Friday continued.

So having justified my upgraded presence as the difference between Mr MacG getting to his show and not getting there, I enjoy my first time in First Class. Which in this instance includes silver service meals and – oh joy – Afternoon Tea with scones. Plus the Aer Lingus Premier Class Toiletries Pack, the highlight of which is a tube of L’Occitane Ultra Riche face cream. Shane lets me have his.

I sit back, grateful for the extra leg room and general pampering, and watch the airline version of ‘Michael Clayton’. An excellent film, if slightly marred by the censoring required for in-flight movies. One particularly clumsy moment comes during Tom Wilkinson’s remarkable performance as a lawyer who plunges (or ascends) into a seeing-the-light style of madness, reminiscent of Peter Finch in ‘Network’.

‘… An hour later, I’m in a BROTHEL in Chelsea and two Lithuanian redheads are taking turns KISSING ME.’

The words ‘brothel’ and ‘kissing’ are not only dubbed over something much stronger, but the voice doing the dubbing is clearly not Tom Wilkinson’s. Not by a long shot.

I’ve never understood this aspect of air travel. You pay all that money for a plane ticket, you’re defying the forces of nature, you’re living the dream of your ancestors, and yet you’re still not allowed to hear a single swear word. Not even on headphones.

***

Staying alcohol-free on the flight in order to reassure the cabin crew, I think of a quote by Jeffrey Bernard, when he sacked his accountant for drunkenness:

‘One of us has to stay sober. It sure as hell isn’t going to be me.’

***

In America. We’re at JFK, waiting in the queue for Immigration. The mother of the pleasant family standing behind us behind recognises Shane, and thanks him for all the pleasure his music has given them. I hope this bodes well for our being allowed into the country. I think of Sebastian Horsley recently turned away on account of ‘moral turpitude’ (I see Mr H has made the Wikipedia entry on the phrase: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_turpitude). But I also think of tales of certain zero-budget Sarah Records indie bands, refused entry for trying to pass themselves off as tourists, because the work visa needed for playing gigs was too expensive, or too awkward to organise in time. Carrying musical instruments alone was enough to get them turned away.

While we wait, Shane tells me he’s never had problems with Immigration in the past. He’s been to New York many times before. Well, there’s that song of his, isn’t there. Fairytale of.

He says the officials are often Irish-American, which helps. That’s it’s English old me who’s more likely to raise eyebrows. My appearance and voice is closer to Sebastian H than Shane MacG. I start to worry – as ever – and for a second I seriously wonder if I should attempt an Irish accent to help get me through. Then I think of Alan Partridge – ‘Dere’s More To Oireland Den Dis’ – and decide against it. Wisely.

But we go through with no problems at all. I have my face scanned by one of those little spherical cameras, and for the first time in my life I have my fingerprints taken. Seems a bit overly zealous, but I’m hardly going to complain at this stage. Inside leg measurement, DNA sample, I’m ready to give America whatever it wants. I’m all too English that way. And then we’re through. Another hoop.

As we pass, I note the young policeman’s name badge. Officer McCann.

(I’ve spent much of the past few days trying, and failing, to compress the NY trip into 500 words. It can’t be done. Well, not by me. Some stories refuse to be abridged. But I like a nice, rambling tale, the winding scenic route rather than the motorway. So I beg the reader’s indulgence on this one. What am I saying? I’m always begging the reader’s indulgence.)

Friday 27th June.

Beginning of the NY trip. I have been asked, at the shortest possible notice, to escort Shane MacGowan from Dublin to New York.

He’s agreed to be a guest singer at a gig in Greenwich Village on the Sunday, billed ‘Liam Clancy & Friends’. It’s to be filmed for DVD posterity, and it’s my duty to see he gets on the plane, turns up to the gig and to a filmed rehearsal and interview, then escort him safely back home. I also have to act as his unofficial assistant, though this is a duty that arises out of necessity more than anything else.

Fine with me. I’m happy to help. And more than happy to visit New York – and the USA – for the first time, not to mention first class seats on the planes, and a room at one of the most ornate and stylish hotels in the city – the Waldorf=Astoria. I’ll have my expenses paid at every step. All I have to do is look after Mr MacGowan, keep him happy, and keep those he deals with happy.

I say ‘all’…

This trip is so last minute that I don’t even know which airport I have to get to in order to make the Dublin rendezvous with Mr MacG. I have to await a phone call from the film company, the ones behind the Liam Clancy DVD.

Originally, Shane was meant to travel with his manager or a long-standing friend, but both can’t make it. Neither, it seems, can anyone else in the pool of his various associates. Illness, Glastonbury, expired passport, whatever. So it’s me they ask at half-past midnight on the Thursday night, if I can make a flight on Friday morning.

My only condition to Team Shane is that I must be back in Highgate by Wednesday evening. It’s my mother’s MBE investiture at Buckingham Palace on the Thursday. I can get out of most things, but not that.

The phone goes at 9am, and I receive my further instructions. My connecting flight is from Heathrow, and it leaves in two hours. Just as well I’m up, dressed, packed and ready. I panic somewhat en route, thinking I’ll never make the gate in time. But the combination of tube to Paddington, Heathrow Express, and those self-service check-in machines at the airport – plus a short delay in the flight itself, actually leaves me with an hour to spare. I really must stop worrying about these things.

The flight to Dublin has an unusually high ratio of screaming babies. At one bumpy point I hear screaming to the left of me and screaming to the right, like a midwifery Light Brigade. In fact, they create a curious stereo effect. There’s even a moment where the cries merge perfectly into phase with exactly the same pitch (B flat, possibly). It’s a pure, blanket, orange-coloured tone. I find this aural symmetry unexpectedly soothing, even nostalgic, reminding me of the days when you’d fall asleep in front of the TV to a test card whine. But it doesn’t last, and the babies break away back into Stockhausen-like dissonance.

Two thoughts:

1) Why is it that fairground rides have a child-spurning sign saying ‘You must be THIS high to get on’, but airplanes, which aren’t attached to anything on the ground and soar somewhat higher, do not?

2) Parents who bring screaming infants onto crowded planes full of nervous flyers should be strongly encouraged to slip their distressed offspring some kind of heavy, sleep-inducing draft (‘Thank You For Flying Herod Airlines…’). If this isn’t possible, maybe they could slip one to me. Triple vodka and tonic, say.

At Dublin airport, I experience the first measure taken to ensure Mr MacG gets on the plane: VIP Handling, Dublin style. This is actually a separate building away from the main airport, and I have to take a taxi out of the arrivals area to reach it. Inside, it’s like a small hotel. There’s a reception area where I sign in and show my passport, while my suitcase is taken to be put on the plane, in the manner of a hotel porter. I am all but saluted.  Then I’m led into a large private lounge, set aside purely for me and Mr MacG. Flat screen TV, tea & coffee, snacks, drinks bar, coffee tables, sofas.

In comes the man himself, worth so much money yet looking, well, like Shane MacGowan. Just as well, really. His jeans are covered in cigarette burns, and he’s swigging from a large and filthy plastic milk carton, containing something that’s doubtlessly not entirely milk. Prime suspect is Shane’s current favourite tipple – a large White Russian. Very large.

Soon a VIP Handling person comes to tell us our plane is boarding. We have to go through security like anyone else, except it’s our own personal security: a small room in the VIP block with the usual metal detector, switched on and staffed just for us two. No queues.

Then we’re escorted into a VIP Handling Taxi, driven to the departure gate, ushered up through a staff-only lift and corridors, shoved past the Economy passengers queuing at the gate (such a great feeling – airline-endorsed official queue jumping), and taken right up into the front part of the plane. Premier Class. Safe and sound.

Except not quite. I’m settling down in my seat thinking all is well, when the head of the Aer Lingus cabin crew comes over to me.

‘Mr Edwards? May I have a word?’

Like a naughty schoolboy, I am summoned to that dark little area by the cockpit where the crew live.

Mr Lingus lowers his voice to a stern whisper and actually wags his finger at me, reeling off his responsibilities as Cabin Crew Manager, his fears about Mr MacG, and why I must now reassure him then and there that There Will Be No Trouble. I clear my throat and deliver the Shane Will Be No Trouble, Honest speech, something I have a smattering of experience in, and in different languages too. I even offer to go without alcohol throughout the flight, if they’ll draw a blind eye (and a Premier Class blind eye at that) to letting Shane have everything he asks for.

I almost hear the ‘Dambuster’ theme swell when I get to the part about how it’s my purpose – and my priority – to keep everyone happy: Shane and the film company and Aer Lingus alike. This last point seems to properly allay his fears, and I’m allowed back to my seat. The plane takes off for New York with us on board. Thank God. One hoop jumped through.

As I settle back to refuse Premier Class champagne and ask for bottled water, I notice my stomach is in knots. It’s either anxiety about getting Shane through the various appointments ahead (Immigration next), or excitement about visiting NYC for the first time in my life. Probably both. Besides, champagne isn’t the best thing for an unsettled stomach.

Above: my crew pass from the Liam Clancy concert, which was the reason for the trip.
Below: boarding passes. Note scribbled-on upgrade, ensuring I’m seated next to Mr MacG. Which was the whole reason for my being there.

I didn’t take any photos on this trip. Took the camera, charged it with batteries, cleared space on the inner hard drive (digital cameras lack romance: I really want to say ‘loaded it with film’), but once I got there I just didn’t feel like snapping away. Hence the scans. I wonder now if this is through some kind of guilt, that I was really there to do a job – escorting Mr MacG to NYC and acting as his assistant – rather than be a tourist. Or whether it was to do with the fact that everywhere Shane went, strangers came up and asked to have their photo taken with him, and my ‘other people are your stunt doubles’ mode took over.

Ah well. You know what I look like. You know what he looks like. There’s photos of us together in the Tangier entries (Feb 2007, Dec 2005). What more do you want? You want photos of the new thing. Oh, how Western of you! You know what a guide in Tangier said to me? He wondered why Westerners can’t believe anything till they take a photograph of it. When they get to a wonderful sight, their reaction is not to just see it and enjoy the moment for itself, but to put a camera between themselves and the sight, to compromise the moment, to only believe it by recording it. And now they go to concerts with phone cameras to film it, even though they have paid to watch the concert in person. They are not watching the show, they are watching television.

And somewhere in there is the connection between developed nations with imperial pasts, and the undeveloped nations at their mercy. Never mind the law: possession is nine tenths of Western history. The possession of those who write it down or – better still – take cameras. The Western connection between seeing something nice, and wanting to own it. I think of those huge rooms at the V&A full of Victorian plaster casts of statues, towering columns and even doorways, from visits to foreign lands. ‘What a lovely statue you have here. Excuse me while I take a plaster cast… ‘

British history is meant to start when Julius Caesar wrote down his invasion plans. That always seemed rather unfair to me. But then, that’s the reason why I started this diary myself – to try and get one over on my own life, and on the passing of time. Write about it, tell the tale. That’ll teach it.

I also resent the power of photos over words, that were I to say ‘I saw Amy Winehouse today strangling a squirrel’, it wouldn’t have a fraction of the same power as my taking a photo of the incident and posting it here – it would probably even end up in a newspaper whether I gave permission or not, given the current media obsession with every tiny aspect of Ms W’s life. Who the hell do photos think they are?

All of which is probably more to do with my being a rubbish and forgetful photographer than anything else. Look, I just forgot to take photos, okay? I’ll make sure I’ll get some next time, assuming there is a next time. You never know with Mr MacGowan.

One thing I have learned from this is how to get to New York or anywhere else you want to go, with no money whatsoever.

1) Always keep your passport up to date and somewhere easy to find.
2) Be contactable.
3) Wait. Maybe years. But you’ll get there.

It worked for me in Japan in 1999 (playing guitar with Spearmint). Then Tangier in 2005, and now NYC.

** *

This Tristram Shandy-style digression isn’t entirely straying from the point. One of my most abiding sensations once the initial excitement of arriving in NYC had worn off was the sense of sheer pressure. That you’re supposed to see the sights, and you’re supposed to take photos. To not ‘waste’ the experience. To do the things you’re meant to do.

Which really means, to do the things other people expect you to do.

So no, I didn’t go to the top of the Empire State Building. And no, I didn’t visit the Statue of Liberty. I didn’t want to. Not at the time. You have to also remember I wasn’t expecting to be in New York at all, finding out on Thursday night just after midnight, and catching the Heathrow Express at 9am on the Friday morning. People who properly ‘do’ New York tend to plan it months in advance.

On the Sunday morning, I stayed in my hotel room and realised what I most wanted to do right then and there was watch the latest episode of Doctor Who. On my laptop, in my hotel room. So I did. Yet saying so seems a kind of obscenity, and one feels the need to go into a torrent (internet joke) of excuses. I didn’t watch anything else on TV while I was there. There was nothing on, anyway – just lots of endless news programmes about Mr Obama and Mr McCain  and some not terribly funny sitcom called How I Met Your Mother, starring the boy from Doogie Howser MD and Willow from Buffy. You’d have thought that turning on a TV in New York would mean instant access to the Simpsons or Curb Your Enthusiasm or The Wire, but they didn’t ever seem to be on.

If it helps, O cruel sightseeing-inclined reader, I WAS watching Doctor Who while eating breakfast. And it WAS at the Waldorf=Astoria hotel (note the double hyphen in the hotel name, often mistaken for an equals sign. Why do they have it? Because it looks nice.) And I DID have a Waldorf Salad, in the Waldorf. All while watching Doctor Who. That’s a stylish way of doing it, isn’t it?

Ironically, the episode in question – one of the most talked about TV episodes of anything this year, with a cliff-hanger that made the news – had Martha Jones phoning Capt Jack in Cardiff and saying she was in New York, confirming that the same apocalyptic goings-on in the UK were also going on there. ‘New York? All right for some,’ he replied wryly. Except of course, it wasn’t really New York. It would have been somewhere in South Wales, where they film the series, plus a bit of computer trickery. I, however, WAS really in New York. Watching people on TV pretending to be there. When I could have been going out and exploring the city. All right for some.

But that aside, I DID go out and explore and see things, or rather do things. Of course I did. I’m not a natural sight-seer, that’s all. I’m more of a thought-thinker, or a thing-doer. So I went out. And I did some things.

(TO! BE! CONTINUED!)

The Dandyism website has put the L’Uomo Vogue article online, with a translation:

http://www.dandyism.net/?p=970

Says the site:

Dickon Edwards, who doesn’t typically pontificate on dandyism itself but who is a fine example of a dandy rocker, was also included.

Not a typical pontificator perhaps, but I know my Brummell from my Baudelaire, and my Beaton from my Barbey d’Aurevilly. He said, in danger of seeking a thick ear. And I am acquainted with Lord Whimsy, if not the others in the piece. Not sure if I’ve ever properly ‘rocked’ either. That’s always been my problem. Not a  proper musician, not a proper dandy. Not a proper writer, either. I must be a proper something. Don’t answer that.

From the L’Uomo Vogue article itself, a rather flattering opening line:

The leading online rock-star dandy is not David Bowie or Bryan Ferry, but Dickon Edwards (dickonedwards.co.uk). The 36-year-old Englishman, who has sang in several bands, has earned admiration in Dandyland for his spare build, slim suits, and blond hair that is as authentic as his first name. Adding to his dandy credentials are his contributions to ‘The Decadent Handbook’ and an afterword to a new edition of Jerome K. Jerome’s classic, ‘Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow.’ Like the dandies of old, Edwards avoids responsibility, preferring to supplement his uncertain musical income by going on welfare rather than taking a job.

Interesting that they assume ‘Dickon’ is as artificial as my hair colour. They’re not the first. It’s like saying someone born Robert but better known as Bobby is assuming a fake name. Dickon is just a more obscure derivative, that’s all. The Richard is also there for the times I can’t be bothered to have the ‘Ooh, interesting name’ conversation.

I did try reverting properly to Richard a few years ago purely to make life easier, in the same way I’ve experimented with not being blond. But in both cases, it just wasn’t me.

And though I’m Richard on my passport, the medical services know me as Dickon, because they need to know the name most likely to bring someone out of unconsciousness. Dickon is my ‘coma name’. Though I realise if I ramble on any more in this hair-splitting mode, I’ll send the reader into one.

As to the bit in the article about my avoiding responsibility: well, it’s more that responsibility avoids me. I do keeping trying to find paid work, work which I think I can do fairly well, where I don’t feel a fraud. Most recently, I emailed all the newspaper blogs with offers of reporting on the Latitude Festival for them, seeing as I’m going to be there anyway, camping for the first time since I was a teenager, and in a white suit too. I thought that would be a vaguely interesting and entertaining perspective: certainly less dull than your average festival report. ‘The Festival Flaneur’, it could have been called. But no one at the broadsheets was interested. Ah well.

Besides, responsibility is all relative. I speak as someone who’s just had to escort Shane MacGowan onto a couple of planes.

Back in Highgate. Utterly tired and shattered and jet-lagged and aching.
I have tales to tell, Shane-shaped and Dickon-shaped. Will write more as soon as my brain starts working again. And when my eyelids stop drooping.

It’s Mum’s MBE ceremony tomorrow, at Buckingham Palace. Not a bad excuse to give when telling people in NYC why I can’t stick around too long. ‘Oh you know how it is…’

So I’m in the car – well, a people-carrier – being driven with Mr SMG from JFK to NYC proper. It’s about 9pm, and as the Empire State, the Chrysler and the rest of that most heart-stopping of skylines looms into view, I think of all the songs…

I start singing, half under my breath, half indulged by Shane, and Moira our host and Sydney our driver.

Singing.

‘We’ll take Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island too…. Um, dum dum dum-dum do…’

Pause. Think. Another song.

‘They sentenced to me twenty years of boredom… For trying to change the system from within…. First we take Manhattan – then we take Berlin!’

(Still haven’t been to Berlin yet.)

‘Hey Manhattan, doobie-doo…’ (Prefab Sprout).

But most of all, the one song that dominates my over-excited, no-longer-a-USA-virgin brain, is the very, VERY silly ‘America’ song from A Bit Of Fry And Laurie. Maybe because I know all of the words. All three of them.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=z4tDP-yMwXI

Thursday, early afternoon: I’m spending a few hours trying to update the three-year-old DE website gallery with the fruits of more recent shoots by Phoebe Allen (2008) and Gillian Kirby (2007). For each photo I have to make a thumbnail for the menu, which links to a medium-sized version for the website, which in turn links to the full high-res version for magazines to use. Very much a teeth-pulling learning process for me, and terms like ‘PHP’ still make me boggle blankly with technophobic incomprehension (if indeed it’s possible to boggle blankly).

As soon as I upload the first high-res photo into WordPress’s new Media Thingy, the site throws a fit and goes down. It’s back up within minutes, but in those minutes Lawrence G phones to invite me out. So I take the Universe’s hint, admit defeat, and escape into town. The photos will just have to wait.

I spend an entirely pleasant Thursday afternoon with the lovely Mr G and his equally lovely Russian fiancee Mr Fyodor, taking the river boat to the Tate Britain, where we gawp at the gigantic Burne-Jones ‘Death Of Arthur’, newly on loan. Mr G and Mr F got engaged via that Jules Verne-esque installation which lived on the South Bank recently: a huge and pretty two-way mute videophone connecting London and New York. Lawrence used cue cards.

In the evening, I DJ at Club D’Amour, in a venue called Volupte, off Chancery Lane. I follow on from Tricity Vogue and her band – and her opera glove action – who do a jazz-swing set featuring versions of ‘Trust In Me’ (from The Jungle Book), ‘Sweet Dreams’ (as in the Eurythmics song) and ‘Club Tropicana’ (as in Wham).

As I walk back to the tube – joined briefly by Lawrence, Fyodor and their young friends – when my mobile rings. Would I like to accompany Mr MacGowan to New York, and could I do so in the morning…?

Now it’s Friday evening. I’m typing this in my room at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, NYC.

The Chrysler Building is outside my window. So, New York is real after all.

Back by Weds.

Paola in Milan tells me I’m mentioned and pictured in the July/August issue of L’Uomo Vogue, being the Italian menswear version of Vogue. The article in question is about dandyism, and they asked me to send press photos a month or so ago. I’d better find a London stockist.

***

Last weekend the new tent arrived. Jen C allowed me to put it up in her Highgate back garden, by way of a trial run. Thank goodness she did: she and her boyfriend Chris understood the thing’s demon geometry far better than I could. I know more or less how it fits together now. Once you get the inner compartment connected to the outer flysheet, and the knee bone connected to the ankle bone, the instructions say it’s okay to leave them like this, forever conjoined in tent-based bliss. To take the tent down, you just extract the poles and pegs and roll this dual skin up, and off you saunter. Come festival day – when I’ll be camping by myself – the poles go back in and the whole thing supposedly springs into shape easily. Well, we shall see. There may be wailing ahead.

I was intrigued to hear about the new biodegradable tent pegs available at this year’s Glastonbury, and went to Millets in Kensington High St to buy some for myself. It does seem like one of those ridiculously obvious ideas. If metal tent pegs are left in the ground, particularly with their heads snapped off to a vicious spike, they’re a clear hazard to hoof, foot and soil. The biodegradable pegs, made from potato starch, are not only lighter to carry and flexible enough to avoid spearing a passing cow, but if left in the ground they eventually break down entirely. As would I.

So I tested the green pegs (coloured green, to ram the point home in both senses) in Jen’s garden. Their jagged shape does make them much better at anchoring than their metal counterparts, but it takes far more force to shove them into the ground and pull them out afterwards. And if you’re not careful, the top of the pegs can snap off in the process. I had to leave one such decapitated specimen in Jen’s garden. ‘It’s okay, it’s flexible and biodegradable,’ I blushed feebly, attempting to pull the thing out.

I tried a few metal pegs alongside the green ones, and they were much easier to use, with less grunting and no snapping, and could be pulled out with no fuss. But then again, there were no other tents around, the soil was soft, and I could easily see all the pegs I’d put in. Solution? I’m taking two packs of the green ones, with a few metal ones on standby.

A quick plug. Ms Tricity Vogue has booked me as a DJ for her Holborn club this Thursday:

The Tricity Vogue Slinktet present
Club d’Amour
Thursday 26 June, 7pm – 3am
At Volupte, 7-9 Norwich St, Holborn, London EC4A 1EJ
Tickets: £8. Email: reservations@volupte-lounge.com or call 020 7831 1622

“Music, cabaret and romantic misadventure, featuring the cheeky jazz stylings of the Tricity Vogue Slinktet. With special guests laconic piano man Pete Saunders and spine-tingling singer Simone Laraway. All topped off with fine tunes to jive, lindyhop or make your own shapes on the dancefloor to, courtesy of DJ Dickon Edwards. Buy-one-get-one-free cocktails from 5-8pm. Restaurant open 7pm – 10pm. You don’t have to book for dinner: just turn up.”

www.volupte-lounge.com
http://www.myspace.com/vogueloveclub

As well as lending the Gemeentemuseum one of my outfits for their ‘Ideal Man’ exhibition, I’m mentioned in the official invite to the opening night:

“…Modern dandy and British fashion icon Dickon Edwards will also be present.”

So there you go. British fashion icon.

Well, I suppose I did have the Agyness Deyn hairdo before she did. If you squint. And stand a long distance away. It’s said in the papers this week that women across the UK are asking hairdressers to give them ‘The Agy’: a short, spiky peroxide cut.

I’m sure it’s been pointed out before, but Ms Deyn’s look does seem very Face Magazine circa 1985. I would say it’s even a bit Romo, except that the New Romantics were disdainful, haughty, and aristocratic. Agyness Deyn’s image – or at least the image her magazine covers like to play up – is more playful, friendly, childlike, with a touch of Japanese comics at their fizziest. Manga Romo, if you will. I approve.

I read elsewhere that the Ideal Man show will also include two suits formerly owned by President Mitterrand. Me and Mitterrand – museum suit brothers.

***

Friday: Photo shoot at my place, this time for photographer Jamie McLoed. He’s putting together an exhibition of, well, exhibitionists and dandies for the Green Carnation bar. Sebastian Horsley recommended me to him, and so today I spend an hour or so posing in my room with a cigarette – his suggestion.

Afterwards: to the Curzon Mayfair with VM Clarke for ‘The Edge Of Love’, the John Maybury movie about Dylan Thomas. Or rather, the ladies in Dylan Thomas’s life. Lots of smoking and posing in that, too.

***

Before that, dinner with VMC at a restaurant in Shepherd Market. Victor Lewis-Smith is at the next table, cartoonish black dreadlocks still in place. VMC tells me about the celebrity karaoke party she attended the previous night, as the guest of Nick Cave. Apparently Will Self can deliver an impressive rendition of ‘Hey Joe’.