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.

Tuesday March 30th

The new Index Page Picture Stars this time are my better-looking younger brother, Tom, and self, last Christmas in Bildeston. I think I look like Steve Buscemi. No one else agrees. Tom plays guitar on a new disco version of “We Are All Friends Here.”

We mixed half the album at Crosstown, a studio in Fulham where Mark did his apprenticeship. We used a digital editing suite normally suited for making unofficial Doctor Who radio dramas rather than pop music, and it all sounds very Anti-Rock. Oh well. Tapes of the results are sent off to various souls in the hope something happens, and I am rescued from passive DIY hell. I’ve run out of money to finish the mixes at Crosstown, so we back up the remaining songs onto digital computer files, in the hope that Jyoti Mishra can decode them at his place in Norwich and we can mix them with him. I’m keeping my hopes at ground level, though. If we just have to re-record the whole lot at somewhere where there’s someone who (1) knows how to make the equipment work 100%, and (2) has recorded bands on it before, I won’t be at all surprised.

“File Under Forsaken” stands out, nine and a half minutes but feeling like four. Fee’s wordless falsettos towards the end really make it, taking it to spiritual highs and, well, it now sounds like nothing else on earth. Perhaps a bit Mercury Rev without the drugs. “Live Deliberately” is similarly fantastically strange. The in-house engineer, Danny C, says my Juno 6 solo is so beautiful he is nearly moved to tears. Nearly.

I am finally happy with my lead vocals. Danny and Tommy Burton suggest double-tracking and a little echo, and it works. Fosca has finally found it feet. It’s not rock, it’s not pop, it’s not folk (despite lashings of acoustic guitars and Val & Fee’s singing styles), it’s something else, something… strange. But it’s still pop.

So I’m sending out tapes to people who run record labels, and who can hopefully pay for more studio time. I thought about getting a Job, but the past has taught me that I simply can’t hold down work: I’m either always late, or don’t turn up at all, or sit there all day and do no work. Understandably, I’ve been sacked from every job I’ve had, sooner or later.

I’ve realised two things from the recordings:

1) I am finally confident enough to be the lead singer. The trick is to double track my vocals, add a little echo, and I sound… right. At last. To be honest, I’ve decided that having the various female singers doing lead vocals isn’t the best thing for my personal, Dickony style lyrics after all, but I had to try to see if that was true first. Female backing vocals are fine, though. The mixes we’ve made with girl lead vocals ARE great, though, and I shall put them aside for now, anyway. When I played Matt Haynes (of Shinkansen Records) the mixed songs so far, he said he wasn’t “convinced” by the girl lead vocals. He’s biased, but even so. It’s just a confidence/shyness thing on my part. And I should stop thinking that, just because I’m a big Carpenters/Stereolab/female-singers in general fan, to emulate that is right for my own songs. It isn’t. Um, I think…curse this fickleness and insecurity!

2) I so want to Be In A Band as opposed to Fosca being just Mr Dickon plus Friends And Strangers Helping Out. It’s lonely! I want to rehearse regularly, and record as a band, so everyone knows what they’re playing, chips in with ideas, and feels generally good about being in Fosca proper, and happy being committed to and taking joint responsibility for Fosca. I just manage the organisational things by myself… I need a manager. Or band members that can do the management things. Or a wealthy lover.

So I’m also sending out tapes to various musical souls (some of whom have played on the recordings, and some who haven’t) in the hope they’ll want to join Fosca proper. Rachel Stevenson’s on board (on keyboards), so I now just need a permanent bass player and drummer. And perhaps one other soul on another instrument and backing vocals… but not a singer who does nothing else. I keep thinking of the girl in Deacon Blue. As ever, though, my hopes are at ground level.

Howard and I go to see the film “Gods and Monsters”, and Brendan Fraser in it keeps reminding me of that homoerotic DH Lawrence phrase: “his arm completely filled his shirt”. Mr Fraser’s muscles enter the frame some minutes before the rest of him does. He has the face of the young Elvis and the body of Henry Rollins. You don’t really notice if he can act or not.

Mark P is video-recording the events on the news, day by day. His tapes are labelled, “NATO vs Serbia… Day 1, Day 2, etc”. He is convinced it’s going to escalate into World War III. I thought NATO had been done away with at the end of the Cold War, but no. People seem to be nostalgic for the “good old days”. Nostalgic for war. The UN should be handling Serbia, not NATO. Everyone knows this, but they can’t wait to send in NATO troops… to a country where the last time the whole of Europe got involved in a crisis together there was… 1914. And then look what happened.

I feel like that 17th century Italian prophet, who, convinced that the world was going to end, went up to pregnant women on the street and insulted them for adding to the potential deathcount. All that time, that money, that pain, nine months, and what for? But I’ve mellowed my opinions slightly. Never mind reproduction is pollution. Now, reproduction is anachronism.

Warhol: “I can’t believe people are still pregnant these days.”

But the pain of parents chastising their screaming kids in the street (I always associate parents with scolding), and everyone else’s pain and worries will end: NATO will see to that. And it won’t be our fault.

I think a lot of my problem with people having children stems from my innate solipsism: I keep thinking that “there’s a child that will see a world I won’t”, and am offended. This is, of course, stupid. I’m sure there’s old women about now who will outlive me.

Saturday March 6th

A shock of blonde hair, heavy black panda-eye make up, the Queen of the Mods, a thin but emotive and immeasurably English singing voice, an ambivalent cagey sexuality, a string of the hippest musical collaborative partners, song after song extolling the world of secret loves and frustrated longing…

But enough about me. Dusty Springfield died this week. For all our sins. In tribute, I consort alone with tears and a bottle of red wine and put on “Dusty In Memphis” at immense volume at 3am. My neighbours wouldn’t dare complain.

I seem to spend my life being indebted to immensely kind people called Tim. Tim Mauve answers his Finchley door in an immaculate tweed suit and lends me his reel to reel 8 track. Tim Burton from the pro-pop band Baxendale (named after cartoonist Leo, not actress Helen) and who also plays in the band Astronaut (and who also just happens to live three doors down from me) lends me his VS880. I lend the latter my copy of the Future Bible Heroes album (the US version on Rykodisc rather than the UK Setanta release, naturally), and he seems to be pleased. It’s right up his avenue: you have to complete word puzzles in order to work out the lyric sheet. His 8-track isn’t fully operational, though. Some faders are broken because he spilt treacle on them. A true sweet-toothed Pop Kid. His colourful house is festooned with pictures of Spice Girls, Kylie, All Saints, and he bought the Britney Spears single rather than the new Blur one. I joke that as soon as I leave, he tears them all down, revealing Ocean Colour Scene and Bob Marley posters. But no, Tim is… for real. Treacle included, sadly.

We talk about the sincerity of kitsch and camp, the fact that there are those who seem to have to choose between the likes of Belle and Sebastian and Mogwai and Steps and Aqua. You can swing both ways. It’s more fun. It’s all melodies and tunes, it’s all pop music. Life’s too short for irony. And ironing, too.

Actually, I don’t like Mogwai. No lyrics. Even Steps have lyrics. And they make the effort to dress up a bit. Or perhaps I’m being unfair. Perhaps Mogwai and Arab Strap normally walk around with neat flattering haircuts, well-toned and moisturised skin and nice clothes, only slapping on the big ugly sideburns and getting the stylist to give them a Slovenly Scottish Gritty Indie Guitar look, come the photo sessions?

Mark’s friend Abba, an American boy with a huge… Shirley Bassey collection, comes to stay, and keeps calling me Ridiculous Edwards. I tell him I don’t like football. “But do you like feet? Do you like balls?”

We visit Tommy and Taylor and play them a few of the new Fosca songs. “Galaxie 500 with Morrissey-ish lyrics?” In my defense, I proclaim that Galaxie 500 are my Beatles. Tommy mutters contemptously, “well, the Beatles are my Beatles…” We listen to the first Wings album and drink far too much black coffee. Mark thinks that Taylor looks like Damon Albarn’s sulkier brother.