Thursday February 17th 2000

I spend Valentine’s Day 2000 in a cramped van full of tired Spearmint types, traipsing across Europe. It’s not terribly romantic or glamourous, the touring life at the lowest, and necessarily most economical level. No one gets to see any of the three Scandinavian countries the band is touring in apart from the view from the tourbus window. All spare time is taken up driving from venue to venue: the concerts are spaced far apart and there is no day off.

My one abiding memory of travelling to, from, and within Scandinavia: there is a branch of McDonald’s everywhere you look.

One girl comments, after the sold-out show in Stockholm, “It’s such a shame you were all so tired… I mean, people PAID…” Despite her words, she is smiling in a friendly, sincerely approachable fashion.

The Swedish, on evidence of a week spent in their country, tend to say what they think with a lack of tact that never fails to startle. Having gone to the trouble of learning technical fluency in English, it appears that incorporating the language’s normally attendant and essential attributes such as tact, diplomacy, euphemism, politeness and manners of any sort is overdoing it.

Perhaps this would go some way to explain that, of all the people who have attempted to chat me up, most of them have been Swedish girls. In Camden, usually.

In Stockholm, I meet up with Rory, Linda, Simon and Mel, people I’ve known from London gigs and house parties who by coincidence are visiting the Swedish capital on the very day I play a concert there. I am …. very tired. They invite me out to a club elsewhere, but there’s no time. We have to do an overnight drive to Malmo for the next day. Still, I’ve brought my Abba video with me to watch on the bus. And there’s a nice picture of me with Spearmint on the cover of a Swedish newspaper’s weekend supplement. With my newly-shorn haircut. The blond has gone for now, in order to let my hair breathe a little after two years of solid punishment. It is the first time my hair has been like this since the photo shoot for the Orlando album sleeve. I look … normal. Which is, of course, extremely misleading. So the make-up goes on even thicker than before.

I am approached only once on this little tour: by a boy in Malmo who is a fan of the 1995 Shelley single. He has not heard of Orlando. I get back to find Tim Chipping has emailed me the URL of a particularly articulate review of the same record, on a webzine. It all augurs strangely for Fosca’s imminent appearance on the record label that descended from Shelley’s label, Sarah: Shinkansen.

We are currently preparing to record the debut album “On Earth To Make The Numbers Up”, with Ian Catt, producer of Trembling Blue Stars and St Etienne. Alex Sharkey, once of the Sarah band Brighter, is also involved. And Fosca play their next concert supporting Trembling Blue Stars on Thursday, March 23rd, 8pm, at The Spitz Club, Old Spitalfields Market, 109 Commercial Street, London E1 (Aldgate East or Liverpool Street tube).

Discussions on the new Fosca songs. Question: is it possible to make a modern dance pop song with (deliberately, naturally) soulless male vocals and not make it resemble New Order? “This above all, to thine ownself be true…”

People keep inviting me out, but I keep not going. I had to spend the Christmas and New Year period in Bildeston, with my parents, away from it all.

My New Year’s Resolution: Read fewer Greta Garbo biographies.

Go to see “Dogma” at the new Ipswich multiplex, by the big McDonalds. Disappointed. Would have made a better comic book than a film.

The fuss over the Government’s plans to repeal Section 28 depresses me immensely, particularly the fact that the House of Lords have just bounced the bill back at them. And websites like this one.

Apart from the fact that the Section is nothing short of legalised bigotry, anyone who has ever been a schoolchild knows full well how cruel kids can be to each other, and how much the word “gay” is used as a term of abuse, of humiliation and of intimidation. Anyone who, like me, finds themself today surrounded by schoolkids simply by accidentally catching a bus in North London between 4 and 5pm, knows that despite that post-AIDS and post-Thatcher, things have changed very little in the trials of the playground:

“Urgh – you don’t like football… you must be gay.”

and, of course, the classic:

“Urgh – you hang around with girls… you must be gay.”

Schools, private and public, are by nature homophobic: it’s the default sentiment whenever you shove a group of disparate kids who just happen to live in the same area together. The scrapping of Section 28 is not nearly enough: it should be replaced by active education in sexuality and toleration from the off.

Thank god we only have to survive school at the beginning of our lives, because there’s no way we’d survive it any later.

Saturday November 27th 1999

Six days before I finally get to meet Quentin Crisp, and he must have heard I was coming, because he ups and dies. The easiest way out of being in the same room as me. Not to mention the easiest way out of Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

Kept from many of the front pages by Jeffrey Archer’s troubles, The Guardian manages, in time-honoured fashion, to get all the dates mixed up in its little piece, saying he moved to New York in 1972…. Even the Pink Paper consigns him to page 3.

I’m happy that Quentin has finally embraced Death, “the only friend” he spoke of meeting for so long. I just wish he could have postponed the meeting for just one more week. So he could embrace this friend first.

There’s people I’ve admired whom I’ve never actually wanted to meet. I’ve been in the same room (as opposed to concert venue) as, say, the Spice Girls, Laurie Anderson, Ivor Cutler and Lou Reed, but I’ve not wanted to ask them anything in particular. With Quentin there was so much to ask, and yet I’d had his phone number in my book for years, between Taylor Parkes and my dentist. I should call them more often, too.

I’m hoping they’ll now reprint his many out-of-print and never-published books like “Love Made Easy”, but I’m not holding my breath.

The Spearmint job has so far taken me to many wonderful places I’ve never been to before: Tokyo, Amsterdam, Middlesborough…

The flight to Japan is ardous, stressful (ten hours in economy class, cramped seats, fruitless attempts at sleep, tempers frayed) and delay-strewn. But the rest of the trip is an absolute joy. In Tokyo, we all go off to Club Pop It!, where the walls are covered with Spearmint sleeves and posters, and we are all but mobbed as we go in. I’ve never signed so many autographs in my life, and not just as a Spearmint member: I am handed several Orlando records to put my inky scribble on. Turns out they often play “Some Day Soon” there, and they do so on the night I am there, following it up with McCarthy’s “The Well of Loneliness”, Haircut 100’s “Favourite Shirts” and Aztec Camera’s “Boys Wonder”. I sign the back of someone’s mobile phone.

After one in a long series of TV and radio station idents (“Hi, We’re Spearmint, and you’re listening to….”), one interviewer offers us some dried, salted prunes packaged like boiled sweets, which we accept graciously if gingerly. Ronan the drummer stands there chewing, then after a while says, “Does it get any better?” This becomes my personal motto for the whole tour (UK included), sometimes said optimistically in the face of despair (or Hastings), sometimes joyously amid the surreal scenes of pop-fandom in Japan. People waiting outside the hotels and venues, Jemina the sound engineer having to drag us away from the Nth autograph or photo so we can all actually go and get something to eat. In Japan, Spearmint are as big as Catatonia and Supergrass. Being bigger in Japan, it’s an old cliche. But it’s a nice cliche.

At Osaka’s Quattro Club, the dressing room walls are covered in the usual band graffiti, but this time going back for the best part of a decade. On the other side of the world I realise I am standing on the same bit of stage as Charley must have when Gay Dad played there the month before. Not to mention the Manics…. in 1992. There’s still some of Richey’s and Nicky’s graffiti there… “I HATE NEDS ATOMIC DUSTBIN”… and from Carter USM: “GERIATRIC TERRORISTS”…

One morning Spearmint play a special acoustic instore at SYFT Records in Osaka, which reminds me of Rough Trade Records in Covent Garden. The band play without microphones, just acoustic guitars, glockenspiel and melodica. They stand up at one end of the shop, the audience are seated on the floor. I get to introduce each song. Afterwards Shirley describes it as a school assembly hosted by Kenneth Williams. I buy the Girlfrendo album on vinyl before leaving. Contrary to what I’d previously thought, vinyl is still very popular in Japan.

One fan gives me a heartfelt letter comparing me to Rimbaud. It comes with a Hello Kitty plectrum. And a portable ashtray that goes round your neck like a Jim’ll Fix It medal. In Japan, cigarettes are £1.25 a packet. There’s a brand called Caster Mild that are particularly nice.

The 24 hour convenience store nearest our Tokyo hotel stocks hair bleach for men. It’s called Gatsby. The concerts are sponsored by a Gap-type store called XXYY, who give me a brand new cream-coloured suit for nothing. I like Japan.

The Japanese Times has a motto printed on the top of ever issue: “All the News Without Fear or Favour”.

On our night of departure, we go to a proper Karaoke bar, where you book into a hotel-like room for just yourself, your friends, your own singing machine with mics, and all the drink you can phone down for. I get to do The Carpenters’s “I Need To Be In Love” and Abba’s “Thank You For The Music”, dedicated to the rest of Spearmint, naturally. “I’ve been so lucky/ I am the girl with golden hair/I want to sing it out to everybody/ What a joy, what a life, what a chance!”.

In Amsterdam, I meet up with Simon Kehoe, who gives me his non-tourist tour. I am nearly run down by fleets of cyclists at every turn. You’re never quite sure which bit is the pavement: there’s a bike lane, a tram lane and a car lane. In that order. Everyone dresses casually, ie badly. When you go to the pub, you sit at a table and wait to be served. The beer comes in smaller measures, but is far more potent. We stay in a hotel that is a glorified hostel: the TV remote control is attached to the wall by a chain. At the Rijksmuseum, you can buy Rembrandt mousemats.

Next stops with Spearmint:

30.11.99 Paris, Elysee Montmartre
2.12.99 Nantes, Olympic
11.12.99 Stockholm, Fritz Corner
18.12.99 London, Blow Up (The Wag Club)

Before boarding the superfast (and super comfortable) Shinkansen bullet train to Nagoya, I buy a toy version of the train from a platform kiosk, to give to Matt of Shinkansen Records of Lambeth. And clearly it works, because Fosca are now going to release something on the label, hopefully a single and mini-album.

We play the Bull and Gate with a drum machine and Sheila B on cello for the first time. And myself as a proper lead vocalist for the first time, as on one song I don’t play guitar and have just the microphone to hold onto for dear life. I am paler than ever. But it feels right. We’re also looking for a fourth permanent member to join myself, Rachel and Sheila, perhaps on guitar, bass or keyboard programming. Write here if you know of someone suitable.

I spent the last weekend in Chipping Norton, partaking in the vivid, dayglo video for Spearmint’s next single, “We’re Going Out”. Naturally, I hogged the make up chair, despite my role being limited to Strange Postman in Scene 42. We all had to attend special choreography lessons. Samanthi, who stars in the video as Woman Going Out, was especially good, and got to wear all the best frocks. I haven’t seen the results yet, but I have a feeling it will look like the video to Aqua’s “Barbie Girl”. Having been re-written by a deranged Mike Leigh fan on too much coffee.

Nothing surprises me anymore.

Reports of the Paddington rail disaster include surreal accounts of rescue workers deafened by a cacophony of abandoned mobile phones ringing like mad: the inappropriate racket of novelty arpeggio trills and vain personalized “amusing” melody chimes among the carnage and flames giving the tragedy a gut-wrenchingly modern pathos. A sick new homage to The Unknown Commuter: They Couldn’t Get A Good Signal. The real tragedy is, of course, Jilly Cooper escaping unscathed.

Nothing surprises me anymore.

On the platform at Highgate Tube station, the woman standing in front of me tries to throw herself into the path of the incoming train.

The guard who gently leads her away by the arm does so with such nonchalance and sighs of resignation that everyone else on the platform assumes she must be a regular at this sort of thing. Then goes back to talking about how great it is that both escalators are working again.

Nothing surprises me anymore.

Waiting for the train on the way home, a lone man with a Bad Beard and Worse Trainers strolls along the platform singing operatic arias at the top of his lungs. A perfect, trained baritone of a voice.

Nothing surprises me anymore.

On Sunday I am so far the only member of the Spearmint touring party to “get off” with someone during the tour. She is a member of the Coventry and Kenilworth Womens Rugby Club, and a confirmed homosexualist. She tries for a conversion with me, and attempts to use tongues, but I am having none of it, and so neither is she. I think she was the prop forward. And I was her hooker. A David-Sylvian-a-Gram. What is it about lesbians and the lead singer of a cult New Romantic pop group from the early 80s? Answers on the back of a postcard: “Greetings From Radclyffe Hall.”

Nothing surprises me anymore.

The following Thursday I am chatted up by Nigel Planer. I’m too old to be this cute. It’s at the launch for “Oral”, an anthology of poetry and pop lyrics. Amongst all the air-kissing, he introduces me to various performance poets. I never thought I’d hear Neil from The Young Ones say the words “and this is Dickon Edwards”. I enjoy readings by Francesca Beard, Billy Childish, Andrew Copeland and Lucy English, and am scared by a severely inebriated Jock Scot. But then, I am scared by most things. I like the poetry performance scene: it’s quieter than rock concerts, there’s no drum kit sound checks and the performers are more honest. And poets are even bigger tarts than rock bands. Flirts, tarts and decent poetry; what else is there?

When you’re Dickon Edwards, old friends act like strangers (and I don’t blame them). And strangers act like old friends, if my email Inbox is anything to go by. One of the reasons I maintain the look I have is so my friends can spot me in a crowd, and my enemies can see me coming. And if my friends spot me first, which is likely, they can then decide whether they’re in the mood to talk to me or not, and dodge or greet me as appropriate. I never approach them. In case they’ve had a really bad day, and the last thing they want now is the likes of me coming up and talking to them. Like the Tennessee Williams play, I not only depend on the kindness of strangers, I’m also always prepared for the unkindness of friends. Unkindness from enemies is far, far preferable, even comparatively homely and welcome when it happens, because enemies, unlike friends, have at least the decency to be consistent in their judgement. My heart leapt with gratitude recently when my name made it into Melody Maker’s gossip column, thanks to my appearance as a new member of Spearmint, and I was referred to as “narcissistic”, “Warhol-wannabe”, “affected, “has-been”, and “doubly annoying prat”. I had a spring in my step all the way back from the newsagents.

The first Fosca EP, “Nervous, London”, is at last all pressed up with somewhere to go. You can find out how to order it here. It’s CD-only and even has a bar-code on it. None of your seven inch vinyl in clear plastic bags for me, thank you very much. I troll over to Nic Goodchild’s place to relieve her of a few boxes of the record. Piles and piles of little CD-sized Dickons. I’m taking some along to all the Spearmintconcerts to sell to anyone who approaches me in person. Such concerts currently are the following:

13.10.99: Amsterdam VPRO live radio session with audience.
14.10.99: Amsterdam Paradiso Club
16.10.99: London Kings Cross Scala (Scalarama all day festival)
23.10.99: Brighton Lift Club
28.10.99: Flight to Japan: various promotional things over the next week like HMV instore performances
01.11.99: Tokyo Quattro Club
02.11.99: Osaka Quattro Club
03.11.99: Nagoya Quattro Club
04.11.99: Flight back to UK
12.11.99: Middlesborough Arena
13.11.99: Glasgow King Tuts Wah Wah Hut

Then, on Monday 15th November, FOSCA play a rare gig at the Bull and Gate, Kentish Town. I think we clash with Morrissey at the Forum next door. Watch this space.

The tour with Spearmint has had all kinds of Spinal Tap-like set backs: fire alarms in Birmingham meaning we only played three songs before having to pack up, unfinished redecorating at the Coventry venue meaning we turned up like idiots for the soundcheck only to find it cancelled… crushingly inappropriate RAWK support acts like the student band in Portsmouth who did a bad grunge version of “Chocolate Salty Balls” from South Park… The strange ideas some promoters have about the definition of “vegetarian riders” (Thanks, I ate last week…). But there have been wonderful moments too, like the entire set at Dingwalls (that rare thing: a receptive London audience), the Bedford and Manchester shows, the whole band singing Happy Birthday down the phone to keyboardist Simon’s partner’s son… people coming to the Spearmint shows because of me playing in the band… people coming to the Spearmint shows because they like Spearmint, then pleasantly discovering I was there too… the Melody Maker review of the Dingwalls show, giving me a nice name-check… staying with my friends Jason and Sam in Bristol, staying up all night with them and listening to obscure OMD B-sides… wandering round the roughest precincts in Hastings on a Saturday night with a telescopic cigarette holder a la Audrey in “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” … tour bus music including The Fall’s “Shiftwork”, Bowie’s “Hunky Dory” (a big sing along album for Spearmint), The Style Council, lots of 70s disco and 80s pop… the person whose only words to me were “Don’t you dare put anything about me on your bloody website”… Nemo supporting us in Bedford, the only appropriate support band we had… teaching certain members of Spearmint how to correctly use words like “aphorism”… umpteen strangers using the Sylvian comparison as a conversation opener… me invading the girls toilets in many venues to apply even more make up because that’s the only place to find a mirror, putting a nice drug-free twist on the cliched reason people usually go into the opposite sex’s toilets for, ie “powdering their nose”… signing Spearmint records despite not playing on them… signing Spearmint set-lists (which makes more sense)… having my photo taken for a French magazine… and, always best of all, strangers coming up to me after a show and saying they enjoyed it, never mind how token and perfunctory… I will never live within my income of praise… I BELIEVE the darling-you-were-wonderful-isms…! I’m that shallow and insecure.

The woman at Muswell Hill Bookshop hands me my copy of Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower and asks me if I’m Swedish. “No, why?” “You sound Swedish, that’s all.”

I promptly rush off and purchase some great Swedish pop music: Stina Nordenstam’s “And She Closed Her Eyes” album. And some great new London pop music: “Preview”, the excellent debut mini-album by Astronaut. Alex, the singer, like all the slyly sexiest people, lives here in Highgate. He helped to fix my eight-track once.

It’s the New Camden. You Get a Good Mix In Highgate, North Six.

Come to Highgate, I’ll give you a quick guided pop tour. Here’s the house shared by Tim Baxendale and Alex Astronaut. Here’s where Keith Moon threw a champagne bottle through a dividing wall and framed it for a photo. Here’s where The Pink Floyd originally rehearsed in their 60s psychedelic light-show days. Here’s where Jo Whiley nearly got me run over. Here’s where Tjinder Cornershop held the toilet door open for me. Here’s where I saw the singer from Heavy Stereo (now in Oasis?) buying his cigarettes. Here’s where the guitarist from Salad waits for a bus. Here’s where Tona De Brett gives her singing lessons to pop stars. Here’s where Brett Anderson wrote “Dog Man Star”. Here’s where Kula Shaker first chanted their mantras together. Here’s where Bernard Butler has his breakfast. Here’s where Victoria Wood gets her library books. Here’s where Helen from Fluffy picked up her dry cleaning. Here’s where the singer from Acacia waved at me. Here’s the bookshop where Terry Gilliam is advertised as a local author. Here’s where the Persecution Complex had their infamous open-house parties, attended by the entire Romo gathering, plus Saint Etienne, the singer from Octopus, Kenickie, that lot in Rachel Stamp, various Longpigs and These Animal Men and countless other bands of varying repute; here’s where the guitarist from Massive Ego and Minty rents his videos, here’s the notice board where two fanzine writers put up a note saying they came all the way here to stalk me, without success… And here’s Highgate Cemetery, favoured by all Gothic-tinged band photo-shoots… Karl who?

I used to hate people saying I looked so “80s”. Now, years on from that Romo palaver, like any good existentialist, I’ve swam with the tide but faster, preferring The Associates to The Beatles, Altered Images to Bob Dylan, ABC to The Beach Boys, and, yes, Japan to The Who. To some people, this sort of music is “kitsch”, wedding reception fodder. To me, it’s a tonic in these dark days.

That said, I am now carrying a small card reading “Yes, I KNOW I look like (tick one of the following) David Sylvian on the cover of “Gentlemen Take Polaroids” / Andy Warhol / Nick Rhodes / Sick Boy in Trainspotting / Lurch in The Addams Family / Kim Novak In “Bell Book and Candle” / David Bowie (?) / Gary Numan (?) / Simon Le Bon (??) / A refugee from “Velvet Goldmine” / The bad guy in “Desperately Seeking Susan” (!) / Dracula (?!?) / Nicky Wire (eyes only) / …Thank you anyway.”

No, really.

Tuesday September 14th 1999

Received this today. Mr Numan need not fret: as far as I’m concerned, friends are electric.

>You’ll be pleased to know that they’re talking about you more than Mark E Smith on ‘Fall-Net’.

>> Anyone remember this twat? His diary is reassuringly unaltered, and he still deserves as horrific a death as is imaginable.

> >http://freespace.virgin.net/dickon.edwards/

>> Stuart

>

>>Actually I think D’s diary is quite interesting. Has anyone here ever heard his music?

>>PJ

Check the record, check the record, check the guy’s track record. It’s out on October 25th, according to Saint Nic at Something Velvet Records. Hopefully Fosca will play a date or two around the time. That’s when I’m not playing guitar for my new employers. I had heard there were a couple of vacancies in Oasis, but somehow I don’t think I’d fit in. My favourite Sondheim musical is Assassins, while Liam Gallagher’s is A Little Night Music. We would never get along.

So I’ve plumped for playing Auxiliary Guitar in Spearmint, the Smiths you can do Northern Soul dancing to. They are kindly employing me to enhance their live performance in my own strange way, at all of their concerts from now till Christmas at least, taking in much of the UK, plus Paris, Amsterdam, and a week of dates in Japan. Full details can be found on the Spearmint website. It’s all terribly exciting, and it helps that I do actually like the band, having spent many an evening at Soho’s Blow Up club strutting my stuff to “Sweeping the Nation”, arguably one of the greatest singles of the Nineties.

I’m particularly looking forward to the dates in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, because ever since I started to frequent the less discerning pockets of the London music industry scene, people have taken one look at me and said “Oh… you MUST go to Japan. They’d love you there.” It’s as if I’d be offered my own Manga animated series (SAILOR DICKON!) within seconds off stepping off the plane. Well, now I shall find out. I shall be taking copies of the Fosca EP with me on tour and see what happens. I hope to be drinking sake while reading the short stories of Saki. And being sarky.

But for now, the Spearmint schedule kicks off this week with shows at Dingwalls in Camden, the Louisiana in Bristol and Aldershot West End Centre. Oh, the reckless glamour of it all! Roadie! My mascara!

Tuesday August 3rd 1999

Turned a corner in Archway today and someone looked right at me and said, “Oh no – another Dickon Edwards clone.”

Red and yellow and pink and green, purple and orange and blue… I’ve just had some surgery. Varicose veins. I have the body of an old man. I think Jimmy Saville’s got the one I should have by mistake. There’s been a mix-up.

Before, the registration nurse had asked me “Religion?”. “No thanks.” Perhaps I should have ventured one, and then had a Catholic or Hindu or Moonie out-of-body experience when I was put to sleep like an old tired and useless pet. Instead, the experience (my first time Under The Knife) was rather akin to that scene in The Matrix. They fixed a catheter on my left hand, pressed a switch, and something shot into me, quickly working its way up my arm. No going back now. Like Keanu’s liquid mirror engulfing him in order to deliver him to another world, when the anaesthetic reached my neck I started to choke, convinced I could taste it. The nurses held me back, and then – nothingness. No Other World after all. Not even dreams.

Sadly, they revived me after the operation. And so now and for the next week I limp around London, left leg swathed in thick layers of bandage (in this heat, too) and look even more strange than usual.

But it does mean I get a week off work, and can catch up on things like diary entries. Yes, I’ve fooled the Real World enough for it to offer me an Ordinary Job until I can get paid for being myself again. I work part-time (and in part make-up) at nearby Kenwood House, a historic Neo-Classical villa halfway between Highgate and Hampstead which doubles up as an art gallery and ornate furniture museum. To some, it’s best known as the permanent home to such world-famous paintings as Vermeer’s The Guitar Player and the greatest Rembrandt self-portrait, where the artist looks like Rumpole of the Bailey. To most, it’s that stately home in Notting Hill where Hugh Grant catches up with Julia Roberts filming some unspecific English period drama. The current temporary exhibition at Kenwood is a history of the artist’s model 1840-1940, featuring examples by all the usual suspects: Etty, Holman Hunt, Rosetti, Millais, Burne-Jones, Gwen and Augustus John, Stanley Spencer, Moore, Hepworth, Lowry, the Bloomsbury lot, and no less than two portraits of that well-known wartime artist’s model, Quentin Crisp…

So far, I have had more than one visitor ask me if I’m one of the exhibits. One gentleman told me I was only the second Dickon he had ever met. “The first is a chap at Watford B&Q. Terribly helpful. There’s nothing he doesn’t know about vinyl floor coverings.”

The gig at Club V went off without too much bloodshed, but I’m still unsure about how Fosca should sound, who should sing, and whether I should even bother with Pop at all. The more I leaf through the music papers, the less and less I feel I have anything remotely in common with that microcosm of confused priorities and bad sideburns. Which of course is the one reason Fosca should exist, as a kindred spirit to those who feel the same way. I flail about, auditioning as a gigs-only guitarist for the band Spearmint, and even writing to Tim Orlando. Though I’d only make music with Tim again if the results were guaranteed hit singles, and were at least as good as Madonna’s “Beautiful Stranger”, Steps’ “Tragedy” or Shanks and Bigfoot’s “Sweet Like Chocolate”. Otherwise what would be the point?

The Fosca show was covered in the free gay weekly paper, Boyz. There was one picture of me onstage above an advert for a bar called Cock and Comfort. Which is entirely appropriate.

Nic Goodchild’s label Something Velvet is gearing up to release the Nervous, London EP. Release date to be confirmed, but that’s no euphemism: it is coming out. It’s just that both Nic and I have been pre-occupied with our respective leg surgery: her right, my left. And now I’m still um-ing and er-ing over the sleeve artwork. But once I’ve sorted that out, it all gets sent off and turned into shiny new CDs, coins with which to buy Fosca a few gigs around the time of the release, too.

It’s a schizophrenic EP, with “File Under Forsaken” all lo-fi and ten minutes long and cavernous Galaxie 500 aural wasteland with my own lisping, whining vocals on top; balanced by “He’s No Help” and “The Followers”, which are cleaner, shorter, poppier, and feature Val Jones’ wry-and-dry folky tones. Some people can’t “get” this range of diversity, which is a shame, as I’ll have to take Fosca in one direction or the other in order to not confuse people. Despite the fact I write songs by and for the confused. I think it’s a maudlin masterpiece. Until the next one.

Advance mail order and any other enquiries can be made by e-mailing Something Velvet Records here. I was round Nic’s place yesterday, checking the artwork, and giggling smugly at my own lyrics. This is a common occurrence. I’m often to be found smirking on buses, entertained by my own inner relentless word-play and the eternal invention of epigrams taking place in my head. My mind is the world’s most pretentious Walkman.

At a bus stop on Camden Road, a middle-aged American visitor turns to me and says “you remind me of Kim Novak in Bell, Book and Candle.” That’s his opening line.

I have only three observations to make concerning the new Star Wars film. My excuse is that they seem to have been overlooked elsewhere. Which is something you couldn’t say about the film itself..

One of the Naboo fighter pilots is played by Celia Imrie, best known for her work in many a Victoria Wood sketch.

One of the Jedi Council is called Yarael Poof.

The Battle Droids bear a striking resemblance to Jacob Epstein’s 1914 bronze sculpture Torso In Metal from ‘The Rock Drill’.

Well, it makes a change from saying “it’s not as good as the first three”, doesn’t it?

Just to remind those coming, Fosca play live in London next Saturday 12th June, along with Linus and Billy Childish associate Sexton Ming, Upstairs At The Garage, Highbury Corner, N5. Doors open 8pm, and we’re on first, 9pm or thereabouts.

The Club VCD compilation, featuring Fosca and about 700 other Club V-friendly bands, will be on sale at the show. It’s also available for £4 (plus p&p) via mail-order, details of how to do so can be found here.

Do come and say hello to us.

Saturday May 29th 1999

I float on an unforeseen gust of tourists into Tower Records, Piccadilly Circus, and flick through Simon Price’s new Manics book. Annoyingly, I only get a tiny quote rather than the seventeen chapters I’d previously envisaged. And the new Catherine Cookson doesn’t mention me at all. A stiff letter to the editors of Women’s Weekly is in order.

How can Nicky Wire reconcile his love of existential literature with his current predilection for domesticity and Dyson hoovers?

Doesn’t he know that Nietzsche abhors a vacuum?

Last Wednesday, and Fosca record the song “On Earth To Make The Numbers Up” at Tommy Barton’s place in Archway. He calls his Joe Meek kitchen set-up The White Ark, as a jokey take on Lee Perry’s Black Ark Studios. Awfully, this now sounds like one of those London right-wing groups you read about in the news, and I’ll have to change the sleeve credit or risk people Getting The Wrong Idea I Shouldn’t Wonder.

We swathe the song in Abba-esque synths and it sounds strange, but new. And definitely Pop Music. Albeit another seven minute epic. Blame my current love of those narrative-poem-like Leonard Cohen songs with 800 verses (from “Death of A Ladies’ Man” onwards, not the earlier stuff). Work has to stop at 7pm because everyone files out to the pub to watch some football match or other. I try following the Cricket World Cup, but the only aspect that appeals to me is the fact that the teams get to wear what looks like garishly-coloured pyjamas.

I mourn the passing of another Fosca icon I’m annoyed to have never met, Dirk Bogarde. The BBC puts on a few of his old films, Death In Venice predictably, and Doctor In Distress somewhat less predictably. No sign of The Blue Lamp, The Night Porter, Victim or The Servant. Doctor In Distress is downright weird. Bogarde made it in 1963, after the arty, black and white, ground-breaking likes of The Servant and Victim had saved him from the charming-if-lightweight early-Carry On-ish kitsch comedy hell of the “Doctor…” series. Bogarde had the career Kenneth Williams really wanted but never got, moving from cheap popular colour comedies to serious dramatic celluloid milestones, but still went back to do one more Doctor film. Perhaps he just did Doctor In Distress for the money, as he seems to be acting on auto-pilot. The whole point of the Simon Sparrow character in the first film, 1954’s “Doctor In The House”, was his young medical student naivety. By “… In Distress”, Simon Sparrow is tired, greying, past 40, and is merely a friend and colleague to the Falstaff-like surgeon Sir Lancelot, rather than an upstart foil. The film is an intriguing curio, but for all the wrong reasons.

Farzana says Charley might be up for playing guitar at the next Fosca gig, the tireless thing. She and Gay Dad are all over the media at the moment. In NME, editor Steve Sutherland rants viciously against their hype, while putting the band on the front cover. Cliff Jones comes in for abuse for liking the Britney Spears single. Games are being played. I don’t understand any of it. Does any of it matter? And to whom?

I’m getting very good at replying to e-mails at the moment. There was a time when I never got around to answering any at all. Now every electronic missive I receive personally, and that seems to want a reply, is replied to within a week or so. Junk mail and unsolicited mail which is sent to me in a list of other recipients, seemingly just as an address that someone knows, is rapidly deleted. Top of my bugbear list are those so-called “virus alert” mails. You know the sort of thing. “Fwd: Do not open any mails with the subject line “Badgers Know No Fear”. Please copy and forward this mail to everyone you don’t like very much”.

Next on the hatelist is the likes of “Fwd: Come to my gig/website/bar mitzvah.” The answer being, no, I probably won’t, if the only time you write to me is as one of many people, you impersonal thing, you.

Some people try to send me unsolicited attachments (photos, sound files etc) and emails written in coloured typefaces via HTML. I wish they wouldn’t. Because my steam-powered e-mail program simply can’t open them.

The actor playing William Hague in the new Eurosceptic branch of the Conservative Party’s Political Broadcast is, amusingly, called Tim Chipping. There’s also an actor doing the rounds in Cambridge University indie films called Dickon Edwards. I get the occasional e-mail confusing me with him, “Didn’t you play a policeman in a play I saw recently? I know your sister’s dog’s vet’s osteopath.” I start to wonder what are the chances of there being someone else out there with the same obscure name AND age as me who also works in the Great British Arts. But then, once the probability of a child being named Dickon is spoken for, the chances of him working in the Arts isn’t that unlikely. And “Edwards” isn’t exactly uncommon at all. An obscure first name compensated for by a dirt-cheap surname.

As I constantly bore anyone who listens, I’m not even the first Dickon to be in a signed British indie band… there’s the violin player in the Tindersticks. As everyone knows. But I still get the “uh?” and “pfft!” comments and misspellings when presenting my name to strangers. However, this is all fair and proper, as I have an “uh?” and “pfft!” and misspelt face.

Saturday May 22nd 1999

Morrissey’s 40th birthday today… so I send him a card of me on the Wilde memorial. On the Jo Whiley TV show, a programme that always has me shouting things at the televison (I’m a frustrated chat show guest), one topic of discussion is the Smiths. Billy Bragg bemoans the fact that no one writes lyrics like that anymore, citing the new Suede single as an example of present-day dumbing down in the so-say alternative/indie music world.

I make a note to send him a copy of the debut Fosca EP, “Nervous, London”, on its release. “Nervous, London” because I was thinking of those people who write to Agony Aunts, signing themselves, “Worried, Tunbridge Wells”. It was going to be “Nervous Of London”, but I like the comma too much. Punctuation is the new rock ‘n’ roll. The lead song “as opposed to “A-side”, for this is a CD), is nine and a half minutes long. Extended Players don’t come much more extended. But it’s still a pop song. “File Under Forsaken”. Three verses, chorus, middle eight, intro, outro. Like any other pop song. I am NOT going to turn into Pink Floyd, promise. Although the site of a giant inflatable Dickon floating above Battersea Power Station isn’t entirely a bad idea.

It’s going to be released on Something Velvet Records, Nic Goodchild’s new label. We master it on Tuesday. I never went to any of the mastering sessions for Orlando, so this will be an exciting new experience for me. I will basically ask for it to sound less “lo-fi”, something that has only happened by accident. The accident being me thinking I could engineer. The sleeve will have the lyrics, pictures of me in a nice suit (it did not take long to decide that), and a nice life-affirming quote from Radclyffe Hall. I hope she won’t mind. Her tomb is in Highgate Cemetery, so if she does, she hasn’t far to go to haunt me.

Meantime, one of the songs on the EP, “He’s No Help” will be included on the nearly-released Club V CD compilation, and Fosca play the album’s launch night at the club on Saturday June 12th. The venue is Upstairs At The Garage, opposite Highbury & Islington tube, Highbury Corner, London N5. Further details on how to get hold of the CD, and Club V in general can be found here.

As for the album, well, I ran out of money while recording it myself, and was becoming increasingly frustrated at the limitations of three different digital recording machines I used. All three proved to be faulty and troublesome, and I resolve to record in future with an engineer/co-producer that has done it before. But it’s hard: I have very specific ideas, and they’re not always the obvious, easy ones. On Wednesday we try recording the title track of the album at Tommy Barton’s Joe Meek-style set up at his flat in Archway. Fingers crossed. What I really need is to be signed. Perhaps having a CD EP out will be more impressive than badly-duplicated tapes. What keeps me going is the unassailable fact that I have more talent in my little finger than, say, the Stereophonics (to unfairly pick a name from the dartboard) have in their entire, dreary, formulaic rock, non-specific, nothing-to-say bodies. The joke’s on me, though, as I never use my little finger for anything.

Monday April 26th 1999

Going nowhere fast, deep in debt and despair, but still I struggle on. I refuse to commit suicide until I have at least one album out. Simon Price thinks I should place one of those begging adverts in the back of Private Eye.”The world owes me a living. Send money now”.

I’ve amusingly attempted to find some way of earning money, applying for writing, internet and jobs where I can just sit at a computer all day and not have to talk to anyone too much. But my joie-de-vivre is such at a low ebb, I radiate such lack of enthusiasm when talking to prospective employers on the phone or in interview rooms, and I don’t expect to be taken up at all. But Fosca can’t go anywhere without money, so I sit here wondering what will happen next, waiting for the next happy accident that will take me to further adventures. I have this overwhelming sense of being properly famous at some point in my life, I just don’t know in what way. Something involving a jail sentence, probably.

Envying Charley’s current employment, I’ve also written to two bands I like that are looking for live guitarists, Spy 51 and Spearmint. I’ve always wondered what it would be like taking a back seat in someone else’s band, where the only thing you have to worry about is your own guitar part. I tried this once before in The Childrens Hour, but that didn’t last long, as I’m not the easiest of people to get on with. I can’t do the “bonding” bit: I tend to retreat to a corner with a good book, and am always the Odd One Out in the band. This was the situation in Orlando, even. And that was seen to be “my” band. It wasn’t, of course. Fosca is my proper, first attempt to do my own band where I’m not someone else’s employee. And I seem to be incapable of getting it together. My oxymoronical quandary: I am a loner who can’t do anything by himself.

I used to think an oxymoron was an idiot in acne cream.

Still, I send tapes of the finished recordings so far to various would-be band members and labels, and there are hopes in the form of a one-song “single” on Shout It Out Loud, an internet-only MP3 label, a song on a compilation CD by Club V, one on a split EP by Ritual Records, and a proper EP on the new label started by Nic Goodchild. She is funding it with the compensation money she received after being run over and hospitalized by a drunk driver. This is a very Fosca thing. I suggested she named the label after the car that hit her.

I also send tapes to the people I like and that I think might appreciate them: Too Pure, Geoff Travis, Shinkansen, Piao!, Blow Up, Stephen Pastel, Cliff Gay Dad (at Charley’s suggestion), Darren Hefner, and Suzanne Rhatigan. None of them have yet gotten in touch. Well, Matt from Shinkansen ums and ers, but he does that in normal conversation anyway, so I can never tell. It doesn’t help that I hate phoning people. My passivity positively stifles.

I get a call from Backyard, who promote gigs around town. They want to put on Fosca at the Lil’ Backyard Club off Great Portland Street. “How many people do you think you can pull?”. “I never pull anyone, except social tourists. And sexual tourists. And tourists.” I tell them Fosca won’t play any gigs until we have a record definitely coming out, to justify doing so. And we have less of a revolving-door line up.

At the Velocette gig I attend with Rachel Stevenson, a group of visitors from Hong Kong recognise me from my former life in Orlando and insist on having my picture taken with them. This is so strange, and only adds fuel to my theory that I’m more of a walking tourist attraction than a capable human being. Orlando were spectacularly unsuccessful, yet this sort of thing happens.

Afterwards, we go to Suffragette City, Debbie Smith’s club night at the Candy Bar. It is my first ever visit to a women-only bar, and I bore most of the regulars with this information. Bizarrely, I’m most taken with how much I notice how small women are. It’s… a bar full of small people. I’m not the only male there (men are allowed as guests), but I am the only one in make up and free of facial hair (including sideburns). There are quite a few “baby dykes”, a Nineties breed of young, friendly, boyishly fresh-faced fun-loving Sapphists who don’t hate men. It’s a new stereotype, perhaps, but a far more welcome one to the humourless, hatchet-faced misandrist clichés of the 80s, and that surely can only be a Good Thing. If only male-only gay bars were more forward-thinking. I think about Fosca playing a gig there, reminded of Huggy Bear (who featured two boys) playing women-only gigs in their heyday. It’s certainly a more novel way of kicking against the pricks.

I’m approached by a girl called Layla (her parents were big Clapton fans). It transpires she is a friend of Tim from Baxendale. I tell her of my search for appropriate bandmates and she tells me the girl she is chatting up is a musician. Vulture-like, I pounce on her potential date, a French girl called Carolyn, and I exchange phone numbers and addresses with her before Layla does. Typical, I go to a lesbian bar and within minutes I’ve swapped numbers with a girl there.

I got to Trash, Erol’s club that has moved around the corner to The Annex in Dean Street. It’s a lot bigger than Plastic People, and there’s a section with sofas where you can actually hold a conversation. I bump into Emma (now in the band Rosita), Adrian, David Barnett (who has split up with his ginger-haired girlfriend to go out with a… ginger-haired girl), John the tube driver, Erol’s cousin whose name I always forget, Skinny David Who Works In TV, a girl that recognises me from Orlando, oh, and more. The old crowd. They never call me or invite me out to anything, but they are always friendly when I do see them about. I spend most of the night watching other people, as ever. One couple are wrapped in each other’s embraces particularly tightly. The girl has exactly the same short haircut, t-shirt and jeans that the boy has. His-and-hers haircuts. Opposites don’t always attract. Especially not for narcissists. “Single female seeks mirror image.” Still in a similar pet Fosca subjects vein, there’s also an obviously anorexic girl there who wears a slinky dress so everyone can see her worryingly skeletal frame. Like a road accident, people are simultaneously entranced, annoyed and horrified by her. Much like these diaries.

I attend Club V’s fourth birthday party. Once again, I am chatted up by a tourist of some ilk. But at least he buys me a drink. Like all the best haircuts, he is short, and to the point.

On the night bus home, I bump into Alex, also from Baxendale. I hadn’t recognised him from their excellent concert I witnessed recently, because he wasn’t wearing his stage expression: a sulky Ron Mael frown. Some people have stage costumes. Alex has a stage frown. Offstage, he is all smiles and happy-go-lucky charm. Rather like Russell Senior from Pulp, in fact.

After attending Val Jones’ champagne-saturated birthday bash in Covent Garden (cries of “oy! Spandau Ballet!” from the men outside Stringfellows), I go to a party at Darian’s place off Portland Place. Someone tells me I look like David Bowie. I really must trowl on the foundation more thickly if my skin resembles a 52-year-old’s.

Thursday April 1st

I buy the new issue of Select Magazine because Charley’s in it, and choke slightly on my greased toast when I see they’ve made these pages “Netsite of the Month”. They can stay.

In need of cheering up, I stumble on a website for choosing baby’s names:

“The name of Dickon has made you serious-minded, responsible, and stable. You love the security of a home and family, you are fond of
children, and, as a parent you would be fair and understanding. Although you have good business judgment, you are not aggressive in your
dealings because you do not like to create issues. You would be successful in any position dealing with the public as you have a diplomatic and
tactful manner and possess a charming, easy-going nature which puts people at ease. People are drawn to you because they feel that you are
patient, kind, understanding, and responsive. You would be effective in a career or in volunteer work where you are handling people and serving
in a humanitarian way. While you are honest and responsible, one weakness that is paramount in your life is your lack of self-confidence and
initiative, which causes you to put things off and avoid facing issues. Generally speaking, you have few problems with your health; however,
there is a weakness affecting the fluid functions of the body. ”

Perhaps someone should tell them about me.

A female columnist in some rag I leaf through in the cafe bemoans David Beckham’s new quiff look. She writes “on behalf of all women everywhere”, begging men not to follow suit and spend more time at the mirror, in the bathroom, and generally on personal appearance, than themselves. Calamity! She concludes, “who needs a blond Morrissey?”. Curses! Rumbled!

GMTV runs a story on the world’s first male pregnancy. Later, the “father” pulls up his jumper to reveal a cushion, and the whole team cries “April Fool!”. Gordon Kennedy quickly puts on his “but seriously, folks” expression, and they cut to Kosovo. The viewer is seemingly left expecting Mr Milosovic to give the camera a knowing comedy wink.

At a club, a man with big glasses and a backpack follows me around the dancefloor. I do my best to shake him off, but he later comes up to me and says, “this is going to sound a bit direct, but do you fancy a fuck?”. “That IS a bit direct. Do I have to answer that?” “No.” “Well, then.”

He goes on to say he’s not a regular. I seem to always attract the tourists. If not geographical tourists, then social tourists. And of course, sexual tourists.

I might as well be dressed as a Beefeater. I should put a card in those phone boxes: “London’s Own, Big Dickon: He’ll Troop His Colour For YOU. Euros accepted.”

Someone tells me I look “androgynous”, but I protest. My shoulders are too broad. For a broad.

Jyoti writes about the importance of us getting on as people before working together on pop music: “If I do work with anyone now, it’s after I get to know them and think we can get on. Dry-recording is like dry-fucking : both sides end up frustrated, sore and confused.” I am appalled at his unlikely (and perhaps, personally revealing) choice of metaphor, but secretly impressed.

I haven’t had an e-mail that dirty since the time someone wrote and volunteered to split my colon in two. Presumably making it a semi-colon.