Sunday morning – attend my first Quaker meeting at Muswell Hill. I go out of curiosity, having read a little about George Fox and Quaker practice in advance. It really is people of all ages just sitting silently in a room for an hour, chairs arranged in an oval shape around a table, with no indication of who’s in charge. No hymns, no sermon, no dressing up. In fact, I worry if I’m a bit over-dressed for attending a famously minimalist form of worship.

Sometimes people get up unprompted to speak about a matter of personal faith (‘giving ministry’), but they keep it brief, and it’s back to the silence. I find it all intriguing and mind-opening, if a little baffling (the organisational structure of the Quaker church still confuses me). What I do approve of is the concept of a religion based on shutting the hell up for once, particularly in these times of blogging and Having Your Say and Twittering and Comment Is Unqualified. Like the night job before, it also helps to knock the corners off my ego; I even find atheism too ego-heavy these days.

For the first twenty minutes, though, this hoped-for Quaker silence is rather compromised by a neighbour’s electric strimmer right outside a (closed) window. Eventually someone from the room goes outside and asks them very, very nicely if they could desist until after twelve. ‘But I’ve nearly finished,’ replies the female neighbour, off. It must have worked, though, and there’s no more irritations for the rest of the hour. Not even an accidentally left-on mobile phone.

This dilemma of Quaker tolerance leads to a couple of speeches made as ‘ministry’ at the meeting: is it right to ask a non-Quaker to stop using their powered gardening tools between 11am and noon on a Sunday? Given that the neighbour must be aware they live next to a place of worship whose main purpose is this very hour of silence once a week? Would this one person mind awfully turning off the thing until afterwards, in consideration for the forty or so people gathered next door for centuries-old worship? Is that so unfair? ‘But I’ve nearly finished!’

Afternoon – tea and cake with Suzi, Minerva and Torquil (from the New Sheridan/ Chap scene) at High Tea in Highgate, followed by drinks at The Angel across the road. We discuss, among other things, preferred pets. It occurs to me that I’d rather like a cockatoo. Yes, yes, double entendres aside. Either that or a macaw. I often look out for the London Zoo macaws when walking through Regent’s Park: they can be seen from the park’s Broad Walk. I find them a cheering sight, and wonder if I could ever share a house with one.

***

Speaking of ancient but still droll innuendo… Yesterday – to the Apollo cinema in Regent Street to see Bruno, the new Sacha Baron Cohen faux-documentary. I have a low tolerance of much laddish, bad-taste TV prank humour, but I do have a soft spot for Mr Cohen’s style, which must now border on the vintage. I love his sheer fearlessness, his devotion to deep cover (he’s clearly had his body waxed for Bruno), and the sense he’s out on his own with an original angle rather than playing to a crowd.

As in Borat, he combines prank interviews and filmed set-ups alongside lots of fleshing-out of the title persona amid a rather flimsy narrative arc. We don’t really care about the actual plot (gay Austrian reporter Bruno seeks love, fame and fatherhood), and it’s annoying when the film tries to make us. You can’t have it both ways: a satirical avatar used in the real world doesn’t cut it in a fictional universe (as the not so funny all-fiction Ali G film proved), so it’s hard to care about Bruno’s emotional life with his assistant. We’re aware they’re both actors playing characters, while all around are real people who may or may not be in on the subterfuge.

The only times the fictional bits DO work is when the reaction sought is not that of an on-camera victim but of the audience, thanks to a smattering of decent jokes  like Bruno’s reference to Hitler as ‘just another Austrian guy who only wanted to try something new’. Then there’s the explicit glimpses of Bruno’s inventive sex life, which venture into regions of deviancy that must still be fairly uncharted for a mainstream audience. One scene combines close-up male nudity and surreal special effects with an imagination worthy of Dali.

Just as Borat had to go to America and only meet Americans (and certainly no one really from Kazakhstan), so the film contrives to surround Bruno with straights, preferably homophobes. At times, he’s like a swiss army knife of reaction comedy: he is The Lone Gay Man baiting homophobes (pure Bruno), The Lone Foreigner baiting Americans with his mispronunciation of English (Borat), or if all else fails, he is just The Lone Irritating Idiot (Ali G style – mistaking Hamas for hummus while discussing Israel and Palestine). On occasion the audience must fear for Cohen’s personal safety – he spends a night camping in the hills with a group of suitably gruff huntsmen, and even tries to creep into one of the men’s tents naked. He gets the reaction he was hoping for – abuse – but one wonders if there were a few less funny threats or even acts of assault off camera.

Sometimes the victims escape with their dignity intact. When Bruno tries to marry his boyfriend at a Californian registry office – where gay marriage is currently illegal – he dresses up his other half in unconvincing bridal drag. To his credit, the marriage clerk reacts calmly, apologising that he can’t go ahead with the ceremony.  He isn’t a redneck homophobe or an open-mouthed Everyman, or an anti-gay politician or evangelist. He’s just a man doing his job, being very sporting about having his time wasted by British comedians in prank mode.

I also felt sorry for the perfectly likeable locksmith called to assist when Bruno is stuck on his hotel bed chained and strapped to his boyfriend in a tangle of leather and toilet brushes. This sheltered-life locksmith walks away from the scene shocked, which is funny, but also upset, which isn’t. I assume – I hope  – that the joke was explained to him as soon as the scene was in the can.

The theory that Bruno is about breaking taboos and playing games with innate homophobia is debatable: ultimately it’s just about making audiences laugh. They get the big joke about what’s real and what’s not.

At least, I hope they do. I’m reminded of a British comedian’s tale of meeting an Australian who didn’t go to the movies much:

‘You seen that Mr Bean?’ the Australian said, deadly serious. ‘The guys a f—ing idiot!’

I’m DJ-ing at a new club called Decline and Fall this Friday 10th. It’s hosted by the elegant burlesque artiste Vicky Butterfly and takes place at the Albert & Pearl in Upper Street, which I’m told is a suitably opulent venue:

http://www.timeout.com/london/cabaret/event/152346/decline-and-fall.html

***

So. I’ve left the news clippings night shift job in order to concentrate on writing jobs like the ‘Forever England’ book. On my last night at the office, many colleagues who normally dressed down gave me a surprise send-off. They came to work wearing suits, or shirts and ties, or evening dresses and high heels. On top of which I was given a lovely leaving card, boxes of Fortnum & Mason fudge and shortbread, a notebook and a luxury ballpoint engraved with my name. I was so touched.

The secret Dress Up for Dickon Day was the chief delight. If that’s what people think of me – that I like to be surrounded by the dressed-up – well, they’re absolutely right. Just as well I am me, really.

***

Now. There’s been an awful amount of Silly Tosh written about Mr Jackson since his untimely death, and frankly I don’t see why I should be any different.

His music has been ubiquitous in London’s coffee shops, cafes and bars ever since, which actually I don’t mind too much. I didn’t realise until now that I do slightly like the Eddie Van Halen guitar solo which occurs halfway through  ‘Beat It’. And then there’s those rather startling lyrics to ‘Wanna Be Startin’ Something’, which straddle the awful-brilliant axis:

You’re a vegetable (you’re a vegetable)
You’re just a buffet (you’re a vegetable)

Indeed. Just, as the man said, a buffet. And people have been helping themselves to that particular buffet even since he departed to that great Moonwalk dancefloor in the sky. Which I guess means… the Moon. (Shall I stop this now? I’m so sorry, I have to tickle myself back to the diary after a fallow period. Silliness is as good a way as any).

I’ll never forget where I was when I heard the news. I was reading the news. No, I really was. Thursday June 25th was my last night at the news clippings job. It was fun watching the BBC site hold onto those get-out-of-jail-free quotation marks in its main headline for as long as possible. They went from ‘Michael Jackson “rushed to hospital”‘ to ‘Michael Jackson ‘is dead'”, the sub heading carefully adding ‘according to reports’. By which they meant, ‘Some news sources are saying Michael Jackson is dead, but frankly they’re all American ones, or Sky, and we’re the BBC, damn it! We won’t take the quote marks away until Jeremy Paxman has personally walked into the hospital and checked his pulse.’

The news broke too late for most of the morning newspapers, which led with the story of BBC executives’ expenses. One morning paper with a late enough press time took advantage and splashed the Jackson story all over its cover. That it was City AM, the London-only financial daily which normally wouldn’t touch showbiz stories with a hedge fund bargepole, didn’t stop it one iota.

The days of news media saying ‘that’s enough, let’s move on to other events’ are long gone. The phrase ‘And in other news’ is still used – but only just, and never soon enough. The proliferation – 24 hour channels in particular -  should in theory mean more diversity in news. It would have been nice to see a little of all that extra time used for more coverage of, say, the passing of Sky Saxon and Steven Wells. Just because they’re less well-known shouldn’t mean they receive less coverage; on the contrary, because they’re lesser known they should get more attention. I suppose I naively want a kind of Robin Hood approach to media attention. Or just a little less reheating of the one buffet.

To Cad & The Dandy in Hanover Square for a second tailored suit: this time for summer wear. Mohair, two button, light navy blue: their recommendation as an alternative to linen. The trouble with linen suits is their tendency to look utterly creased and grubby within minutes. Which I don’t mind so much, but I’m curious about the mohair argument and as a known-suit fancier I think I should own one.

C&D were featured in an article on the summer suit debate in City AM, which a kind colleague on the night shift had put aside for me. The sentiment ‘I saw this and thought of you’ is responsible for about 90% of my wardrobe, and indeed my library.

==

At the Whittington Hospital’s Imaging Department the other day for an ultrasound on my left leg. A decade after the removal of a large varicose vein, it’s come back to haunt me once more. Dad is apologetic about this, as it’s his family’s hereditary condition. I tell him not to feel bad, that it’s a small price to pay for the privilege of being his son. Being English, I can’t let this statement hover for too long and quickly add, ‘And thanks for the full head of hair.’

So here I am again, back at the Whittington a decade later. I stand on a footstool in my underwear while a lady engineer applies the gel and the plastic thing on a wire and insists I look at the screen. I can’t make out what she’s referring to, and the only comment that springs to mind is ‘Isn’t there a Joy Division sleeve that looks like this?’

She says it’s good news: the new vein is operable after all.

‘You’ll be able to wear shorts again!’ she beams.

Preparing to go out to two soirees: a birthday gathering at the Flask in Highgate, then onto the Phoenix in Cavendish Square to DJ at How Does It Feel To Be Loved. Always a pleasure to do the latter as it means I can indulge my lesser aired taste in 60s girl group pop alongside 80s jangly guitar indie.

Thursday last was DJ-ing at the Boogaloo for Beautiful & Damned, the warm up for our slot at next month’s Latitude Festival. We put on the silent movie Pandora’s Box by way of a backdrop. Louise Brooks’s iconic bob hairdo always looks more extreme than one expects: from some angles it’s nearly a butch crop. In one scene she wears a helmet-like black hat which actually looks exactly the same as her hair. When she takes the hat off, there’s no overall difference. It’s like someone wearing two pairs of glasses.

It dawns on me that the haircut also crosses over for both of my DJ-iing incarnations this week. How Does It Feel… runs a label for latterday indiepop groups, one of which, the Pocketbooks, has a girl singer whose hair is pure Ms Brooks – or indeed the singer from Swing Out Sister, echoing the 80s echoing the 60s echoing the 20s. Some music scenes are joined at the haircut.

But never mind my own dipping into different worlds – Fosca’s Tom Edwards, my brother, is now playing guitar for none other than Edwyn Collins. He replaces Roddy Frame, with his first gig being T In The Park. Quite a leap from playing with Fields of the Nephilim. Though not such a leap, of course, from playing with Fosca.

Tom tells me much of Mr Collins’s back catalogue is more muso-y and trickier to play than you might expect from the Godfather of Indie. Even though those early recordings with Orange Juice are often out of tune and vocally wavering (in all the right ways) the guitar lines are elaborate and downright fiddly to copy. With the notable exception of the break in ‘Rip It Up’, Orange Juice’s only bona fide chart hit. Amid all the polished funk-pop production, Edwyn sings ‘And my favourite song’s entitled… ‘Boredom” before going into a replication of that Buzzcocks song’s two-note guitar solo. How many Top Of The Pops viewers got the reference at the time, heaven knows. So very sly, so very arch, so very Edwyn.

The process of writing a non-fiction book is fascinating. Mr Agent now wants to know if I’m going to write ‘Forever England’ as a straight narrative or as a more guide book shaped affair.

Which is better? 14 chapters of 5000 words (narrative style) or 40 chapters of 2000 words (guidebook style)? I have to decide this now, really.

My gut reaction is go with 14 long chapters with a decent index, as once I start to write about something, I like to really explore and get settled in. But maybe shorter chapters would be more readable, more dip-into-able, and perhaps make the book more commercial, in these days of compact attention spans. Ultimately, I want as many readers as possible. Which path to take?

==

Saturday last – a trip to Brighton for the wedding party of Simon Price and Jenna Allsopp. Staying with Rhoda B at a hotel near the station.

Venue is the basement of the Al Duomo Italian restaurant, round the side of the Pavilion Buildings. Inside, each table has its own designated 7-inch pop single floating above it, anchored to a helium balloon. I look inside each sleeve, and it really is the actual records. All impeccable choices, given the bride and groom DJ at their own long-running club in Camden, Stay Beautiful. There’s The Specials – Ghost Town. Siouxie and the Banshees- Spellbound. Manic Street Preachers – Love’s Sweet Exile (underrated in my book). The single which happens to be above the table I’ve randomly installed myself at turns out to be David Bowie – Ashes To Ashes. Perfect.

I drink too much and enjoy myself too much, with the result that I spend the day after with a twitching right thumb. I’d collapsed into bed drunk and slept on a nerve or muscle in the wrong way. It’s a new degree of hangover for me- actual palsy.

At the party I boozily flirt with younger people yet bemoan (and bore them with) the tragic way one’s romantic taste doesn’t change as one gets older.

There’s no solution to this, really. There are those of my age who think nothing of visiting their paramours in student halls of residence, happy to attend birthday parties full of 20-year-olds when they’re nearly 40.  I enjoy the company of the young, but if I’m the only person at a party who’s over 22, part of me thinks, ‘This Looks Unseemly, Frankly’.

And then again… Another part thinks, ‘Well, I’m not getting any other offers, damn it. And they can’t be after me for money.’

It can be  about casting oneself in a role, before you’re cast by someone else. How does this look? It’s all very well saying ‘who cares what others think’, but if you take an interest in your external appearance per se, you can’t help considering the outside view when it comes to companions, too. Here is a man, you are saying, with someone far too young for them.

There are those who feel a younger lover keeps them young, while others think an age difference makes them feel twice as old. ‘Who’s this then? Kasa-been?’ ‘Kasabian, Grandad.’ ‘Ah, heard it all before. It reminds me of The Wedding Present circa 1987…’ ‘Who?’

I realise Kasabian don’t sound anything like the Wedding Present. Probably. I could find out. But the fogey-ish image suits me, and takes less effort, so why bother?

In fact, if I DO investigate new pop music, it arguably makes me look sadder.  I absolutely adore La Roux, a tomboyish Brixton girl singer sporting heavy 1980s make-up and a quiff (Tilda Swinton meets Molly Ringwald, as someone put it). She looks like she has no friends – except the posters on her wall. I’m sure she DOES have friends offstage, but the image is clear: defiant and refreshingly aloof.

Her records go from sounding a bit like Prince’s ‘When Doves Cry’ (‘Quicksand’) to budget synthpop recalling Romo and Post-Romo bands like Hollywood, Riviera, Client, or Baxendale (‘Bulletproof’).

But if I were to go to a La Roux show, given I’m 37 and she’s about 12, I’d just look deeply, deeply sad. Well, unless I hang onto the bar at the back for dear life. My taste is the same, it’s only my body that’s changed. My body isn’t me – sometimes.

In fact, I’ve just written an Angela Carter-ish fairy tale about this, ‘Gepetto’ (sic), which should appear in a fanzine for the comic Phonogram. It’s an attempt to map the story of Geppetto & Pinocchio onto a relationship between an older man (who’s keen to pull the strings), and a younger female-to-male transsexual who dreams of becoming a Real Boy. Or at least, that’s where it starts: I quickly became bored with the Pinocchio-transman idea (‘yeah, that old chestnut!’), and went onto, well, everything I had to tell the world full stop. There’s musings on rebelling against the body (the wrong age versus the wrong gender), and Phonogram-esque references to a song by the 90s band Belly.

I wrote the story just before leaving for Gibraltar, in three handwritten drafts (fountain pen, A4 lined), followed by a fourth on the computer. Heaven knows what others will make of it, but I’m pleased I did it. Next step: more.

An email:

Dear Mr Edwards,
We seem to have been staying at the same hotel in Sark at the same time; I presume you were the young man who had difficulties with his bicycle chain and who resembled a refugee from ‘Crome Yellow’.

==

Have given my notice at the night shift. My last night there is June 25th.

I’d been hoping to keep the job on and have it support the writing, but it was becoming increasingly obvious that I couldn’t muster the energy for both. However, I swore to myself I wouldn’t quit until, say, a literary agent contacted me out of the blue with a view to writing a book. Which is exactly what happened.

The proposed book is a non-fiction travel work, working title ‘Forever England: Corners of Belonging in Foreign Fields’. It’ll muse on versions of the displaced Englishness I’ve come across in Sark, Gibraltar and Tangier, as well as places I’d like to go, if the book deal allows. I’m fascinated with 2009 notions of belonging, where people escape a country yet take bits of it with them – or create a version of Albion from scratch. It’ll be about otherworldly bars, poignant shops and strange monuments. All from my point of view, as someone who thinks he doesn’t really have ‘roots’ or fits in anywhere – only to be told the moment I step outside the UK that I resemble a terminal Englishman. Whatever that means…

===

As I’m quitting the night job, it means I’ll be available for more London DJ gigs. There’s these between now and Latitude:

Thurs June 18th: Beautiful & Damned at the Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, N6. The usual vintage, easy listening & showtunes.

Sat June 20th: How Does It Feel To Be Loved, The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square. 80s indiepop & 60s girl groups.

Mon June 29th: Book Club Boutique, Dick’s Bar, 23 Romilly Street, Soho. Gay Pride event. Not sure what I’ll play here. Perhaps everything I can’t get away with at the other places.

Sat July 4th: Last Tuesday Society’s Fairy Tale Masked Ball, after a talk by Marina Warner. The Vaults, 47 Chiswell Streets, EC. The B&D stuff with a slightly more hedonistic, giddy angle.

===

The sensation of finding out there’s a Big Brother contestant whose path has crossed yours is, I suppose, an increasingly common modern experience. This year’s series includes an intriguing Russian lady called Angel, who entered the BB house in top hat, tails and brandishing a cane. Last time I saw her she was married to the manager of Spearmint, the band I was in during 1999 and 2000. She designed and built the set of the video for Spearmint’s single, ‘We’re Going Out’, which I appeared in. I don’t watch the programme much these days, but I hope she wins. Her bohemian, arty charm might swing it for her. Niceness is the alibi of otherness.

===

Today the country has woken up to the results of the European Parliament elections, with the BNP acquiring two new seats. A closer look reveals the actual number of votes for the BNP in their two winning regions (Yorkshire, North West) has in fact decreased. It was the poor turnout by people who’d normally vote for the top 3 parties that gave them a higher percentage of the vote, and thus the seats. Proportional Representation is thought to be a fairer system, but if people aren’t voting at all, it’s useless. So now the rest of Europe – and people who aren’t looking hard enough – think the UK is becoming more right wing. No, it’s becoming more apathetic. More people than ever have chosen not to choose.

But they forget the trouble with choosing nothing. Like the laws of nature where a vacuum is abhored, something still has to go in nothing’s place. So now we have BNP MEPs. Well done, nothing.

Back from Gibraltar and Tangier. No more mad little holidays for a while now.

Announcements.

I’m Dj-ing at the Latitude festival once again, as one half of The Beautiful & Damned DJs. This time we’ll be on the Thursday night, in the Film & Music tent. We’re DJ-ing between the acts through the evening, then we’ll take the tent into full club mode till 2 am. If it’s anything like the last time we did the Thursday night, the tent should be packed.

Writing-wise, I’ve contributed a piece to the New Escapologist magazine, issue 2. It’s called The Seven Ages Of Cliche, and appears to be a slightly hysterical rant about, well, whatever’s closest to hand. You can buy it from www.new-escapologist.co.uk

I’m also sad about the passing of Plan B magazine, which I wrote bits and pieces for over the last few years. I really should get around to archiving all my Plan B pieces on this site.

***

Diary catch-up:

Saturday before last: DJ-ing for cash with Miss Red and James L, at a wedding near Steeple Bumpstead in Essex.

The marquee’s set up outside a farmhouse in the middle of the countryside. There’s a fancy dress theme, so although I’m in a tent full of people I do not know, they are all dressed as people I do know. I count about five Fat Elvises. A white-vested Freddie Mercury prances by the canapes, sausages on a stick in one hand, fake microphone on a stick in the other.

The organisers have hired a portable public lavatory from Classical Toilets of Bury St Edmunds, the interiors of which are decked out like luxury hotel washrooms. Classical music is pumped in, and there’s a vase of fresh cut lilies by the aloe vera soap dispensers. I take one of the firm’s business card-sized flyers. It turns out they do a range of four different models, depending on the number of guests catered for.  For some reason, each one is named after a famous writer, rather than a classical composer.

Top of the range, for events of over 350 guests, is The Shakespeare. I can tell from a little diagram on the flyer that the mens’ side of The Shakespeare comprises three urinals, and two cubicles. Next one down is The Dickens: three urinals and two cubicles. Then there’s The Tennyson: two urinals and one cubicle, which is the one hired for this wedding. Finally, if you think your big day is likely to attract only a few dozen guests, you can plump for The Bronte: one cubicle only.

It’s not clear which Bronte they mean, but I have visions of all three sisters having to queue up and wait until the cubicle’s free. Emily runs out of patience and uses the moors.

As I stand there at the urinal, drenched in Vivaldi, I think of Tennyson.

‘Hold thou the good; define it well.’

In Memoriam, indeed.

I receive an email from someone who says they’re a literary agent, mentioning the words ‘book deal’. And suddenly the world gains new colours.

Hopes at ground level, of course. But it has galvanised me into author-shaped action, making me dig out the Writers’ & Artists’ Yearbook, scribble ideas, and generally Take An Interest In Life again. As opposed to just being interested in sleeping. And sleeping again. And sleeping some more.

=

Just when I’m in the mood to write, it’s getting on for time to go to the night shift. I’ve promised a short story for someone’s collection. It’s due on Monday. Have it all worked out, am terribly pleased with the idea, and want to write it now. But it’s  time to go to work. And although I have taken tomorrow night off, it’s in order to DJ at someone I don’t know’s wedding. Still, presumably that won’t go on all night. I shall just have to steal moments with my notebook wherever I can get them.

If you have the nerve to call yourself a writer, you’re meant to learn from experiences of being thrown in amongst strangers. Observe, note their conversation and so on. Except I’m hardly the fly-on-the-wall type. Too often, I AM the subject of conversation. ‘Hey, look at him! What’s he writing? Look at his hair! Oy, mate, are you gay?’ And so on. So much for eavesdropping. My ‘Overheard By Dickon Edwards’ book would be filled entirely with comments about me.

=

Boys with bikes in King’s Cross the other evening. Shouting at me from the other side of the street.

‘Oy, blondie!’

I keep walking, and don’t look over.

‘OY, blondie. Blondie. Hey, Prince Charles!’

(Prince Charles…!)

That makes me look up. They grin, and put their thumbs up.

I grin back and nod in what I hope looks like ‘Yes, I do look funny, don’t I. Heigh ho!’ Without sarcasm, though. It’s hard work.

Walking in the street is improv class. You pretty much have to cast yourself in the role of a person walking in the street. No one ever tells you this.

Because my appearance isn’t particularly outre compared to the proper human peacocks of Camden and Shoreditch, I’m convinced part of My Problem is in the way I carry myself as much as my clothes and hair. Or in the way I don’t carry myself. I’ve never quite managed to convincingly play Bloke Walking In The Street. Or even – crucially – Arty Bloke Walking In The Street. Neither fish nor fop.

Sunday morning. Sitting in Waterloo Station Starbucks, still recovering from the queasy swaying of the overnight ferry from Guernsey. The Japanese girl working behind the counter is playing her own mix CD in the shop. Entirely 1980s UK indie. New Order’s Age of Consent. OMD. Echo & The Bunnymen. The Cure (it’s always The Cure – they should get a Queen’s Export award). And best of all – some Durutti Column. On a Sunday morning in Starbucks.

I’m quietly enjoying the music, reading ‘Sark: As I Found It’ by a rather eccentric character called Captain Ernest Platt, published 1935. Can’t decide whether he’s real or a pastiche, a joke. Googling him later reveals he was both: a British Fascist. Common experience when reading old books, of course. So much latterday forgiveness has to be factored in. Even Mervyn Peake’s 1950s ‘Mr Pye’ refers to a burning match looking like ‘a hanged negro’.

Just then, there’s a knock at the plate glass window. A couple of men I don’t know, pointing at me, laughing, before moving on down the street.

This ability – or curse – for attracting attention. No, not attention, curiosity. It has to be worth something in the cut-and-thrust world of marketing new authors. Has to help. I’m hoping to find out.

Wednesday, St Peter Port, Guernsey. I catch the 4pm boat to Sark. It’s a kind of floating minibus, seating 50 or so on this trip. Smooth enough journey out of the harbour, but as soon as we hit the open Channel, it’s roller coaster time. I think of that old quote about the Channel being Britain’s greatest line of defence, defying Caesar and countless other invasions, and making those D-Day colleagues of Mr Hanks throw up so memorably in the opening of Saving Private Ryan.

I can never remember the best way of dealing with rough crossings. Maybe it’s nothing by the standards of more seasoned sailors, but my idea of rough is any time the horizon just can’t make up its mind where to sit. Some say you have to lie down – not always easy in a minibus arrangement of bench seating. I choose to hold on to the seat, turn on my iPod, close my eyes and imagine I’m playing the music. I am not here, I tell myself. I am not in a boat being thrown about. I am playing this Galaxie 500 track somewhere else. On a stage, say. A stage on a boat… oh, I’ve lost it.

It works well enough at the dentist. There, I imagine my mind is not in the body in the chair, the one at the mercy of the drill. I am floating above, looking down. I am in the next room. I am elsewhere. This attempt at amateur self-hypnosis is actually pretty effective, perhaps because one is already in a reclining position. But not on the Sark boat. I make a mental note to get some bottled anaesthetic – Pino Grigio Nitrous Oxide – for the trip back.

At Sark harbour, I meet Philip and Elizabeth Perree from the hotel I’m staying at, La Sablonnerie. Turns out Elizabeth was in the boat too, in the other seating section behind me. ‘How was that crossing by your standards?’ I ask her. ‘Excellent! Very quick!’

Behind me I watch the boat taking passengers deliveries for the journey back, including lots of grey mail sacks.

For the steep trek up the cliff to the main part of the island, I’m given a lift on a goods trailer pulled by Philip’s tractor, me and Ms P (and her Harrods shopping bag – reused for Guernsey) sit and chat together amongst the suitcases. The scenery is spectacular: it’s wildflower season and the hills are speckled with bluebells at every glance.

The slope levels off at a crossroads, and I’m given a horse-drawn taxi ride to the hotel, the driver Elaine telling me all about the island’s history on the way. How Sark is part of Guernsey in some ways, and not in others. How it uses Guernsey currency, mail service and stamps, how like the other Channel Islands all the place names and nouns are French, but the main language is English with a variety of accents, from RP posh to working class Essex. Just like in ‘Bergerac’, of course. But while Guernsey is in the UK, Sark is actually a self-governing independent state, a feudalist fiefdom from 1565 till last year, when they finally had their first Parliamentary elections. The ruler of the island is still the hereditary Seigneur, but I’m told he ‘helps out’ rather than tells others what to do. And as his son has divorced and remarried, which is frowned on in the Feudal Rulebook, it’s not clear what will happen to the line of Seigneurs.

I’d already read about the recent democratic elections and all the hoo-ha over the Barclay twins. The Barclays are billionaire playboy owners of the Telegraph newspaper and the Ritz Hotel, who live in their newly built castle on nearby Brecqhou Isle, one of the fiefdoms ‘parcels’ of land, and own a number of hotels and shops on Sark. The Barclays controversially kick-started Sark’s democratic reforms, bringing the scrutiny of international human rights to the anachronisms of a feudal system. An unelected Seigneur being King is unfair, they reasoned. But of course, the flipside is in the freer world of democracy, money is power instead. As the world’s press recorded, once their favoured candidates at last year’s election were democratically rejected by the island’s voters, they dramatically closed down all their interests and sacked over a hundred staff (out of a population of 600). Orwell would have loved this one: which do you choose between the power of hereditary barons versus the baron-like power of billionaires? Still, what’s less reported is that the Barclays-owned jobs were quietly reinstated a few weeks later, that the twins continue to help boost the local economy, and Sarkese-Barclay relations are, I’m told by a few locals, more or less back to normal. If a little bruised and wary.

There’s a fascinating Guardian article on the post-election Sark here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/mar/23/sark-democratic-elections

(With the Barclays, I can’t help thinking of the archetype of elderly rich twins in films like The Million Pound Note and Trading Places).

‘I’m re-reading Mr Pye, by Mervyn Peake,’ I tell the horsedrawn cab’s driver, Elaine. The horse is called George.
‘We’re just about to pass the house where he wrote it,’ she says.

And there it is on the right, still occupied by Peake’s daughter. It’s also where he wrote Gormanghast.

The highlight of the journey is La Coupee, the narrow sliver of cliff topped by a thin path – an isthmus – connecting Little Sark, where I’m staying, to Great Sark, where all the other hotels and the main ‘Avenue’ are. ‘Hold tight. I hope you have a head for heights,’ says Elaine as she takes George into a fast trot. It’s like a very small part of the Great Wall of China. A plaque marks how the railings and track surfacing is the work of German POWs during WW2.

It’s a chilly night. But when I get to my room at La Sablonnerie farmhouse hotel, I find a real coal fire burning and two hot water bottles in my bed. It’s fair to say I’ve gotten over the rough crossing.

(Uploaded in Sark’s Island Hall cafe. Laptop battery running out.)

Am using the free wifi and sofas in Guernsey’s Tourist Information Centre, where the staff are very nice indeed, while waiting for the ferry to Sark.

Another impulsive mini-holiday made in a moment of desperately wanting to get away and go somewhere, coupled with paint fumes from the flat downstairs’s major redecorating stint forcing me out – anywhere. Plus the night shift really got to me last week – not quite breaking down in tears before my colleagues, but the closest I’ve come yet. I need… something. Somewhere quiet. Without paint fumes. Or indeed, traffic fumes. Sark has a ban on cars – it’s all horsedrawn carriages and hired bicycles.

I’m also off to Gibraltar and Tangier two weeks later – booked months ago. So after that my wallet will need a holiday too. I’ll be pretty much grounded for the summer, fumes or no fumes. But it’s utterly worth it.

What I don’t want to happen is to turn into one of those people who work, then feel the need to blow all their wages on doing things that take their mind off the work. I took the night shift job partly to earn money while getting plenty of time off, but also to get me out of my spiralling nihilism and slapping me about the face with a dose of the real world. Maybe I’m still in shock from the slaps.

If I were back on the dole, chances are I’d be just as miserable and frustrated, except it’d be worse: miserable and frustrated AND penniless. Instead, here I am travelling to places I’d always dreamed of visiting if only I had a little cash.

Been meaning to go to Sark for 20 years, ever since I saw the 80s TV dramatisation of Mervyn Peake’s Mr Pye, starring Derek Jacobi as the alternately angel-winged and devil-horned protagonist . Though it may be only me that remembers it. A distinctly eccentric tale, set on a distinctly eccentric island.