Loose Ends on Radio 4 last Saturday. A new interview with Stephen Sondheim is followed with a performance by the BMX Bandits. This really happens, and cannot be an aural hallucination engendered by my current illness. I apparently have some kind of carsickness-like strain of flu virus whose symptoms are sporadic burning sensations in the head (often at the back of my head), dizziness and nausea. Plus the usual aches and pains, coughing and snuffling.

At the doctor's:

Doctor: You're the seventh person I've seen today with those symptoms. There is (wait for it!) a lot of it about.
Me: So what can I do?
Doctor: Nothing. Wait until it finishes.
Me: How long is that likely to last?
Doctor: Three weeks.

Merry Christmas, indeed.

I have to go back if the condition lasts longer than three weeks, or if I start <i>staggering</i>. As I'm fond of a good stagger or two of an evening, I may well not notice.

To Kash Point in South London, the latest club to be run by Mr Matthew Glamorre. Mr Glamorre was a member (and for all I know still is) of the exotic performance art pop group started by Leigh Bowery, Minty. In the 90s, Mr G was the MC at a popular London club called Smashing. This was peopled by many a Britpop "celebrity" of the time, and took place in a dark room under Regent Street known as Eve's Club, where the walls, ceiling, and columns were covered with Eden-like plastic vines. I consult the blurred half-memories of my mind, and in them it's 199X, I can see the wet, crowded underlit dancefloor, the tiny overpriced bar, Jarvis Cocker and others from Pulp, Alex James from Blur, pretty much all of Menswear, Courtney Love getting "married" to another Stevie Nicks-like girl, the time when people in there were picked to appear in Pulp's 'Mis-Shapes" video. They didn't pick me. I clearly wasn't mis-shapen enough.

However, mingling with music industry types per se has never attracted me as much as mingling with the fantastically dressed, regardless of who they are. I'd much rather spend an evening with a group of five unknown pretentious art-fag types who don't really "do" anything, than be surrounded by a hundred dressed-down famous and important types. Just because you're famous, it shouldn't mean you should "slum it". Typically, it's the men who let the side down rather than the women. Famous women still tend to dress up in public, even though they don't need to. Famous men often grow ghastly proto-beards, and sport awful trainers and t-shirts. As soon as Menswear became well-known, most of the band ditched their trademark suits at once. This, I thought, was a terrible shame. There really is NO excuse for dressing down in a club known for its dressed-up crowd, but many men still do it. At Trash you can see many a stylish girl on the arms of an absolute gorilla of no woman born. They can't ALL be drug dealers.

[Idea for character in a "cool" film. A drug dealer played by Michael Palin, clean-shaven in a nice suit. Nothing violent happens.]

As a self-confessed narcissist, you might think I prefer those around me to be less aesthetically appealing, in order to make me look better by comparison. But it simply isn't true. I want everyone to look beautiful. Or at least for the men to have had a shave that day. Call me eccentric, then.

At Kash Point, the ratio of the dressed up to the dressed down is, I am delighted to discover, admirably high. Once inside, I am convinced I'm in a scene from one of my favourite films, "Liquid Sky" (now frustratingly deleted on DVD). A colourful mixture of Nu-Hoxton and Nu-Romo peacock style abounds. Extreme hair, extreme make up. Outfits that are created rather than just worn. It's Stay Beautiful with electropop rather than rock, or NagNagNag without the crowds of scruffy dull people just trying to be Where It's At.

On this occasion, Kash Pont is at Crash in Vauxhall. I get off at Vauxhall station, and suddenly realise I am alone, lost and terrified in South London at 11pm. As you exit the station, there's a veritable labyrinth of confusing subways, barriers, scaffolding, roundabouts and dozens of unmarked streets. No signs to help pedestians, except for one apologising for the inconvenience of the road-works.

A typically English trait – to spend energy on apologising rather than on what people affected might really want. After the recent devastating postal strike, London residents received letters of apology from Royal Mail, adding that by way of compensation, the company had donated £1m to the city's bid to host the Olympic Games. The idea of spending this money on preventing future strikes or on improving the postal service must have seemed far less important.

North London has its share of violent crime, but the stereotype about the Dreaded South permeates. I wander in exactly the wrong direction for half an hour, and am convinced I'm a yellow Police Notice sign waiting to happen:

"THURSDAY, 11PM. Did you see a man with bleached hair, suit and make-up being stabbed to death? If so, don't you agree he was asking for it?"

At one point, I find myself outside a huge building marked "British Interplanetary Society". I feel like banging on the doors and shouting "Never mind other planets. Where on Earth am I?".

After much wandering, I eventually find the venue. Echoing across the nameless lanes and darkened railway arches is a siren-like unmistakable electroyelp:

"METAL HORSE!"
"METAL HORSE!"
"METAL HORSE!"
"METAL HORSE!"

Turn again, Dickon Whittington… Mr Simon Bookish is clearly onstage.

Tonight, Mr Glamorre looks and comperes like Club Smashing was only yesterday, resplendent in a customised red mechanic's boiler suit and visor shades. Tonight's PAs comprise a veritable electropop festival, with each act doing two or three songs. I manage to watch the likes of Simon Bookish, Cantankerous, Replicant, Silence is Sexy, Baxendale, Bishi, Super Studio, and Viktor. The latter has a couple of go-go dancing girlish boys, with slogans on their chests and enormous false eyelashes. The music is all blips and beeps and backing track-heavy, though far more pop song-based than electroclash. Alex Baxendale ditches his guitar to do some robot dancing. Even Tim Baxendale has a suit on. Everyone looks marvellous, and I adore it all.

Alex Baxendale, afterwards (mock-sniffily): I notice we're the only act tonight with proper middle-eights.

One booked act doesn't turn up, but it's just as well as the bill over-runs and Baxendale leave the stage sometime past 2am. The missing group is the problematically named band Stupid C—, whom I've still yet to see. I am known to the singer, young Mr Martin Tomlinson, with whom I appeared in a fashion show some years ago. Martin is a beautiful boyish dandy and model, and when I bumped into him at the Hidden Cameras ICA gig earlier this year, he told me about his band. When he mentioned their name, I assumed he was taking the mickey. A few weeks later, Stupid C— appears in The Guardian newspaper's list of The 40 Best Bands In Britain.

Back at Crash, and the bar staff and security are all unusually friendly, a welcome change in a London club. There's a Finnish brand of bottled beer on sale for £1.50. It's called Lapin Kula, which presumably translates as "Cheapskate". But Kash Point tends to skip from venue to venue. Its next location is the Purple Turtle in Mornington Crescent on Dec 31st. So that's my New Year's Eve sorted out.

For some reason, there's fair amount of photographers with, appropriately enough, anachronistically large and clunky 80s cameras and tripods. At one point Mr Glamorre cries at them from the stage, "Stop making my club look like Ibiza!".

If anything, I fear my appearance may not be <i>enough</i> for the club. But, once again, I am taken aside by a female photographer, and an imprompu photo session takes place. She asks what I call my "look". I reply, "Twenty-First Century Fop". Later, I realise I should have used a description suggested by Ms <lj user=antiutopia>, "Ice Prince".

Still feeling unwell as I post this. Am comforting myself with the splendid "Saint Morrissey" by Mark Simpson. The first Smiths biography to be well-written as opposed to just researched. About time.

To the Camden Palace for my first Heavy Metal rock festival. Going by the adage that maximum interest is at the point of maximum contrast, this entry refuses to be avoided.

A magazine that does not yet exist, Plan B, contacted me. "Go forth and write about the Stylish Satanic Metal band, Ackercocke. We have chosen you for this exploit, partly because you are amusingly related to them in a Rock Family Tree way (of which more below), but mostly because, like you, they stand out by wearing nice suits. You will be on the guest list for the festival they're playing. Do not expect to be paid".

I sigh ungraciously at this latter caveat, but can't think of a reason to refuse. After all, I've never been to a heavy metal festival before, and this one is only a fifteen minute tube journey away. I patch together my wretched frame and journey to Mornington Crescent, possibly the only London Underground station to be saved from closure by a Radio 4 comedy show, "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue".

Queuing around the block are hordes of Henry Ford's loose children. Dressed in any colour, as long as it's black. I conduct the interview with the band first, in a pub across the road. Kindly granting me a portion of their time before a proper journalist arrives, I speak to Mr Jason Mendonca and Mr David Gray. When I was touring in the band Orlando, they were among our hired hands. Jason was the guitar tech, and David was the drummer. In Ackercocke, the former sings, the latter drums. And presumably now curses the head-wobbling singer-songwriter who has stolen his name.

Their official press release contains spelling mistakes and gets the band roles mixed up. An accompanying biography, by the band themselves, is better written and better spelt. I ask about the tacky t-shirts, ringtones and mobile phone "wallpaper" catalogue that rudely interrupts their otherwise beautifully designed CD booklet (created, Mr Gray says, by the man behind the sleeve to Japan's Tin Drum album). They admit the ringtones are nothing to do with them, but par for the course these days, and a depressingly important source of revenue to boot.

When the next proper, professional rock writer arrives, from some glossy heavy metal magazine or other, I can't resist placing my MiniDisc recorder (androgynously invisible controls) next to hers (voluptuous, moulded controls) on the table, to see if they fight, or breed. She is not in the least bit amused. It its palpably obvious I am new to this interviewing racket and refuse to take it seriously.

Which is just as well. I'll never forget an occasion where Mr Momus warned me to never become a journalist – "it means losing a bit of your soul." Advice which I saw repeated earlier this year, amid the barrage of obituaries on Mr Johnny Cash. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1043491,00.html"> A somewhat affected writer recounted how her interview with Mr Cash marked the end of her journalist career</a>, because he had shown her the importance of creating rather than spectating, if that's who you really are. She turned to fiction. Though I expected the article to end "…and I've been starving ever since."

Inside the Camden Palace, the place is rammed full with heavy metal fans, whose appearance is far more varied than I'd previously imagined. More women than you'd think, fewer trolls than you'd think. Quite a lot of virginal, flower-skinned teenage boys, who are presumably to be sacrificed on an altar later. I watch Ackercocke perform, and am surprised to find myself utterly mesmerised by their aural pummelling and growled invocations to The Goat Of Mendes. Although they insist on sporting the type of long hair so beloved of the genre, the suits and waistcoats make all the difference. The performance connects with far more parts of my brain than if they had the standard uniform of leather trousers and t-shirts. Experiencing their set, with all its bowel-quavering frequencies and foundation-shaking noise packaged so stylishly, is the closest I've come to rough sex for some time. Which admittedly rather says more about me than them. Scenes from Dennis Cooper novels, the ones with references to Slayer in them, suggest themselves. I fully understand the appeal of this sort of music, if not the haircuts.

The bands that follow, Nile, Destruction, and Deicide, are dressed entirely traditionally for the genre, and all sound similar to these delicately ignorant ears. I have drunken enough to appreciate their sets, in the same way that I can still stay in a pub if there's a football match on the TV, but it's safe to assume I will not be converting to the heavy metal cause. Still, even I can tell that Ackercocke have honed their sound to a far greater degree than these other bands, as well as honing their appearance. I hereby approve of Ackercocke. Bet they're pleased.

Despite this alien outing, some normal Dickon Edwards things still happen. At one point, a girl with a foreign accent asks to take my photo. We retire to a corridor and it becomes an impromptu Dickon Edwards photo shoot. I have no idea who she is, and she refuses to tell me what the photos are for. This is all in order.

Also, despite the type of occasion, the darkness, the size of the venue and the immense crowd, I still manage to bump into people who know me, albeit whom I haven't seen for some years. Mr Matt Platts, of the band Nightnurse, who is currently performing in a group called <a href="http://www.twisted.org.uk/interlock/standard/standardframe.htm">Interlock.</a> Also, Mr Jonathan Selzer, a music writer who started out interviewing the likes of Talulah Gosh before converting to the heavy metal cause. He now writes for magazines like Terrorizer.

Mr Selzer is at first surprised by my connection to bands like Ackercocke and Nightnurse, but then remarks on how one could play Six Degrees Of Dickon Edwards. My nature is to wander alone like a powdered peripatetic, in and out of scenes and social circles without ever settling down. In this aspect, I am like the 80s TV dog, The Littlest Hobo. In only this aspect.

A few days later. In Archway, an old man with a walking stick notices me as I pass and stares. I am wearing my glasses. A new one for the book:

"Cheer up – you look like Michael Caine."

It's true that the more I do nothing, the more I do nothing. John Mortimer's excellent new book, "Where There's A Will", points out that writing calls down writing. It's important to write something – anything – rather than nothing. A fear of making substandard diary entries has rather put me off doing any entries at all. The thing is, I do rather have a reputation as a Minor Celebrity Diarist, and the more I think about that, the less I approach my keyboard.

However, I have now found a treatment for apathy. Whenever my brain says "I can't be bothered to write a diary entry", I now convince it instead that "I can't be bothered <i>not</i> to write a diary entry". Doing nothing at all can be such hard work.

Thankfully I've taken notes whenever anything vaguely interesting has occurred to me, and will now go about clearing the backlog of memories.

Removal of distractions helps. I was spending long hours playing the only computer game I've ever enjoyed – Age Of Empires. The solution was simple. I threw the game away. My epic clearing out of possessions on EBAY is nearing conclusion, too. Lately, I've discovered that it's almost impossible to get anyone to buy a signed Divine Comedy album for £4. I had to resort to relisting the thing for another ten days. O, Mr Hannon, victim of the vagaries and vicissitudes of pop fashion. This is what happens when you insist on dismissing your suited persona as taking some kind of Mike Flowers Pops shilling, in favour of dressing down and employing the Radiohead Producer. Dickonist Rule Number One – Never, Ever, Try To Fit In.

Meanwhile a Ruthie Henshall CD went for £101, the most I've ever received for a single item. Mr Lloyd-Webber, who is richer than any rock or pop musician, is quite right – the real money lies in musical theatre. Musicals will always win in the end. They carry a connotation of accessibility, of Proper Entertainment. When Mr Bush was interviewed by Mr Frost about coming to London, the first thing he remarked about his previous trip there, was that he had gone to see "Cats". Whatever one thinks about the work of Mr Lloyd-Webber, becoming a Tourist Attraction can never be dismissed.

Mr Blaine knew this too. If he <i>hadn't</i> wanted to be a Tourist Attraction, he could have conducted his little starvation show in a room on a webcam, or in a TV studio. Or he could have chosen Ipswich, Romford or Hull in which to have his perspex cell suspended in the air. But no, he chose the heart of London, just by Tower Bridge. People came to watch, even if they disapproved. This, then, is the ultimate aim of the Dickonist – to become a tourist attraction. Perhaps I should apply to stand on the spare plinth at Trafalgar Square for a while, now that Mayor Livingstone has had all the pigeons deported. Though unlike Mr Blaine, I would insist on a dressing room in which to recharge my appearance every now and then.

Such a stunt isn't even particularly original. I'm reminded of an local anecdote concerning the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. While a schoolboy in Highgate, he once bet a fellow pupil that he could survive the longer without taking any liquids. He won after a few days, by which time his tongue had turned black.

Also, in the mid 90s, I went to see the actress Tilda Swinton sleeping in a transparent box in the Serpentine Gallery. She remained as still as the glass around her, and was there for a week. This was intended as Art. Mr Blaine simply added tourism to the equation. He suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous paintballs, but came away rich in the currency of Cable TV Sponsorship, and in the Currency of Attention. The latter being by which all things are truly bought and sold.

Watching TV and listening to music has proven less of a distraction too, thanks to my continued waning of blanket enthusiasm in both mediums. I've found that if anything is My Sort Of Thing, someone somewhere will alert me to it. Whether it's The Hidden Cameras (music), or Curb Your Enthusiasm (TV), or I Capture The Castle (film), or even clothes – I'm writing this while wearing a pair of two-tone bowling shoes chosen for me by Mr Chipping. All these things came to me via others. Other people do tend to know Dickon Edwards as well as, or even better than, myself. Keeping In Touch is no longer necessary. Anything that might matter to me will come to me. If I am ignorant on any particular topic, it's more often than not something people wouldn't expect me to know much about, like Justin Timberlake, text messaging, or bungy-jumping. In these instances, I give the Dickon Edwards take. That is what people expect, and we both go away happy.

To this end, I have been recruited by Plan B Magazine to cover the besuited Black Metal band Ackercocke this weekend.

Before I forget, I should alert my readers to two new instances of my attention-grabbing on the Web.

Firstly, Secret Crush Records of New York is the first record label to be named after a Dickon Edwards song, as far as I'm aware. I am immensely flattered. If that weren't enough, the label's website currently has a recent photo of me on the front page: http://www.secretcrushrecords.com/

Secondly, there's a new lengthy interview with me at The Mind's Construction website: http://www.geocities.com/themindsconstruction/ It's the most personal interview I've ever given. And it's accompanied by a few nice photos of me in Highgate Wood.

My thanks to them, and to you, for the attention. My apologies for the hiatus. But I am back.

Apologies for the lack of recent entries. Normal service will be resumed shortly, when I shall tackle the backlog of matters waiting to be written about.

In the meantime, here is an announcement of my next public appearance.

This Friday November 21st, I shall be guest DJ at the gently legendary London club, How Does It Feel To Be Loved.

This takes place at the Buffalo Bar, beneath The Famous Cock Tavern, next to Highbury & Islington tube station.

The club runs from 9pm to 2am, with my DJ set between 10.30pm and midnight.

I shall be playing lots of 60s girl group gems, sprinkled lightly with 80s indiepop haircut anthems.

Please come if you can. It shall be joy on toast.

More on HDIFTBL here:
http://www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk

Fosca are playing a Strange Fruit event at Bush Hall tomorrow (Sat Nov 1st), supporting Sodastream. Details here:

http://www.bushhallmusic.co.uk/SODA.html

We shall be onstage 9.30pm, off 10.15pm, approximately.

I'm rather excited about performing at this particular venue. Ornate Edwardian plasterwork, cherubs and chandeliers in abundance. I shall forgive it for being in West London.

One for the Tracy Chevalier fans:

Highgate Wood Cafe, Autumn 2003.

Photo by Neil Scott.

Happy Birthday Mr Wilde.

<img src="http://www.fosca.com/PDVD_019.jpg">

<img align=left src="http://www.in-public.com/images/marmalade_sept03.gif"></img>
Two announcements to the curious:

This Friday, my group Fosca are performing at the Buffalo Bar in Highbury Corner. More information at <a href="http://www.fosca.com">www.fosca.com</a>

Also, the <a href="http://www.fosca.com/DICKONphoto.jpg">Sarah Watson portrait</a> of me features in the current issue (#2) of <a href="http://www.marmalademag.com/">Marmalade</a>, a trendy London art & style magazine. The image has been given a two-page spread (pages 86 – 87 if you're in a hurry). Available in Magma (Earlham Street, Covent Garden) and Borders Books. Or <a href="mailto:mail@hotbed.org">email them</a> for mail order details.

I'm also on the cover of another art magazine, yet to appear. Further details when I have them.

I've just found a spare copy of the Orlando album, "Passive Soul". Mint condition, unplayed.

<a href="http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=1057&item=2563128364">It's on Ebay for this week only</a>, starting at 99p as usual. If you know someone who may be interested, now is the time to tell them.

Here's something you don't see every day:

<img align=left src="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/brentford1/misc/jp/02.jpg" width="304" height="404"></img>
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<p>This was taken at Ms Scott's barbecue in the suburbs of Oxford last weekend. No tiresome attempt at irony or any similarly deviant commentary on this apotheosis of Surburbia was in the least intended. However, the comparatively bohemian nature of many of Ms Scott's jolly acquaintances did mean the event couldn't help but feature a few Bloomsbury Set-like elements. Certainly ones that would be uncommon at the kind of barbecue documented in, say, the works of Mr Ayckbourn. Not least my own brief stint at the grill, as pictured.

One criteria of the modern garden barbecue is that a man, ideally the most testosterone-charged of men, should do the cooking, often with an unamusing apron. Rarely a man who looks the way I do. And so Mr Storey considered this, quite rightly, worthy of a photograph.
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<img align=left width="152" height="202" src="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/brentford1/misc/jp/01.jpg"></img>
<p>&nbsp;<p>The gathering was soundtracked by a vintage Dansette-like gramophone that had been wired up to an mp3-playing I-Pod (see photo). Just the kind of dangerous juxtaposition that, it was observed, would have Sapphire and Steel on the scene at once. Thankfully, Time, as far as we were aware, did not "Break Through" at any point.
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<img align=left width="202" height="152" src="http://homepage.ntlworld.com/brentford1/misc/jp/06.jpg"></img>
<p>A further unusual element documented by Mr Storey was this impromptu Study In Malt Loaf by the artist Ms Dennis. "Maltzilla", seen here menacing an innocent teacake, was created at an impressive speed when no one was looking. "Quite a good modelling material, as cakes go," she commented. "Holds together well."

<p><p><br>&nbsp;<p>&nbsp;<p>(with acknowledgements to <lj user=mzdt>)