<img align=left src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/Owen/backs.jpg"></img>
My friend Mr Laurence Gullo (<LJ user=tzarohell>) is performing in Hackney this Sunday evening, telling a story via his beautiful shadow puppets. I shall be involved too, possibly narrating. The music has been specially selected by Mr Martin White (<LJ user=martylog>).

However, we desperately require an extra puppeteer. If you're free and willing, or just want more details, please email Mr Gullo asap at:

alienlovemessiah@gmail.com

Much thanks.

Event information:

Hanky Panky Cabaret (MC: Xavior)
Sun 13th Feb 2005
From 9-Midnight
At Bistrotheque,
23-27 Wadeson Street,
London E2
Directions: Walk up Wadesdon St away from Hackney Rd, and it's the first doorway on the left.

Things I have learned this weekend:

Whenever Brian Eno and David Bowie chat these days, they tend to speak in 'Pete And Dud' voices, as in the flat-capped Dagenham characters from Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's 60s TV sketches. (from Alan Moore interviews Brian Eno, "Chain Reaction", BBC Radio 4).

The director of the video for Abba's Knowing Me Knowing You was Lasse Hallstrom, who went on to direct The Cider House Rules and Chocolat. (from 100 Best Pop Videos, Channel 4).

I keep seeing references to 'Chocolat' wherever I look lately. An old lady at the Lyric Hammersmith cafe suddenly sat herself at my table (while plenty of other tables remained empty) and talked about it. I keep noticing the movie and the Joanne Harris book on shelves in shops, as if it's calling to me. Perhaps I should see it.

Recently: I attend Ms Jennifer Connor's birthday party at a house in Tufnell Park. I choose her event over the three other parties I've been invited to the same night. Partly because she asked first, but mostly because the evening includes a screening of the 80s John Hughes film, 16 Candles.

The film (rented from Archway Video, naturally) is projected upon a wall in the living room, and we watch in darkness. Just like a proper cinema. But even better: chocolate brownies and Rice Krispie cakes are passed around. I am in heaven.

I'd forgotten just how brilliant 16 Candles was. Like Some Kind Of Wonderful it's often overshadowed by the more iconic likes of The Breakfast Club and Pretty In Pink. It features Ms Molly Ringwald as the ultimate sulky teenager. Mr Anthony Michael Hall stealing every scene as The Geek. Mr John and Ms Joan Cusack aged about 12. An extremely unlikely plot – her parents forget her own birthday. And all that fossilised, nay, <i>crystallized</i> period music. Proustian rather than nostalgic.

The only flaw in the film is the Chinese exchange student character, included for comic stereotypical effect. Just like Mr Mickey Rooney's Landlord in Breakfast At Tiffany's. And now we have Lost In Translation. You can't have a classic American movie without a Worryingly Stereotypical Use Of Far Eastern Characters, it seems. Perhaps it's in the screenwriting masterclasses.

I ask another American chap at the party: was it just Mr Hughes's own taste, or did US teens in the 80s really listen to all that British pop, rather than anything from the US? Simple Minds, Altered Images, Nick Heyward, Specials, Stray Cats, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran… He assures me they did. So much fuss is made these days about new UK acts needing to "break America"… Robbie Williams trying again and again, for one. In the 80s, US success for a British pop group appears to be automatic. On this evidence, I wonder if The Stray Cats have sold more records than Mr Williams?

<img align=left src="http://www.fosca.com/alexm-dickon.jpg">
Here's another photo taken earlier the same evening, at a pub on Fortess Road. I'm speaking to Mr Alex Mayor, of the band Baxendale and now in the exciting new group, <a href="http://www.alexandersfestivalhall.org" target="_blank">Alexander's Festival Hall</a>, who are playing at RoTa this Saturday. He's one of the most deliciously arch London men I've ever met. Which as you might imagine, is saying something.

At Trash the other day, some stranger accused me of trying to look like… Mr Peter Cook. Not heard that one before. I wonder if my face isn't taking on Cook-like qualities as I get older and more dissolute.

Looking at this photo, though, I think I do slightly resemble Mr Cook… though as played by Mr Rhys Ifans.

I have no idea why, in the photo, my hand is holding my drink in such an unlikely manner. Alex and I appear to be holding an Unconsciously Effeminate Wrist competition. That's the one remaining sport the British can still beat the world at. I must write to to the UK Olympic Committee at once.

I could even be an alternative Action Man prototype. The Dickon Edwards Doll – Inaction Man. With darting left-to-right Eagle Eyes to quickly see Who Else Is At The Party. Comes with Unrealistic Gripping Hands.

Email from Tim Chipping. The ICA Artist Tino Sehgal has read my diary entry about him, presumably searching the web for mentions of himself. It was only a matter of time before Mr S realised his life is just a part of the Work Of Art that is this diary. It’s the ultimate Pro-Choice argument. You’re not a proper human being until you’re in Dickon Edwards’s diary.

Sadly, Mr S gets paid for his Art. While I do not get paid for this thing. Yet.

Surely it must just be a matter of time. I’ve kept this web diary for eight years now. That must count as some kind of ‘experience’. I suppose I just have to Hustle. It worked for Ms Belle De Jour.

Successful Art is ten per cent inspiration, ninety per cent prostitution.

Speaking of which. Piece in The Guardian the other day about bands of the past who were touted as Next Big Things, then failed to deliver. Orlando are included.

I knew about this beforehand. One of the writers (the piece took two people to write, never a good sign), contacted me. I told him that if Orlando had gotten some publicity in The Guardian in 1995, rather than in a piece in 2005 about publicity-hyped bands that failed, maybe we wouldn’t have failed. Not what he wanted me to say in the piece, of course.

But it’s the un-simple truth. Orlando were only hyped in the Melody Maker, nowhere else. That was the whole problem. We’d have loved a few crumbs from the Guardian table back then, when it mattered. So our first ever appearance in the newspaper is instead ten years later, in a piece about apparently having too much press. I thought The Guardian was meant to know all about the nature of irony.

Of course, the real reason for our inclusion is that they couldn’t get Terris, Tiger or Gay Dad. And to be fair, Melody Maker readers of 1995 have, like the writers, probably moved to The Guardian now.

I hesitated to help the journalist, wanting like anyone else to Be In The Guardian, but only on My Own Terms. It goes against my whole philosophy to be part of any crowd. That was another problem with Orlando, too. Roped in with Romo in 1995. Roped in with Adorable in 2005. Journalists – or rather, their editors – always want there to be A Pitch, A Reason, An Angle. A way to box things together, compare, organise, present, explain. Because if something can be explained, it can be explained away.

But I realised it wasn’t me the journalist was after, just Someone From The Band Orlando Who Acts Vaguely Human. So I gave him Mr Chipping’s number.

The piece came out with no mention of my name, and Mr C’s quotes, he tells me, pay scant relation to what he actually said. Shame. Still, it could have been worse. And it was a nice photo of Mr C.

And good to see coverage of the divine Ms Virginia Astley, too. I’m reminded that in 2003 Rough Trade re-issued her wonderful album, From Gardens Where We Feel Secure. This is as good a time as any to recommend it. Available to buy here. You’ll absolutely adore it. I suppose it would now be called ‘Ambient’ music.

I don’t mind Orlando being roped in with her at all. She’s another original that wanted to give the world something they weren’t getting from others. Unlike Adorable and Five Thirty, who were just Bandy Band Bands, and don’t deserve to lick the impeccable, well-chosen boots of Ms Astley and ourselves. There’s always another Five Thirty just around the corner. That’s the whole problem.

Ah well. More people read this diary than read The Guardian.

(Told you I was good at attracting attention)

No, I withdraw that claim. But the diary does seem to have a talisman-like effect on all kinds of people, good and bad. I wonder. If I type the the words LOVE, WEALTH, and SUCCESS here, and publish them online, will they too eventually look me up?

I’ll settle for ABILITY TO GET MANY THINGS DONE QUICKLY. Find me. Find me, please.

Even though I now screen the comments on my diary, I still receive a few messages from, how shall I put this nicely, the sanity-challenged and ill-wishers. Not quite death threats, not quite stalkers (though the line is sometimes blurred) but certainly sinister little calling cards, or anonymous attacks. It makes no sense. I'm not rich, I'm not famous, I have no money or property and I live in a bedsit. It's like I've inherited the detriments of being successful and famous without the benefits. Why do they do it? Is it something about me? If so, can I convert this something into attaining actual fame and success, so I can then hire my own personal bodyguard?

Actually, the latter has always been a bit of a fantasy for me. I think it may even be a fetish. Having one's Honour Defended by someone who can Take Care Of Things physically. Any gender. I need an Insecurity Guard.

I just have to remind myself that, if one replies to such comments, it's an insult to the well-wishers and kind friends one IS lucky to attract, who probably would prefer the attention. Who send me proper <a href="mailto:dickon_edwards@hotmail.com" target="_blank">emails</a>, but whom I often don't get around to replying to. Contain the fear and the worry, convert it to positivity. Use it for positive ends, and for attending to kinder friends.

Onwards and upwards.

<IMG align=left alt="Portrait of George Romney." src="http://www.dalton-in-furness.org.uk/dalton-online/history/photos-plates/romney-s.jpg" border=5>I'm playing DJ next Thursday, in Cavendish Square, once home to Lord Nelson and the painter George Romney.

Club Night: 'How Does It Feel To Be Loved' – A Central London Winter Special.
Date: Thursday February 3rd
Venue: The Phoenix, 31 Cavendish Square, W1G 0PP. Three minutes walk from Oxford Circus tube
Time: 8pm – 2am. D.E. set between 10.30pm and midnight.
Cost: £3 members, £5 non members, membership is free from the site: http://www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk
Music: 60s girl groups, 80s indie, and any other jolly selections that I think could fit in.

Also starring: The Sarah Records Jukebox from 8pm.

Mr O'Boyle invites me to see the band Yeti at the Boogaloo. The place is packed even more than it was for Bright Eyes. Yeti are a pleasant group of young men, two of whom are the Other Two in the Libertines, the popular UK combo of late.

Yeti aren't entirely my cup of tea, but they have a pleasant enough jangly-guitar line in pop-rock. The singer wears a large wide-brimmed hat. One song, "Insect Eating Man", is impressively rendered in a Bonzo Dog / Scarlet's Well style croon. Mr Shane McGowan joins them for a version of "The Israelites", wearing a top hat.

I have one glass of wine, then switch to Perrier. My new routine. Nothing to do with trying to be more healthy. I enjoy a drink, but have had enough of being drunk. It's also cheaper.

No more cigarettes, either. My last smoke was a rather nice long and ultra-thin foreign cigarette kindly given to me by Ms Sophie of the Boogaloo staff two months ago. Possibly more than two months ago. That I can't remember the exact date helps immensely. None of this "34 days since my last cigarette" nonsense. It's in the past, that's enough.

An unintentional last cigarette, but I'm glad it was that one. As the days went on, I found I wasn't missing smoking after all. Perhaps I was never really addicted in the first place.

I took up smoking at the age of 27 in order to make buses come sooner at bus stops. I quit at the age of 33 because I've finally realised photos of me smoking look like I'm trying to be someone I'm not. The End of that story, then.

Struggling at AV. The whole shelving system has been changed, so just as I was getting used to knowing where things were, I have to re-learn all over again. I feel the kind of grief associated with moving house.

Customers asking for Clive Owen or Mike Leigh films now, thanks to the Oscar nominations.

One customer moans about something I'd not noticed – that Channel 4 hardly ever show subtitled foreign language film these days. They just shove them onto Film Four, their digital subscription channel.

We discuss <b>The Barbarian Invasions</b>, Mr Arcand's recent sequel to <b>The Decline Of The American Empire</b>. It then occurs to me that the only reason I watched the first film was by accident, idly flicking through TV channels in the late 80s or early 90s, and catching it on C4 at about 11pm. I was intrigued, so I watched it.

Now, the channel's idea of late night foreign culture is by filling the same slot with live footage of Brigitte Nielsen cleaning her teeth. Even fans of Big Brother themselves complain about these pointless live feeds on the terrestial channel, as the sound is muted whenever anything interesting happens.

The BBC are just as bad. I look through the Radio Times trying to find one foreign language movie on the BBC that's not just been shoved on their digital channel BBC4 in the hope no one will watch it. They market this channel as "a space to think". Presumably this means all their other channels are for absolute idiots, and they're pleased to encourage things going this way.

Apologists would tell to me to subscribe to BBC4 and Film Four and shut up. They don't seem to realise the whole point of public service broadcasting, at a time when terrestial is still considered Proper, Superior and Default TV to digital, which is Option TV.

One shouldn't hide away acclaimed, thought-provoking TV and film from the possibility of accidentally flicking onto it, staying there, and being transported somewhere new.

Quentin Crisp talked about his success being entirely due to The Naked Civil Servant being shown at a time in the 70s when there were only three channels, and one of those (BBC2) was not transmitting most of the time.

He imagines a couple at home.

"What's on the telly?"
"The queers."
"What's on the other side?"
"The news."
"Oh. As you were"

"And this," said Mr Crisp, "is the spirit in which The Naked Civil Servant was watched."

If The Naked Civil Servant were made in 2005, it would be shoved on BBC4 or Film Four at 3am and left there to die. It would be for the most part unwatched, except for a few gay men and dedicated liberal arthouse film fans. That it was instead seen by millions of Normal People accidentally, who weren't seeking it out deliberately, is crucial.

These days, there is no Other Side. There is just This Side Of The Camera, and That. And one must pick which side they're on.

Good taste and intelligence shouldn't be an OPTION. If they gave me the keys to TV today, I would put all the makeovers and reality tv shows on the digital only channels, the foreign films and plays on terrestial, and see what happens. Would there be complaints? I really doubt it. I have more faith in the intelligence of the viewing public than current channel bosses. Though admittedly that isn't very hard to do.

Branding thinking as a minority interest is a dangerous use of media reponsibility. I wonder where it will lead us.

I go to see <B>Enduring Love</b> at one of my favourite Odeons in London, the Wardour St branch. To gain entrance, one has to take an ordinary tower block-style lift to the third floor. It's like visiting someone's flat rather than a multiplex cinema.

This is a New British Film, an adaptation of a 1998 novel by Ian McEwan. His stories win big, dinner-jacketed literary prizes in print and make small, creepy little films on celluloid. The film version of The Cement Garden is a particular favourite of mine.

So as the Odeon lights dip, I am cheering it on from the sidelines, hoping so much that Mr Daniel Craig, who's in nearly every scene, won't let me down. Which is appropriate, as that's exactly what his character is so obsessed about. Has he let down a stranger whose lethal fall he's witnessed? Or his girlfriend? Or himself as a Good Man? Or has he let down all three? It doesn't help that an unkempt loner, Mr Rhys Ifans, has started to follow him about, living purely to deliver Mr Craig to God's Love. By way of his own love for Mr Craig.

No wonder Mr Craig gets through so much wine in the film.

Enduring Love is at the mercy of its own opening scene. Mr Craig and his girlfriend, Ms Samantha Morton, are having a nice sunny picnic in a coruscatingly beautiful open field, somewhere in the Oxfordshire countryside. All seems perfect. But they've barely opened the first of the movie's many bottles of wine when a big red helium balloon drifts into the field and changes their lives.

The balloon's grey-haired pilot is being dragged helplessly along the ground by its anchor rope, and there's a terrified young grandson in the passenger basket. Mr Craig chooses to do The Decent Thing and rushes to help, along with some other male Samaritans, including Mr Ifans. At first, this enormous, silent, angry symbol of Man Versus Nature is brought under control. It's clear at this point – and entirely relevant – that Mr Craig has become the default leader of the group, being the fittest, strongest, quickest-thinking and most sensible Man in attendance. The other Men have deferred to him instinctively, while Ms Morton has chosen not to get involved at all. Oh, the rich symbolism of it all! That Mr McEwan's original novel is on the A-level syllabus should surprise no one.

Then the camera cuts ominously to Nature's Point Of View. We become <i>the wind itself</i>, rushing into the field, scooping the balloon and all the manly rescuers up into the air. A man is killed – and it may or may not be the fault of Mr Craig.

It's a scene that's at once terrifying and awe-inspiringly beautiful in its silent execution (in every sense). Balloons are beautiful, noiseless and graceful things, even when they're killing people. Lesser film-makers would have used CGI and an intrusive soundtrack. So all credit to the director for choosing to film a real balloon and keep the scene heart-stoppingly free of a composer telling us how to feel. If only they gave out awards for Best Opening Sequence, Enduring Love would clinch every one. Saving Private Ryan would come second.

Sadly, one must consider the rest of the film. After reeling from this startling opening of beauty and horror, a brilliant depiction of Mr McEwan's imagination; we are wrenched away and dropped head first into Enduring Love London. Which appears to be a depiction of Mr McEwan's own life.

It is a London of nice white middle-class types, with their successful careers as artists and academics, having countless dinner parties, wearing glasses in bookshops and meaning it, typing away on laptops, appearing in The Guardian, and having lunch at the Tate Modern to discuss being on The South Bank Show. I'm not making this up.

I start to wonder if the director, who also made Notting Hill, is referencing and sending up Richard Curtis's notoriously idyllic version of London. After the emotionally exhausting first scene, perhaps he wants to have a bit more fun than the original novel permits. Cue sly insertion of a Peter Cook joke (see my earlier diary entry).

To consolidate this theory, he has cast Mr Nighy as someone funny (like he was in Mr Curtis's Love Actually), and Mr Ifans as a scruffy Welshman who gets in the way (like he was in Notting Hill). At one point Mr Ifans sinisterly sings the Beach Boys song, God Only Knows, which soundtracks the final scene of Love Actually.

Also, Mr Craig's Tate Modern dining partner is played by Mr Andrew Lincoln. Who was in Love Actually playing a kind of… stalker. There, he dealt with his camcording infatuation of Ms Keira Knightly by showing her cue cards, then walking away saying "Enough" to himself; his stalking days apparently out of his system.

No such cue cards and unlikely London snow for Mr Craig. He hides his Blue-Eyed Sensitive Boxer looks and well-toned physique behind a nice pair of glasses (this means he is An Academic), and tries to get over the nasty Big Red Round Thing of his recent past. But the accident eats away at him, he sees red spheres everywhere, he acts obsessively, and when Mr Ifans starts stalking him, he over-reacts significantly, shouting "Keep away from me – or I shall <i>gut you like a fish</i>!"

Now, Mr Craig is such a physically wonderful actor, so at home within his own skin, that we entirely believe he could rip the skinny Mr Ifans apart with his bare hands, let alone require a fish knife. It's hinted that his sense of Potential Violence is a direct influence on Mr Ifans's later actions, that by doing so he has changed Mr Ifans from a sad, harmless sort who just needs professional help to a dangerous violent threat to him and Ms Morton. That it it may be Mr Craig who is the truly dangerous one. So it's just a shame that the film then plays this down in favour of a cliched kill-or-be-killed struggle for a kitchen knife, turning it into just another sub-Fatal Attraction thriller. Bring back the balloon, I say.

I leave the cinema so unsatisfied that I pop into Borders and buy the Ian McEwan novel, hoping it contains a better ending. Which, I'm pleased to report, it does. The book finishes with a letter, giving us a terrific insight into Mr Ifans's character that the film denies us. It also posits the thought-provoking idea (also suggested in the Peter Schaffer play "Equus") that Deranged Love outstrips Normal Love in terms of pure, poetic passion, in terms of certainty about one's lot, and that this may even make it an enviable state of mind.

To be fair, the film doesn't entirely leave this theme out. In a scene halfway through, the two men accuse each other of being "lost". But that's as far as it goes; there's no follow-up. No last letter. Never mind the men: the real loss is this film's potential.

The film does improve on other aspects of the novel, though. Mr McEwan's balloon as he originally meant it is grey, not red. For all its faults, the film would be a far less poetic animal if the makers hadn't made this crucial revision. I wonder if their choice of red might not be a knowing adult twist on the 50s French film "The Red Balloon", which also had a small boy and a red balloon with a mind of its own. Or perhaps it's a nod to Don't Look Now, another film with a tragic opening scene, a sinister use of scarlet, and a bloody ending with a big knife.

I note that Mr Craig's character in the novel is pushing 50, fat and balding, unlike the rippling thirtysomething he is in the film. In the book, Mr Ifans is a wealthy, ex-public school English-accented Londoner living in a huge house in Hampstead; as opposed to Welsh and living in a small flat in what looks like Kilburn. Quite why they asked Mr Ifans to keep his accent is beyond me – he's played Peter Cook with convincing enough Posh English tones. Did they really prefer a slightly sadder Spike from Notting Hill?

The Fatal Attraction knife of the film isn't in the book either – there's a gun (in fact, a whole sequence of gun-getting), a small pen knife, a shooting in a restaurant and a suicide threat. All of which are omitted by the film, and I just can't understand why. The movie could only benefit from them.

Ms Morton's character has also been changed for the worse. In the book, she's a sensible literary biographer. In the film, she is a Guardian-featured artist who makes bad clay busts of Mr Nighy and Mr Craig, tempting audience members of a certain age to start whistling Mr Lionel Richie's "Hello".

One final complaint. After the impressive lack of music in the opening scene, the rest of the film resorts to featuring one of the most inappropriately tacked-on cod-classical scores I've ever heard at the cinema. Backing music is meant to enhance a film. Here, it grates and distracts.

My conclusion to you, Dear Reader, is to see the film for its opening sequence and excellent acting all round, then read the novel immediately afterwards to wash away the movie's baffling shortcomings.

Otherwise, Enduring Love will only endure in the mind as Love Actually meets Fatal Attraction… on Chardonnay.

After viewing Mr Nicholson Senior's art at the RA, I sit in Borders Books Cafe, Charing Cross Road. The cafe is now a Starbucks, so I only use it if the one in Foyles (still an independent family business) is full-up. And then, as I do in all Starbucks, I only ever order tea. Tea drinking as a revolutionary act, I like to think. The joke's on me, as their tea is revolting. Clever, very clever.

A young couple seated near to me are talking loudly to each other about "gigs".

It is only after some time that I realise it's not concerts they are discussing.

Neither is it "gig" as in "job", used in a spirit of matey modesty. As in "I got the Spielberg gig".

They are, in fact, discussing different types of <i>iPod.</i>

2005 London in a nutshell.