixed seats on a steep incline, and the event a poetry festival, for the first time I could hear my vocals way above the music. Hundreds of people in the audience, and all of them silent and paying attention. Which is rather different to playing rock venues, of course.

A little later, I joined Friday Bridge to sing and play on their song ‘Pigeon’, before ending with Fosca’s ‘It’s Going To End In Tears’. Always interesting to play a dance number in a venue where people can’t stand up to dance. It meant the song became more serene, serious, glacial.

From what I could make out, the audience was a real mixture of literature fans (all ages), and hip festival goers (arty twentysomethings). The nearest London equivalent would be the ICA.

Which reminds me. In Stockholm there’s a chain of supermarkets called ICA. Didn’t go inside one, but I like to think they sell pints of milk rated by Alan Yentob as culturally influential.

The festival was a curious schedule: three separate shows in one day, from 3pm till midnight. I spent much of the Friday recovering from the hangover incurred by the party at the Governor’s palace, but I stuck around afterwards for a drink at the bar. Three parties in three days, including one at the Polish Institute on the Wednesday. Two TV interviews. One morning rehearsal. One sushi dinner with Niklas and Ylva. One meeting with the record company. And lots of being looked after by the kind organisers. Who booked me taxis on account, which I only had to sign for. Who provided backstage catering including little chocolate cubes containing different jelly flavours: orange, mint, Turkish Delight.

Who put me up at the lovely Mornington Hotel with its eat-all-you-like-and-all-you-can-think-of breakfast buffet and its unique ‘library bar’. Thousands of books – some in English – lining the walls while you eat and drink. Not just for show, either: you’re encouraged to borrow them during your stay.

My thanks to Ester, Hanna, Kristina, Anne, Johanna, Hilary, Jessica, and all at 00TAL Magazine whose names I forgot to remember.
***

I wandered about the city for a lot of my stay. Had lunch in a cafe in Stortorget, the ancient square in the Old Town, currently host to a Christmas Market. Lots of sweet-smelling market stalls. I like a town square that smells of sweets. Tried a drink called Glogg, which is a bit like mulled wine, but with a small cup of raisins and almonds on the side. I gathered from the waitress that you’re meant to add the raisins and nuts to the drink and stir it. Very nice, anyway.

I know it’s still too early for Christmas, but Stockholm is a great Christmas destination. They have your actual snow and your actual reindeer. Well, there was snow on the Wednesday.

In the Sweden Bookshop in Slottsbacken, after hours spent wandering a foreign city alone, I bought a Greta Garbo fridge magnet. Seemed like the right thing to do.
***

Popped my groggy (and Gloggy) head into the Nationalmuseum, home to Sweden’s largest art collection (and comparable with the National Gallery in London). Enjoyed an exhibition on Swedish illustrations to Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

Which was particulary fitting as I’d brought Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy to read. This is her modern-day take on one of the Ovid myths: the tale of Iphis and Ianthe, a favourite of mine and very probably the first female-to-male transsexual love story.

Girl Meets Boy has a rather excellent opening line:

Let me tell you about when I was a girl, our grandfather says.

When I saw Ms Smith’s book I felt a degree of envy and chagrin, as the Iphis story is the one myth I’d most like to retell myself. But I can still do my version one day.

Set in the world of Inverness bottled water corporations (‘Eau Caledonia’) and drawing on her gift for sisterly relationships (as in The Accidental), Girl Meets Boy has a sweet and dreamy atmosphere, with lots of pop culture references. I’ve complained before how one of the contributors to the Iain Sinclair anthology couldn’t get the title of Robbie Williams’s ‘Angels’ right. I was also stunned to read Colm Toibin’s review in the London Review Books of Rupert Everett’s memoirs, where he confesses to never having heard of the actor before:

‘In my head I had him slightly mixed up with Kenny Everett, who was a disc jockey during my youth…’

Ali Smith, on the other hand, gives the impression she does know who Rupert Everett is. Because she peppers Girl Meets Boy with references to Judi Dench in Notes On A Scandal, Johnny Depp in Pirates Of The Caribbean, Daniel Craig coming out of the sea in Casino Royale, and, you guessed it, Facebook. Not in a tokenistic way, but in the way that makes perfect sense when writing about people who live in the real world (and yet don’t quite), and it helps to stop the book taking itself too seriously. If you only write books for people who only read books, you’re in a danger of a kind of literary in-breeding. Authors are meant to have their eyes open to the wider world, not just to the world of books and other authors. Books are meant to be connect, not breed academic ghettos.

Anyway, Girl Meets Boy is also a little thing of gorgeousness to look at: lovely red font for the page headings and embossed title, red endpapers, simple matt white covers with a line drawing and cool Helvetica lettering. For me, this makes all the difference between buying a hardback book (which I rarely do) and borrowing it from the library. That, and it being £2 off in Waterstones.

Stansted, Saturday evening. I’ve just arrived back from Sweden, and am walking through customs when I realise something really rather inconvenient.

I’ve left my wallet on the plane.

In it is my sole bank card, my Oyster Card, some safety cash for going abroad, plus the cash I was paid by the Stockholm Poetry Festival. On top of that, there was the cash I was paid by the TV company for thoughts on dandyism and fashion, etc.

And all because RyanAir planes don’t have mesh pockets on the backs of their seats.

Well, all right, it’s my fault, I’m an absent-minded fool. But the lack of a mesh pocket was why I put my wallet on the floor and forgot about it. I had wanted to buy something to eat on the journey, so took out my wallet from my bag. But there was nowhere to put it during the flight. My hands were used up wrestling with Ali Smith (her new book Girl Meets Boy, of which more anon). I had no pockets for once: the plane was so warm, I’d taken my jacket off. So on the floor and out of mind went my wallet.

(And as it turned out, I didn’t use my wallet after all. The couple between me and the aisle said ‘no thanks’ whenever a stewardess passed by. I felt that piping up and asking for food across their glaring, Le-Carre-reading laps, would seem like contradicting them. Too much like Making A Fuss. Yes, I know. My fault entirely. I think the fact they were a couple intimidated me. I often feel intimidated when forced to sit next to a couple in public places. It feels like two versus one.)

So at the airport, having realised what I’ve done, I tell the people at the RyanAir desk. They say the plane is now locked up for the night, and that I have to contact the firm who cleans their planes, allowing at least 24 hours, in case it’s been handed in.

(Sunday evening as I write this, in Highgate. I’ve emailed and left a message with the plane cleaners. No word about my wallet yet.)

There is the small matter of how to get home on the tube without an Oyster card or money for a ticket. And I’ll have to borrow some cash from somewhere, if I’m to eat this weekend.

What does everyone else do when they’re stuck without money, and need to get home? Just start begging on the spot? With my guitar and laptop? I suppose I COULD give an impromptu gig. People might drop enough coins to get me to stop.

The most logical option is a slightly embarrassing one for the age of 36. But I AM lucky enough to know two people with a car and a spare room in nearby (ish) Suffolk, who will be happy to rescue me (as long as it’s Stansted, not Gatwick or Heathrow), and who are also the least likely to be out at a gig, pub, or getting ready for a nightclub.

Mum meets me in the car park an hour later, shrugging off the inconvenience, happy to see me. I spend a cosy evening in Suffolk (they’ve now replaced my childhood ‘graffiti’ duvet cover with something arty and tasteful), and catch the lovely two-carriage Sudbury train to London the next day. Last time I took this Adlestrop-like branch line, which passes through the village of Bures and the East Anglian Railway Museum at Chappel & Wakes Colne, it was to see R.E.M. play at Wembley Arena on the ‘Green’ tour. Late 80s. Straight from school.

While waiting for Mum at the airport, I sit on some plastic seats, surrounded by the bored and the tired of the travelling world. Airports really should be happier, prettier places. But they rarely are. They all conspire to associate flying, the very dream of humanity for aeons, with the stuff of bland drudgery, of identical shopping malls. Of overpriced coffee. Of scratchcards.

I love flying. It’s airports I have a fear of.

Tired Frenchman: Hey, cheer up. I’m waiting too. I see you have a guitar. Could you play it for a while?

Me: Can’t, sorry. It’s an electric. Needs plugging in. Sounds wrong otherwise.

(pause)

Me: Actually, even when I plug it in and play it, people say it still sounds wrong.

I don’t think he got the joke.

An attempt to take an arty photo in the hotel room mirror, after a party at the outrageously ornate Stockholm Governor’s Palace.

Hair, lips, suit. Everything else differs according to the viewer.

The Tessin Palace is rather… what’s the word? Palatial. Painted ceilings and panelled walls dating back centuries. Pricelessly beautiful clocks, portraits of bewigged nobles, antique chez lounges in every endless room. Trompe l’oeil canopies above a mini-maze in the courtyard.

‘The law requires me to live in this palace,’ Governor Per Unckel says in his speech to the Poetry Festival people. ‘It is not a law I have much difficulty complying with.’ But he says this in a genuinely abashed way rather than boastful. I rather like him.

For some arcane reason, I spend most of the dinner discussing the work of the band The Fall, plus explaining the meaning of the English phrase ‘blotting your copybook’, of all things. The idea that artists are not allowed to do anything at all once they’ve created a perfect work. The apparent pointlessness of Orson Welles’s other films, after he’d made the greatest film ever made. Paul McCartney unlikely to play a concert without some number from the band he was in over four decades ago. That Joseph Heller quote about not doing anything as good as ‘Catch 22’ (‘Yes… but neither has anyone else.’) Compare to Ray Davies:

Rude hack interviewing the Kinks frontman about a recent tour: How can you bear to crank out ‘You Really Got Me’ or ‘Waterloo Sunset’ for the millionth time?

Ray Davies: That’s like asking an actor if he ever gets tired of Shakespeare.

That’s the way to do it.

***

I speak to a local poet, Sofia Stenström, born and raised and living all her life in the city. She says this is the first time she’s been inside the historic palace. And I remember how I’ve still never been inside Buckingham Palace.

Discussed with Niklas and Ylva about how so many Swedish pop acts write and sing their songs in English. From Abba onwards. How often is the complement repaid, I ask? Which UK acts have recorded songs in Swedish?

Robyn Hitchcock did one. In addition to predicting a Swedish pop star via the spelling of his name. The Stranglers, too. Big in Sweden, they did a Swedish number. Any more? Do email in.

I’ve hereby sworn to record a new song in Swedish myself. It’s the least an English artist invited to Sweden more than a few times can do.

***

Niklas says I should have called the previous entry ‘Dickyn’.

***

Did another national TV interview this morning. Spoke about dandyism as decadence (cue the absinthe) and dandyism versus decadence, by way of Baudelaire’s great ecrivain-dandy quote (‘Dandyism is the last spark of heroism amidst decadence’). Considered various latter-day media definitions of decadence. From Facebook photos of drunken girls in the Daily Mail, to the New Burlesque club scene. Point me at a TV camera, and I’ll connect Tallulah Bankhead to Amy Winehouse at the drop of a post-modern trilby.

‘Are you a tragic figure?’ was one question.

Inescapably, I said. But the hours are good.

Have been getting all kinds of funny looks on the streets of Stockholm today. Just realised that, given the fresh bleaching, and lack of cutting, my hair is starting to look like Robyn’s. As in the Swedish pop star, currently doing well in the UK. Perhaps they think I’m her transvestite tribute act. At a distance. In the dark. In another world.

Thought I should do the Stockholm tourist bit properly today. Stood around dithering in a bookshop, choosing between the various guides. Rough Guide. Lonely Planet. Berlitz. Eyewitness. Eventually I left without buying any of them, because I suddenly realised I had a discount voucher for another bookshop on the other side of town.  I also realised I’d used the time I could have spent on a museum or attraction on browsing through guidebooks about which museum or attractions to see. There’s a very clumsy analogy about my life somewhere in there.

Am on the fourth floor of a rather nice hotel in Stockholm, with free WiFi.

Am fully blond once more, ready for my close up in a couple of hours’ time.

At 8am, Gatwick was crowded and noisy and too hot for a big winter coat. But the staff were nice and helpful, getting me checked in at one of those automated kiosks so I didn’t have to queue. Sterling Airlines let me carry my guitar onto the plane, pleasingly enough.

Landing in Arlanda, I’m pleased to see little scatterings of snow on the runway. And my big coat now makes sense: it’s -2 degrees C.

Am stopped going through customs – my first time – but only to be asked where I’ve come from.

‘London… and nowhere else?’

‘No.’

‘Okay. Thanks. You can go.’

I wonder why this makes all the difference? Still, my rubber glove day is postponed once more.

Another item ticked off the life To Do list: at the Arrivals gate I am met by a taxi driver carrying a sign with my name on.

Arrive at the hotel and am given an envelope containing the festival schedule, map, plus a formal invite to a buffet dinner tomorrow at the Palace of Tessin, being the Residence of the Governor of Stockholm County. Complete with coat of arms.

Am about to do my roots for Sweden. Letting my hair grow to Byronic tousles is fine, but the roots must be always be attended to. Particularly when one begins to resemble a badger who’s inexplicably been cast in a 1970s rock opera.

I’m not due to perform in Stockholm until Friday evening (Royal Dramatic Theatre, Elverket stage, Performance 2), but am been flown over tomorrow in order to attend rehearsals. Gatwick this time. Sterling Airlines. Just me and my guitar.

Three short sets to do:

1: Me and the novelist Martina Lowden. She reads her words, I back her on unobtrusive (I hope) ambient guitar. Ms L has quoted from my lyrics and blog in her novel, hence the collaboration.

2: Me solo. It’s a poetry festival, so I’m doing a couple of the wordier, poem-like Fosca songs.

3: Me and Friday Bridge. I’m guest vocalist for them once more, but this time I may also play a bit of guitar, seeing as I have mine with me, all amped to go. Niklas has emailed me the chords to an FB song. I balked at one of them, thinking it was some devilish new tonal invention. Or that I was so out of touch with the pop world, I’d even missed out on the discovery of a new chord.

Me: Um, it says ‘H’ here. What notes are in the chord of ‘H’?

Niklas: Oh, it’s the same as ‘B’. I think they changed it to B in Sweden in the mid-80s… I might be excused since I studied music theory for an old Polish teacher and he refused to call it B.

A bit of Googling reveals there used to be an ‘H’ chord in Germany (meaning ‘B’ in the UK), while ‘Bb’ was named ‘B’. Various European countries used this alternative notation for centuries, but it’s finally starting to die out. Bach used the old system to spell his name in a fugue. I do like how a simple email query can expand one’s education so. Particularly after a lifetime of thinking there was no such thing as the ‘H’ chord.

***

More education, this time re the motto on the first £1 coin.

‘An ornament and a safeguard’ would be a better translation! It refers to the milling on the edge of the coin, which was designed to stop people clipping bits off coins when they were actually made of gold and silver
– Laurence Hughes

Aha. Makes slightly more sense than ‘a treasure and a safeguard’.

***

Tomorrow, after I’ve settled in at the Stockholm hotel, I’m going to be interviewed by Swedish Public Service TV. They want my thoughts on Decadence & Dandyism in relation to fashion. Hmmm, I said. Okay. It turns out they also want me to film myself. Never done that before. Deep breath.

Meanwhile a Dutch national broadsheet has sent me a fairly serious email interview for an article on modern dandies. I’ve taken far too long doing the answers, treating it like a school exam paper, as if they’ve asked ‘examine and discuss’ or ‘show your work.’ And then I delete it all and start again. This is what often happens when I’m left to my own devices. I can get a bit lost in my own head, and am not sure where to stop.

With the interviewer present (or on the phone), I can be kept on track, or made to explain further when an answer hasn’t quite satisfied. Or convinced. Either way, I just sit there and talk and enjoy it. (and we’re back with Tom Sawyer once more. One secret of happiness: make your job feel like it’s not work).

When I’m asked by an interviewer to come up with something by myself, as in these latest two requests, I have to stop and think more consciously about what’s expected. Have I properly understood the brief, or barked up the wrong dandy tree entirely? No,  mustn’t think like that. Just do my best and hope for the best. Try not to overdo it or show off. And enjoy it.

Because I’m not complaining. These are requests from professional journalists for national media. And this is what I’m meant to be doing. So I must… show my work.

A long letter from Tom Stoppard. Sadly, not to me personally: his signature is printed on. It’s to the members of the London Library, of which he’s the honorary President, correcting some misconceptions about the subscription increase. One wouldn’t think this would be of interest to non-members, but it turns out there’s been some ‘misleading press coverage’. By which he means a piece in the Spectator and letters to the Times Literary Supplement.

He regrets that 34 members of the Library have instantly resigned, while a further 100 have written to say they’re considering leaving come the next renewal, but hopes the letter will persuade them to come back.

Sir Tom apologies for not being at the AGM:

I had a play opening in New York, which entails the duty of attending the previews and finding fault with anything except the script.

But the sackcloth stops there, and he signs off as a firm supporter of the decision:

To be a member of the greatest independent open-stack lending library in the land for just over a pound a day is not an offer for which we need apologise.

***

Wednesday: to the Bank of England Museum with David Barnett. It’s one of those many London museums and galleries that I’ve always meant to get around to. Highlights include the notched sticks used as receipts for the Bank’s first deposits in the 17th century, lots of Gillray and Cruickshank cartoons, and the real gold brick which visitors can handle, albeit through a hole in two perspex boxes.

I can’t even pick the brick up, but David – who is skinnier than me – has no problem. This spurs me on somewhat, and two more tries later I just about manage to turn the thing over. It’s not as light as it seems in films like The Lavender Hill Mob and The Italian Job.

Some facts learned from the museum:

– early bank notes were so easy to forge, the death penalty was extended to include counterfeiters. An example of how punishments can be set not to fit the crime, but to cover the shortcomings of crime prevention.

– the spindle on the which the metal strip is added to banknotes is called a Dandy Roll.

– the ‘folding green’ £1 note became blue during WWII, due to fears of enemy forgery

– I really miss the £1 note of my youth, the nice little green one with Isaac Newton, replaced by the £1 coin in the mid 80s. ‘Decus et tutamen’ said the usurping £1 coin along its side – ‘a treasure and a safeguard’. Handy for my O-Level in Latin at the time.

I also remember the first time I saw a £20 note as a child. It was a thing of real beauty: blue and red, with Shakespeare on the back against a scene from Romeo and Juliet, all in exquisitely detailed thin and tiny lines.

To my childish eyes, it seemed not just an impossible amount of money, but helped instill the notion that Shakespeare was an ultimate role model. I knew that the £50 had Christopher Wren, but the amount of £50 and the whole world of architecture seemed an impossible, even frightening level of responsibility. Shakespeare – and £20 – was a more possible ideal.

I still get nervous on the occasions I handle £50 notes today, and try to get them changed or banked or spent as quickly as possible, before I’m robbed or accused of being a forger. And I know I could never be an architect. Well, if I DID, I’d be the one who made the Millennium Bridge wobbly, making things that have to be ‘corrected’ before they’re allowed near real people.

I wonder if the children of today look at the current top notes – with Adam Smith on the £20 and John Houblon on the £50, and think about becoming economists or bankers respectively.

***

In the evening, I head to Chelsea for Xavior Roide’s Quentin Crisp Walk, for which I’m a kind of consultant. Well, I help him with the addresses and nuggets of interesting detail. There’s six of us – Xavior in lipstick and vintage spiv hat, resembling not Mr Crisp but one of his friends in the Black Cat cafe in the 1930s.

The rain absolutely drenches us to the bone, but we press on. 129 Beaufort Street is still there: the bedsit where Crisp lived from 1940 to his departure for New York in 1981. It’s currently for sale, and I’m tempted to phone up and ask how much. Probably more than an art school life model of today can afford, I’ll bet.

Some of the residents in the adjacent flats emerge and have to squeeze past our party. What must they think of this group of men in lipstick and funny hair, taking photos on their doorstep? An awkward moment, but they don’t say anything. Shame, as I was all ready to point out the history of their building for them.

Eight years ago this evening, I want to tell them, Mr Crisp died. And your building is where he spent most of his life in London, where he wrote The Naked Civil Servant, where he had (for once) enjoyable sex, thanks to the influx of American GIs: ‘Never in the history of sex was so much offered to so many by so few’. And in the 1971 documentary (also on the Naked Civil Servant DVD), he is interviewed at length in the bedsit, yet to be famous, talking about waiting for death at the age of 63. ‘It can’t be long now.’ He died in 1999, pushing 91.

‘They don’t look very Quentin-compatible, do they?’ whispers Xavior as the current residents of Quentin’s old address glower at us as we stand aside. But of course, they’re hardly likely to be flamboyant bohemians. Synthetic jackets, jeans, minimum risk clothes. Economists and bankers, maybe. It IS Chelsea.

Taking in ‘Darkest Pimlico’, where Denis Pratt first dyed his hair and name (the name ‘Quentin Crisp’ a suggestion by his friends), we end up in Old Compton Street, standing outside Swanks Menswear at No. 72, formerly the Black Cat cafe.

***

My own appearance on the walk is free of make-up, purely through lack of time. But I like to think the late Mr Crisp might be interested to know that earlier in the day, I was jostled by Holloway youths for the way I look (ie having dyed blond hair, pretty much), and had ‘Batty Boy!’ shouted at me. A 2007 tribute of a kind.

This was while walking down to the bus stop with David B, at about 1pm. We found ourselves in a quiet side street where the only other pedestrians were a handful of shouting teenage boys, walking towards us. Possibly school boys on their lunchbreak. No way of avoiding passing them. David and I continued chatting, though by this point I was just thinking, ‘Please don’t prove to be stereotypes.’

But of course, most teenagers can’t help being stereotypes of one sort or another. Geeks, Ravers, Punks, Emos, Nerds, Swots, Goths, Chavs, Hoodies. Rebel against your elders, but conform to your peers. The phase of feeling cheated in life, the safety of childhood gone, the cold world of work beckoning, the confusion of choices. No wonder some feel the need to react with aggression or violence.

Except I get this treatment from some so-called adults too. And it’s not because they’re in a gang. I’ve had a lone youth glower at me in the street and hiss ‘Batty Boy!’ as well. And this was in expensive yet liberal Highgate.

At the moment of passing, one of the Holloway number is shoved against me by one of his friends, like a game of Hoodie Dominoes. The old schoolboy trick to scatter blame: troublemakers yet cowards.

‘Oy, watch where the f— you’re going, blondie!’

But they’re walking away at this point, so I’m clearly safe from any proper harm. And one of them shouts ‘Batty Boy!’

I feel like turning and blowing them a kiss. But I can see how that might backfire.

Still, it seemed fitting for a day of celebrating Quentin Crisp.

***

Still royally fed up with this mysterious stomach ache. Have seen the GP, and have had blood taken for yet another test. This time, they think, it might be a food allergy. I’ve been asked to keep a Food Diary, noting everything I eat and drink. Which is pretty depressing.

Food is either boring or embarrassing. What’s good for you (vegetables) is boring to write down, what’s bad for you (chocolate) is embarrassing to admit to.

Am now on a diet not just without meat and fish, but also without caffeine or gluten, in case it helps. No let-up in the pain yet, but of course I want an instant improvement, rather than after two or three weeks. I have visions of Julianne Moore at the end of the film Safe, allergic to absolutely everything.