I've written a piece for Plan B magazine about attracting attention. It's published online here:

http://www.planbmag.com/columns/archives/00000018.php

There's a rather amusing argument, or rather, exchange of abuse, in the comments section at the foot of the page. Most of the comments appear to be from males. Just call me the new Helen Of Troy.

I've been going out in London so much lately, and frittered away so much money, that I've had to impose a ban on myself leaving Highgate until my backlog of chores and promised writing is tackled to some degree of completion. There's also a backlog of things to write about in the diary, which I'll draw on when the previous day hasn't thrown up anything particularly interesting. I have a file full of notes and photos to consult, and I never leave the house without a pen and pocket notebook.

The two exceptions to this curbing of my social life are <a href="http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/" target="_blank">Scarlet's Well</a> at the LSE on Monday, and <a href="http://www.kashpoint.com/" target="_blank">Kash Point</a> on the Tattershall Castle on Thursday 29th. But that really is it. Anyone who badly wants my company can come up to the <a href="http://www.theboogaloo.org/" target="_blank">Boogaloo</a> and buy me a drink. Just as well Kash Point has gone monthly.

There are plenty of examples of great barflies of the past being able to balance work and play adequately. Francis Bacon would put in a good morning's painting before spending the rest of the day propping up the bar in the French House in unsubtle make-up. Dylan Thomas is another one. For all his much-documented Soho drinking sessions, he still got Under Milk Wood and all those BBC readings done. Even if he did once leave the manuscript of the former in the Admiral Duncan on one particular Soho pub crawl, fortunately retrieved the next day by a frantic BBC producer. That said, he never actually wrote a thing in London, instead going away to Wales for bouts of alcohol-free intensive writing when the deadlines approached. I can't afford to leave Highgate, so a writing holiday in Highgate it has to be. At least, until such time as I can multitask to a Baconesque degree.

There's other local attractions on my doorstep, though. As well as the Boogaloo, there's <a href="http://www.ents24.com/web/venue/16980/London/Jacksons_Lane_Community_Centre.html" target="_blank">Jacksons Lane Community Centre</a>.

<b>Last night:</b> To JLCC to see Richard Herring's new Edinburgh show, <a href="http://www.richardherring.com/hercules/" target="_blank">"The Twelve Tasks Of Hercules Terrace"</a> with Mr Martin White. Unfortunately, the box office misinforms us about the running order. So while we are happily chatting away in the Boogaloo across the road, confident of missing the other act on the bill, Mr Rob Deering, we are in fact missing the man we'd come to see. I refrain from asking for my money back purely because our tickets are free.

On being told of the staff's mistake, we do manage to sneak in and catch the last ten minutes of Mr Herring's set. I knew it was a preview of the Edinburgh show he hadn't yet finished, but I didn't realise just how unfinished. The comedian is clutching a microphone in its stand, not taking it out of the stand once, while reading entirely from notes in the other hand. Essentially, he is talking about what the show will be like when it's finished, and trying out bits to see if they work with audiences first. Quite a contrast from the slick multimedia show he'd last done, "Talking Cock", where he prowled confidently around the stage, radio mic somewhere on his person, delivering a well-crafted and memorised script with slides and little bits of seamless improvisation when deviation from the text is required.

It's true I'm fascinated in seeing the nuts and bolts of work-in-progress shows like this (or "scratch" shows as some arts centres call them), but feel I can't really comment on them until I've seen the completed version. On top of which, tonight I end up seeing only the last ten minutes of the draft version. So I see an incomplete version of an incomplete version.

You might ask, Dear Reader, why I wanted to miss the other comedian on the bill, even though his act was probably more finished, and that I'd not seen him before. Well, I'm funny about stand-up comedians. Given the choice between chatting with a friend of mine I've not chatted to for a while, and seeing a comedian I've not seen myself or had recommended to me, it's the friend every time. Most of my friends make me laugh more than most comedians.

On top of which, I have seen Mr Deering on television, presenting a programme about mistakes in Hollywood movies. He came across as a Chummy Young Bloke, which is a style I'm not keen on, you'll be vastly unsurprised to learn. I doubt very much he gets "Batty Man" shouted at him when walking around, though I could be wrong. Still, on this occasion I was exclusively psyched up to see Mr Herring and his tales of updating Mr Hercules's tasks, and gave Mr Deering the detriment of the doubt. So after the Herring set finished, I didn't stick around.

I've really not been at all lucky when seeing comedy gigs lately, at least not when accompanied by others. Tim Chipping and I went to see Adam Bloom and one of Parsons and Naylor at Crouch End King's Head. Both comics had their own shows on national BBC radio at the time. The show was cancelled due to insufficient audience numbers.

More recently, we both turned up at the Chalk Farm Enterprise to see Russell Brand. He cancelled.

Add to that this Richard Herring show of last night, which Mr White and effectively missed due to the venue staff not knowing what was going on in their own venue.

Yet, I've had no problems at all when going to comedy gigs by myself. I went to see the excellent Jo Caulfied at Comedy Camp the other week. She turned up, the audience was of a healthy size, and the venue staff didn't give me any misinformation.

I can only conclude that all these comedians and box office staff members are secretly jealous of me when I'm in company. They want me all to themselves, or not at all. Well, they're only human.

A new portrait by <a href="http://www.claudia-andrei.com/" target="_blank">Ms Andrei</a></a>.

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/dickoncemetery3.jpg">

Dickon Edwards, Highgate Cemetery, July 2004.

Friday night – to How Does It Feel To Be Loved. I only intend to stay a short time, as I'm currently trying to curb my wanton clubbing due to its effect on my meagre finances, and more importantly, on distracting me from doing any creative work. But typically I drink too much and dance too much and before I know it the club ends.

The place is sold out by 11.30. The snob part of me thinks there are too many non-member Office Monkeys turfed out of the nearest Firkin or O'Neills, only there for the cheap Friday night out, and possibly taking up spaces that might have belonged to proper fans and members.

But then I argue against myself. Regulars and members would know that they need to get there early. And perhaps playing records by Heavenly and The Monochrome Set and The Sea Urchins to the uninitiated does more good than preaching to the converted. To show Dave From Accounts that there are other worlds of Being.

I like to think my appearance has this effect too. In every gang of boys who shout "Batty Man" as I pass by, perhaps – just perhaps – there's one whose world has been secretly changed, if only a little. If only to advertise that there is another way of living, one without Mr Nike and Mr Reebok's permission. Visibility of other potential paths of life, at all costs. Many gangs are really formed around one bully who takes charge, who issues the orders. The others are just desperately trying to fit in.

I'm not suggesting for a moment that as soon as my fluffy little head disappears from view, such boys turn to each other and say "Actually, I thought he looked wonderful. It's so good that individual thought is thriving. What am we doing wearing this awful default sportswear? We just look like People. As opposed to Ourselves. Let's all flounce off to the nearest row of charity shops and look for suits." But I try to live in hope.

Ultimately, I refuse to believe that all young people who dress that way FEEL that way deep down. I'm reminded of the Paul Merton joke about Iraqi officials. "Why do they all have those moustaches? They can't ALL think it suits them."

Back at the club, and Rachel Stevenson points out that many of the How Does It Feel club's members are themselves, as I offensively described, Office Monkeys. "Ah yes, but are they so in their hearts?", I said, arms extending into the air as if I'm Frances De La Tour in Noel Coward's "Fallen Angels".

I find myself sharing a cab with an Australian girl living in Archway. I'm ashamed to admit my drunken snobbery had not yet receded, and I put her to my own British Citizenship Test. Does she know who Alan Bennett and A.E. Housman are? She does not. But then she gives me the names of important people who help the Environment, her line of work, and I am of course equally stumped. "What's this Alan Bennett ever done to curb the Greenhouse Effect?" she asks. Serves me right.

Now, I must talk about the most recent job I had. Arguably, it's the best job I've ever had to date.

On the day of the last tube strike, the streets are full of besuited men walking everywhere. But few of them are wearing cravats and walking plastic lobsters on pale blue ribbons.

I am being photographed for the cover of a book called The Decadent Handbook, edited by Ms Rowan Pelling of The Erotic Review. The black suit is my own, of course, though I'm giving a new acquisition its first airing. A bejewelled tie pin, £1.25 from the Neutering Stops Aids In Cats charity shop on Archway Road.

People are forever telling me I have a natural talent for posing for a photo, perhaps posing too much. "Can you look more natural?" photographers sometimes ask. Silly question. As Mr Wilde says, looking natural is the hardest pose of all. And looking unnatural comes extremely naturally to me. The other man's grass is always posing unnaturally.

So it's nice when occasionally someone is willing to pay me for this innate so-called ability of mine. Today it is <a href="http://www.dedalusbooks.com/">Dedalus Books</a>, publishers of Decadent Literature past and present. I'm tempted to ask that they pay me in selections from their back catalogue, starting with the FIVE lesser-known titles by J.K. Huysmans they do. But I do need the cash.

En route to the photo shoot, the photographer Mr Bird asks me a favour. Will I pick up the prop lobster, given the prop shop is on my way? I agree, and find myself in DZD on Tottenham Court Road. DZD turns out to be in a huge open-plan basement, full of Christmas trees draped in coloured ribbons, surrounded by little tableaux scenes on platforms designed to show off their prop range. They offer not one but two prop lobsters for sale. One is small and orange and edible-looking, probably used in plays featuring a dinner table spread. The other is huge and red and features as part of their World Of Fishing display amid nets, rods, plastic fish and so on. It's been posed as if it's trying to crawl out of a wicker fishing basket.

I can't make up my mind, but as both lobsters are inexpensive, I take both with me. I'm delighted that the shop provides me with a transparent carrier bag.

"Who's this for?", asks the female assistant, typing out the invoice.

"Dedalus Books. As in Icarus and Daedalus, but spelt the way James Joyce did in Portrait Of The Artist. You know the old Icarus story. Wax wings, flew too near the sun, over-used as a metaphor by newspaper columnists…?"

She's never heard of it. Far be it for me to expect that all assistants in theatrical prop stores should have a basic knowledge of the Greek Myths in order to take the job, but I did think that one tale was pretty damn well-known.

So I make my way across tube-strike-addled London, looking the way I do, carrying a clear transparent bag with two plastic lobsters inside.

Tube strikes over salaries (as opposed to safety) happen fairly regularly at the moment, despite overwhelming public disapproval, even from Mayor Livingstone, the trade unions' friend. When the tubes are operating, the service is hardly first class. To go on strike as well, given that tube drivers are paid far more than nurses and teachers, seems the height of sarcasm. It's the old cafe joke. "Isn't the food here terrible?" "Yes, and in such small portions too." Much about London can be similarly summed up by its people.

However, there's a little secret tactic one can take advantage of on tube strike days. Most people assume there'll be no trains whatsoever, but there's actually quite a few still running. And as many minor stations are closed, these trains stop less and so travel faster. So, oddly, I have the fastest Warren Street to Victoria tube journey possible on a virtually empty train.

Only at Victoria, my luck runs out. I can't get a bus to Sloane Square because they're all full to the brim. So I walk the remainder, playfully swinging my bag of artificial crustaceans all the way.

The photo shoot is intended to portray a New Decadent couple in 2004 London, paying homage to the Decadents of the past. My companion for the photo is the Parisian chanteuse, artist and recording artiste <a href="http://www.annepigalle.com/">Anne Pigalle</a>, wearing a long red silk dress, feathery headpiece, and lots of black lace. She's dressed a little bit Moulin Rouge, a little bit Frida Kahlo. I have more make-up on than she does. With Mme Pigalle on one hand, a ribbon leading to a plastic lobster on the ground in the other, this, then, is my job for one balmy June afternoon in 21st Century London.

Our lobster friend, which I name Susan, is the larger of the two I purchased, and is here as a reference to the story that in the 1840s, the poet Gerard de Nerval walked one through the park of the Palais Royal on a pale blue ribbon. He preferred lobsters to dogs, he said, because they don't bark and because they "know the secrets of the deep."

This tale is very possibly a myth, given French biographies of M. Nerval don't mention it at all, just British and American books about bohemians and eccentrics. It could be a wishful fib that's become truth over time. But true or not, it is considered to be an image of ultimate Decadence, so a homage is due.

We pose by the side of the <a href="http://london.openguides.org/index.cgi?Albert_Bridge">Albert Bridge</a>, by the old sign saying "All troops must break step when marching across this bridge." At one point a dog-walker came past: a woman walking six small terriers at once. One of the mutts had a curious sniff of our artificial crustacean friend, but sadly Mr Bird didn't snap this event in time.

Here's hoping Dedalus and Ms Pelling are happy with the photos. To be on the cover of something called The Decadent Handbook – what job could I possibly be more qualified to do?

<img align=left src="http://www.ri-ra.co.uk/photos/boogaloo.jpg"></img>Mr O'Boyle, landlord of The Boogaloo, rings me and invites me to be an "ambassador" of the pub. The will entail, he says, being myself, staying myself, and occasionally meeting with the other Ambassadors, who I've yet to meet, for meals. I gratefully agree. I see he's even made an announcement on the <a href="http://www.theboogaloo.org/news.htm">Boogaloo website</a>.

I regard this as something of a personal landmark. With stark Proustian terror, I recall the first time I ever stepped across the threshold of a pub by myself. I would have been about 11. The pub in question was The Red Lion in Bildeston, the Suffolk village where I attempted to grow up for eighteen years. Such an overrated idea.

My mother had asked, no Р<i>ordered</i> me to deliver a tin of home-made cakes to the Red Lion for some local f̻te or other. I remember begging her not to send me there, even for a matter of seconds. Given my reaction, she might as well have been sending me away to join the army. All I had to do was go into the hostelry in question, hand the tin to someone behind the bar and leave. Yet even this small filial assignment reduced my childhood self to a quavering mass of tears. The searing fear of this nominally trivial moment has stayed with me ever since, and will doubtlessly follow me to the grave.

So what was all the fuss about? One doesn't have to be a Friend Of Freud to suspect that for me, The Pub represented The World Of Adults, particularly of Adult Men. Which was somewhere I clearly never wanted to go, if I could at all help it.

Twenty-one years later, here I am, technically an adult, but merrily proving that one can be grown-up without having to grow up. I have found a pub that not only welcomes me, it's made me an official ambassador of the place. By a ludicrous piece of good fortune, it's also the nearest bar to my bed.

So, I suppose I'd better start carrying out my ambassadorial duties, and spread the word about the Boogaloo. It's just as well I'm only too happy to oblige.

It's true I admire that whole lineage of 20th century Soho barflies and Fitzrovian bedsit dandies, as celebrated in the works of <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1899235698/dickonedwards-21">Mr Maclaren-Ross</a>. Hallowed haunts like The Coach and Horses, The French House, The Wheatsheaf, frequented by lounging legends of literature and art. There one could meet those who actually did worthwhile things between drinks, like Francis Bacon and Dylan Thomas, jostling at the bar with those who couldn't quite multi-task the business of Being with the business of Doing. Or, in the case of the late Mr Jeffrey Bernard, taking failure into his own tragicomic realm of success.

By a strange coincidence, the scene of my trial by fire, Bildeston's Red Lion, was once a drinking stop for Mr Bernard too, during a period in the late 60s where one of his hapless wives tried to change him by moving him out to the countryside. He actually lived in the next village, Chelsworth, but the Peacock Inn there had him barred for breaking in and serving himself out of hours. So he found himself regularly walking a mile or so of country lane to Bildeston, purely in order to get a drink. If you can't live in Soho, make Soho where you live.

I never met Mr Bernard in Suffolk myself – he would have moved away by the time I was old enough to remember anything. However, my father met the man a few times when sharing lifts into London, while a glamourous young cousin of mine, who does something or other in the Soho media world, once met him in the Coach and Horses in his amputee twilight years. Which probably cheered the old soak up no end. He drew some kind of cartoon for her, I believe. In fact, an older Boogaloo regular, Mr Michael Sharkey, tells me he also met Mr Bernard. This was it – he was a professional Local Character that everyone either met, or knew about, or knew someone that knew someone that had met him. Whether I like it or not, this is one aspect that I am beginning to share in common with Mr Bernard. I'm a Local Character that brings character to his local.

I hasten to add that, much as I admire Mr Bernard's writings (in his book <A HREF="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0715631500/dickonedwards-21">Reach For The Ground</a>, or as adapted in the play <A HREF="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004YVDE/dickonedwards-21">Jeffrey Bernard Is Unwell</a>), I don't hero-worship his drinking habit per se. I do enjoy drinking, and being drunk, in company. But it has to be somewhere I vaguely feel welcome. Given my instant-opinion-soliciting appearance and my dislike of blokish men staring grimly at a tacky wall-mounted TV, just any pub won't do. And as much as I'd like to be a regular at those tried-and-tested bohemian Soho hostelries of yore, the thought of having to brave an interminable night bus journey home to Highgate most nights rather puts me off. That the spiritual heir to the French House should be on my doorstep therefore delights me immensely.

=================

Typically, <a href="http://www.lynnefeatherstone.org/news966.htm">some local councillors have voiced reservations</a> that the pub is in danger of bringing the West End to sleepy old Highgate. Well, I've lived here for ten years, voted here for ten years, and I for one welcome such a transformation. The Boogaloo is the best thing to happen to my neighbourhood since I moved here.

In any rate, it doesn't even make sense to complain about noise levels on Archway Road. The rest of Highgate is indeed a leafy residential area, but Archway Road itself is the beginning of the A1, for goodness's sake, and one of the major traffic routes out of London. It's already a noisy street, and always was. And the Boogaloo clientèle are never violent, or laddish. Some pubs are frightening places, certainly. But here, the only sense of fear is that struck into the hearts of badly-dressed louts, who on entering quickly realise their mistake and relocate elsewhere for their evening's shouting and fighting. Probably somewhere on the Holloway Road. Let's face it, if a pub nominates the likes of ME to be its foppish mascot, you know that brawls over sporting scores are in no way going to rear their ugly head. I may drink beer, but I will never be beery. There's more chances of catching me wearing trainers.

So I can only presume these so-called Liberal councillors are just referring to The Wrong Kind Of Noise – that of people audibly enjoying themselves. Juggernauts constantly rumbling away miserably into the night are, to their ears, somehow preferable to the sound of spontaneous human joy. Such an English quality – the idea that enjoying one's life isn't as essential as having one's supermarkets well-stocked in the morning.

The local councillors of Soho are even more ludricous in pursuing this line of curtain-twitching mean-spiritedness, given their location. Central London venues like the Astoria are constantly battling to keep their late licences from being revoked by Soho residents. It seems quite simple to me – if you want a quite night in, don't bloody live in the middle of London. Or if you do, then don't complain about the noise, and don't stop people trying to enjoy themselves non-violently after 11pm. I know someone who lives happily in a flat in Old Compton Street. He is, needless to say, a very heavy sleeper. And a DJ. Noisy streets are for noisy people. Just as it is in Soho, so should it be in Archway Road. Ye gods, this is a street dominated by Archway Bridge, a favourite North London suicide spot. It needs all the fun it can get.

===================

Any small pub can get a crowd in every night. What it seems Mr O'Boyle is keen on doing is instead getting it packed with "characters", with fans of music and literature, helping to making the Boogaloo unlike any other local. Making it hip as opposed to trendy. Stylish as opposed to fashionable. Unusual as opposed to commonplace. <a href="http://www.ri-ra.co.uk/features/features2.html">In a magazine article</a>, there's the rumour that Mr Thing from Coldplay was turned away for being too dull. I'm not sure if that story is true, but I fully approve of a pub that is happy to have such a rumour circulated.

So, what else goes on at the Boogaloo, apart from the sight of me in a corner sipping at a glass of Magners Irish cider and scribbling notes for diary entries like this?

Well, left over from the time Mr O'Boyle ran Filthy McNasty's, there's literary events and readings, such as the one this Thursday from Mr Jake Arnott, author of "The Long Firm" and other tales of Kray Brothers-esque gay East End gangster life. Lately, Time Out magazine employed Mr Arnott to interview Morrissey, and no one was in the least surprised.

From the days of the Shepherds comes the notoriously difficult Tuesday night pop quiz, attended in the past by Bernard Butler and the creators of the film "Shaun Of The Dead" (in which the Shepherds is referenced). I note that the <a href="http://www.theboogaloo.org/events.htm">Boogaloo website</a> currently mentions one regular team in particular, The Libretto Heels. This group includes certain passionate music loving associates of mine, Mr Timothy Chipping and Mr Edward Mole. If they lose, on no account tell them it's only a game.

There's also a monthly film quiz, which I have yet to attend. From the looks of it, it seems to cater more to those list-making boys who can recite scenes from Star Wars and Goodfellas, rather than flower-like Jean Cocteau fans like myself, but I shall go and find out for myself. It's also been turned into a MTV panel game of late, featuring people from, yes, "Shaun Of The Dead".

Then there's the jukebox, which Mr O'Boyle claims is the best in London. He makes a point of not including anything from the last ten years on it. This is not to suggest he's against any kind of new music – The Libertines' bassist is performing here soon – but one can hear the latest chart records in any other hostelry, after all.

Finally, the Boogaloo has two extremely cute black cats. Sisters, I'm told.

===========

Last Monday I drank with the androgynous Wren Gallo, of whom more another time, along with his Welsh companion Andy. We talked about Welsh bands, and I mentioned The Pooh Sticks, the semi-satirical indiepop band whose late 80s song "On Tape" deliciously reels off a list of the essential music to be found in any discerning indiekid's collection of the time. Albeit copied onto cassette. <i>"I've got Falling And Laughing / the original Postcard version / I've got the Pastels' Songs For Children / Sky Saxon's solo album…"</i>

In the background, there's an impromptu gig by <a href="http://www.skysaxonandtheseeds.com/">Sky Saxon</a> himself, and Mr O'Boyle introduces him to me. Such is the Boogaloo.

==============
Another famous drinker, Mr Shane MacGowan, is a regular. In fact, he stays in the flat upstairs whenever he's in London. Recently, the pub became the venue for the launch party of his brand new single, "The Road To Paradise". This is a rather infectious and jaunty summer pop song featuring the Kick Horns, and <a href="http://www2.hmv.co.uk/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=280;-1;-1;-1&sku=181492">it demands your immediate purchase</a>, Dear Reader. HMV are stocking it under "J" for Jimmy Johnstone, whose charity it benefits, in case you can't find it under "M".

I was lucky enough to be on the guestlist for this party, my name next to the likes of Ms Kate Moss and Mr Johnny Knoxville from the Jackass TV programme, where he endured a variety of dangerous stunts in preparation for sharing a small room in Highgate with Dickon Edwards. One onlooker in bad shorts asked what I was doing there. Because, he said, I didn't look like "an average Shane MacGowan fan". I replied, "I'd hate to look like an average anything." I wonder if he said the same thing to Ms Moss?

Someone else there insisted on telling me I resembled… (notebooks out, score-keepers!)… <a href="http://www.echonews.com/932/images/bob_downe_lismore.jpg">Bob Downe.</a>

At one point I was dragged off to be seated with the other best dressed person in the room, the <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0283062991/dickonedwards-21">writer Ms Victoria Clarke</a>, resplendent in a white toga-like gown belted around the waist. She is the singer's close friend, biographer, and former lover of some fifteen years. Ms Clarke introduced me to the others around the table, including the man himself and Ms Moss. Later, I learn that Ms Clarke is an ex-New Romantic.

Mr MacGowan performed a couple of short live sets with a youthful backing band, some of whom can't have been born when the first Pogues album came out. They played a mesmerizing version of "A Rainy Night In Soho", which has to be my favourite song of his. Mr MacGowan has certainly had his much-reported physical problems over the years, but on the evidence of this iconic performance, his worst days are behind him.

<a href="http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=14389170&method=full">The event is later reported in the Mirror newspaper</a>, as part of the gossip on Ms Moss's romantic life. Nothing in there about mine, I see. The article mentions a couple of inaccuracies. They say Ms Moss missed the gig. Not true. She missed the first set, but danced vigorously to the second and nearly high-kicked me in the face at one point. They also report that Mr Nick Cave played the gig too. He wasn't there, unless you count his calendar on the wall opposite. Again, this is another plus point for the Boogaloo: how many pubs have Nick Cave calendars?

There's a more accurate article about the party, with photos, online <a href="http://www.ri-ra.co.uk/features/features16.html">here</a>. I've just noticed, I'm in the background of two of the photos. I never was much good at fading unnoticed into the background.

There's another decent account of the event, <a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7948-1172023,00.html">in the Times here.</a>

I think that's enough spreading the word about the Boogaloo for one day. Consider my ambassadorial duties fulfilled. I'm off for a drink.

===
In the next diary entry: My day spent posing by the Albert Bridge with Mme Anne Pigalle and a plastic lobster called Susan, for the cover of Ms Rowan Pelling's "The Decadent Handbook". I am not in the slightest bit joking.

A quote emailed to me today from Mr Laurence Hughes, from his newly-acquired home of a boat in Shropshire. "Life is either an adventure or a disaster. So better make it an adventure".

<img align=left src="http://freespace.virgin.net/jones.586/sw/16.jpg"></img><b>[Photo by <lj user=mzdt>. <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/mzdt/152150.html">Click here to see more from the same concert</a>]. </b>

<i>Thinking back – May 26th 2004</i>
One of the highlights of my year thus far. I play a concert as part of the <a href="http://www.scarletswell.co.uk/">Scarlet's Well</a> band. This marks frontman Bid's first official UK performance in eight years, and the first since his former group, legendary New Wave dandies <a href="http://www.bid.clara.net/mset/">The Monochrome Set</a>, split up. In addition to playing on all the marvellous Scarlet's Well esoteric folk-pop songs, I get to sing an impromptu duet with Bid on the MS classic Goodbye Joe, and to emulate the Lester Square lead guitar part on Eine Symphonie Des Grauens, the Set's second single, originally released on Rough Trade in 1979. It's less a gig for me than a letter to Jim'll Fix It. The Monochrome Set and Scarlet's Well may not be household names, but to me they are household gods.

Meet Lester Square himself afterwards (tall, handsome, affable), and the other main Monochrome Set member, Andy Warren (small, wary, cynical). Someone from the Adam Ant fanclub was there to video the concert, which Bid rightfully finds odd. Apart from the fact it was really Messrs Warren and Square, not Bid, who had more of a connection with the young Adam Ant's first musical steps, I've personally found Bid's music far more enjoyable and closer to my heart than Mr Ant's oeuvre, and do wish a small number of lazy souls would cease regarding the MS as little more than a footnote in the Adam Ant story.

That there should be someone applauding at a Scarlet's Well concert saying "thank you, Bid, for being vaguely connected with Adam Ant over twenty years ago" is a depressing thought indeed. Thankfully, the effusive cheers tonight are in approbation of the Scarlet's Well songs, and for the band members passionately transforming this previously studio-bound project of Bid's into an impossibly engaging and infectiously entertaining live show. Scarlet's Well has quickly become the London concert world's best-kept secret. Elements of Kurt Weill, of sea-shanties, of Russian folk songs, of Disney musicals, of timeless melody. What better night out?

What the uninitiated make of it all, goodness knows. If a band is easier to put into a category, they are easier to play on a radio programme (even a specialist one), easier to review, easier to market. See also the band Keane. Why be different when you can be easily marketable? We're back to that dreaded question of St Peter at the gates of Heaven… "What do you bring to the party?" "Something you've heard before. Someone other than myself".

The music of Scarlet's Well is in a genre of its own, and defiantly so. Bid is a man more likely to say no to most things than yes. He's turned down playing support slots to certain big name groups, and is no way interested in the schmoozing and hustling side of the music industry. One half of me finds this frustrating, while the other admires it as an entirely praiseworthy trait, especially in a business saturated in sycophancy and the desperate urge to Keep In Touch.

One can never underestimate the power of deliberately saying no. In the music business, and in London media life in general, there are usually only two responses. Yes, and Anything Other Than Saying No. This latter can take the form of "We'll let you know", or simple non-responsiveness. Phone calls not returned, emails not replied to, a name silently crossed off the party invite list. I imagine people suddenly waking up and saying aloud, "Oh, I don't like that Dickon Edwards any more. I've gone off him."

People go through their pro- and anti- Dickon Edwards phases. I do too, it's just that mine are lifelong.

Also on this bill at the Spitz is the last set of the week by Gentleman Reg, whom I once again accompany on extra guitar. I get an enormous buzz out of Reg Vermue borrowing Bid's guitar – two very different worlds, generations, countries, scenes, genres, meeting as a direct result of me getting out of bed and doing something about the music I love. What have Scarlet's Well and Gentleman Reg got in common? Answer: Dickon Edwards is rather fond of them both, he wanted to see both in concert, so he did something about it. The Spitz was my suggestion to Bid when he asked about where to play this first SW UK gig, while Toronto-based Gentleman Reg travelled to the UK for the first time, to play the SW support slot I'd got him. I suppose for me it's a very small version of the Meltdown Festival. What have Alan Bennett and The New York Dolls got in common? Morrissey. Ivor Cutler and Lou Reed? Laurie Anderson. Scarlet's Well and Gentleman Reg? Yours truly. I note that Morrissey compares his festival to an i-Pod. Booking one's favourite groups as the ultimate DJ set or personal compilation. One does so to entertain others, to introduce acts one likes to the uninitiated, and to communicate one's own thoughts and personality via other people's music.

The day after, I receive an email from Bid asking me to leave the SW live band. After I've had a good cry, I concede that this is for the best. I'm keen to get on with my own creative affairs, and lack the energy to hold down several projects at once, unlike musical multi-taskers Martin, Jennifer and Kate in the band. It was always my assumption that I couldn't be in the Scarlet's Well band for long, not while Shinkansen Records (and the others in Fosca) are patiently awaiting a third Fosca album.

Bid's reasons are that he feels I'm too much of a frontman in my own right, and am miscast in the role of the backing musician. He's also frustrated that I'm not an innate lead guitarist. We're both essentially rhythm players. Meanwhile Peter Momtchiloff, lead guitarist in the bands Talulah Gosh, Heavenly and The Would-Be-Goods, offers his services a few weeks after I join. From that moment it feels silly for me to be there when he could be doing a better job. Given that I used to hitch-hike around the country to see Heavenly in the early 90s, I am only too happy to see him joining Scarlet's Well. Even if it means me stepping down. Mr M <i>understands</i> the guitar far better than myself. I'm just glad Bid didn't ask me to sling my hook before the Spitz concert.

The thing is, I am starting to admit I've never WANTED to be a guitarist – it's just the instrument I find the easiest to use as a songwriting tool. Or even, just somewhere to put my hands to stop myself from being arrested. I've played the thing on stages for over ten years now, and it's fair to say my six-string skills have barely improved one jot. In my music exam at school, I'd frequently get full marks for the theory, and shockingly low marks for the practical. Anyone out there who regards themselves as a guitarist would be able to see that I'm not the best man for the job.

When Martin and Jennifer hear the news, I find myself having to convince them on the phone that I agree with Bid's decision. Jennifer says, quite understandably, "I can't believe that you're arguing in favour of someone else's decision to dismiss you!"

It's not the first time. After I toured the world for the best part of a year playing guitar for Spearmint, my musical talents were found wanting and I was fired. Singer Shirley Lee invited me to a cafe in Muswell Hill one afternoon.

"Would you like a drink? Wine? Spirits?"

"It's a bit early", I reply, taking my seat at the bar table. "Tea would be fine, thanks."

"Are you sure?" he insists.

"Yes, yes. So what's this about?"

Shirley pauses, stares at me and smirks sheepishly. I cotton on and roll my eyes.

"Oh, god… You're sacking me."

He nods, with the expression of a kindly vet confirming the worst about a doomed sheepdog.

I sigh heavily.

"In that case…. Triple vodka and tonic, please."

Still, this is all fair enough in the world of music. Whatever is best for the songs must come first. I still wonder just how bad the other candidates at the Spearmint guitarist audition must have been.

Thankfully, I remain friends with Mr Lee and his bandmates. They seem to like my skills at Being Dickon Edwards, if not my skills at Being A Backing Guitarist. Shame, as I do love sharing a stage and strumming along with a band I'm fond of. Not a day goes by without my wishing, if only momentarily, that it'd be nice to not be Dickon Edwards sometimes. But I remain the best man for the job. If only that job.

With Scarlet's Well, I prefer to see my walking the plank as good party etiquette – arrive, make your mark, ensure everyone knows you were there, move on to the next party. For those that missed the Spitz concert, there'll be a Scarlet's Well live album out soon, which I'll be on, and which will also serve as a handy "greatest hits" collection for those needing an introduction to Bid's estimable talents. I shall also be contributing or co-writing new songs for future SW albums, which is really what I was meant to be doing in the first place.

Something I <i>do</i> seem to have an innate talent for is being a catalyst, a connection, a matchmaker, whether by default or design. Bid was after a drummer, keyboardist and accordion player, and I found him the three best ones for the job. <b>Scarlet's Well play again at the Kings Cross Water Rats on July 7th</b>. I shall be there, proudly watching a beautiful multi-headed creature I had a small hand in creating.

Apologies for the delay in updates. One reason is trying to write about the Scarlet's Well concert, and about what I'm doing now, in a suitably definitive fashion. It's worth getting right. I'll try and clear the backlog over the next few days.

What I am doing RIGHT NOW, as in the next 24 hours, is something new. A short Dickon Edwards solo set. Myself singing and playing electric guitar with no other backing, at the excellent monthly event, "Club Bohemia", which I recommend to anyone in London on the 4th Saturday of the next few months. The spirit of the 1970s meets that of the 1890s. I think it's fair to suspect that the organisers have seen "Velvet Goldmine" more than once. Which is no bad thing in my book. More details <a href="http://www.glam-ou-rama.co.uk/bohemia.asp">here</a>.

Their website says I'll be taking requests, but that's rather impractical on the night. If someone reading this is coming, and does have an Orlando or Fosca song they'd like to hear me attempt in the solo Billy Bragg-esque style, do email me in time. The club always sells out on the night, so those interested should get there early. Why am I doing this? Because I rather like Club Bohemia and want to lend it my seal of approval. The club is about the unusual, so here's unusual me doing something unusual for me. And because I want to ensure I catch the Wilde Thing performance this time.

Yesterday – walking through Parliament Hill Fields to Highgate Library (Camden Council branch). I'm not wearing any make-up, but I am wearing braces on my suit trousers (US readers know them as "suspenders"), without a jacket to disguise them. I used to wear belts, but braces seem more me. Had to go to an old-fashioned suit shop to get them.

As I pass, a group of black youths shout "Batty Man! Batty Man" at me. I don't say anything. But I am tempted to blow them a kiss. Or turn around and say "You really must try gay sex some time, dear boys, it's Da Bomb". Their response would make a good diary entry. Parliament Hill Fields is hardly South Central LA, and boys like these are, I suspect, a lot less tough than they make out. But my cowardice, or rather, crippling passivity, gets the better of me. I walk on. The earth remains distinctly uninherited by the meek.

An article in the Independent about the plight of black comedians on TV. I seem to have as much talent as Mr Lenny Henry at making young black people laugh. They just can't seem to help themselves as I walk by. Perhaps I am what he needs for his current disastrous programme, where he is, it's fair to say, dying on his batty. "It's not going well, Mr H. Better bring on Dickon Edwards to give them a REAL laugh." I wouldn't even have to say anything.

Matthew Glamorre recently defined the clientèle of his club Kash Point as people who get shouted at in the street. Half of me is pleased I've still got "it", even when my appearance is at half-mast. The other half just wants to have a good cry.

Typing this while Big Brother Live is on in the background. Hysterical, shouted arguments and genuine threats of violence have sparked off. All very disturbing, and then we go to the cosy, soft-voiced adverts. "Talk Talk, for all your communication needs." British TV in 2004.

<a href="http://www.client-online.net"><img align=left src="http://www.client-online.net/client/cover.jpg"></a><i>Monday 14th June</i>
A particularly intense therapy session. Normally I shed a tear or two at some point during the 50 minutes, but this time I actually break down completely. Progress of a kind, I suppose. Feel much better afterwards, but it's a rather draining experience. Afterwards I decide to treat myself – I feel I need some kind of reward, so off to the Swiss Cottage shops round the corner from the clinic. I suppose one is meant to buy a new dress or a large amount of chocolate, but I settle for some Doctor Scholl ankle pads in Boots, as my new loafers are somewhat of a loose fit.

Someone taps me on the shoulder to say hello. Ms Sarah Blackwood, charming singer, formerly of the synthy indie dream-pop group Dubstar, whose music I'm rather fond of. She's now with the office-worker-fetishising, ill-fitting corporate uniform-sporting (<i>deliberately</i> ill-fitting, of course) electro band <a href="http://www.client-online.net">Client.</a> She is all smiles and sympathy, and is just what I need here and now. She invites me to her gig that night, but the heat is too much for me, and I can't go in the end.

I learn that Client have an excellent, brand new electro-pop single out this very week, "In It For The Money", or, as Ms Blackwood sings in her deliciously unfettered Halifax accent, "mURNey." (Is this the first time the words "Halifax" and "delicious" have been used in close proximity?). There's a chance the single could make the proper UK charts, though it's touch and go. So, by way of saying thank you to the unasked comforting company of Ms Blackwood, and because I couldn't make her gig, I use the money I'd have spent on gig drinks buying the single in a number of formats.

I strongly urge you, Dear Reader, to <a href="http://www.toasthawaii.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=495">do the same</a> before Sunday, if you feel like buying a Dickon-Edwards-endorsed £1.99 pop single this week. And if you agree that the pop charts should feature more people who are spontaneously kind to fragile fops in Swiss Cottage chemists. The B-side features guest vocals from Mr Doherty of the Libertines if that sways your decision. Buying chart-potential pop singles these days, as opposed to downloading them, is as much a form of voting as anything else. Vote Client, I say.

<a href="http://www.kashpoint.com/"><img align=left src="http://www.ju90.co.uk/ssp/kp/showboat_front2.jpg"></a>Client are also playing the London Metro this Thursday, but I shall be attending An Evening With Alan Bennett at the Morrissey festival on the South Bank (doubtless Mr M will be in the audience too), followed by <a href="http://www.kashpoint.com/">Kash Point's</a> triumphant return to the newly refurbished Tattershall Castle boat, moored opposite the London Eye on the North Bank. Alan Bennett, Morrissey and the Kash Point club. Good examples on what it means to Be Defiantly Oneself in 21st Century England. Kash Point remains less a disco, more a sanctuary for exotic blooms.

<i>[My thanks to <lj user=automatique> for <a href="http://www.livejournal.com/users/automatique/79081.html">creating the current inevitable user picture of me</a>. Entirely unsolicited, naturally. I particularly like the Trooping The Colour goings-on in the background.]</i>

Thursday June 10th – To Jacksons Lane Community Centre to vote three times: for the London Mayor, for members of the London Assembly, and for the European Parliament.

British Democracy in 2004 is currently defined as the right to choose between Shifty, Shifty, Nazi, Looney, Obviously Shifty, Rich Person Possibly Running As A Tax Dodge, Lately Shifty, More Nazis, George Galloshifty, Liberal Shiftycrats, The Joan Collins Nazi Club, and the Green Party.

I place my Mayor Of London X next to Cuddly Ken Livingstone (whose first volume of autobiography was called "If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It") , and put Green for everything else. The Greens are, The Observer points out, an established anti-war party, not one that becomes anti-war when it suits them, like the Liberals. I don't entirely agree with some Green policies, like being anti-Euro because the Euro is, they say, a tool of globalisation, and they're anti-globalisation. Funny how the Nazis and Greens can have some things in common for different reasons. And The Greens do have rather too many silly beards in their gallery of candidates. My second choice for Mayor is the Green's openly-gay, beard-free candidate, Darren Johnson. If London can't have Ken, a Gay Green Mayor would surely be the next best thing. Also, the Greens are endorsed by Peter Tatchell, Joanna Lumley and Twiggy. What a dinner party!

I know I should vote "tactically", which really means voting Liberal, but it's not what my heart dictates. What I really want to do is vote Labour. But not while Mr Blair is still in charge. So Green it is.

It is the first time in my life I've not voted Labour across the board. Mr Blair says that if people disagree with him taking the country to war, then "they know what to do at the ballot box". All the protests, marches and petitions mean nothing to him. With that in mind, I take him at his word and quietly register my own anti-war protest with a small pencil on a string. I hope Mr B notices, if as he implies, voting is the only language he understands. If anyone who goes on anti-war marches doesn't use their vote as well, they are whistling in the wind with those loud football whistles of theirs.

Friday June 11th- Mr Livingstone makes it in to a second Mayoral term, but only just. A frightening thought that thousands of people seem to trust Stephen Norris, the shiftiest Tory around. And that takes some doing.

The Greens lose an Assembly seat, and Mr Johnson gets less votes than his rivals in the BNP, Respect (George Galloway's new vanity party) and UKIP. Rather depressing, but I'm glad Ken's staying.

The best news is that the country-wide local election results are translated as a serious disaster indeed for Labour. Even the Deputy PM, John Prescott, admits that voters have shown their anger at the Iraq mess, and now Attention Must Be Paid.

Stereotypes would have us believe that voting is a pointless, unsexy, waste of time that the young eschew, while marching is more visible, done by dancing youths with dreadlocks who possibly don't wash after sex.

Today's lesson appears to be that, when it comes to political protest, dogs on strings are nothing compared to pencils on strings.

The worrying side-effect is the Conservative Party becoming a serious political force for the first time since 1997.

Strange echoes of last night's dream pervade, though I can't remember anything more. Something about The Pope being interviewed on Radio 4's Loose Ends, and a discussion about falling in love with buildings. The word "Archisexual". Image of someone in bed with the St Pancras Hotel. "Buildings are better than people. They don't let you down and tend to still be there in the morning."

Currently fighting off permanent fatigue. Heard that cutting down on caffeine, even cutting it out altogether, increases alertness and energy in the long run, and might help reduce my general anxiety and stomach aches. Haven't had any coffee, or caffeinated fizzy drinks, for some days now. Feeling more tired and work-shy than ever. Cold turkey? M.E.? Last Tuesday I insisted the doctor test my blood for pretty much everything under the sun. "We'll get the results next week. If you're clear, we then have to look at your susceptibility to believe you've got every illness you hear about." He takes my hypochondria very seriously indeed.

My grandfather died recently, and left me a little money. Not much, but enough to enable me to buy the £150 off-white Italian linen suit I see glowing with temptation in a Highbury menswear shop window. The shop stands out all the more as all the surrounding shops are all fast food takeaways. I try on the suit, and it fits so well it's not true. About time I had a decent, lightweight, light-coloured summer suit. I look at the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/5day.shtml?id=2735">BBC weather forecast for Highgate</a> with some dread. Temperatures over 25C on the way. But I now have the suit to fight the battle. Keeping it clean will be the hardest thing, and I consider getting another. At the Hidden Cameras gig, John Moore tells me about £50 machine-washable linen suits in a shop in Chalk Farm. One can never have too many summer suits.

Monday May 27th. To the 12 Bar for the third Gentleman Reg gig. The 12 Bar Club has a tiny stage best suited to acts consisting of one or two people, ideally the archetypal solo acoustic singer-songwriter. Despite this, full bands with drummers often squeeze themselves bravely onto the platform, and when Justine Rutledge, another Canadian, performs here tonight, his keyboard player has to sit at the side of the stage, amongst all the empty instrument cases. While he's playing a delicate, alt-country style piano part, I sheepishly have to mutter "excuse me" and retrieve my guitar case from the side of his left elbow. I time it so I can act while he's not playing any bass notes.

Why bands with full line-ups put themselves through this awkwardness says something about the status of the 12 Bar as a much-loved venue. It's centrally located, in the shadow of the Centrepoint tower, by the junction of Oxford Street and Charing Cross Road. It's neither too touristy and off the music industry map like the Rock Garden, or too smelly and beery like the Monarch or Dublin Castle, though one does has to brave the smells of the alley outside, Denmark Place, which clearly doubles as a lavatory. The 12 Bar is just about trendy enough while being unpretentious and friendly.

More recently, the venue's expanded to take in a cafe in Denmark Street and a second bar area, with TV monitors so one can watch the acts while buying a drink. Thankfully, the two most unique aspects of the place, which anyone who's been there will tell you about, are still in place. One is the seventeenth-century blacksmith's forge, with its chimney next to the stage, a plaque proudly displaying its birth as 1635. I point out to Gentleman Reg he's playing a venue older than his country. "Do you have dates like that in Toronto?" I remark, surprising myself with an air of a Peter Ackroyd-like popular historian. Must remember to apply as a tour guide at Highgate Cemetery, in training for a possible future career to follow Messrs Ackroyd, Schama and Starkey as a Slightly Camp English TV Historian. "Dickon Edwards's Limpwristed London."

The other feature of the 12 Bar is a low balcony area where one can watch mere inches from the artist's scalp. I once saw Momus play here in the mid-90s, and now know the top of his head like the back of my hand. I think it's the same year I see The Magnetic Fields here, to promote the album "Get Lost". Just Stephin and Claudia. The next time they headline a gig in London, it is in the Queen Elizabeth Hall.

The 12 Bar performer in turn is at close eye level with the balcony viewers' shoes, seen through railings. Mr Rutledge's backing band know all about staring at shoes, as they are members of Mojave 3, who in turn were once called Slowdive. Along with Lush, Moose, Chapterhouse, and Ride, Slowdive were part of an early 90s UK indie scene nicknamed "shoegazing", because of the bands' tendency to perform sullenly without moving their eyes from the floor. Dreamy, fuzzy guitar music, heavily influenced by My Bloody Valentine, with lots of effects pedals, 60s haircuts, and nebulous, quasi-psychedelic lyrics about falling down in a breeze. Perhaps because of their name and wispy girl vocals, Slowdive were spotlighted as the quintessential shoegazers, often used unkindly as a personification of the whole scene by those aware of its music paper coverage. At the time, the Manic Street Preachers remarked "We hate Slowdive more than Hitler". Right Said Fred, in the proper pop charts at the time, told a TV interviewer in defence of their novelty pop status that "Well, we're not Slowdive."

Perhaps even Slowdive hated being Slowdive, as a few years later they re-invented themselves as Mojave 3, and played a more roundly unthreatening, alt-country-style music. Quietly acclaimed, annoying no one. Mr Rutledge's songs suit their playing well, and it's impossible to dislike a live slide guitar player.

When I play with Gentleman Reg, some of the chatter from people at the bar is so loud I can't hear my own guitar. I do something out of character, and which I disapprove of in other live acts: I tell a punter off. The garrulous culprit is a blond woman whom I can see through the bar doorway. Her lone natter is carrying from a separate room, and is drowning out my playing. As bad a guitarist as I am, I like to be at least given a chance to hear myself. On top of which, I have personally brought Reg across from Toronto to play these gigs, he's only on for a short set, and there are people other than me who have come to hear him. So I do hope any jury would support my decision to stare directly at the woman, put my finger to my mouth, and offer a deeply annoyed "SHHH!" at the top of my lungs. This is something I instantly regret, and expect her to shout back at me, or worse. But, to my surprise, she does in fact shut up.

For an encore in doing out of character things, I later make an ill-advised onstage remark. Reg introduces "Statement" and "Give Me A Chance" as songs featured on the soundtrack to the US version of the TV series "Queer As Folk". "Your British version is probably much better, though", he adds, speaking to me. "I don't know," I say, in an attempt at onstage banter. "Does your version have rimming in it?"

Silence in the audience. A word too far, Mr Dickon. I imagine mouths agape. Darts, had there been any, would have paused in mid-flight. Across the road in the Astoria, Skipknot and their audience of pierced Jeremys pause in mid-mosh and stifle a collective gasp. I feel like <a href="http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/British%20Comedy%20Awards">Julian Clary at the Comedy Awards.</a>