Tuesday evening, written up belatedly. To the Royal Albert Hall for one of the Proms concerts. I have a ticket in the stalls, courtesy of Rob Cowan, for which I’m truly grateful. The seat commands a decent view from the stage left side, is comfortable, and even swivels to provide extra leg room for those of us with long, unsupple legs.

The main arena is standing room only, for the ‘Prommers’ which give the concerts their name and defining feature. Inexpensive tickets, cheap access to top-rate classical performances, as long as you don’t mind queuing and standing. Some of the Prommers take it very seriously indeed, attending every single one of the 70-odd summer dates and forming little intense societies of their own. Some of them organise collections for charity, and in the interval there’s a group announcement from the arena, saying how much they’ve raised so far. They don’t have a microphone, so they make the announcement together like a chant.

I’ve been a Prommer myself once, as a teenager for Mussorgsky’s Pictures At An Exhibition. I remember chatting with – and being looked after by – a thin, bespectacled Prommer who was famous among the regulars. He was first in the queue, and I was told he always had his own place down the front, dead centre. I remember tuning in for the televised Last Night At The Proms that year, and easily spotting him down the front, singing along with all the flag wavers. I can’t quite tell from the stalls if he’s still there these days, though.

I’ve come to hear Bartok’s Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta (1936) and Ligeti’s Atmospheres (1961). The Bartok is moody and strange and folk-influenced, while the Ligeti is downright avant-garde. Soundscapes of colour, the tuning of braking trains from distant dreams. Atmospheres features in the dark screen ‘overture’ to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Kubrick also uses Ligeti for the bits with the monolith, and the long bit at the end where the astronaut’s pod whizzes through endless landscapes of oddness. If it’s in 2001 and sounds scary, abstract and otherworldly, it’s Ligeti.

Note to self: stop pronouncing him ‘Li-GET-tee’ It’s ‘LIG-erty’. Hungarian, not Italian.

What makes tonight’s concert attractive enough to fill about 80% of the Hall, even in the midst of a Tube strike, is not just the inclusion of this challenging fare (the Ligeti’s never been played at the Proms before), but that the orchestra playing it is more suited to traditional Strauss waltzes and polkas. It’s the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Daniel Barenboim.

The Telegraph gives this concert a critical pasting the next day, saying the VPO are too polished, corporate and old-fashioned to handle the modern stuff. Well, the Bartok is 70 years old and the Ligeti is 40, but it’s modern enough for the VPO, established in 1842.

It’s true they’re hardly innovative in the gender equality stakes: I read that their first female member was only admitted in 2003, making front page news in Austria at the time. It does seem an anachronistic, golf-club-like imbalance these days, particularly when the audience tonight (like classical fans in general) is about fifty-fifty male and female. In fact, two women behind me comment loudly on how few ladies are on stage. ‘There’s one – on harp!’. ‘I think I see another one in the woodwinds…’

2001 – Humanity discovers an alien monolith.

2003 – the VPO discovers women.

But old-fashioned or no, they do the difficult stuff perfectly well as far as my ears are concerned. The slow, sparse first movement of the Bartok piece has the audience gripped from the off. It’s almost as if the entire Albert Hall is holding its breath. Barenboim jumps in the air for the faster passages.

And the Ligeti is astonishing; suitable otherworldly and dreamy. At one point, two men open up a grand piano and stroke the strings inside with what I imagine are special Ethereal Soundscape brushes.

Also in the programme are more melodic, traditional pieces: Kodaly’s Dances Of Galanta and Enescu’s Romanian Rhapsody No 1. There’s also two encores of Strauss: the catchy Annen-Polka and a fitting Hail To Hungary (given the Eastern European theme), complete with shouted ‘hoy!’ at the end. All of which pleases both audience and performers (there’s even some dancing in the Prommers’ arena), but it’s the experimental stuff that really delights my heart.

I really should go to more classical gigs. Apart from anything else, they smell nice. People are generally better deodorised.

The new school and college year is about to begin, because I overhear this from the crowds spilling out of the Albert Hall:

Girl: Oh I really love my year, daddy!

Dad: Are you with all your buddies?

The tube strike isn’t a pain at all. For many, it’s an excuse for to get some exercise from walking, particularly as the weather’s warm and dry. I happily march all the way across Hyde Park at night, along the main road that runs down the middle, and along Oxford Street to Tottenham Court Road. Then I catch a tube home. The Northern Line is unaffected, so my journey isn’t as awkward as it could be. It’s been a perfectly lovely evening, in fact.

Thursday evening. To the Spectrum Gallery in Great Titchfield Street, for Sebastian Horsley’s book launch and art show. The place is fairly small, and the art on display is effectively his greatest hits. The video of his crucifixion in the Philippines. A shark painting, from his close-up encounters with the beasts. A copy of the ‘This Is Not A Brothel’ sign from his front door. One of his beautiful suits.

Horsley bridges the Emin & Warhol world – art as advert for the artist – and the Soho Hooligan world of Bacon, Hambling, Melly, Bernard, Hamilton, and Quentin Crisp. He is possibly the only person to quote Quentin Crisp even more than me. Though he actually did actually meet Quentin, and suggests some of Crisp’s later quotes were his in the first place.

When Jarvis Cocker first appeared on TV, he was introduced as ‘a cross between Scott Walker and Quentin Crisp.’ Which wasn’t (and isn’t) entirely him. But it was a good start. A departure point. People need a way in; a handrail with which to approach the new.

Crisp was Firbank meets Saki meets Wilde. And Wilde was Ruskin meets Huysmans meets anyone else in the room at the time:

Wilde: I wish I had said that.
Whistler: You will, Oscar, you will.

All innovators begin life as a one-man tribute band. As long as it’s on the way to becoming a tribute to themselves.

And so it is with Sebastian Horsley. Not the first man to be crucified, of course. Not even the first man to be crucified in recent years, given it goes on in the Philippines every Easter. But he is the first Westerner, and remains the only one. Dominik Diamond tried it for a TV show called Crucify Me, but his nerve left him right before the nails were driven in, and he called it off.

Flicking through his book, Dandy In The Underworld, I spot a Quentin-esque line immediately. It’s on the importance of living in small flats and bedsits. ‘I never know what people do with the rooms they are not in.’ But then Sebastian adds, ‘I’ve been in bigger women.’

Dandy In The Underworld is a terrific read: a litany of hedonistic, decadent acts. Some of which are the usual suspects: drugs, sex, degradation. But Horsely puts a personal, darkly funny spin on them all. He’s a gifted writer, cutting to the chase, one step ahead of his own critics. ‘I’ve suffered for my art,’ he says. ‘Now it’s your turn.’

The event at the gallery is packed, with people spilling out into the street. For someone who describes himself as untalented and unsuccessful, Horsley is impressively popular. Maybe because he doesn’t take himself too seriously. Make people smile, if you must make them do anything. Absinthe is served, and I’m afraid I help myself to a glass. Just the one, mind.

Names. I say hello to Sebastian, Sebastian’s family, Victoria Clarke, Miss Hattie, Sophie Parkin, Viktor Wynd, another man called Dickon (no one is terribly impressed by two Dickons meeting: the universe fails to implode), a young couple, fresh in London and hitting the top parties already – the boy is called Alexei. An AIDS charity worker turned teacher. Lots of girlish young men who look down their elegant noses at you (or at least, me). I eventually gravitate to Lady Billy from the Club Kitten scene, and Bleach Blonde Sarah, current landlady of Miss Shanthi. Billy and Sarah are in a band together called Wet Dog. Mark Keds says hello to them: I remember him from the band the Senseless Things. I bought their single, ‘Too Much Kissing’, when it came out, with its Jamie Hewlett sleeve. This was 1989. They all repair to Electrogogo, but I opt for bed.

Frequently asked boring question:

‘How do you know Sebastian?’

Answer: ‘Osmosis.’

‘Nice meeting you’, I say to one man who’s passing through.

‘You’re lying, aren’t you.’

‘Yes.’

‘It suits you.’

Actually I was lying that I was lying, but wanted to play his game. Sebastian’s approach rubs off on you.

Maybe I should try being deliberately rude, as opposed to being inadvertently rude. It’s so tiring having to apologise.

You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been deliberately rude in my life. Evasive, yes. Stand-offish, certainly. But not actually telling people to get knotted. Maybe that’s where I’ve been going wrong all this time.

Ahem. (clears throat)

You can all get knotted, frankly. You and the boat you rode in on.

I think I need lessons. 

Buy Sebastian H’s decadent feast of a book here.

Monday: spend my birthday in a perfectly happy state. No drinks, no social gatherings in a bar or club. Instead I plump for a day on my own, loafing about the British Library cafe and Reading Rooms (reading a book about happiness, in fact), going to the Post Office to send Fosca CDRs to labels and post the rarer books which I’ve sold on Amazon (which were NOT gifts to me), and a bit of indulgent shopping. Suits me fine. I’m meeting friends later this week as it is.

I had a perfectly lovely surprise meal thrown for me last year, which in happiness terms will keep me going for a long time yet. Sometimes, one’s birthday can feel like New Year’s Eve, ie strained, enforced jollity for its own sake. Worrying that you’re not happy enough. Happiness for me this year meant solitude, and not worrying. I was happy.

I didn’t fancy the idea of a drinks gathering organised at short notice, which people would find hard to attend (particularly with the Tube strike) and having to refuse alcohol while surrounded by people getting drunk.

At the Highgate garden party on Saturday, I was frequently offered drinks (Oh, poor Dickon! Our hearts bleed!). I gave in and supped a little Pimms and fruit punch, but couldn’t really enjoy it, knowing I was meant to be on the wagon and worrying that I’d get drunk. So I’m still struggling a little with that, and thus felt awkward about a birthday drinks do.

One year, though, I’d like to throw a proper bash in a venue, advertised weeks in advance (the only real way to do gatherings in London) with films, DJs and dancing. Maybe an ‘If….’ party, with everyone dressed as schoolboys.

The Tube strike is planned to go on until Friday morning. I have things to go to. So, a good excuse to do lots of walking.

Receive lots of birthday greetings via email and Facebook (much thanks). A few Facebook Gifts this year, which are cute little cartoon images of presents. Certainly very Green-friendly. No wrapping paper, no space taken up in the real world.

Tim Chipping sends me the new Edwyn Collins album in digital form, along with a video e-card. It’s that famous 60s Bob Dylan film where he holds up signs featuring words from the song’s lyrics. On the e-card, Dylan’s words are replaced by ‘Happy Birthday Dickon’. Very clever stuff.

My parents and brother send me generous amounts of much-welcomed money, along with a copy of McSweeney’s Quarterly No. 13. This is the big literary comics anthology edited by Chris Ware. Staying on that tip, I use some of the money at Gosh Comics, to buy a similar anthology: Ivan Brunetti’s Anthology Of Graphic Fiction, published by Yale University. I also pick up a copy of Gaiman’s Stardust, the version illustrated by Charles Vess, so I can compare it with the forthcoming film. Am meant to be attending a press screening on Thursday, though Sebastian Horsley is having his book launch the same evening.

Oh, and they had sold out of Scott Pilgrim Vol 1.

Films seen recently include Disney’s Fantasia. Whenever I come back to this, it’s a different sequence that appeals. As a child, I first favoured the Mickey Mouse ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ segment, then the ballet with the crocodiles, hippos and ostriches. Today it’s the opening Toccata and Fugue that connects with my 36-year-old self, with its backlit live-action orchestra mixing into a dazzling parade of abstract, dreamy animation.

But I still like the hippos.

My 36th birthday. Up at 6am again, so the day has hope. No appointments today. I can pretty much do what I like, as long as it doesn’t cost very much. Perhaps a mooch around town, and then to the London Library. Somewhere where quietness has been subscribed to. I need to have a serious think about things, so it helps to go where the serious thinkers go.

Looking at the number 36 written down, thoughts of what I want to do with the rest of my life spring up. There was a George Melly documentary on TV the other week, screened in memoriam. He was interviewed during his last years, and said there were many things he wished he’d done: been more of a poet, painter, novelist, alongside all the singing, memoir writing, journalism and generally living large.

‘But I’ve never done anything I didn’t want to do,’ he said, uttering the phrase like a credo.

Now, civilisation was pretty much built on a good deal of people doing things they didn’t want to do, throughout history. As I write, all over London people are off to jobs they’d rather not do, indeed might hate with a passion. But they are jobs they can do, which need to be done (one hopes) and which pay the bills.

That’s fine for those who can adapt easily to the World Of Work. But for those of us who are shaped slightly wrongly for much of the world’s fixed slots, it’s not so easy to do. If I’ve learned anything after thirty-six summers, it’s that there’s no point in working purely for money if you hate what you’re doing. Apart from anything else, hating a job means in my case that I won’t do a good job, so I’ll soon be sacked, and then it’s been a waste of time all round.

Some birthday messages to myself. Maybe to others, too.

You should probably spend less time on the Internet. If you just keep your diary updated, and stick to one place on the Web, people will know you’re still alive and are more or less okay, and that’s usually all they need. You have enough real friends in real life, and should spend more time consolidating these friendships. Friendship is sacred, if it’s truly meant.

Don’t dwell on those who find you ‘interesting’ from afar, or those in whom you’ve awoken some spark of remote obsession. All unsolicited attention flatters, but its active cultivation will do no favours to admirer and subject alike. Instead, spend more time on those who truly know you and love you.

Concentrate on learning to properly swim in one social pool, rather than paddling in the shallow end of so many. This one is going to be tricky at first, but stick with it.

At 36, you’re meant to more or less know where your abilities lie. You’re told – by people you don’t really know – that you can write well. Well, write. Write more. Write better. Read up on technique. Practice. Maybe take a course. Write stories. Screenplays. Lyrics for others. Don’t get to your grave having only written about what other people have done, reviewing other people’s music, books and films. Not if you know you want to do your own. So make your own. Make many. Do it. Work at it. Become faster. Get feedback. Improve.

Last night: I watch the film Beyond Therapy. It’s a late 80s comedy directed by Robert Altman, adapted from a stage play. Altman is clearly not best suited to the material, because the film really doesn’t work. It’s certainly not worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as Short Cuts. Jeff Goldblum plays a bisexual trying to have it both ways. He lives with Christopher Guest (whose convincingly swishy performance is close to the one he does in the fantastic Waiting For Guffman), but he also wants to date the lady from Airplane. And everyone’s seeing therapists.

Jeff Goldblum does his usual thing, speaking… as if… he hasn’t… had much… sleep… the night… before. And the dialogue overlaps in that chatty Altman way. But the scripted jokes become lost and the audience is left high and dry.

I was sitting there thinking I could fix the script myself, or even fix the direction. Not daring to suggest I could outdo Robert Altman, but I could see which bits were not working, and was thinking what could be changed, given it’s an adapted play. Any filmic tendencies need to be quietened down, so the words and the performances can engage more directly.

But the other sides of directing tend to put me off: the long hours, the painstaking repetition, and the diplomatic nature; having to be overly nice to so many people even in the most stressful of circumstances. I wouldn’t have the nerve to be a tyrant, a la Von Trier. I actually rather like actors. Still, that’s one thing on the big To Do list.

An over-used phrase to say when having watched a bad movie is ‘that was ninety minutes of my life I’ll never get back.’ But in the case of films like Beyond Therapy, which left me thinking how I could fix the thing, it was ninety minutes well spent.

‘I would have preferred the film to have done this’, some critics say. So make your own film, I say.

***

Saturday evening: to a fun garden party at the home of Jen C and Alex & Bill M, in Highgate. Home-made cupcakes, marshmallow-flavoured Rice Krispie cakes, a raffle with prizes, and games of badminton on the lawn. I chat to Senay S for the first time in years; great to see her again. Actually it’s a Baxendale reunion, with Tim B and Alex M all there.

I mention to American Emily that I’ve applied for that Time Out job.

‘So have I!’ she replies. And we imagine we probably know a few other applicants somewhere along the line.

‘Hope you get it.’

‘No, I hope YOU get it.’

I don’t envy whoever has to sort through the applicants. Must be hundreds.

We talk about the ‘things to improve about Time Out‘ blurb which the advert asked for, and Emily thinks the Guardian Guide has stolen much of Time Out‘s potential audience. The Guide is a cute little mini-supplement packaged with the newspaper’s Saturday edition, containing arts reviews and a decent smattering of local listings. It’s handy in size, and manages to be vaguely fizzy and in touch without feeling too trendy. And it steers clear of getting into the ‘praise one thing for not being another’ tone which in some quarters is mistaken for ‘lively’.

Right. Off into town I go.

Have applied for a job at the insistence of Charley S, who forwarded the advert. Staff Music Writer at Time Out magazine, London edition.

Needless to say my hopes are at ground level. I suspect they’ll be inundated with applications from more aggressively networking types. But it’s a writing job, I could do it, and I do have something of an unusual, toe-dipping background on various London scenes over the years. I like to think I can produce entertaining, unusual musings on music of all stripes, which people would go out of their way to read. So I give it my best shot.

As for music of all stripes, I’m off to the Royal Albert Hall for Ligeti at the Proms this week. On the bus to the venue, my iPod Nano will be playing… actually, what AM I listening to at the moment? Let’s see.

Cocteau Twins. Dory Previn. Dresden Dolls. Dressy Bessy. The Hidden Cameras. Joy Division. My Bloody Valentine. New Order. Nico. North Sea Radio Orchestra. The Supremes. The new Edwyn Collins single. Philip Glass. Prefab Sprout’s first album. Talulah Gosh. Virginia Astley. The Breeders’ session for John Peel, circa 1990. Xiu Xiu’s incredible cover of the Pussycat Dolls’ ‘Don’t Cha’. Alan Bennett’s diaries. A radio dramatisation of Clive Barker’s play, The History Of The Devil. An audiobook of Saki stories. And the most recent edition of Radio 3’s Late Junction, featuring classical, folk, avant-garde, experimental jazz, new tracks by David Sylvian and Robert Wyatt, and field recordings of birdsong.

Though I have little interest in many of the latest radio-friendly alt-rock sensations clogging up festival bills, I like to think I could write knowledgeably about them, if required. I’m a research junkie: my brain lends itself easily to the location, absorption and recall of new information. If anything, I overdo the research in my all-or-nothing tendency.

For the time I interviewed the directors of Brothers Of The Head, I went to the British Library and read the obscure, out-of-print novel their film adapted, and took notes. Then I read every single interview and article about their work that I could find, and put together a huge file on them that would lend itself to a book-length biography, never mind a 2,000 word interview. Oh, and I read a new book on professional interview technique, which couldn’t hurt. So I can do it, when I want to. Even if I overdo it.

I’m also experienced in reigning in the Dickon-ness in favour of a house-style, homogenised hack approach; playing to the zeitgeist gallery and using ‘we’ to mean ‘me. It just means a small acting job. Still, any job is an acting job of sorts. Even the ones where you’re cast as yourself.

The advert asked for a short critique of Time Out’s current music coverage. A lot of publications do this. ‘How would you improve things?’ they ask. I wonder what they really want to hear?

Last time I applied for a similar full-time position for another magazine, they asked the same question. So I launched into a list of suggestions. Not only did I not get the job, I notice not one of my mooted revisions was even slightly taken on board. The magazine seems pretty much the same as it always was. So maybe the right answer is to posit a few very minor tweaks, nothing radical.

Or maybe it’s a trick question? That you’re really meant to say: ‘I couldn’t possibly question the decisions of the present editors. The magazine is perfect as it is. You have always been right, will always be right, and I look forward to obeying your every command, for money.’

What most bugs me at the moment with Time Out is the pointlessly cynical tone of many of their reviews, where they praise one artist by burying another. Last issue, a piece on the band Dragonette mentioned the singer’s appearance on Basement Jaxx’s ‘awful’ ‘Take Me Back To Your House’ hit. It’s Time Out‘s ‘awful’, not mine. Over the page, there’s a tiny, 50-word blurb on an artist that still finds it important to take a pop at Mika, by way of unfavourable comparison. What’s good about this artist? They’re like Mika if he was good, goes the gist.

But I like that Basement Jaxx song, and I like Mika. So these snidey digs are not only unhelpful, they backfire entirely. There’s more to music criticism than simply assuming the reader is on-message with your own specific dislikes. It’s a cynical style more used to web forums and blog comments, and has no place in a listings mag for a city that represents a wealth of tolerance and possibility for those who love it.

Time Out has a job to provide filters and signposts for the capital’s confusion, but narrowing choices shouldn’t mean narrowing minds.

So that’s what I told them in my application. They did ask.

Still throwing out most of my old audio cassettes. Many are the demos of friends and correspondents over the years, but I assume they keep their own copies and so don’t think twice about disposing of them.

On the train the other day, David Barnett asks me if I’ve jettisoned his own ancient demo, which he gave me a decade ago when we were musing about making music together. I tell him no, it’s gone the way of all the others. And after ten years, surely a kind of statute of limitations comes into place?

But of course, he then says it was the last copy in the world. I am absolutely mortified, even though any brutal reduction of possessions comes with a price. What was it the USA leaders say about casualties? ‘Stuff happens.’

If it’s any consolation, I add feebly, begging his forgiveness, I’ve also thrown out rare tapes by people who’ve gone on to proper success and Mercury Music Prize nominations. He thinks I’m mad not to put Isobel Campbell’s tape on Ebay, with its demos of her songs for Belle & Sebastian and her first solo album. But even though I’ve not been in contact with Ms C for (again) a decade, it would still feel tacky, even a betrayal, to put such tapes into others’ hands. Money or no. I still have the letter she wrote to me at the time. When I get onto clearing out old letters, it’ll be a different matter entirely.

It’s odd. For someone who loves museums and libraries, I hate the thought of becoming an archivist myself; whether of my own work or others. I like collections, but would hate to be considered a collector. I like being a guest at parties, but rarely the host.

But all this is secondary to the main reason for clearing such dusty items out: I simply don’t have the room to be a collector of anything more than what I need to use right now.

Many of my own demos are the musical equivalent of baby photos: cute to others for five seconds, embarrassing to me for longer.

Baby photos are overrated. I don’t see the point of baby photos in documentaries or in the photo section of biographies. A cheap curiosity. What did the subject look like when they were a baby? Well, guess what! They looked like a baby. They had no choice in the matter.

Life is more interesting when there’s bits missing.

***

Have seen the latest Quentin Tarantino film, Death Proof. Makes one scream at the screen, ‘Hurry up and cut to the chase. Literally.’

Plot: a group of jolly ladies chatter for too long, then are terrorised by an unkind gentleman who uses his stunt car as a murder weapon. Then it happens all over again in a different part of America, with a twist. Then lots of film buffs stroke their beards and point out all the clever references to cult trashy films which only they have seen.

The movie is meant to be viewed in a three-hour double bill, one massive homage to the late night b-movies of yore, called Grindhouse. The other film is Planet Terror by Mr Sin City, about a bottom-kicking pretty woman with one leg, who takes on legions of enemies out to get her. Cue Heather Mills jokes.

Grindhouse also includes a few fake trailers for ‘Coming Attractions’ by other directors, for similarly garish films that don’t exist. There’s one by Edgar Wright, a horror nasty called Don’t. It’s extremely funny and beautifully realised.

Despite the cooler-than-thou appeal, the full Grindhouse package was something of a flop on its US release. So much so that the UK distributors have opted to release the two main movies separately. Britain gets the Tarantino in a few week’s time, followed by the one-legged lady thing a month later. I presume the spoof trailers will be on the inevitable DVD, the afterlife format where all wrongs are righted.

Death Proof, then. It’s very nearly a great film. But the extended dialogue scenes really bore the 70s hot pants off me. They’re meant to build up a sense of tension, but they just drag on and on.

All the girls have 70s flick hairdos and vintage diner clothes, listen to groovy music from the 60s and 70s, show off their long legs and perfect feet to the camera, but have iPods and text messaging, and talk about the use of CGI in movies. All very well, but when the killing comes into it, you no longer care about such creatures of pure fantasy. If anything, I find myself rooting for Kurt Russell’s Morrissey-faced killer to hurry up and dispatch these chattering damsels of dream.

Misogyny on the director’s part? No, more Pygmalionism. I do think he wants women to be more like the ones in his head. Which is either shaking their legs and feet and bottoms, or kicking the bottoms of men, or have them twittering on about the trivia of 60s bands, cult movies, cars, magazines. It’s a world he wishes existed, so he makes it exist. Which is something I completely agree with, after all.

And it’s not unflattering to the women. Who doesn’t want to be sexy and hip and bottom-kicking? I know I do.

Sadly, the lengthy dialogue scenes between the girls are not a patch on the conversations in Reservoir Dogs. Or Amanda Plummer’s ‘Honey Bunny’ character in Pulp Fiction. And that’s my main problem with Death Proof: he doesn’t let the girls be funny. Or indeed, funny and tired and capricious and careful and worried and wise, like the girls I know. His girls are too busy being sexy, hip and tough, and ONLY those things.

It’s no good thinking female characters are well-written just because they’re tough, fight with weapons, and talk about cars and obscure movies. Maybe that’s enough for Mr T’s fans, but it leaves me missing Mr Pink arguing about the ethics of tipping, and Honey Bunny switching from timid girl to foul-mouthed gangster and back again, to comic effect.

Still, when the action sequences finally come along, they’re worth the wait. And Zoe Bell, a strapping New Zealand stunt lady, is something of a star. She was the action double for Miss Thurman in Kill Bill, and here is promoted to proper actor. Hearing her Kiwi accent pricking the bubble of Tarantino’s world of Americana is like hearing Tim Roth’s ordinary English one in Pulp Fiction: it shakes the aesthetic up. Just a shame she doesn’t appear till about an hour in.

Tarantino’s choice of soundtrack, however, is as impeccable as ever. For a director, he’s a brilliant DJ. In Death Proof, the main musical showpiece – ie, the bit where Mr Tarantino is purely making a film to illustrate his favourite music – is a superbly groovy version of ‘Baby It’s You’, not by The Shirelles or The Beatles, but by a late 60s band called Smith.

Slightly less of a revelation is the appearance of ‘Chick Habit’ by April March on the closing credits. One could argue this is QT personified: a 1990s cover of a 60s Serge Gainsbourg song. It sounds forty years old, but its hip lyrics meld slang across the decades.

Thing is, it’s already been used on the credits to another film a few years ago. But I’m A Cheerleader got there first, a funny indie romp about gay and lesbian teenagers sent to a hetero-converting summer camp, starring RuPaul. Which, as you can probably guess, is more my cup of alcohol-free absinthe.

There’s a little photo of me in today’s Independent newspaper, as part of Rhodri Marsden’s article on DIY pop. Page 2 of the Extra supplement. I’m caught in mid lip-synch on his video shoot, and it looks like I’m pulling a rather silly, Wildean expression. Bought my copy today from Bildeston Post Office.

Can’t quite believe that, according to his article, Rhodri’s video has been watched 250,000 times, yet the thing it’s meant to be promoting, the actual single, has sold barely 60.

I guess it still has to be radio and TV play, gigging, fanbase interaction and media hype that makes the real difference between watching a pop video and buying a pop song.

Making your own music with a computer is easy, we’re constantly told. Getting people to listen to it, and pay to listen to it in its week of release, is somewhat less easy. There has to be an angle, a world, a tribe to belong to. An aesthetic. A consensus. An appearance on a trusted radio playlist. Filters and signposts, yes. But it has to be the right filters, and the right signposts.

Have sent the new Fosca album out to various labels. Or rather, emailed them and pointed them to the MySpace page so they can hear four of the tracks now, with the offer of sending the full CD if their breath is bated. Seems the modern and eco-friendly thing to do.

Matinee have said sorry, too many acts already. Elefant have said the same, but they’d like to hear the whole CD anyway. Swedish label But Is It Art are tentatively interested; they’re Fosca fans, though new to the label game. No reply yet from Siesta, Rough Trade or Domino. That’s all the labels I can think of. Or rather, all the ones whose records I buy which are aware of me or Fosca, and are still active.

***

‘I don’t do drugs, I am drugs’ said Salvador Dali once, and my newly teetotal incarnation knows exactly what he means.

Since eschewing alcohol, I’ve found my imagination going into newly strange and dreamy extremes. It’s as if my body is missing the state of drunkenness so badly, it’s providing its own version. I’ve found myself craving oneiric music and art. Or at least, the sort that connects. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless album, the Cocteau Twins’ woozier output, the soundtrack to Mysterious Skin, Death In Vegas’s ‘Girls’, William Basinski’s Disintegration Loops, Glass’s ‘Floe’, Ligeti’s ‘Atmospheres’, the Huelgas-Ensemble’s polyphonic choral album, 40 Voices. The dreamier fare played on Radio 3’s experimental music shows like Late Junction, or Julian Anderson’s Book Of Hours from last night’s Proms. The latter was described by the programme notes as ‘bursting into a dawn chorus of high heterophonic skirlings’. No need to get personal.

There’s rumours today that My Bloody Valentine are reforming. I saw bassist Deb Googe at a birthday party in Tufnell Park the other month: presumably she knows. Actually, maybe not. I’ve just found an interview when she says she spent her first two years with MBV unsure if she was in the band or not. And did they actually split up, or go on ‘hiatus’? Hard to tell. Their status was always as woozy as their sound.

I can vividly recall their outrageously loud gig in London ULU, 1990. Catching the last train back to this bedroom in Suffolk, and waking the next day with my ears still ringing.

‘You Made Me Realise’ was the encore at Bristol University a year later, on what I think was their last UK tour. Never been keen on that particular track myself. Too rock. I prefer the woozy soundscape stuff.

When I first played the You Made Me Realise EP, I was amazed they’d given the melodically weakest track pride of place. ‘Drive It All Over Me’, ‘Slow’, ‘Cigarette In Your Bed’, and ‘Thorn’ are superior. The best MBV pickings to my mind comprises those four songs, all of Loveless, half of Isn’t Anything, ‘Swallow’, ‘Off Your Face’, and ‘Sugar’, a track from a flexidisc given away with The Catalogue magazine. I remember buying the magazine in Ipswich, cutting out the flexidisc (it was square), playing it and wondering if was warped or not. And thinking: how can you tell?

***

Also for the first time since my teen years, and staying on a dreamy tip (or indeed, trip), I’ve gotten back into the works of Salvador Dali.

I went through the teenage phase of first loving his weirdness per se, then smugly dismissing him as the favourite artist of, well, teenagers who have yet to really find out about modern art. For me, Dali was something you grew out of.

For years I felt that his work was over-polished, garish and tacky, lending itself too easily to Athena posters and postcards on sixth former’s bedroom walls. He was – by his own intentions – a Surrealist for the masses, a forelock-tugging (well, moustache-tugging) Hollywood showman, and thus inferior to the likes of Bacon, Man Ray, Miro, Rothko, Mondrian and so on. Wackiness and tackiness with no heart, no soul.

I think that’s still true of one or two works on display at the Tate Modern’s current show, Dali and Film, like his non-surreal portrait of movie mogul Jack Warner with his pet dog. It’s so garishly literal, loud and glossy, it might as well be one of those paintings they found on the wall of Saddam Hussein’s palace. But then, subtlety and real-life portraiture were hardly Dali’s defining strengths.

Otherwise, though, I’ve revised my opinion on him entirely. Looking for emotional depth is rather missing the point: if imagination and ideas delight the heart, the connection is made.

Most of the show is a gorgeous, sexy, scary, funny and stylish dream. There’s working drawings and paintings, including some for unfilmed projects for the Marx Brothers, alongside a range of paintings with filmic elements. Some rooms are mini-cinemas showing the films he was involved with, on a loop. There’s his iconic work with Bunuel that has you laughing out loud one minute, then squirming uneasily the next (Un Chien Andalou and L’Age D’Or), alongside his dream sequence for Hitchcock’s Spellbound.

But the runaway highlight has to be Dali’s collaboration with Disney, an animated musical short called Destino. This delight of delights was shelved in the 40s but dusted off and completed in 2003, via the thankfully discreet use of computers. Turns out the film’s original director is still working for Disney – at the age of 95.

In Destino, a beautiful dark-eyed ballerina – realised in a style that’s exactly half-Disney, half-Dali – falls through a Dali landscape in search of her lover (I think): while dodging eyeballs, ants, constantly morphing statues, and those very Dali-esque impossible structures in the middle of a sunny desert. It’s as good as the best bits of Fantasia, or the ‘Pink Elephants On Parade’ sequence in Dumbo. And the Disney touch, coupled with the music, provides the emotion. To my mind, it’s the best thing ever to bear Dali’s name.

At the Tate, the 7-minute cartoon is delighting kids and pensioners alike, all raving about it as they come out of the screening room. Had Disney released their proposed DVD in time, it would make an absolute fortune in the gift shop. Instead, there’s a dozen shakey versions on YouTube, surreptitiously recorded by camera-phone. Supply and demand in action.

The YouTube clips are better than nothing, but you really have to see Destino in person. If you can go, go now. It finishes soon.

In Bildeston, visiting Dad while Mum is away in Spain (Valencia). There’s still no mobile phone signal here, and once again I think of the calls I’ve happily made to London while walking around in Morocco, or on the ferry crossing the Mediterranean. Once you’re a few miles out of Ipswich or Stowmarket, you’re on your own. But there’s email and the Web, and that’s more than enough.

Dad’s in good health. One unexpected silver lining of his stroke last year is that his lifelong migraines have vanished completely.

I find the change of setting conducive to reorganizing a routine, and am getting up to write at 6am each morning. I love the sense of pen hitting paper while the world is flickering into life, before my brain has a chance to realise what’s happening. Leave it to my brain to instigate the day, and its first thoughts tend to be of procrastination, tiredness, self-pity and resentment, setting me up for a day of ‘if only’ and ‘what’s the use’. In my case, the mere act of getting up early is a kind of Prozac. Oh, look, brain: 500 words before 7am. Didn’t see that coming, did you.

Rising at 11am, as I’ve done too much of late, may be fine for some who work at home, but for me it feels like I’m missing out. Not necessarily missing the best part of the day, as the cliche goes, but missing the most hopeful. Get past noon without anything done, and I feel the day has already been a failure.

To this end, I would like to thank the large moth which woke me up this morning, making a truly disproportionate racket as if fluttered angrily between the window and the roller blind. Thank you, Moth.

***

Yesterday morning. 10.50am. Catch the Tube down to Liverpool St, worrying that I’ve left it too late and will miss the 11.30am train to Stowmarket. David B and Rhoda get on the same tube carriage at Archway and keep me company. David reassures me that I’ll still make it okay, as long as I make the Moorgate Manoeuvre.

This is one of those tips that separates Londoners from the tourists. If your Tube journey involves a single-stop trip at one end, it can work out quicker to make the connection on foot. This is certainly true between Covent Garden and Leicester Square stations, where the getting to and from the platforms (via lift or escalator), added to the waiting for a train plus the train journey itself, takes several times the duration of walking the same distance along Long Acre.

Likewise changing at Moorgate for Liverpool Street. Quicker to walk the last stage, as long as you know where you’re going. From Moorgate, you walk along Eldon Street or Finsbury Circus, look out for the 2001-like monolith, then descend the steps straight into the main part of Liverpool Street station. Easy. I make it to the train with no rushing.

But the reassurance from David and Rhoda on the way makes all the difference. ‘You’ll do it’, say your friends. And so you do. It’s my own brain – or rather, the part that shouts the loudest – that says ‘You won’t make it. You can’t write. You can’t catch trains. You can’t get out of bed. You’re useless.’

It can be a real struggle to ignore this inner critic at times, or worse, actively seek out condemnation from real critics to support it; I’ve banned myself from Googling my own name ever again and heading down that particular self-serving spiral.

Never underrate kind friends. And moths.

An email:

You bloody well better have bought Scott Pilgrim as well as the excellent Phonogram. As Phonogram is a celebration of music geekery, Scott Pilgrim is a celebration of ALL geekery. Plus a romantic comedy and martial arts/punk rock adventure. P.S. Your diary is wonderfully written.

Thank you!

Phonogram author Keiron Gillen also writes, somewhat modestly:

You should have bought Scott Pilgrim. It would be the only sensible thing to do.

Oh all right, then. I’ll buy it after my birthday.

I share my birthday with the playwright Caryl Churchill, the TV presenter Fearne Cotton and the outbreak of World War 2. We always have a joint party. ‘Hullo Fearne. Hullo Caryl. Hullo, Outbreak of World War 2.’

***
I’ve also been alerted to Gosh Comics’s email newsletter service, where they keep you in touch with what’s new in stock from the comfort of your Inbox. So that’s handy.

***

Today – one of those days where things go a bit wrong. I get up too late, I miss a film screening (the new Cronenberg), it’s battering down with rain, I can’t think straight when reading and writing.

In the Assassin’s Cloak anthology of diaries, there’s this from August 23rd, 1956, by author Dawn Powell:

A motto: do it tomorrow; you’ve made enough mistakes today.

Which sums up my Aug 23rd in 2007.

However, I do manage to meet Shane MacG and Victoria Mary Clarke for late morning coffee in Highgate, then bump into Dale Cornish on Tottenham Court Road. Dale’s a lovely young man from the Kash Point scene, and was formerly in the band No Bra. Current band: Barraclough (I think that’s what he said it was called). We kiss hello. He has grown something of a beard since we last met, but it’s soft and downy rather than thick and bristly. A good kissing beard. He is off on holiday to Croatia, now something of a chic destination. The fashionable choice used to be Iceland, then Cuba, then Goa. Now it’s Slovenia, the freshly-detached Montenegro, and sunny Croatia.

***

Read about an alleged graffito in the toilets of the Old Bailey:

I’m about to be tried by twelve people too stupid to get out of doing jury service.