A reminder: Fosca are playing the Brixton Windmill on Weds Aug 1st, part of the Spiral Scratch club night. It’s our first headlining gig in London for a long time. Do come. We don’t play very often.

The Fosca Myspace page now features two new songs from the latest sessions: ‘Kim’ and ‘Come Down From The Cross’. We have one more mixing session with Alexander M, then the album is done. After that, the hunt for a suitable label begins. I’m wary of new indie labels who might rip us off: we’ve had our fingers burnt before. It would have to be someone with a track record. We also need to commission some decent CD and booklet artwork, so the album is worth owning aesthetically.

***

The Latitude Festival in Suffolk has booked me twice. Once as a DJ, one half of The Beautiful & Damned with Miss Red. We’re doing sets every evening from the Thursday (July 12th) to the Sunday, in the Cabaret Arena.

In addition, I’m now reviewing selected acts in the Literary and Film tents, for the Mean Fiddler’s Latitude website.

Only problem is, I now need to find accommodation for the Thursday night. My parents take over the Southwold cottage from the Friday. It seems silly to have to procure a whole tent and sleeping bag for one night only.

The writing job comes with a weekend ticket. This latter is rather surplus to my requirements as I’m already booked as a performer, with guest passes. So I need to somehow swap this ticket for accommodation on the Thursday. Any advice to the normal address, please.

***

Someone emails me to ask if I’m aware of Stephen King’s On Writing. Yes, indeed: it’s a truly brilliant guide to the craft. His sense of uncluttered, informal urgency is infectious, and it’s the only Stephen King book that the London Library will stock. Though I’m not so sure about the bit where he recommends writing to the sound of AC/DC and Metallica. For aural wallpaper, I’m more of an ambient and classical fan: stuff from Radio 3’s Late Junction, William Basinski, and so on.

***

Smoking inside public places is now banned. The nearby pubs now have buckets of sand outside their doors. The TV is riddled with adverts for helplines, nicotine gum and so forth. I don’t mind either way, finding the self-righteous rants on both sides a bit boring. I still smoke very occasionally, usually when I’ve had a few drinks and someone has offered me a cigarette. I like the close camaraderie of the shared smoke, but then I like close camaraderie of any kind.

***

On a tube train, I leaf through The London Paper – my personal rule is to never accept a copy from one of the notoriously pushy vendors, because I’m principled against the waste, the litter and the aggressive distribution of free newspapers in London. But picking up a copy on the train is fine, says my rule. Three articles in a recent issue are either about Facebook, or refer to Facebook. So at least Facebook is definitely useful for something: getting paid for writing umpteen articles about it.

***

Kate D works at a school in King’s Cross. She says teachers no longer ask an unruly class to shut up, as ‘shut up!’ is what modern children are constantly saying to each other already (as observed by Little Britain and Catherine Tate).

Instead, when teachers need to call a class to order, they clap their hands: the one sound that cuts through. Presumably kids don’t play clapping games anymore.

Too many mornings lately, I’ve woken up and thought, ‘What’s the point in making music or being in a band, or even writing the diary? Why can’t I just stay in bed all day, shouting at the radio, particularly when Vanessa Feltz’s phone-in show on BBC London is on?’ The utterly idle, nihilistic life, a life like an invalid, or hermit, or both, is far less costly to the nerves and wallet, and is indeed what I feel like doing with my day most mornings. Some talk about the joy of the ‘challenge’. I’m not one of them. I like everything to be as easy as possible. Life is too much like hard work. Fun is too much like hard work. Art is too much like hard work. And I haven’t even begun to think about actual Work.

At least, that’s what’s going through my head in the difficult waking hours lying in bed, feeling tired, sluggish, awful. Then I eventually get dressed, put on a tie, and start to adjust. Hours have already passed. Then I find one single chore that mysteriously expands to fill the rest of the day. Like the contents of a handbag, or traffic on a congested motorway after an extra lane has been added. All available space is filled before I know it. By the time I feel just about ready to face the day and get on with what I really want to do, it’s time for bed.

****

Sat eve: To the Lark In The Park venue in Islington, to see bands with friends in. Martin White’s Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra and David Barnett’s New Royal Family. Nice contrast in vaudeville: the former’s quiet, droll ditties versus the latter’s noisy rock cheeriness. It’s a gathering of many people I know, have known, or am getting to know, or am known to. Friends past, present and future. The promoter of the club night – Club Mental – used to write me fan letters in the Orlando days. She doesn’t anymore, suffice it to say. I don’t bring the subject up with her, in case she says what I would say: we all do silly things in our teenage years. But I still have the letters somewhere. Real ink on real paper. Writing to me was just her little phase. Beats sniffing glue.

Was I very different then, too? Am I worse now, or better? And her?

Not for me to say. But I’d like to think bits of me are better, bits of me are worse, bits of me are different, bits of me are the same. Some people have gone through Dickon Edwards Phases in their life. I’ve got one of those too, it’s just lifelong.

Anyway, this is all hypocritical, because I go through phases too, despite the more or less fixed appearance and aloof stance. It used to be bands I became obsessed with, then turned my back on, now it’s more societies, libraries, clubs, gatherings, social scenes.

Yesterday I suppose I was Ms Gillian Kirby’s little phase. She asked me – via Facebook, how very 2007 – if I would pose for a photo session for her. I live to be photographed, so I agreed. The afternoon was spent draping myself around the stone angels of Brompton Cemetery. I loved it, naturally. I suit cemeteries. Quiet tombs, wild flowers, the egos of the dead.

Am writing this with a headache caused entirely by slapping my hand against my head in extreme frustration. Which in turn is caused by the technical problems involved with agreeing to play a gig in a foreign country.

What I forgot is that one really needs a third party when organizing foreign gigs: a manager, or tour manager, or roadie or two. I need someone who’s not in the band to sort out the various technical and practical matters: money, flight cases, travel, dealing with the promoters and so on. I’m not too great at playing the jolly Team Leader role, father figure to grown adults: I can barely look after myself. I also find it hard to tell a fellow band member to do something where I think I know better. Because I’m not always sure I do know better.

A combination of Ryan Air’s ridiculously petty rules (they won’t let us put a keyboard on an empty seat that we’ve already paid for, because Tom’s wife was going to come along but now can’t, without us paying an extra £70 to change the seat name from ‘Victoria Edwards’ to ‘Keyboard’), combined with general annoyance that I should be getting on with learning lyrics and not worrying about flight cases, has now made me shout at the cat.

Sorry, cat.

Actually, as I’m writing this, the cat is sleeping by my side on the sofa. He’s making all kinds of hurt, groaning noises in his sleep. I do hope he’s not having bad dreams caused by me shouting at him. In which case, Ryan Air, I hope you’re happy now.

Next time, I must ensure we have a manager taking care of the fragile instruments and the fragile nerves. Even if we have to pay them, it’ll be worth it. I have to accept I’m just not the managing kind. In any sense.

Because it’s a small, fan-organised affair, we’re doing this Swedish festival gig purely for expenses. Oh, and as long as each band member gets separate bedrooms. That was my other stipulation. Sharing a room would mean actual murder, I’m sure of it. The stress of having to handle our own transportation and equipment handling, coupled with lack of sleep (check-in at Stansted on Saturday morning is 5 AM) and general worry about making our own way across a strange country is more than enough. Ms Woolf got it right: a room of one’s own. And indeed, a tour manager of one’s own wouldn’t hurt.

It’s such a cliche when bands moan about touring. Touring is fine when you have a bit of money and support in the mix: managers, roadies, drivers, hotels. Anything less than that can be a pain, but what makes it all worthwhile is the knowledge that we’ll be playing our songs on a far-off stage to people who care who the hell we are. That’s why it’s still worth it. Even on this shoestring, DIY level.

Incredibly, I still occasionally get people writing to me asking about how to make it in the music business. The answer is,  of course, if you want to make money, you must do anything else but make music. Be a DJ, a manager, a producer, a roadie, a lawyer. Especially a lawyer. Work for Ryan Air, and spout your merry laugh when you invent fees for the merest thing. I’m expecting them to add a ‘Complaining About Ryan Air In A Blog, Post-Glasgow Car Bomb’ tax on Saturday.

A couple of bombs in Central London are found in time, and no one is hurt. Good news for Londoners, but the tone of many reporters is one of disappointment, a juicier story denied to them. Passers-by are interviewed, confessing that as nothing went bang, it’s really not a cause for alarm. Just another bomb. But the reporters insist, loading their questions: ‘Do you feel less safe? Do you feel you’re a target? Are you more afraid? Are you defiant?’.

Most of the answers express neither fear nor defiance, just a shrug. The fact that curiously unites police, politicians, journalists and terrorists alike is that many Londoners now find terrorism a bore. They see the overkill in the overkill. Killing has been done to death. Bombing is SO last season.

Londoners are awash with distraction and fractured priorities. Everyone is too busy, or too tired, or both. Everyone is high on multiples of distraction, novelty and celebrity. This is both the curse of London and its greatest asset.

One silver lining of the bout of teenage stabbings, it could be argued, is that it’s helped to equate random murder with childishness. Would-be killers of all ages are now pathetic little children, idiots, unimaginative, immature, and tiresome. Those bent on taking life should just, to use the youth vernacular, get a life.

Far more of a bombshell today – at least, in terms of making Londoners react at all – is the sudden closure of the beloved chain of CD, DVD & book retailers, Fopp. Fopp was original in promoting the serendipitous side of impulse buying, grouping its items by price rather than by artist, its novels by nationality of author, not by genre. Fopp cut its prices so low, one found it genuinely hard to walk out without picking something up. Shame. And rather larger a shame too that 1000 of its staff have been left high and dry, a whole month’s wages in arrears. I presume the landlords of the unlucky staff will not be putting a Fopp-style discount on their rent for the month.

I know it’s standard practice, but asking workers to somehow eat and pay the rent and clock up a whole month of work before getting paid still staggers me. If you sign a contract to work for a month, you should get paid at least some of the money right then and there, I feel. Half first, half later, say. It’s all about trust on both sides, after all. The company trusts the worker to turn up and work. The worker trusts the company for not going bust without paying him.

For staff to have to ask for an advance or loan on their wages in order to survive the first month of employment seems pointless. But of course, I speak as someone outside of the world of Work, looking on with ever-estranged bafflement at the many-tiered ways humans make each other jump through hoops.

***

Since moving into the Cat Flat, I’ve already had two baths in one and a half days, one of which was spent listening to the Archers. I don’t even particularly like The Archers. Actually, I’m still not sold on baths over showers, either. But it’s nice to have the option of trying out another kind of life for a spell. A life with a cat and more than one room of my own.

I realise posting photos of cats on the Internet is rather the stuff of other blogs, and probably what you don’t come here for, Dear Reader. But I couldn’t resist. And I wanted to see if my camera was still working.

This is Sevig. His name is Armenian. I’m told it means ‘small black thing’. When I heard this, I also shamefacedly admitted that I couldn’t point to Armenia on a map. But I can now. There it is, between Turkey, Georgia and Iran.  Its capital is Yerevan. I shall remember that by thinking of the time I once recognised Evan Dando of the Lemonheads  at the Reading Festival.

Me: You’re Evan.

Mr Sevig is my lord and master here in this Upper Holloway flat for the next seven days. He wants to sit on my lap, but I’m worried about his claws damaging my suits. Sorry, Mr Sevig.

Still, I’m careful to ensure he gets all the food and water he usually has, plus a few treats such as catnip and spoonfuls of Dairylea cream cheese (his favourite, it seems) to help compensate for suddenly having to deal with me and my cat-shunning suits.

Wednesday. Am sitting here in Highgate before going to pick up the keys from Ms Claudia for my week-long house-sit and cat-sit in Archway. Well, technically it’s more Upper Holloway. It’s Hatchard Road, at a fair block away from the main traffic.

Awake this morning and put on the local radio news, ie BBC London. Another teenager stabbed to death. In Holloway, in fact. Tollington Way. Which is a few streets down the road. In daylight.

‘[Mother of the murdered 14-year-old boy]Mrs Dinnegan said: “I’ve just been speaking to one of Martin’s friends and he says it’s because apparently they were looking at each other in the wrong way.” ‘ (BBC News website)

And so I find my mind jumping through the hoops of it’ll-be-all-right-ness. Hatchard Road is the NICER end of Holloway. And I’m not a teenager. Yet when I was a trembling teenager, treading in fear of my classmates, I used to think, ‘Ah well, I won’t be a teenager for ever. I’ll be an adult. And then I’ll be okay.’

Now I am an adult in my mid-30s. And yet I still walk the streets with unease, in fear of attack from teenagers. Something is very wrong in this equation. The meek aren’t inheriting the world any time soon, ‘Man’.

The use of the word ‘man’ in so-called ‘youth’ conversation, as a suffix to a sentence. Most used by boys under 20. Boys say ‘man’ to each other. Actual men do not.

‘Yeah, man.’

The above utteration is as alien to me as the squawks of a fictional Martian chicken.

***

Dinner today in Hampstead, at the kind behest of Ms Clarke. Mr MacGowan is there, as is Ms Clarke’s father Tom. Whose eccentricity is legend. The first thing he says to me is this:

Tom: Ah, I remember you. You don’t like being hairy, do you? Would you mind showing me your nether regions? I’m curious.

He is in his fifties. And this is a well-to-do Italian restaurant in Hampstead.

Ms Clarke finds all this entertaining, at a dinner table with the three strangest men in the world. One of which is her father, another is her fiancee. The other is me. She happily scribbles down our unlikely dialogue, for potential use in her newspaper column. Otherwise, who would believe it?

This includes my retort to her father:

Me: With respect, sir, I refuse to pander to your kinkiness.

Which is the sort of thing others only write down. But which I say in person, with my real mouth.

Elsewhere in the city, Gordon Brown becomes Prime Minister, years after a deal made in a London restaurant. The details will always remain a secret between the new PM and the old one, but one suspects the requests made were somewhat less interesting than those asked of me over the pasta today.

We repair to the politely gay William IV pub, and Ms Clarke’s father is still incorrigible, chatting up passing Iranian lesbians and black men alike. Mr MacGowan is, for once, entirely upstaged.

Once both Clarkes leave, it’s just me and Mr Pogue once more in a public place. And it’s business as usual. By which I mean a couple of people insist on coming over, dragging their chairs to our pub table, and saying they know of a relative who does a really good Kirsty MacColl part in ‘Fairytale Of New York’. And would Mr MacGowan be interested if he ever needs a singer…?

Mr MacG is as gracious as ever, but once again I sit there and choke back a haughty glower, principally because the attention is for him, not me. Still, it never ceases to amaze me how some people feel they have have carte blanche to invite themselves over to someone’s table – even interrupting a conversation – purely because they recognise a face off the popular media.

I think it’s more practical – if you like to be left alone – to become famous for being grumpy, like Liam Gallagher or the reputed foul-mouthed chef Gordon Ramsay. Then when strangers suddenly drag their pub chairs to your table, and you tell them to get knotted, they scamper away with your reputation consolidated rather than damaged. ‘He told us to get stuffed – isn’t that wonderful! So HIM!’

A friend of mine mentions he played a gig recently where Rufus Wainwright was in the audience, but with his back to the stage and talking constantly throughout the performance. I suspect the slighted friend is now unlikely to buy any more Rufus Wainwright CDs.

Had the chatty celeb been Gordon Ramsay, where rude behaviour is part of the lovable act, all parties would have been happy.

Moral: If you must be famous, and must be rude, be famous for being rude.

Harriet Harman is now the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and is thus about to be Deputy Prime Minister once Mr Blair hands over the keys. Assuming Mr Brown wants the position to continue, that is.

I can never quite disassociate her from an obscure fictional namesake. There is a Harriet Harman in Woody Allen’s 1992 film Husbands And Wives. She doesn’t have any dialogue, but is referred to off-screen by Mr Allen’s character as a former lover:

‘Harriet Harman… You know, we just made love everywhere…She was highly libidinous… She wanted to make love with other women… She got into dope for a while… I was getting a real education… And ultimately she wound up in an institution…’

File alongside the opening line of Girl Interrupted, where Winona Ryder’s character describes her madness by asking the viewer, ‘Have you ever confused a dream with life? Or stolen something when you have the cash?’ I saw this film while Ms Ryder was in the news for shoplifting.

Or James Fox saying to the young Mick Jagger in Performance, ‘You’re a comical little geezer. You’ll look funny when you’re fifty.’

***

Meet Victoria Mary Clarke in Highgate Wood Cafe on a curiously chilly and rainy day for late June. I wasn’t invited to go to Glastonbury (I wouldn’t turn it down), but from all accounts it once again resembled the trenches of WW1, with The Kaiser Chiefs as opposed to Kaiser Wilhelm.
In the news were the usual photos of loose children wallowing in e.coli (do they just use the same photos every year, as sunnier festivals do with the eternal girl in a bikini sitting on a boy’s shoulders?). Though Shirley Bassey is photographed backstage in diamante-encrusted wellington boots. That’s the way to do it.

At the cafe in Highgate Wood today, Ms Clarke buys me lunch, and I plump for grilled halloumi cheese and Earl Grey tea. Halloumi is a modish choice perhaps, but like iBooks and Moleskine notebooks I find some fashionable accessories of the day suit me so well that I can carry them off in my own style. They just happen to be fashionable, that’s all.

Ms Clarke is currently devising some kind of Celebrity Tarot Cards game, drawing on various self-help theories (from Florence Scovel Shinn to The Secret), but blending it with celebrity culture and one’s opinion (if any) on various famous names. It’s half-fun, and half-serious, and she tries the game out on me. The ladies at the next table in the cafe, Ms Pippa and Ms Cathy, are so intrigued by overhearing Ms Clarke’s questions where I have to compare myself to the likes of Bill Clinton, that we end up moving to their table and playing the game with them too. It’s the sort of thing that I imagine could be marketed rather well as the next Trivial Pursuit-style dinner party game, as apart from anything else it does get people chatting.

I should also mention that her excellent book is on sale here:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Angel-Disguise-Victoria-Mary-Clarke/dp/1905172354

***

Claudia A is away in Germany for a week on Thursday, and has asked me to house-sit and cat-sit for her. Her cat Sevig (which means ‘small black thing’) hates being left with neighbours, and much prefers to stay in her quiet Archway flat while someone else is keeping house, preferably sleeping over. He already knows me, and hasn’t reacted adversely so far. I’ve said yes.

So from Thursday next I get to live in a whole flat for a week (as opposed to a bedsit), and within convenient walking distance of my usual home. For the first time in my life, I will find out what it’s like to have my own bathroom, and not have to share it with others. Hotel rooms don’t count.

Another first this year was the flight back from Tangier while Ms Clarke and Mr MacGowan stayed on. My first time flying alone.
***

Ms Clarke wants her wedding guests to wear old wedding dresses. Including the men.

Sunday: 1pm-9pm spent in the Hackney studio with Alexander M, in the last stages of the Fosca album. We record Rachel’s vocals for ‘Confused & Proud’, ‘Evening Dress At 3pm’, ‘We See The World As Our Stunt Doubles’, and ‘In-Joke For One.’ Then I add my own vocals, and we sort out the mix of ‘Stunt Doubles’, turning it into a song from the repetitive showcase of riffs and hooks it had been before.

Sometimes a song will be ready for the studio, fully formed. At other times, the song comes together in the editing and mixing, and this is the case today. How many verses? How many bridges? How long should the coda be? When should the guitar solo start? When can we start fading the thing out? The recording process, particularly with the luxury of cutting and pasting on a computer, is a cross between solving a puzzle and putting forth arguments in a debating chamber. WHY is this take better? WHY should the glockenspiel be louder? WHY should the drums do something odd at this point? A reason must always be given.

Sometimes it’s like pulling teeth, other times it all comes together and makes sense and the heart lifts. Hours pass quickly. I leave in the evening, still with work to do, but we’re nearly there. ‘Stunt Doubles’ is 1980 Taking Heads meets 1972 Bowie. ‘Confused And Proud’ is early Cocteau Twins with a touch of late Kraftwerk. ‘In-Joke For One’ is vaudeville garage pop, with a cinema organ solo and Beatles harmonies. ‘Evening Dress At 3pm’ is pure Sarah Records, and features Rachel and Kate singing lead on the verses, with me on the choruses and the coda.

Alexander M is good company: a producer with a philosophy degree and a shared love of Laurie Anderson. We discuss Ms Anderson’s 1982 album Big Science, re-issued this week with a few inevitable extra trimmings. One of which is a photo of her on the back of the CD which makes a nice counterpoint to her monochrome robot-gamine pose on the front. Here, she’s in a man’s shirt and tie, walking along the early 80s Manhattan waterfront with a shy, self-conscious smile, the Twin Towers behind her. As the lyrics to ‘O Superman’ now take on an unavoidably eerie prescience post-9/11, the image is perfect, balancing the chilling side with something warmer and optimistic. Less performance artist, more Annie Hall. And ‘Let X=X’ is still an exquisitely beautiful and simple song that moves me to tears.

Saturday: Fosca’s first rehearsal for the Swedish festival date, and our first time playing together for over a year. We’re in Zed One Studios, Camden. It’s one of the better examples of its kind, generally less malodorous and less decrepit than the average studio within the more affordable price range, though at times I think I can smell what might be someone else’s gingivitis on my microphone. Still, this is an occupational hazard of using hired equipment. Mental note: I should really bring my own mic next time, as I own one of the same make but entirely untainted by the dried saliva of a hundred strangers.

A trio of young people at the bus stop on Archway Road, carrying large rucksacks. They are possibly off to Glastonbury.

Boy: I’ve got everything. I’ve packed my Trilby. And my spare Trilby.

Still worrying about my lack of money. Recording in Hackney is paid for by the Fosca Kitty, but it also means a £15 cab ride home for me each time, as I insist on never taking buses after dark, particularly not the Foul 43, North London’s favourite bus for homophobic attacks and fatal stabbings. AND it takes too long.

Such cab rides must duly come out of my own money, rather than the band’s. Two such sessions with taxi rides this week have done the most damage to the Dickon Purse. Then I find my Oyster Card must be topped up, if I’m to take a bus or tube anywhere between now and Tuesday. And I have a suit to be picked up from dry cleaning, naturally. And my mobile phone credit needs topping up, too. I could just get by without it, but I do need it to interact with other humans. I need to phone the cab, phone the producer to let me into the studio, phone a band member to ask them something important, and phone the producer again when I leave the studio and lock myself out. Then there’s the text messaging, back and forth, to arrange things like the Latitude DJ booking. Because some people prefer to live by text than by email. Which is fine, but it means I can’t live with zero credit in my phone.

It’s all very well saying you’re going to eschew email or mobile phones and just live like the Old Days, but if you want to have anything to do with other human beings, you have to meet them on their terms. Hence the mobile, the email and the Myspace or Facebook account (though I have very mixed feelings about the latter two). People with mobile phones often tend to be late, or cancel. So you need a phone.

I meet the modern world halfway on this. I tend to keep my cheap little mobile (no Bluetooth, no camera) switched to silent, and only check it from time to time in case there’s a text or voicemail message. If I have to, I try to make all calls in places I hope they won’t disturb others: empty hallways and avenues. But generally I try not to use the phone at all, preferring email. This has meant that I’m probably losing out on all kinds of work offers and social events, but so be it.

My home phone is switched to the answering machine all the time, unless I’m expecting a call. So it doesn’t even bother me by ringing: it just goes straight to recording a message. But if the house is quiet enough, I can hear it clicking on then clicking off at various times during the day. I know exactly who such callers who never leave a message usually are: call centres trying to sell me something.

The London Library’s Suggestions Book currently hosts an amusing argument between its members. The suggested etiquette on mobile phone use at this most distinguished of subscription libraries is to switch them to silent for the hallowed Reading Room and use the corridors to make limited calls.

Some members think this latter option is still an irritation, and want a complete ban throughout the building. Others prefer a discreet tolerance in the corridors: ‘Some people can be “off-air” for hours at a time, but others have responsibilities… This is a twenty-first century place of work, not a gentleman’s club!’ (the Reading Room has large armchairs and a fireplace reminiscent of those club scenes in Yes Minister)

There is a certain glamour to my living jobless and hand-to-mouth in a bedsit, but insisting on taking taxis, subscribing to the London Library, wearing suits, moisturiser, Touche Eclat and contact lenses all the time and having a higher dry cleaning bill than most. I put food somewhere down the list after these. The Low Life should never mean letting one’s appearance go.

One could argue that having a topped-up phone is as necessary for some as having a topped-up stomach. And in the cases of the fashion industry, even more so.

Sainsbury’s, Tottenham Court Road. A young man in casual clothes hisses ‘Go To Hell!’ at me, jabbing his hand at my chest in something between a hip-hop gesture and a straightforward point. I am browsing the range of Innocent (ho ho) smoothies – such a sad, lonely, typical act in 2007 – when this happens out of the blue. I’m not sure how best to react, but find the decision made for me as I feel my system flooding with the latter of the ‘fight or flight’ endorphins. My gut reaction is that I want to get away, and that I want to have a good cry. That’s usually my reaction to most things. Despite being in a crowded supermarket, I feel a genuine sense that I’m about to be physically attacked for the way I look. It has happened before, after all.

I walk to the nearest till, join a queue that lasts for eternity, and begin to calm down. Perhaps he’s not a violent lunatic, I muse, when I note he’s now standing a couple of people behind me, further down the queue. It’s here that I realise he’s muttering and talking to himself, almost constantly. So I now think, ‘he’s not a homophobic thug with a knife, he’s just mentally ill. Well, I’m technically mad, too.’

But then, of course, I get around to thinking that it’s entirely possible to be a mentally ill thug with a knife. For all my supposed oddness and inability to do what normal people do, I am at least ‘harmless’. When I get angry, people just laugh, and rightfully so. When other mad gentlemen get angry, and people laugh, things can get violent. London is full of tense men on the brink of violence, and I am just the sort of person to spark them off. If it’s not my appearance or my infuriatingly aloof manner, it can be my defensive smirk. I have to be careful.

So now I’ve trained myself to be in a constant state of saying no, thank you, or better still, being silent. And of knowing how to disappear, quietly. Which is a shame, as I’d really like to know just why the gentleman in this instance wants me to go to hell, and indeed wants to put this request to me in speech.

Am at my most penurious time of the month, which is of course when I suddenly find I need to spend money. Cash in pocket: £22.21. This has to last me till Tuesday..

Twenty pounds is perfectly fine to live on for three days if I didn’t have places to go and people to see between now and Tuesday. But I do.

It’s the travel costs that account for most of the trouble. I try to walk everywhere, but there are times when I have to carry a heavy guitar or a bag which make long walks harder. Or that I have to be somewhere on time, and haven’t allowed for enough walking time. Or that I’m just feeling too tired and fragile to walk all the way.