"Dear George, Remember: no man is a failure who has friends."

And so, to all those LJ users who've added me as their Friend, I've finally returned the compliment. Mainly because I'm curious as to how you're all spending the festive season. All 64 of you. Whew! Let's see how long I last. Though I know that's peanuts for some LJ users who have HUNDREDS of Friends. How do you get the time to read all those diaries?

Anyway, thanks for reading me. I'll do my best to read you.

From the BBC News site's <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/showbiz/2567097.stm">list of celeb quotes of the year</a>:

"I think that if you're 30 and not thinking about marriage and kids, you're immature." Ben Affleck.

Happy New Year to all the blissfully immature out there…!

Was going to go out last night, but felt a bit fragile and instead plumped for staying in and watching a TV movie called "No Night Is Too Long" on BBC2.

How was it? Ruth Rendall (as Barbara Vine) adaptation. Bisexual murder thriller. Very Patricia Highsmith (Talented Mr Ripley, Strangers On A Train etc). Featuring Lee Williams, the supernaturally pretty young man on the sleeve of Suede's "Coming Up" album. Plus Marc Warren, who resembles a young Malcolm McDowell with hints of Niles Crane with better hair. Lots of gratuitous boy-on-boy action.

I rather enjoyed it.

As I look back over these past 12 months, I know that 2002 has been a curious year for me.

I converted my long-running diary to one of those "blogs", or rather a LiveJournal, and as a result have written more and been less lazy in my diary entries than before. The Comments feature has proven to be a lot of fun, and reminds me that as I type these entries, not only are people reading them, but they feel the need to respond publicly as well. Only connect, EM Forster said, and that old closeted queen would, I like to think, have approved of LiveJournal and the Internet. So, by converting my diary to this more interactive format, it's true I feel a lot less alone than I did a year ago.

With my band Fosca, we recruited the talented multi-instrumentalist Kate Dornan and made our sound a little more live, a little less programmed than before. We played one concert in London once every calendar month, plus a festival in Leeds and a club in Chelmsford, and released a new single and a 2nd album. I'm not sure that the 2nd album was received less well than the 1st or not. It depends on your criteria. John Peel didn't play it. No one reviewed it in the press apart from Simon Price in the Independent, bless him . We didn't get invited on a Swedish tour this time. Our proposed December tour of the US fell through. But then again, we've broken even on the costs and people have continued to pay to see us or buy our CDs. So the "dumper" doesn't quite beckon yet.

For my part, I remain extremely proud of the album, and nominate "Rude Esperanto" as the best song I've written to date in any of my bands. It's always a cliche when writers say their favourite own work is their latest, but it's a true cliche in my case.

2002 found me losing interest in the current pop music scene more and more, and taking more interest in the comedy and spoken word "scenes", for want of a better word. My grumblings about the NME were made entirely redundant when I realised that the publication's target market is 18-24 year-olds. And yet I still feel too young for the likes of Mojo, and I'm still not sure if I'll EVER be old enough for them.

But I'm made more aware that if you have something to say, wrapping it in music is all very well, but there's the problem that many people simply won't like the attendant musical style, or your performance. And despite my love of the song as a concise method of communication, I can't help thinking that it's about time I tried other formats. I'm not saying I'm about to write The Novel, but I do want to try something else.

As ever, I have taken more comfort in cosmetics and hair bleaching products than in music. But I'd never dare to say I'm shunning Real Life. I'm constantly excited in meeting people, old and young, old acquaintances and new, and hold true to that Quentin Crisp adage that if we find a person who is telling the truth about themselves boring, it is ourselves we are criticising.

More than ever before, I have found that the year has brought home to me the truth that the vast majority of immediate concerns and worries are worthless, and that it's important to worry less and live more, whether in real life or on the Net. It's all living.

In 2003, I have some ideas for new projects that I hope to see fruition, and will report on them as they unfold. All I want to do is contribute to the world what I can give more than anyone else, and contribute it to the best of my abilities. Whether that's writing, recording, or just standing in London nightclubs looking the way I do and imparting my broken wisdom to those who seek it, it's all good.

Dickon Edwards
Highgate, London N6

I like to spend Christmas alone. My parents are very understanding and allow me to do this. What happens is that they come down from Suffolk to London a few days before Christmas Eve, this year it was in the cafe by the side of Somerset House Ice Rink, and we exchange cards, presents, and so on. Then I spend the festive period here in Highgate by myself. On the 25th I phone my parents, then I go off to feed the ducks in Waterlow Park.

I think that if you're no longer a child, or don't have children, Christmas can be incredibly depressing. I remember the Christmas when I realised my childhood was over. I cried for hours. So now I take advantage of the quietness of the season, and so deliberately choose to take the Garbo option. I want to be alone. To take stock of where I've been, and where I'm going. If anywhere. To think about life. To think about my life.

Today, I had a small adventure. On Robert Elms' BBC London radio show, he announced that he'd forgotten to bring in his copy of the experimental composer Gavin Bryars' "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet", the version with Tom Waits, with which Mr Elms signs off every Christmas Eve. It's an incredibly moving piece based around a sound loop of a (now dead) homeless but unusually teetotal tramp circa 1971 who would walk around the Elephant & Castle area singing the same song to himself over and over again:

<i>"Jesus' blood never failed me yet
Never failed me yet
Jesus' blood never failed me yet
There's one thing I know
For he loves me so
Jesus' blood never failed me yet
Never failed me yet
Jesus' blood never failed me yet
There's one thing I know
For he loves me so…"</i>

From Mr Bryars' own sleeve notes: " I copied the loop onto a continuous reel of tape, thinking about perhaps adding an orchestrated accompaniment to this. The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping."

On the recording, the loop fills up the entire CD (75 minutes or so), gradually adding instruments one by one until a full orchestra is playing along. Then Tom Waits appears and sings along with the tramp in his own fashion.

Mr Elms appealed on air for someone to bring in their own copy to the studio. So I got on a tube and went to BBC London in Marylebone High Street. I mentioned to the producers that I'd been to the radio station before, when Orlando performed in session for Mr Elms when it used to be called GLR. I don't think they were that interested or impressed with this information, but they were grateful for the CD and my mercy dash, and gave me a bottle of beer. And I got to go on air for a few seconds.

Afterwards, I walked around Central London for about an hour, feeling less human than ever, and more like one of those angels from "Wings Of Desire" in my big black coat. Feeling apart from it all. Alone at Christmas, yet surrounded by people. Staring at them all as I go by, wondering about their lives. Walking through Bond Street, Oxford Street, taking a bus to Camden Town to buy a copy of "Monsiur de Phocas" by Jean Lorrain, as recommended by Alice ( <lj user=fadedglamour>) to me at Trash last night. Saying hello to Andy R ( <lj user=andypop>) there, shortly before he goes off to see his own daughter in Dorset. I buy some bleach at Boots with which to do my roots, then I go to Camden Odeon for my customary Christmas Eve film. This year, "Dirty Pretty Things", a movie about desperate illegal immigrants surviving in London. I enjoyed it, but there were a few aspects of the film where I found myself thinking I could have done a better job of the screenplay myself. I never used to think this before. Perhaps this means I'm becoming more of a writer. More likely, it probably just means I <i>think</i> I'm becoming more of a writer.

As I write this, BBC2 are showing a documentary about how people spent Christmas during World War II. So, a day where I'm reminded of the homeless, the refugees, and those living in more precarious times of old. Doubtless to add, with all my neuroses, lack of money, and lack of direction in my life, I do realise just how lucky I am tonight. I am safe, and warm, and sheltered, and watered, and fed. And in blissful solitude in lovely leafy Highgate. And I can do whatever I want. Or nothing at all. And I am extremely grateful.

Some might say it's a bit sad, even Scrooge-like, to prefer to spend Christmas alone, and to have no one to snuggle under the mistletoe with. Well, in that case, let this diary entry be my virtual kiss to you all. Or a virtual polite handshake, if that's what you'd prefer. MWAH!

A Very Merry Christmas to you all.

At the Madness concert last night, the support act was a selection of classic pop videos projected onto a screen (possibly because it's difficult to bottle-off a projection). The Jam, Ian Dury, Blondie, Specials, The Clash ("London Calling").

For the first time, I finally "get" The Clash and enjoy the video immensely. Mick Jones wearing a nifty suit with buttonhole.

Get home to discover Joe Strummer is dead:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/music/2600669.stm

The Fosca website appears to be down at the moment due to a server problem at their end. Apologies.

While you are waiting for them to fix the wire, here's a picture of the Holy Trinity in Lego. God The Son, God The Father, and God The Holy Ghost.

Merry Christmas!

<img src="http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/revbps/bricktestament/merchandise/holy_trinity_small.jpg"></img>

I'm currently reading "The Smiths – Songs That Changed Your Life" by Simon Goddard. It's a real anorak affair, providing all the minutiae details and anecdotes behind every recording by the band. Which suits me fine.

However, I could well do without the author's apparent insistence on imposing his own descriptions of the records upon the reader. Particularly when they're like this, from the section on "Hand In Glove":

"…[Morrissey's] inimitable voice trembling upon each syllable with the force of a dormant human volcano suddenly erupting in a white-hot supernova of embryonic passion."

That's surely a contender for some kind of award, akin to those Bad Sex awards. Purplest Prose Awards? Dancing Badly About Architecture Awards?

Bad writing aside, it's also entirely redundant, as the book's target market is, by definition, Smiths obsessives. All of whom I can imagine reading the book, then rising as one and addressing Mr Goddard:

"You don't have to TELL us what the songs sound like. We KNOW what the songs sound like. We are SMITHS FANS. DO YOU SEE?"

In Iran, you can be <a href="http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=oddlyEnoughNews&storyID=1928372">arrested for cutting girls' hair short</a>.

Here's the reasoning behind my recent DJ set at Stay Beautiful.

1) Xanadu – Olivia Newton-John & ELO

I approached the compiling of my DJ set as if it were to be a strictly unique event. So I decided to make my selection a kind of autobiography, with each song taking me back to memorable points in my life, with the emphasis on my Orlando life. Just like Marcel Proust. If he was a DJ. For the weeks leading up to the night in question, I changed most of my intended song choices over and over again. However, this one was planned as my opening song regardless. I associate it with living in a bedsit with a brown carpet, above a carpenter's shop in Bristol's Montpelier Road circa 1993, when I was first thinking of starting a band called Orlando. I'd purchased a copy of Olivia's Greatest Hits from a charity shop after seeing the 1980 rollerdisco cult classic "Xanadu" on TV for the first time ("Let's build the ultimate nightclub right here! And call it Stay B-I mean, Xanadu!"). It's a song that I simply have never grown tired of hearing. I must have played it hundreds of times while living in Bristol and thinking of asking this boy I'd met at Sarah Records gigs called Tim to sing in my band. I still play it at least once a day now. It's brimming with unabashed pop joy and never fails to cheer me up. I'm quite partial to ELO's Phil-Spector-If-He-Was-British-And-Bearded-And-Called-Jeff hits in general, but this has the added appeal of Olivia Newton-John at her dizzying, helium-angel, beard-cancelling best, plus Krautrock synths, AND Abba-like piano hooks. It even has the nerve to throw in the bassline off The Four Tops "I Can't Help Myself", and the drum break off The Ronettes' "Be My Baby" at one point. The choice was even more apt, given that getting to Stay Beautiful that night was akin to searching for a lost Xanadu in itself, what with all the unpleasant weather and Kafka-esque bus diversions.

2) Could It Be Magic – Take That

Remember Robbie Williams this way. He's on lead vocals for this one. Tim and I were obsessed with Take That when they were going. We even spent a February afternoon in 1995 standing outside Alexandra Palace in the snow, freezing to death, trying to see into the Brit Awards. The trouble with Boyzone and all the subsequent UK boybands is that they forget Take That actually had an iota of personality, danced about and upped the homoerotic ante. With Westlife and their ilk you just get a bunch of granny-pleasing clones sitting on stools.

3) Handsome Devil – The Smiths

The only song I played due to a few people's email requests, asking for something by Lord Moz. After much hesitation over which of the many, many possible Smiths and Moz solo tunes to plump for, I once again took the Proust angle and went for this, which I associate with indie discos in Ipswich, having just left home in 1990. I moved into a £26 a week bedsit off the ring road, sharing the kitchen and living room with two bearded men in their 30s, one a quiet divorcee who'd lost the house to his wife, the other a fat man who would come home drunk and rip the front door off its hinges if he forgot his key. The only music I had was literally two cassettes. And they were both The Smiths. Taped off vinyl from Ipswich Library. Monday night at Hollywoods there was Indie Night, and "Handsome Devil" was a regular floor-filler. Despite the fact that Mr M's vocals are far too low in the mix. "There's more to life than books you know, but not much more". Still holds true. More than ever now, as I'm far more interested in dead authors than the current pop scene. Still, that Girls Aloud song (which Tim played) is quite pleasant. He said grudgingly.

4) Digital Love – Daft Punk

Dickon plays something relatively new shock! Even though it's based on a sample from a hoary old Supertramp record or something like that. And, yes, it does sound like The Buggles. But I was slain by its beauty when I first heard it round Tim Baxendale's last year. And the cute, "Battle Of The Planets"-style video helped. As you know, I've always felt more like a character in a Japanese animation than a real person. It was also the song I most enjoyed at the 2001 Stay Beautiful Christmas Party. When they played it I was the happiest I'd been all through that miserable season, second only to Channel 5 showing "O Lucky Man!" at 3am on Christmas Eve when I couldn't sleep. So there's the Proustian bit. Does anyone know if the single version is any different? I only have the album version.

5) Doctor's Orders – Carol Douglas

For me, this is the most danceable 70s disco record ever. And this is the one that got the complaints. I followed Tim playing Nick Cave's "Deanna" with it, and some of the punters were rather displeased with me, as if Nick Cave is The Anti-Disco. What rot. I may not know much about Nick Cave, but I do know he is a man who performs lectures about Kylie's "I Should Be So Lucky", so he's hardly the rockist incarnate. Quite apt that it was deemed the most offensive record of my set, seeing that it accompanies the opening credits song of "The Last Days Of Disco", a film with includes that famous footage of a crate of disco records being blown up on a US football pitch, at the height of the "DISCO SUCKS" movement over there. How interesting that it wasn't punk rock that really offended conservative Americans, it was disco. Proustian bit: another thing that brought Tim and I together was a shared love of the films of Whit Stillman. Mr Stillman doesn't seem to have done much since "The Last Days…" though, the film which brought "Doctor's Orders" to my attention.

6) He's Frank (Slight Return) – The Monochrome Set

"Play some rock", they said, so I put this one on. Like "Doctor's Orders", I like to think that even if you don't recognise the song, it's danceable enough to win you over. This is a 1979 UK post-punk classic that fits nicely alongside all those trendy new US-style garage bands called The Somethings that The Kids are into at the moment. Though typically, Bid's lyrics are extremely English in that arch and Wildean fop way (years before The Divine Comedy, of course): "He's got precious youth / But forsaken, forsooth / And now the shine grows dim / Change tradition for whim / Who'll save him from being a man / Not me". The Monochrome Set were also favourites with the young Morrissey, and it's not difficult to see why. The singer Bid was barely out of school when he wrote this. Currently he makes wonderful lit-pop albums under the name of Scarlet's Well, using vocalists from the North London Collegiate For Girls. The art teacher there is also the Monochrome Set's guitarist. I wonder if any of the students were at Stay Beautiful? It must be odd going to a club where they play punk rock records made by your art teacher. Mind you, Bid went to school with Adam Ant. Imagine that. Proustian bit: when Fosca played on a boat in Paris last year, the gig was part of a club night where they played this song, and I was amazed how good it sounded on the dancefloor.

7) Give Him A Great Big Kiss – The Shangri-Las

I followed Tim playing the Girls Aloud song with this. Girl groups now and then, do you see? Compare and contrast. Oh all right, don't, then. This song is just faultless and irresistible. If you don't like it, then frankly you are a joyless husk of no woman born. No offence. No, actually, offence. I've heard "The Leader Of The Pack" too many times, but can never get tired of this one. Proustian bit: shortly after I left Orlando, I sat at home for weeks wondering what to do with my life, watching videos of Doctor Who with the sound turned off and The Shangri-Las playing on the stereo in Repeat Mode. It improved the Sylvester McCoy ones no end.

8) Better The Devil You Know – Kylie Minogue

Proustian bit: Another thing that brought Tim and I together, and seemed to separate us from the rest of our so-called peers, was our serious love of Stock Aitken Waterman records. We would spend many a night at G.A.Y. in Charing Cross Road dancing our legs down to the ground to those records. I could have played "The Harder I Try" by Brother Beyond, but I guessed people at Stay Beautiful might tar and feather me just that little bit less if I went with this one. I guessed right, and walked home with my legs intact. It's got a real clarion-call intro, too. So there you go. My advice to DJs. If in doubt, slam on this record.

9) Beautiful Stranger – Madonna

Proust bit: my last proper job was working at Kenwood House up on Hampstead Heath. If I had to get a job, I figured, it might as well be somewhere where I was surrounded by beautiful paintings in a beautiful house within walking distance of my room. This Madonna song was constantly on the radio that summer, and whenever I would go for my lunchbreak by the outhouse courtyard, the workmen there would be sawing away at planks of wood with this playing on their portable tranny. It's that old Jerome K Jerome quote: I love work, I could watch it all day long. He didn't stipulate that it's even better if the work in question is manual labour carried out by muscular extras from Spartacus with arms like pistons. But he should have done. Before I played this, Tim asked me if he should play Shakira or Pulp's "Mis-Shapes." I said Pulp. So he put on Shakira. My plan worked.