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’.

That Dutch newspaper article on my dandyism has led to new adventures. The Hague’s Gemeentemuseum has asked if I could lend them one of my suits. It’s to go put on public display as part of an exhibition on male fashion and style, ‘The Ideal Man’, running from late July to October.

http://www.gemeentemuseum.nl/index.php?id=035553&langId=en

I’ll be delivering the suit in person two days before the show opens, staying in town for the opening on July 26th. The museum are covering my travel and hotel costs, so I’m treating it as a small holiday.

Never been to the Hague before. Lots of museums, including one devoted to MC Escher, that DJ of mathematical art (“MC Escher in the house! Make some infinite noise!”).

I do hope his museum has lots of impossible staircases spiralling upon themselves. I want to stand on them and shout Peter Davison’s cliffhanger line from the Doctor Who tale, ‘Castrovalva’. The Doctor and his companions (there’s about 79 of them at this point) become trapped in a real-life version of an Escher town, with all exits leading right back to the entrances. He explains what’s happened to his companions, as the episode ends:

“Recursive Occlusion! Someone’s manipulating Castrovalva! WE’RE CAUGHT IN A SPACE-TIME TRAP!”

On the Castrovalva DVD, there’s an out-take of the director forcing Mr Davison to ham up this line until it rises to a sufficently hysterical pitch. But it’s not hammy acting, he insists in the commentary (with an endearing degree of self-mockery), it’s TV cliffhanger acting. The two are often confused.

The Gemeentemuseum has asked me to make my own travel arrangements. So I’ve been doing a bit of travel research and have plumped for the Harwich ferry, with trains either side. Partly because one’s meant to be more ‘carbon efficient’ and cut back on flying where possible; partly because I’ve flown abroad about eight times in the last two and a half years and want to try the path less travelled. I’ve done Eurostar before, but never the North Sea ferry.

But mostly because I want my own cabin. I want a floating Room Of One’s Own. With its own toilet, shower and bed. A private space to escape to while travelling. Even the smallest possible single room is an oasis to the soul. Whether it’s Easyjet or Eurostar, if you’re travelling alone and can only occupy rows of open seating, you’re at the mercy of other travellers, which might mean loud businessmen on their mobile phones, squealing other people’s children running about, or beered-up football supporters.

Set down like this, such concerns sound downright misanthropic. But I’ve had a run of bad luck with train and plane trips in recent memory, in terms of Sartre-esque ordeals, suffering the noise – or even cannibis smoke – of my less considerate fellow passengers. I can’t be the man who complains or politely asks others to restrain themselves, as I am not part of normal society in the first place. Quiet eccentrics must not tell off noisy straights. That’s the whole eccentric deal.

When away from home, I crave rooms with lockable doors, however small (in the case of Latitude, a tent with a zip). On a ferry you get somewhere to escape, somewhere to sleep without being on display, and somewhere to shower en route. But you also get somewhere to go for a walk, somewhere to take in fresh air, and somewhere to drink and eat and mix with other travellers if you ARE feeling sociable. You get the choice of both worlds.

The only two downsides of ferry travel are the extra hours added to the trip, and the chances of a rough crossing. In the first case, my life isn’t the busiest in the world, so the time away is no problem. And besides, the extra hours are comfortable and private extra hours.

In the event of a rough crossing, I’d just down a few vodkas at the bar and go to bed. I toss in my sleep anyway, and a lone male is in no position to refuse a bit of extra tossing.

Far better to suffer the Cruel Sea than suffer the cruel loudness of other passengers. Frankly, it’s the lesser of two tossers.

Have confirmed that I’ll be DJ-ing once more at this year’s Latitude Festival. The festival runs from the 17th to 20th July, and I’ll be spinning the usual showtunes and vintage pop in the Cabaret Arena, though the slots are briefer than last year. Once again, it’ll be me and Miss Red, appearing as The Beautiful & Damned DJs.

This time, however, I’m going to do the festival thing properly and bring a tent. Ms S thinks this is hilarious. I’ve just bought a cheap little number that came recommended by a Daily Telegraph article on ‘glamping’. This is an alleged new trend: glamourous camping for monied types. Prada groundsheets, Gucci guy ropes, that kind of thing. Well, my take on ‘glamping’ is more low budget, but at least I’ll be pitched in a glamourous space – backstage with all the other Cabaret Arena types.

Can’t remember the last time I did go camping, in fact. Possibly the Reading Festival 1990, at the age of 18. The bands playing then included the Pixies, the Wedding Present, Nick Cave, Mega City Four, the Senseless Things, and the aforementioned Inspiral Carpets, who were the biggest act on one of the nights. Many of these groups have since split, then reformed, then split again. Actually, even in 1990 there already was a reformed band playing – The Buzzcocks, with The Smiths’ Mike Joyce on drums. And I think Wire were in their second time around. Not being new is not a new thing.

My abiding memory is finding out the hard way just how pointless it is lurking down the front by the main stage all day, purely to secure the best view of the big acts later on. But I had to try it for myself first.

In order to be close to the Wedding Present (second from last), I installed myself right against the metal crowd barrier, dead centre, rushing to secure this position at about 1pm, as soon as the arena gates opened. I didn’t mind going without food all afternoon, and cups of water were always to hand, obligingly handed out by stewards in the photographer’s pit, that sliver of calm between barrier and stage.

John Peel was DJ-ing in between the acts, which rather helped. I remember him playing the Popguns b-side ‘Because He Wanted To’, fairly early on in the day. Hearing this catchy and fuzzy little indiepop tune, a favourite of mine, was a treat. It felt like private music imposed upon thousands, when only two years earlier Reading was more of a heavy metal festival. This very un-rocking pop song was now ringing out on the gigantic Main Stage speakers, previously accustomed to the likes of Whitesnake, Saxon and Magnum. For a few minutes, the meek could indeed inherit the world, with a help from Mr Peel.

I then stood and watched the coming and going of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin (quite fun), Psychic TV (no tunes), Wire (past their best, looked bored), The Young Gods (baffling, one of those bands other people like), Ride (okay, if looking amusingly out of place in the bright afternoon sunshine), and Billy Bragg (great as ever).

As the hours passed, the crush down the front became more frightening than I’d envisaged. I was even afraid real damage might be done to my ribs. By the time the Buzzcocks came on, the pressure of so many bodies behind me and to either side was impossible to take any longer. I didn’t want to be one of those archetypal forlorn youths down the front that had to be dragged out by security men. As much as I loved the Wedding Present back then, I didn’t think they were worth suffering actual physical agony for (insert your own jokes about their records here, non-fans).

‘This is really no way to see a band,’ I remember thinking. ‘Even though all these other young people down the front think it is. Once again, I know I am not like other young people.’

So halfway through the Buzzcocks I yielded my prized place at the barrier and started to move back to a more bearable area of crowd density. I didn’t stop walking – or rather, squeezing past muttering a million ‘scuse me’s -till I felt I could move my arms freely again. When the Wedding Present finally took to the stage, I was right at the back of the crowd. It’d been a waste of time. Well, no, it’d been a lesson learned.

I still approve of the serendipitous side of music festivals, where you can wander around and discover new favourite bands. With its emphasis on a varied diet of stages, I feel Latitude does this side of things particularly well. It’s the feral crowd side of rock festivals I’m not keen on – the mud, the sweat, the packed-in numbers down the front.

One of the headliners at Latitude this year is Franz Ferdinand, who I last saw upstairs at the Barfly, supporting the Futureheads. Back then, they turned up on my Highgate doorstep and asked to borrow my Juno 6 synthesizer. The Barfly wasn’t thinly attended – these were two bands with ‘industry buzz’ after all – but neither was it packed. These days, Franz Ferdinand are a bigger deal, of course.

So next month they’ll doubtlessly be playing to a crowd of thousands, with 18-year-olds down the front, but I do wonder if these teens will be suffering to quite the same degree I did at their age, or whether the civilised feel of Latitude means it’ll be more like the Tube at rush hour – packed in, but not to the extent of actual pain.

Also, these days the Net and mobile phone culture has meant there’s so much more to do than watching bands, and I’d have thought that would affect the pain level of the moshpit. Or does it connect with a Lord Of The Flies-style, atavistic teen aggression, something I’ve never felt? That fearing for your rib cage is part of the fun, and will always be the case? With all the downloading, all the Internetting, all the iPodding, all the digital surfeit of choice, could it be that this particular trial of life remains utterly unchanged?

Well, I’m not going down the front to find out.

I look at my appointments diary and muse on the sentiment of the Fosca song, ‘I’ve Agreed To Something I Shouldn’t Have’. Half jokey and half rueful, it’s a feeling I still get at the moment, which I need to let go of more often.

These days, lots of people I know use the Facebook website for event invitations, where you’re encouraged to RSVP by clicking on the boxes marked Yes, No, or Maybe. I find it too easy to brood on this, more aware than ever how life is riddled with the results of paths that should have been taken but weren’t, of life-improving opportunities passed up in favour of something else that seemed more attractive at the time, and of a constant worrying about missing out. I want there to be a fourth box. Yes, No, Maybe, and a quote from a St Christopher song: ‘You Deserve More Than A Maybe’.

When people talk of ‘settling down’, they really mean settling for. It’s such a twenty-something concern, the rush to not miss out. Life past the age of thirty (and thirty-five) seems to be more about coming to terms with the things you’ll never do – because you just won’t have the time or money or energy – and learning to not mind so much. But from the second I wake up every day, the minding begins. A sea of minding.

I suppose what I want is someone around purely to boss me about and tell me what to do, to stand behind me glaring over my shoulder, to make sure I do it. Otherwise, I sleep through the alarm clock yet again, even though I went to bed early, and yet another morning fails to exist. And the rest of the day is full of worrying about doing a thousand things, rather than working on and finishing just one.

I’ve just switched phone companies in order to get cheaper broadband – which is as blokey and as normal as I get – and Bathos Telecom have just charged me £4.50 for NOT setting up a Direct Debit in time. It’s as if they’re the bank or the tax man, not a private company which doesn’t even have a monopoly. Being charged for not doing something: the symbolism of it all.

Still, shops do it too, with their bullying loyalty cards. The sad awfulness of the single man in the queue asked for a Tesco Club Card, and of the poor staff having to front the management’s petty requests for them. I’ve done that job too, though. Served my time in the world of less fun but necessary jobs. Bristol circa 1991, stacking shelves, on the counter with a name badge. Richard rather than Dickon, to avoid the jokes.

Tesco Cashier: (automatically, barely there) “Do you want a free voucher for school clothes”?
Me: No thanks, I’m… barren.

Which is me blurting out an excuse, rather than trying to be funny. But the response surprises us both, and she laughs. Hers is a lovely laugh too, individual as a fingerprint. Individuality and laughter in the queue at Tesco: all things are indeed still possible.

Listen to Paul Morley’s Radio 2 Documentary on Twee Pop. It’s great to hear the music and reminisces from those involved, though I’m not a fan of Mr Morley’s ersatz post-modern presenting style; it’s as if he’s saying ‘all music documentaries are essentially compromised and contrived, so let’s meander back and forth in a messy fashion for the sake of it’. I far prefer him as a wry guest or talking head on other people’s programmes.

At one point he even admits he’s asked Amelia Fletcher to sit there and listen while he spouts his pontifications on The Meaning Of Twee. It’s like the people at Q&A events who always put their hand up to say ‘Don’t you think that…’ before going on for ten minutes, essentially pleased with the opportunity to air their own mini-thesis, with no thought for others present. Save us from the questioner who doesn’t want to hear an answer.

Besides, these days such a need is more easily sated. If you have a burning desire to express an unsolicited theory on a subject, you don’t impose it on a captive audience in an interview or Q&A session. You write it down in a blog. Then your theory will be more likely to attract all the people in the world who might give a fig about it. Or not. I always find it funny when some blog comments complain about an entry being a waste of space.

Interesting how Edwyn Collins’s post-stroke singing voice is still more in tune and less wavering than his early Orange Juice singing voice, which was once described by a friend as ‘Bryan Ferry being tickled.’

As an example of more recent alleged tweeness (surely it’s more an aesthetic than a genre?), Mr Morley includes ‘Hey Lloyd I’m Ready To Be Heartbroken’ by Camera Obscura.

He makes some comments about the implied anti-girlishness prejudice of male music critics: tweeness as a pejorative, Sarah Records equalling femininity, thus weakness, and thus blanket condemnation. But what he doesn’t remark upon is how that Camera Obscura song has since been used in the opening credits of unabashed chick-flick PS I Love You, starring Hilary Swank. It was a massive hit with female audiences, and  topped the DVD charts despite the critics – particularly male critics – absolutely trashing it in their reviews. One of the words in their cruel weaponry: twee.

The documentary’s online here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/musicclub/doc_musicalgenres.shtml

I could say a fair amount about my own Twee Pop Past, I suppose. What comes to mind right now is a rather clever t-shirt from that scene, parodying a popular and fashionable design for the band Inspiral Carpets. The Inspirals’ t-shirt, as worn by a million youths circa 1989, featured a cartoon cow’s face, with the slogan ‘Cool As F—‘. An attendant speech bubble also had the cow saying ‘Moo!’ It was the must-have garment of its day.

This spoof t-shirt sported an archetypal Twee Pop girl in a flowery dress and child-like bob haircut (possibly with a hairslide), smiling cutely and holding a guitar. The caption was ‘Twee As F—‘. Her speech bubble: ‘Ooh!

In her own blog, Rachel S has written about music from her Twee Pop past, complete with cute photos. DM boots, shades, floral dress. It’s a look I could never quite carry off myself:

http://millionreasons.livejournal.com/214412.html?style=mine