Have spent most of this week in bed riding the waves of Swedish Flu. Hazy orange head-flames followed by violet shivers and back again. Charley and Rachel also have it, and so do Niklas and Ylva from Friday Bridge. Get well soon, everyone.

The GP prescribed a temporary inhaler to help me breathe more easily at night. Always thought I’d be given one of those at some point in life, given my tendency to come down with things. My first little L-shaped plastic blue puffing device. Except I have to attach it to this big oval plastic funnel called a – wince – Volumatic. With a little ‘TM’ after the name, as if it were a character from Transformers. Other than that, it’s the usual routine: paracetemol, Vit C, staying in bed, keeping away from others. I’m all too experienced in those last two, but at least I have an alibi. I’d prefer to be fit and well. Honest.

***

In the post office yesterday: man in front of me filling out a form to claim half-price bus fares with Income Support. He is wearing stripey leggings, a velvet jacket, and a floppy hat with a cardboard-cut out photo of the singer Grace Jones stuck in the brim.

***

Let’s get that second half of the tour set down before it fades any more.

FRIDAY – LUND
8.45AM. Breakfast in the Karlstad hotel with a queasy hangover, trying to work out which milk cartons are which. Rachel and Charley read my previous diary entry and point out that (a) they DO like both of the new songs we recorded yesterday, they just have different favourites, and (b) the observation about the Back To The Future-like square outside was Charley’s. ‘Credit where credit’s due’ – one of this tour’s Mike Leigh-ish catchphrases. Others are ‘Don’t stand on ceremony’, and ‘I like fun, I don’t know about you.’

10AM. As is the way in most Swedish hotels, the lift doors open outwards onto the floor in question and must be pushed or pulled by hand. I’m in the lift with my suitcase and am about to push the door as it arrives at the lobby, when I see it’s obstructed by an ambulance stretcher. An elderly woman is tucked in the blankets, moaning in pain as paramedics busy around her. Had I shoved the lift door open without looking first, I might have well have knocked both stretcher and patient onto the floor. In which case the rest of the day would have been immediately upstaged.

12 noon or so. Another close call. We stop outside the record label’s distributor in an industrial estate on the outskirts of Gothenburg. Rachel is tying her shoelaces when a huge chunk of ice plummets from the top of the warehouse roof and hits the ground with an almighty bang. It misses her by a few feet.

The ice is melting conspicuously everywhere we go now. Were this a novel, bored GCSE students would be forced to comment on what it all means. ‘At this point, do you think the author is using the melting ice to reflect what’s going on in the protagonist’s personality?  Is it just a normal description of the weather, or is there something more going on…?’

‘No, sir. It’s just a normal description of the weather…’

(This was how I used to play cheeky games with my English teacher, deliberately answering his ‘Is it… Or…’ questions with the duller option, knowing full well such ‘questions’ were just gentle nudges along the right lines. It’s like blurbs on the back of books along the lines of ‘Will Harry Potter Save The Day? Answer: Yes. Yes, he will.)

At a service station, there’s a steady dripping along one side of the pumps’ canopy, but not the other. Asks Charley, ‘Why is it only raining on the left?’ Symbolism for a more politically-based novel, perhaps.

2PM. The van stops for lunch. We haven’t the time to venture into city centres, and the only eatery that presents itself is a branch of McDonalds attached to the back of an Ikea-type furniture superstore. Thankfully, Rachel (who once supported the McLibel protest) finds a near-empty Twinings-like tea shop among the other outlets, and it does mozzarella rolls.

Evening: finally reach Lund after spending the best part of the day in the van. The venue turns out to be the same one Fosca played in 2002, with the same sound engineer. It’s the student union building, on the local campus. All I can remember about that previous gig is that our accommodation consisted of ancient bunk beds in the one room in the basement, with a loud late-night indie club next door keeping us awake.

This time – thank heavens – we have the plushest hotel of the tour: Hotel Lundia in the centre of town. My room turns out to have a faulty radiator, and I am upgraded to a slightly plusher one down the corridor. I compare notes afterwards with my bandmates; for me, the highlight of my upgrade is a free pen. Everyone else thinks this is funny. Still, it IS an elegant rollerball in black and silver, as opposed to the more flimsy printed Biros offered by the other establishments. Definitely the best hotel pen on the tour.

Pause for…

MR DICKON’S ALL-DANCING HOTEL PEN REVIEW

Stockholm: Crystal Plaza.
Retractable ballpoint in see-through green perspex with twist mechanism. Hotel name and logo in white. Pretty, but clip breaks off too easily. 3/5

Gothenburg: Spar Hotel.
Another twist-operated ballpoint, this time in ugly opaque white with black lettering and red logo. Sturdy clip, but loses marks for wilful cheapness of design. Too Travelodgey. 2/5

Lund: Hotel Lundia.
See above. A serious player in the field of hotel ballpoints. Even makes a more expensive-sounding clunk when dropped on a desk. Pop-out retractable action, fat rubber grip along neck, lettering in confident and stylish silver on black. The kind of hotel pen you can take home to meet your mother. 5/5

Karlsberg: Savoy (Best Western)
No pen in room. Forgot to ask at reception. I just can’t follow any idea through properly, can I? Nice bath, though.

Back to Lund, where our dressing room is the infamous bunk bed basement of six years ago. The walls include not one, but two Secret Shine posters. As in the Sarah Records band, one of whom I once shared a Bristol house with. They’re back, it seems. Who isn’t?

Gig goes okay – lots of drunken students. A few books signed. More people than Karlstad, not as many as Stockholm. Sound quality better than Stockholm, not as good as Karlstad. But enough people to hear the lyrics being sung along with. Always nice, that.

***

SATURDAY – GOTHENBURG
Hungover once again, plus have developed a sore throat and slight cough (which develops into flu once I’m back in London). We have to make a diversion to a chemist’s purely to pick up Strepsils – in Sweden cough sweets are considered too pharmaceutical for corner shops and convenience stores.

Music in the van includes Kylie Minogue’s latest album, and Nico, who insists on being dead but  – as is the wont of record labels – always manages to put out new releases. It’s the most recent Marble Index / Desertshore re-issue, with requisite lovely repackaging and booklet. Perfect for sleepily soundtracking Swedish motorway vistas.

Gothenburg’s local Metro newspaper has a little photo of me on the cover, plus a small interview inside. In the afternoon, we play an acoustic set in the Blenda record shop in town, and sign a few CDs and books afterwards. Not exactly JK Rowling-style queues around the block, but enough to make it worthwhile. I like signing things. It’s fun. (‘I like fun, I don’t know about you.’)

Acoustic set includes world premiere of ‘My Diogenes Heart’. Then I’m interviewed in the record shop office (many thanks to the Blenda staff, by the way). Surrounded by tottering boxes of other people’s records and CDs, I talk about just why I’ve deigned to foist another record on a saturated market. Why bother? What’s the point? And so on. I wave my fingers dramatically around the stockroom and say things like, ‘All these records, and not one of them contains a song called It Only Matters To Those To Whom It Matters! Someone has to do it. Might as well be us…’

Driving up to the venue in town, a boy with a huge Goth – or possibly Emo – backcombed hairdo crosses the road in front of us. His fringe is stretched so far over his eyes, I doubt he can see where he’s going. The suspicion is confirmed – he bumps straight into a building, missing the door he was aiming for.

We’d been singing songs from ‘Cabaret’ on the way, and I find myself altering the words to ‘Mein Herr’:

Bye bye my Emo hair
Farewell my Emo hair
It was a fine affair
But now it’s longer
It’s really hard to dance
To My Chemical Romance
You’re better off without
Emo hair

Maybe I should send it to Half Man Half Biscuit.

(Fave HMHB lyric in my head right now:

‘There is nothing greater in life / Than writing on the sole of a slipper with a biro.’

HMHB on Proustian joy via morphic resonance. I wonder if they still make those biro-baiting slippers?)

Charley’s favourite showtune is ‘People Will Say We’re In Love’ from Oklahoma.

Venue is called Stars ‘N’ Bars: a touristy sports bar by day, an indiepop venue by night. A larger than actual size fibreglass statue of Michael Jordan (I’ve asked) is in one corner, complete with basketball, while little sculptured figurines of the Blues Brothers flank the exit. You can never have too many figurines of the Blues Brothers flanking your exit, I find.

We soundcheck alongside some football match on a screen (Man U v oh, as if I’d remember… oh Rachel says it’s Aston Villa – score 4-0 she says). As we pack away, I notice the clientele has changed entirely. Gone are the white baseball caps and lone men on barstools of a certain glower. In their place are smiling girls and boys with nice coats and button badges. It’s a venue with a less butch life outside hours, like a weekend transvestite.

Except when we take to the stage, they’re anything but less butch. It’s our biggest crowd on the tour, the venue is packed, there’s more than one incident of stage diving, and it all ends in a full-on stage invasion. People are jumping all around us. My main thoughts are less ‘isn’t this an incredible response’, and more ‘I hope no one gets hurt and nothing gets broken.’ I’m all for stage invasions, they just have to be, as the Alan Partridge line goes, properly policed. No pint glasses of water near open power sockets, as there were here. No chance of anything being unplugged. Towards the end of our second encore (!), the drum track from ‘The Millionaire Of Your Own Hair’ disappears entirely. Presumably someone has tripped on a cable and pulled it out. So we finish doing a drum-less version, and retire from the proceedings dazed, but pleased. No one was hurt, nothing was broken.

Throughout the show, the crowd sing along with all the words, and even sing along with the lead synth and guitar lines. It’s a truly incredible response, and the best received gig I think I’ve ever played. Thank you, Gothenburg.

***

SUNDAY – RETURN HOME
Clocks have gone forward, plus we didn’t get back till about 5AM. I sleep through my alarm to noon, missing breakfast entirely. I’d like to say the seven hours of sleep leave me feeling fully refreshed, but not a bit of it. I’m typing this at Gothenburg Airport feeling like I’d been in a wrestling match with several large and slippery mammals.  When does ‘feeling okay’ start? No wonder so many proper bands are ripped to the gills on amphetamines and sundry other narcotics – you do need something. Of course, later I realise this is the beginning of flu on top of a hangover.

Stansted – long taxi ride home where driver insists on using Sat Nav to get directions. Never a good sign. End up stuck in traffic throughout bits of North London.

Then: fall into fluey haze for five days.

So with all the flu and expense, with all the feeling like tired husks in vans and taxis and planes, with the lack of financial reward, was it worth it?

I look at my mental ‘Reasons Against Bothering’ column. Then at the ‘Reasons For’ side. Between the cheers of the audiences – particularly at Gothenburg and Stockholm – and the nice hotels (thank god!), the nice hotel pens, the comfort and the general looking-after provided by Niklas, Salle, Mats, Ylva and the promoters (Mattias, Gustav et al), Fosca felt loved.

I like feeling loved. I don’t know about you.

Back in Highgate, rather addled with flu. It started as a cough on Saturday, but by Sunday evening I had the tell-tale shivers, fever, headache, and general inability to cope. I’ll write about what happened in Lund and Gothenburg soon. For now, though, here’s some other people’s takes of the trip.

Rachel Stevenson’s blog account:

http://millionreasons.livejournal.com/204181.html

Ms Rachel refers to a favourite Swedish film of ours, Lukas Moodysson’s F—ing Ã…mÃ¥l (aka Show Me Love). Every time we’re travelling in Sweden and see signs to Ã…mÃ¥l, we always think of the film. I feel a little sorry for the place and want to give it a town-hug. I also feel the same way about Slough, thanks to John Betjeman’s similar unkindness. 

The whole film is streamed here:

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=5599594765620844277&pr=goog-sl

Anyway, back to the Fosca tour. Niklas from the label has sent me a review of the Karlstad show. They give it 4 out of 5, um, alarm clocks:

http://nwt.se/ArticlePages/200803/28/20080328170016_997/20080328170016_997.dbp.asp

Photos from Karlstad by Magnus Hernegre:

Photos from Stefan Olsson, taken at the Gothenburg gig. As you can see, the stage was somewhat more modest than Karlstad, yet we had about ten times the audience. Plus a few stage divers and an all-out stage invasion. Not that you’d know it from these pics:

7AM. Am woken by the phone. It’s a strange phone in a strange room. Who am I? Where am I? And what exactly can I do about it?

Bits of my mind start to fire up after several attempts. Worn-out Ignition on a cold morning.  My name is Dickon Edwards. I am in a hotel room in Stockholm. I am the frontman of a band called Fosca. And if I don’t get dressed in a passably decent state and stumble downstairs right now, I will miss out on a paid-for breakfast.

After consuming as much juice, coffee and toast as I can stand, sharing such bleary munching with bandmate Ms Charley Stone, I manage to meet Rachel Stevenson and the record label touring party in the lobby on time. And off to Karlstad we all go.

A snow-laden yet sunny day on the Swedish motorways. Stop at a service station by a vast and lovely lake. Find myself singing Haircut One Hundred lyrics: ‘Where do I from here / Is it down to the lake I fear / Aye yi yi yi yi yi / Yi yi yi yi yi yi yi ya…’ No one joins in.

1PM. Reach the venue in Karlstad: the ‘Arena’. Thankfully it’s more like the Highbury Garage than Wembley Arena. The afternoon is spent recording two brand new Fosca songs elsewhere in the building: ‘The Man I’m Not Today’ and ‘My Diogenes Heart’. Just the three of us: self, Ms Stone, and Rachel Stevenson. Charley likes the A-side, Rachel the B-side. I like both.

The studio’s live room is full of marvellous vintage organs and synths. Up against time, we bash out the two songs with engineering from a nice chap called Mattias and production from Niklas (of our fellow touring band Friday Bridge). I finish the lyrics in the van, during the three hour journey to Karlstad. As ever, I’m annoyed at how useless a guitarist I am when it comes to making records, and am grateful for Ms Stone’s more innate ability on the instrument. Ms Stevenson provides backing vocals and synth, instantly changing the songs from odd little Dickon Edwards tunes to Fosca The Band, and thus into something more inclusive, more at home in the world. Somewhere in the collective efforts from all present, a fanning-out of the songs’ spectrums pulls through. On top of which I’m just reminded how much more fun and enjoyable it is to be in a band than to be a solo performer.

6PM Soundcheck in the venue. The house sound engineer and venue PA system are so much better than last night’s set up. It’s an utter pleasure to soundcheck for them: instruments and voices as clear as a bell before we have a chance to even ask what we want in the monitors.

7PM. Meal in the venue, then a couple of hours in the hotel to relax. After the busy and metropolitan Stockholm Crystal Plaza, this hotel feels like we’re the only guests here. But it’s only a few minutes’ walk from the venue – via a square with a clock-dominated municipal building, which strongly resembles the one in Back To The Future. My room is large and cosy, and I can’t resist trying out the bath, with its split shelf floor for enhanced sitting action.   I’d already had a shower back in Stockholm, so the concert attenders of Karlstad are treated with a doubly-washed Dickon for their money, at no extra cost.

1030PM Hide out in the venue dressing room, hidden in the backstage maze of corridors. Meet family and friends of Friday Bridge and the record label. Am provided with much white wine, but take care not to overdo things. To get from the dressing room to the stage, we have to cross the balcony floor of the adjoining nightclub, with its requisite pumping disco.

1115PM Perform my solo number, then do my guest vocal with Friday Bridge, then after arguing with Charley and Rachel about which set list is most likely to please curious but uninitiated regional gig-goers, we perform as Fosca proper. There’s only a few dozen people down the front, but they manage to be even more passionate than the Stockholm fans. A few shouts of ‘I LOVE YOU DICKON!’ from strangers, plus a one man stage invasion, and I consider the gig a success. So what if the venue isn’t packed out, when the few who do come are so devoted? The whole point of Fosca is celebrating the passions of individuals, not reducing people to, well, making the numbers up.

Had this gig been in London, these fans’ counterparts would have kept away from the front of the stage, self-consciously lurking in the back corners and shadows of the venue. What regional gigs may lack in numbers, they more than make up for in unabashed, fashion-free affection. Thank you, Karlstad.

Am typing this in a Stockholm hotel room. The tour’s going okay so far.

Tuesday: two phone interviews from Sweden in the morning. Noon till 6pm sees a long but languid rehearsal session at Camden Zed One Studios, stopping at 2pm for one more Swedish interview.

Tuesday evening: pack and prepare for the trip. Two stupid mistakes: I forget about the Bank Holidays affecting payment, and so have literally no cash to take with me to a foreign country (thankfully resolved the next day when the delayed payment goes through). The other one is to leave my mobile phone charger in the rehearsal room, necessitating a second trip back to Zed One in the evening. And much grumbling under my breath. Of course, one doesn’t have to be hostage to such devices at all, but given this is a trip where different people need to get hold of me at different times, the phone is a necessity.

Can’t sleep with pre-tour excitement (or nerves). Watch ‘The Curse Of Steptoe’. It’s another of those new TV biopics of old TV entertainers. The usual line: Genius Is Pain, The Sad Clown, Successful People Are Never Happy. From Kenneth Williams to Fanny Craddock to Peter Sellers to Peter Cook to Frankie Howerd to Harry H Corbett. Very different people, but these recent dramas all tell exactly the same story – it’s a sad life bringing happiness to millions. It’s the Scott of the Antarctic Syndrome, the Feet Of Clay syndrome. Success is a happy ending in itself, so to go anywhere when telling the story, the requisite pain must take centre stage.

Contrast this with autobiographies by celebrities alive today, which also tend to all tell the same story, albeit with the opposite arc: ‘First I was not famous and successful. Then I was. The End.’

Still, the main appeal of these dramas is to see actors of the day pulling off impersonations of past legends. Jason Isaacs as Harry H Corbett is just fantastic.

Wednesday, 7AM: cab with Charley Stone to London City Airport. Cab driver slightly racist, and comments accordingly on crime in Hackney as we drive through. I don’t engage him in conversation, knowing that there’s no way I could do so without coming out badly one way or another. Of course, what I really want to do is point out that a cab driver stereotyping race is in himself a stereotype. That’d shut him up, I think. Except of course, it’s me that shuts up.

The thing to say about City Airport is that the runways are worryingly close to the Thames. Every take-off seems to pull away from the edge of the water at the very last minute, like the second thoughts of a self-drowner.

Charley expresses annoyance in the waitress-service cafe, when the fresh pastry she orders arrives in a cellophane wrapper. Albeit with the word ‘fresh’ printed on it.

The flight is delayed by the best part of an hour, and we arrive in Arlanda circa 1pm. Check in to the hotel, or rather the others check in: I have an interview with a pleasant young man in the hotel lobby right away. Then get to my room – small but lovely – and titivate myself to a degree of telegenic acceptance. Then straight to Landet to perform a two-song acoustic session for a Web TV channel. Landet is a cafe venue with the performance area upstairs. I think we do okay, though one of the songs takes about five takes to reach the end without messing up. I’m just not used to playing acoustic guitars; it’s so much harder on the fingertips than the electric.

A teeth-pulling soundcheck, then a nice meal in the venue, then back to the hotel for another interview. My fifth in 48 hours. I’m only too happy to do every interview sent my way, knowing how hard the record label works to set them up.

Back to Landet in the van – the venue is some way from the centre of Stockholm. Say hello to lots of people I’ve seen at Fosca gigs in Sweden over the years: from those at Benno in 2001, to those at the Poetry Festival last November. The venue is packed, with at least 150 paying to see us – the capacity. It’s far better to play a packed small venue than a half-empty large one.

As for the actual gig, the sound is atrocious and riddled with drop-outs, and we lose the bass on the rhythm backing track for much of the set. It’s Fosca as the White Stripes. But despite this, we do our utmost to give the best performance possible, and by the end I’m losing my voice. Just as well we don’t play sets longer than 40 minutes. Though I also play ‘Rude Esperanto’ as a solo spot before Friday Bridge’s set, sing guest vocals on FB’s ‘Pigeon’, recruit FB back onto the stage to join us for ‘It’s Going To End In Tears’ as a first encore, then gasp out ‘Agony Without The Ecstasy’ for the second.

The DJ at Landet airs Scarlet’s Well’s ‘Mermaid’ and the Monochrome Set’s ‘I’ll Scry Instead’. Perfect records, both.

Stockholm weather is freezing, with several inches of virgin snow on the grass outside the venue. So I can’t resist running about just to hear that crunch-crunch-crunch underfoot. Another perfect sound.  Charley keeps singing a Prince song called ‘Snow In April’ or something along those lines.

I’m exhausted, but having fun.

Another Fosca album review, this time in Croatia:

http://terapija.net/mjuzik.asp?ID=4333

Kristijan from the site writes:

The album is absolutelly stellar and it got 9/10… It’s in croatian but it’ll get translated to english in the next couple of days so i’ll send you the link to that one as well… Fosca (and you) have our full support!

Here’s an interview I did for them, in English:
http://terapija.net/interwju.asp?ID=4335

Though I mention there’s not much planned for Fosca in the future, I should have pointed out the new songs we’re recording.

The Magnetic Fields-y song is now called ‘My Diogenes Heart’. As in the grumpy philosopher who lived in the tub; the original cynic. Though I’m very much against being cynical all the time, I think a certain wariness of the world is no bad thing at times, particularly if you’re feeling a bit removed from it all. And of course some people are brought together by shared estrangements as much as shared likes. ‘You can’t stand asparagus? How funny, neither can I! Let’s get married.’ Hence the song.

It started out being called ‘I Won’t Put You On Hold’: a song about being in love with someone who’s already in love with their mobile phone. But apart from the limitations of the premise (and it’s not really my style to do something that blunt), I think more people would sympathise with a phone addict than with a phone-less admirer trying to get a word in edgewise. It shows the lyricist up as the odd one out trying to pass himself off as an everyman.

A stand-up comedian circa 1992 might have said ‘Aren’t people with mobile phones a bunch of poseurs?’  (I dimly recall the music press once took the mickey out of Wedding Present singer David Gedge when he brandished a mobile phone backstage at a festival – this would be ’92 or so). But try that today and the comedian would be the odd one out in the room. Actually, that’s an idea for a character: the stand-up comedian whose observations are all jarringly out of date. Probably been done. In fact, I think I’ve seen one or two like that in real life. ‘Those Tamagotchis – what’s going on there, eh?’

***

I do an awful lot of wasting time on the Internet. Here’s three more noble uses of this urge, which I’m happy to pass on:

Online petition 1: Stand with Tibet – Support the Dalai Lama:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/tibet_end_the_violence/98.php/?cl_tf_sign=1

Petition 2: Stop the UK Govt deporting those who may be executed for being gay:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Stopdeportinggay/

Related BBC news story for the above:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7294908.stm

Finally (if you’re not already aware of it), play the FreeRice vocabulary game and help the UN’s World Food Program:

http://www.freerice.com/

***

From now till Sunday it’s all Fosca, Fosca, Fosca. Here’s what’s happening.

Tomorrow we rehearse in Camden from noon till 6pm. We’ve got two new songs to arrange, plus an acoustic session to practice, as well as rehearsing the live set proper. I’ve also got three phone interviews to do, one of which will have to be carried out halfway through the rehearsal.

We leave from London City Airport on Wednesday morning. Then it’s Stockholm for an acoustic TV session, then TWO interviews, then the gig.

On Thursday it’s off to Karlstad to record these two new songs – possibly a third if we have the time (an acoustic version of a rare song, perhaps). Then we’re onstage at 11.30pm. Friday is dominated by a – gulp – SEVEN hour drive to Lund. Saturday is Gothenburg: four hours in the van followed by an acoustic performance at a record shop. Then one more gig.

Sunday sees a welcome lie-in, then we catch a mid-afternoon plane back to Stansted.

There’s playing gigs for the love of playing, and there’s the point where it becomes work. But it’s a nicer kind of work.

First phone interview at 9am. To bed, then.

Fosca t-shirts:

The slogan is taken from a line in ‘Storytelling Johnny’:

I was getting so afraid / I nearly had a t-shirt made / Saying ‘Lose Friends In Days’ / ‘Ask Me How’

***
Niklas corrects me re that Nojesguiden review I mentioned last time:

Actually the smiley is the rating, so the magazine has given the album 5 out of 6. The dots below have to do with comments and listeners rating (which in this case is 4 and a half…)

***

I’ve more or less got the hang of this Garageband program thing. Just. Have programmed the two songs Fosca are recording on Thursday in Karlstad. I’m looking forward to bashing the arrangements into shape with Rachel and Charley. The main dancey one is called ‘The Man I’m Not Today’, as in ‘you made me the man I’m not today.’ The other Magnetic Fieldsy one is still called ‘The Magnetic Fieldsy One’. But it will have a proper title by this time tomorrow or there will be trouble.

Being asked by a record label to write new songs and go on tour – as opposed to hustling your recordings and forcing your gigs on people – is a privilege. Quite why this doesn’t make any difference to cracking my ‘why bother?’ barrier is beyond me. I guess the entry level DIY-ness doesn’t help, not after years of it. All the heavy lifting. Why can’t they make lightweight, fold-up guitars and keyboards?

***

I DJ’d at How Does It Feel To Be Loved, on the Saturday before last. Venue: The Phoenix, off Oxford Circus.

Here’s what I played.

Would-Be-Goods – Fruit Surprise
Aislers Set – Hit The Snow
Aztec Camera – Oblivious
The Wake – Crush The Flowers
New Order – Age Of Consent
Monochrome Set – Jacob’s Ladder
April March – Chick Habit
Spearmint – Sweeping The Nation
The Angels – My Boyfriend’s Back
The Smiths – Is It Really So Strange?
Carole King – I Feel The Earth Move
Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made For Walking
Cast Of ‘Bugsy Malone’ (1975 movie soundtrack): My Name Is Tallulah
The Supremes – Stoned Love
Gloria Jones – Tainted Love
Shirley Bassey – Spinning Wheel
Peggy Lee – Fever
Stereolab – Ping Pong
Felt – Penelope Tree
Chairmen Of The Board – Give Me Just A Little More Time
The Shangri-Las – Give Him A Great Big Kiss
Mel Torme – Right Now
Belle & Sebastian – Woman’s Realm
Le Tigre – Hot Topic
The Sundays – Here’s Where The Story Ends
Dressy Bessy – If You Should Try To Kiss Her
The Vaselines – Molly’s Lips
Orange Juice – Blue Boy
The Supremes – Come See About Me
The Chills – Heavenly Pop Hit
Sister Sledge – Thinking Of You
David Bowie – Young Americans

I enjoyed it. Still the strange mix of Felt fans who’ve come from far and wide, with a smattering of West End Girls and Boys who are just there because it’s a club in Central London on a Saturday night.

While I was waiting at the bar to be served, someone pinched my bottom. No idea who it was, though there were a couple of widely-built lads in matching white tops behind me making repetitive, loud jokes in my ear about how the drink Bulmers sounds a bit like ‘Bummers’. I hope it wasn’t them.

Without knowing the identity of one’s posterior pincher, there’s no way of discerning cheeky affection from ironic comment, or indeed unkind attack. If it’s the latter, it’s a bit tiresome and childish. I did feel a little upset, because of the implication that a complete stranger presumed I’m ‘fair game’ for the pinching. If it was someone I knew – or indeed fancied – it’d be different.

The last person to pinch my bottom before that was Sebastian Horsley. I’m never quite sure when he’s joking, either. But at least I know who he is.

***

Yet again, I’ve spent too much time falling into the addiction to doing anything else rather than the thing I should be doing. There’s been a lot of going to bed earlier and earlier, and rising later and later. Then as if for an encore (or applause), I’ve started sleeping twice during the day. Sometimes I sleep so much I start to hallucinate, from whatever is the opposite of insomnia. Far from relaxing or recharging me, this over-sleeping whittles down my ability to function at all. My brain starts to seize up, and the thoughts I do produce are shrouded in a dull headache.

A change is very much needed. A move? I’ve been in this Highgate bedsit for fourteen years now, and though there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, I feel I’ve ‘done’ this bit of my life. Ticked it off. Maybe I should try living outside of London for a while. I have other favourite cities: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Tangier, Brighton, Paris. NYC and the Chelsea Hotel are still very much on the To Do list. Too obvious? Won’t know until I give it a try. When I have the money. If I ever have the money.

I can’t quite travel at the absolute minimum level, though. From last year’s Tangier trip, I know that I get nervous around luxury and expense, even if someone else is paying. But I also feel uneasy in the ‘romantic cheapskate’ places: the hostels and the £10 a night pension-style hotels where one has to share a bathroom with the backpacker next door.

I like to think this ambition is amusingly humble, but of course I haven’t thought it through:

Mrs Hypothetical: What do you REALLY want out of life, Dickon?
Me: I just want my own bathroom. Not sharing with someone I don’t know.
Mrs H: Well, I’ve had to share a bathroom with my husband for decades. And I don’t really know him either.

From getting drunk on one’s own dreaming to the solipsist’s nightmare; the more I withdraw inside my head, the more the real world seems surreal, going on without the dreamer’s permission or involvement. Whose dream is it, anyway? Well, it’s currently a pretty one: snow flurries in late March.

Better pack the winter coat for Sweden, then.

New Fosca badges, made by the record company:

It’s their idea. ‘We Won’t Get On’ is a reference to the Fosca song ‘Square In The Social Circle’:

‘You’re wearing a badge that reads We Won’t Get On / Because you think it’ll save you time in the long run’

Another review in Swedish, this time from Nojesguiden. Four and a half out of six, plus a smiley face:

http://www.nojesguiden.se/skivrecension/fosca-painted-side-rocket

Interview and scary pic of me here:

***
Completely lacking in energy today. Tonight’s Fosca rehearsal is best described as a ‘jazz session’. As in the old musician’s joke, ‘I did not make a mistake – I was playing jazz.’ Towards the end of the rehearsal, I can barely play the guitar properly (no change there). Fingers seem unwilling to push down strings, left arm heavy as lead. Just sheer baffling fatigue, completely unearned after a day of lounging about at home or walking in Crouch End with Jennifer C. Charley says she feels the same, and I wonder if the rehearsal room itself (Enterprise, off Charing Cross) has some mystical energy-sapping qualities about it. Well, we’re back in Camden’s Zed One next week for one last practise before the Swedish tour. Just as well.

Have had the most terrible trouble getting new songs finished in time to record them in Karlstad next week. Lots of sitting at my desk clawing melodies and lyrics onto the page, only to shout ‘Argh!’ at regular intervals. There’s been a lot of ‘Argh’ moments. Not so much the gasp of frustration at writer’s block, more annoyance when a song is either not good enough, or good enough but too much like somebody else’s song for comfort. I started playing a lovely melody the other day, thinking it was a little bit like ‘Queen Jane Approximately’ by Mr Dylan, but not too close. Just to check, I then went on YouTube to play the Dylan song and realised that not only had I unconsciously copied the song chord for chord, but that it was even in exactly the same key. Back to the drawing board, or rather the ‘Argh!’ Board.

But playing Rachel and Charley the little I had come up with – and hearing them say nice things back – made all the difference. One vamping tune is somewhere between Jonathan Richman’s Egyptian Reggae and the theme from the game Tetris. That kind of ersatz Eastern folk melody – a bit Morocco, a bit Russian Cossacks, a bit Fiddler On The Roof -  that lends itself easily to danceable pop music.

The other song is a cute cyclical melody – the b-side, I guess – a bit like the sweeter moments of the Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs. I’ve been humming it for ages, and the only way to get it out of my head is to put it on a record.

So that’s the two new Fosca songs sorted. Before next Tuesday’s rehearsal, I need to finish the song structures, add lyrics, and program the bass and drums using Garageband on the iBook. I’ve never used the program before, or indeed done any computer-based song programming entirely by myself. Up till now I’ve always sat with a producer in a studio, told them what I’m hearing in my head, and they’ve done all the actual clicking and pointing with the computer mouse in question. Unfortunately Tom Edwards  – now a busy  session musician – and Alex Mayor, the most recent Fosca programmers, are both unavailable this week. So I have to bite the digital bullet and work out how to do it myself. How do I feel about that? I feel more bouts of ‘Argh’ are on the way.

Tom’s excuse is worth noting: he’s playing Greece with Fields of the Nephilim.

***

Morning – shamefully lounging about listening to local radio phone-ins, I’m afraid. I note this in the hope it will stop me doing it again. Today’s subject: is Heather Mills setting back womankind thirty years? Have to admit that like so many I find the whole McCartney divorce as engrossing as any soap opera. It’s none of the public’s business how much of Mr Beatle’s millions she’s been awarded and how much she wanted, of course, but the basic narrative fits everything from Dynasty and Dallas to the mythical Furies. There’s something superhuman about Ms Mills and her all-conquering ire. Her sheer nerve keeps people agog. If the press truly despised her, they’d just ignore her entirely.

Afternoon spent with Jennifer C in Crouch End. She’s quit her job with an organisation who do humanitarian campaign work. It was her dream job, but their more spiritually-inspired working methods – involving some kind of guru – made her feel out of place. Her boss upbraided her for not contributing to the ‘natural team telepathy’.

Her poor cat Vyvian has developed some kind of inflammatory illness, and has lost a shocking amount of weight. He’s not eating his food, and while I chat with Jennifer in the kitchen, the cat keeps coming in and approaches his food bowl, but only to give the morsels light licks without taking any into his mouth. Vyvian’s had a tough enough life as it is: including being rescued from an abandoned litter, and accidentally being trapped inside a moving tumble dryer (not by Jennifer, one must add). Nine lives, and then some.

On Crouch End Broadway, we go to the Spiazzo Italian cafe (plus food hall and deli) with its comfortable booths. The place used to be a large electrical shop selling TVs and so on, and can still be seen in the opening credits of Channel 4’s Peep Show. In fact, the comedy connection goes further: in Shaun Of The Dead, it’s the electrical shop where Simon Pegg works.  Now it’s utterly transformed into its present cappuccino-based incarnation; the 80s whiteness and space of the TV shop giving way to fashionably cluttered wooden shelves of expensive chocolates and deli meats. From striplighting to stripped pine.

***

New routine: I’m going to try writing a diary entry at the end of the day, associating it with the things one has to do just before going to bed. Previously I’ve either spent much of the day itself thinking about what to write, and then either spending hours writing it, or worse: hours NOT writing it. I’ve already overdone this entry. But considering I felt unable to barely do anything at all when I sat down to type this, I feel capable and, yes, happier for it. Unfortunately, I’m with Dorothy Parker on this one: ‘I hate writing; I love having written.’

The Portable Dickon Edwards – as in the little book of lyrics and other writings – has now sold out at the record label. Entangled in the US seem to have a few left, though, so if you’re reading this and still want a copy, try here:

http://www.entangledrec.com/product_info.php?products_id=1354

There’s been a couple more Swedish reviews for the album. This one, Sydsvenskan, gives it three out of five:

http://sydsvenskan.se/nojen/skivrecensioner/article306287.ece

While Dagens Nyheter, the newspaper that interviewed me last year, gives it a more pleasing 4:

http://www.dn.se/DNet/jsp/polopoly.jsp?d=2198&a=751208

Here’s a kind blog review that awards the album 8.5 out of 10, calling it ‘one of the best pop albums of 2008’:

http://kissmeivequitsmoking.blogspot.com/2008/03/your-list-of-top-ten-songs-to-self.html

By the way, the singer in ‘Kim’ isn’t mean to be anyone real or specific. Just any aging Britpop lothario. There’s plenty of those knocking about. Though the writer character is definitely inspired by someone I know.

At the rehearsal room:

Charley: Is ‘Kim’ about X?

Me: A bit. Unless they complain. In which case, no it isn’t.

Another clarification. Kate Dornan doesn’t sing lead on ‘Evening Dress’, even though she wrote it. That’s Rachel Stevenson. In the studio, all three of us took turns to see who could sing it the best that day, and Rachel won.

I can also announce that the album now has a proper UK release date: April 28th, via Forte Distribution.

We’ll try to organise a London show in May or so. Rachel says she knows of a hairdressers’ in Stoke Newington who put on gigs occasionally. Which would be perfect.

***

Have been traipsing around Hampstead Heath every day since last week, in a desperate bid to get fitter. I drawn the line at going to the gym, but am royally fed up with the permanently exhausted, ailment baiting state I’ve been in for the last year or so. Everyone tells me a brisk walk of at least 30 mins a day makes all the difference, so I try to make it an hour, and always aim to include a couple of steep hills, which is fairly easy to do around Highgate and the Heath. I’m endlessly passing people walking their dogs. Or walking their boyfriends.

When it comes to fitness, other people ‘train’. I traipse.

Passing the cafe by the tennis courts, I overhear some boys shouting ‘Batty Boy!’. Having become personally acclimatized to this particular catcall over the years, I turn round to see if they mean me. But no: it’s three or four schoolboys – their uniforms of the posh and expensive school nearby -  fighting and pushing and calling each other gay in that time-honoured, puppy dog, play-fight way that no one gets worried about.

Funny how childhood excuses cruelty. I vividly recall going in tears to a teacher at the age of 8 or so, having been attacked in the playground, only to get the teacher telling me off for apparently making it all up.  ‘Don’t tell tales’. More of a shock than a double hurt, it was my first realisation that the world might not be entirely on my side after all. I see, I thought. This life thing is not being to be the pushover it first appeared to be.

If the meek ever did inherit the earth, sooner or later the slightly meeker would be suffering at the hands of the slightly less meek, and everyone would be back where they started.

***

Coming back on the Tube one evening, two Rubenesque young women are pulling the carriage’s focus. Late twenties and in jeans, with the air of a few drinks about them, they are engaged in a half-hearted parody of pole dancing, using the support poles by the carriage doors. They swing and dance and giggle and whoop to each other, though as there’s not enough room in one space for both dancers, one girl opts to use the next exit space further down the carriage. So a whole row of seats – with a few bemused or uneasy passengers sitting on them – becomes an inadvertant no man’s land, across which the girls exchange their slinky, if tipsy, fire.

Still, they’re harmless enough, and a carriage at ransom to two drunken girls is preferable to one commandeered by lads in a similar state.

One man sitting near to me exercises his own control in a very male way. After the girls get out at the next stop, he offers a comment to the carriage at large:

‘Well, I wouldn’t pay for them.’

I’m Dj-ing this Saturday at the club How Does It Feel To Be Loved, which specialises in mixing 60s soul & pop with 80s indie. After all the showtunes and easy listening with which my DJ persona is usually associated, it’s nice to be able to air the likes of ‘Crush The Flowers’ by The Wake or ‘You Wind Me  Up’ by Bad Dream Fancy Dress and not feel like I’m in the wrong room.

Actually, were Cherry Red / El Records to put out 1989’s ‘You Wind Me Up’ as a single now, one wonders if it would be accused of ripping off Lily Allen. Judge for yourself, Dear Reader:

http://dickonedwards.co.uk/you-wind-me-up.mp3

Were I better connected with the current pop world, I’d be nagging Ms Allen to cover it. Or better still, Ms Nash. Or Mr Ronson. Or Misses Girls Aloud. Or any new pop group with a chart-potential marketing budget and youth on their side, but no decent songs.

‘Isn’t that a shameless Lily Allen rip-off?’ the people would cry.

‘Oho!’ you’d say. ‘It’s actually a cover of an obscure 80s indie track. The band was called Bad Dream Fancy Dress, and the song was written by Keith West, of ‘Grocer Jack (Excerpt from A Teenage Opera)’ 60s hit fame. You’d know all this if you read Mr Edwards’s diary.’

‘Oh, him. Why doesn’t he just get a job?’

I digress. Here’s the details of my DJ slot:

Date: Saturday March 15th
Venue: The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP, three minutes walk from Oxford Circus tube station.
Time: 9pm-3am, with my set 10.30pm-midnight.
Entry: £4 members, £6 non members. Membership is available free from www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk

***
An email arrives from Zagreb, asking if I could be interviewed (re Fosca) for the Croatian magazine Terapija. Though I’ve never been to Croatia physically, it’s nice to know I’ve been there musically.

As I got dressed this morning, I realised a button was missing from the clean shirt in question. I started to think I’d have to sort out a needle and thread and sew a spare in place, when it dawned on me: it’s about time I started wearing cufflinks. After all, people do send me them to wear.

A pair of lovely vintage silver ones appeared in the post recently from the US, in the shape of little 1930s automobiles. Here’s the note that came with them:

Dear Mr Edwards

These belonged to my great uncle. He was a gay Mexican paratrooper in WWII (and after as well I suppose). You are the only one I know who would do them justice. Enjoy!

Ms Brandi Shawn.

I’ve got them on now. I like to think this diary reads like it was written by the sort of person who is sent vintage cufflinks previously belonging to gay great uncles, Mexican paratroopers or not.

In fact, someone else told me the other day they suddenly felt the urge to send me some cufflinks. Well, now’s the time. From today, I am officially a cufflink wearer.

(Is it ‘cufflinks’, ‘cuff links’ or ‘cuff-links’? Glancing at newspapers online, all three versions appear to be in usage. However, the Compact OED and the London Review Of Books prefer ‘cufflinks’, so I’ll go with that.)