Wednesday October 10th 2001

My brother rings me and tells me of this rumour going around that the terrorists are “doing” London tomorrow. People being told “Don’t Be In London on Thursday 11th”.

I myself have to be in the City for a few minutes in order to catch the 9.30am Stansted Express from Liverpool Street, then a few hours at the plucky little Essex airport begging Ryan Air staff to let me carry my white suit on the plane with me. “No, it isn’t impregnated with anthrax… and I’m going to Sweden.”

But if I do have to perish tomorrow, O Lord, please take the Stereophonics too. And anyone in Embrace. And Starsailor. And that band who were rehearsing next door to us last Sunday that were doing a 14-minute version of “Knocking On Heaven’s Door”. And anyone wearing a hilarious “Porn Star” t-shirt. And a few music journalists I could mention. I have a little list. No, I have a Very Long List.

I’ve just had my hair cut, so they can say “At Least He Died With No Split Ends”.

Oh well, there’s always reincarnation. If so, I hope reincarnation gives me a miss.

So long, I love you, Keep On,

Dickon x

Wednesday September 26th 2001

While panic grips London, and gas masks are advertised on the Shopping Channel, I too prepare for war.

I go out and buy six month’s worth of peroxide.

Meanwhile, a charity recording of “What’s Going On” is about to be released by Bono and diverse other self-important pop stars, who after much thought have decided that the best way they can help victims of the terrorist attacks is by reminding people they’re famous. I have just heard the record, and, needless to say, it is an atrocity of its own. Haven’t people suffered enough?

And there was I thinking there had been too many three-minute silences of late. I could have done with another one there.

“War is not the answer”, they sing. And immediately Messrs Bush & Blair drop what they’re doing and hang their heads in shame… No, of course they don’t. World leaders have never had their minds changed by music in the past and they’re certainly not going to start now. Least of all by hasty, ill-advised, self-aggrandising charity records.

Natalie Imbruglia is at least honest about the egotistical intentions behind the big “America’s Heroes” benefit telethon that was broadcast on TV recently. She uses her slot on the show to premiere her latest single.

Elsewhere, the Rev Jerry Falwell, friend and influential supporter of Young Mr Bush, appears on an American Christian programme and quickly indentifies the culprits behind the terrorist attacks: “I really believe that the abortionists, the feminists, the gays and lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle… I point the finger in their face and say: ‘You helped this happen’.”

I imagine Mr Bush, being that renowned expert of world geography, subsequently clicking his fingers and threatening to bomb the people of Lesbia if the Lesbianese government doesn’t hand over Osama Bin Lesbian.

Wednesday September 12th 2001

Thousands die in a series of terrorist-related attacks on the US.

And in music news:

“MTV have dropped all their shows for the rest of the week and instead will broadcast videos of “unobtrusive adult orientated hits” such as Dido, Travis and Madonna.”

I walk the streets of North London and people don’t seem to be hanging their heads in collective misery any more than usual. The animal welfare charity subscribers are still out in force on Muswell Hill High Street:

Women With Clipboard (to passers-by): Can you spare a minute? Animal Welfare, can you spare a minute? Excuse me… Can you spare a minute…?

(Dickon passes her, looking the way that he does, not unobtrusive, not orientated to adults)

Woman: Can you spare a – Oh! You’ve put me off now.

Saturday September 8th 2001

After the Manic Street Preachers launched their last album with a concert in Cuba, Fosca are launcing the new EP with a tour of Sweden.

I am reminded of my disappointment at watching the documentary “Our Manics In Havana”, and seeing Nicky Wire dress down for his excursion, eschewing his usual dress and make up. Any fool can wear panstick and drag on an English rock festival stage. Many fools do just that. Surely it’s far more interesting to do it, if you have a fleet of journalists and camera crews to record the occasion, in a country where despite the improvements made in the last ten years, homosexuals and transvestites are still regularly detained by the Cuban police. Dressing down with a bad beard to meet a dictator who once commented approvingly on rural life that “in the countryside, there are no homosexuals”, seems to me a wasted opportunity. Apparently Mr Wire is aware of Cuba’s record on such issues, yet deliberately refused to ‘Stay Beautiful’ in Castro’s presence because “that would be disrespectful” to the dictator. Pity. I will not forgive him.

Sunday July 15th 2001

Two comments from strangers yesterday.

Walking on Archway Road. Young man in baseball cap mutters at me as I pass, finishing with “….batty boy.”

Later, a stranger in a club hisses to me: “You’re one of those that only act gay in order to pull a better class of girl.”

Wednesday July 11th 2001

A beggar sits against a wall in Leicester Square Tube Station, chatting to a tall man who I assume is a passer-by giving him money. I catch a line of the conversation as I walk by:

“So, are we okay for tennis on Tuesday?”

Sitting at a table in a quiet pub in Highgate by myself, nursing a sullen pint. I’m not wearing any make-up. I am “off duty.” Despite this, a man opposite on a bar stool, stares directly at me for ages. I look away. He suddenly shouts at me, “Are you gay?” I say nothing. A pause. “You look it.” Woman next to him says “Shhh.” The pub becomes quiet again.

This sort of thing happens to me all the time. Dickon Edwards: Celebrating Nearly Thirty Years Of Being Out Of Place.

The whole point of me realising that I have this innate talent for Inviting Comment is that I chose to put this talent to good use, to get it to work for me rather than the other way round. I look like that Dickon man because I am that Dickon man. Somebody has to be. Hence the Fosca lyrics: one one level they are adverts for my own persona, explanations as to who I am and why I am who I am. The records are out there now, and there will be more. The work has only begun. I have too much unfinished business with this world. If only for the sake of providing an answer to strange men in Highgate pubs.

Awake from a dream which, unusually for me, I recall vividly. I am quietly ejected from a shop via the staff entrance, on account of “ruining it for the other customers” and “lowering the tone”.

The shop is Woolworths.

Thursday April 26th 2001

I firmly maintain that a person’s possessions should reach a designated limit. This is one of the reasons I chose to live in one room. So when I have to find space on my crammed shelves for recently purchased records, rather than finding new storage space, I have to remove an equal amount of old records and dispose of them in a uncontrolled environment. Record and Tape Exchange, Camden Town branch if I’m feeling hungry. Local charity shops if I’m not.

Today I can’t make my mind out which CDs to dispose of, enema fashion, to make room for some newly-procured Monochrome Set albums. So I eject all those knowingly recorded by lead singers with beards. It seems as good a reason as any. Out goes everything by Shack and Nirvana and the last Scritti Politti album. Serves them bloody well right.

I spend Easter staying with my brother Tom’s family, and their over-excited Pomeranian, Silver, at his home in Ipswich. On a hungover journey to the nearest grocer’s shop, Tom, who like me feels nervous and vulnerable in shopping environments, forever falls foul of the herd instinct in others. We both loathe being in queues, believing that the unobserved shopping life is the only kind worth living. To this end, our inclination requires us to gather our goods as quickly as possible, but then wait and pretend to browse futher, while keeping an eye on the counter until it’s definitely free, preferably with the shop empty as well.

Only then, of course, as soon as we approach the till, a huge queue IMMEDIATELY forms behind us, seemingly from nowhere. “There’s that Edwards boy,” think all other shoppers within a square mile. “Quick, now’s our chance to make him feel even more nervous. Let us instantly fill the shop with a intimidating queue behind him, and sigh loudly with umbrage as he rummages desperately through his bag for that fiver he could have sworn he had on leaving the house. Let his debit card refuse to swipe in public view! Let us tut in choral unison as his cheque book pen runs out halfway through!

Tom’s ordeal on this particular occasion is newly compounded by cries from a gang of nattering Suffolk old ladies, who seem to spend their days loitering by cash registers, conspiring with assistants and passing judgement on the inconvenienced convenience-store shopper. “OOOOH…” cackle the cake-hatted elderly hooligans, as Tom’s blushes reach levels of puce to rival those of a vicar caught with his hand up a chorister’s cassock. “DUNNEE LOOK LIKE JAMIE OLIVURRRR?”

My brother’s features, it has to be said, do indeed vaguely resemble those of the UK’s most famous Mockney TV chef, though I can thankfully report he doesn’t share Mr Oliver’s uncommonly fat tongue.

Tom’s “look” may accidentally approximate this current fashion amongst trendy young media things to wear their hair in a permanently spiky, uncombed, “just-got-out-of-bed” manner, but the reason for him is usually because he HAS just gotten out of bed.

High street chemists currently stock a new type of hair wax for this very purpose. The jar actually reads “for that Just Got Up look”.

“Who would buy that?” says Taylor. “The whole point of dishevelled, slept-on hair is that it remains exactly like that all day naturally.”

Saturday February 10th 2001

I’m feeling terribly alone. I seem to be the only person in the UK with no stand to take on Eminem. For the simple reason that his work is rap music, and I’m not a fan of rap music full stop. You’ll be amazed to hear. In much the same way as I don’t care for heavy metal. To me, rap is a genre entirely based on a fixed style of cock-of-the-walk macho attitude and rulebook aggression; of employing a regimented, limited set of hand movements at the audience; of wearing ugly shapeless clothes and backwards baseball caps; of swearing constantly (while only using US rap-approved statutory swear words) and of raising one’s middle finger and thinking such a pose is a serious statement of defiance, rather than a quick, surefire way of selling records to the “Kevin and Perry” set, the fat, ruddy-faced fourteen year olds in tatty black t-shirts down the front of the moshpit at Reading Festival. Eminem, for all his supposed originality, still works firmly from this rap rulebook, including the comedy middle finger part, and as a result can find no place in my meek and gentle heart. I’m sure he’s upset about that. Though I do prefer his videos to, say, Westlife’s, if forced at gunpoint to admit it.

I have no idea what Eminem really thinks, I don’t know him. So, actual music aside, I don’t have an opinion on whether he’s okay to like or not. Unlike everyone else. What amuses me is the hilarious rash of embarrassing bleatings by defensive Eminem apologists, speaking on behalf of someone they’ve never even met. Weird. You don’t have to apologise for liking Eminem. You don’t have to apologise for liking any music. Just enjoy it, for goodness’ sake, if you must, and let any implications take care of themselves. No one will die because of what music you listen to. God knows, if I had to defend my love of “High Fidelity” by the Kids From Fame…