This iBook laptop is starting to throw worrying little fits. Without warning, the display suddenly darkens to black (as if I were pressing the F1 key), the windows slide away to the Desktop – and keep sliding back and forth after that (the equivalent of repeatedly pressing the F11 key), any discs in the drive are ejected (F12), and most annoyingly, if I’m writing, the cursor deletes some text or the web browser flips back in its history several pages. It’s as if a ghost is leaning over my shoulder and merrily bashing several keys at once. I fear an expensive trip to a Mac repair shop may be on the cards.

***

Last night: to a pub quiz at the Prince Of Wales in Highgate Village. Pub quizzes are of course deeply unflattering, but it’s really an excuse to catch up with the friends who invited me: Rhoda, David B, Anna S, Miriam. We come about halfway in the final scores. My contributions include the following:

– the ‘Grumpy Old Man’ who wrote the play An Evening With Gary Lineker is Arthur Smith.
– the 1970 children’s film whose child star appeared in a 2000 remake is The Railway Children (Ms Agutter being the star).
– the 80s Oscar-mopping David Lean film is A Passage To India.

More than a few questions about sport, which I always know nothing about. It’s that very mid-30s sentiment:

I am glad I do not like football.
Because if I liked it, I would have to watch it.
And I hate it.

Heading past the age of 35, there’s a crossing out process. You find things not to like – and let them fall happily through your fingers like water. It’s okay not to have an opinion about The Foals (or whatever trendy band people in their 20s are meant to have an opinion about). It’s okay if, like my hairdresser, you never watch movies – at all – because life is short and you’d rather watch football. You get a stronger sense of what you DO like, and if something doesn’t seize your heart at once, you shrug it off rather than waste time forcing yourself to like it.

Books take on a page limit – if you don’t care about the story by the time you’ve hit Page 50, you put the book down and look for one which DOES keep you reading. It is the author’s fault, not yours. There is the worry that you may be missing out on The Perfect Book, coupled with the dawning realisation that you’re never going to read everything. If you’ve ever wanted to read Proust, for instance, you feel you should probably give it a go sooner rather than later. So this whittling-down process takes on a new urgency.

But whereas the youthful version is a shrugging, sulky ‘whatever’ or ‘bothered?’, the late thirtysomething’s act of letting things go has a certain slinky serenity. Other people will always do the football-liking thing for you. You see the world as your stunt doubles.

‘No, no, you go ahead, dear boy. That football won’t watch itself.’

***

Some noting down of overdue events. Recent nights of over-indulgence: twice at the Boogaloo with Mr MacGowan, once at the Idler party on May 1st, in Clerkenwell. My attendant hangovers last throughout the following day. I do like to go out for a few drinks, but can’t manage more than once or twice a week. Physically as much as fiscally.

The Idler bash on Clerkenwell Green – which is more of a traffic island than a green – involves May Day festivities: prancing performers in medieval dress, acting out St George & The Dragon antics with the requisite dragon head prop, lutes and bawdy singing, plus a real roast pig on a spit. While this is going on, I spy a more latter-day attired man in jeans – who is clearly NOT part of the event – passing among the crowd and furtively offering bootleg DVDs for sale. A very 2008 sight juxtaposed with the medieval. The spotted and the chatted-to include Neil Scott, Rhodri Marsden, Salena Godden, John Moore, Sophie Parkin, Susan Corrigan, Sean Hughes, David Quantick, Tom Hodgkinson.

Boogaloo the other day. At one point I find myself sitting among famous drinkers. Shane MacGowan on my left, Johnny Vegas on my right. A drinking musician and a drinking comedian. I introduce myself to Mr Vegas. He looks me up and down.

‘Your name’s Dickon? Blond hair, pinstriped suit? I’m sorry, but if I took you back to my parents it would be The End of Christmas. They’d say, “You’re never going to London again!”‘

***

A Spanish blog has reviewed the Fosca album, and I’ve put the text through the Babelfish web translator in an attempt to read it. Needless to say, this will always produce a combination of inadvertent humour, odd poetry and gibberish, but I particularly like the results on this occasion:

Somebody remembers Orlando? No, the graceful ones do not become: it did not refer to me to Orlando Marconi but to the pioneering English group of that one moved that the pirate press had denominated like Romo. Good, the singer of Orlando (what it is sharp well with English accent: Orlandou…) Dickon was called (and still it is called) Edwards. After to separate the mentioned band that failed in great form it formed Fosca with a select group of London musicians. The first rule that maintained is the strict one ‘prohibited to use slippers’. It is not a joke, not: it is an obsession of Dickon not to ‘espores’ (entrerriano pure) or, as a Uruguayan would say, the championes. Both first discs of Fosca were produced by Ian Catt of Saint Etienne. After years that happened remote of music wrote for magazines besides some longer article and several tests. It was rumored on his endeble health and, after all that, it recorded the third disc of Fosca in a cellar of Hackney. The result is one of best learned discs indie-MGP of the last pair of years, the influences are extensive but always within the scope of the MGP British, by far of The Smiths, The Cure, The Pastels, Orange Juice, the Pulp de Separations and Freaks and also something of Momus. Notable.

(from eloasisdelta.blogspot.com)