An email from Holland:

You were mentioned in a column in NRC Handelsblad, a national newspaper here in the Netherlands. It refers to your post about Facebook and digital friendships versus real life.

There’s a pdf of it here:

http://www.dickonedwards.co.uk/nrc.pdf

Well goodness, hullo to Holland newspaper readers. Glad to be of use. I suppose I have a slightly unique perspective on online trends, being a blogger before the word was invented, and generally looking on at modern life from the outside. I watch things come and go, and slightly join in with some of them. A drawback, but also an asset in terms of being the outsider looking on at it all.

Of the Marvel comic heroes whose adventures I read while growing up, the one that most connected with me was ‘The Watcher’, an alien being who looked on and considered alternative universe versions of known stories. Those ‘What If…?’ tales were always the stories I liked the best. Of the boys who grow up reading 70s and 80s Marvel comics, one type of boy wanted to be Spiderman or the Hulk. Your usual boys. Another type of boy wanted to be Wonder Woman, and we won’t go into that. I was neither. I wanted to be The Watcher. Albeit with nice hair and a tie.

***

On Tottenham Court Road a woman with orange skin in a black PVC catsuit blocks my path and tries to hand me a flyer. I now realise this is outside a branch of Spearmint Rhino, the franchise of lapdancing clubs. She’s persistent, and matches my side-stepping so well that I have no option but to take her flyer in order to get past. She is like the troll under the bridge. Or in this case, the trollop under the bridge.

‘I’ll wait for yooooo!’ she calls after me in a heavy foreign accent, as I blushingly stride on. Behind me I hear her giggling with her colleague, a similarly-attired lady. I suspect they’re taking the mickey out of me: I can’t possibly look like the regular Spearmint Rhino customer. Perhaps I am their light relief on a dull afternoon. In which case, I muse about sending them an invoice for providing them with entertainment, rather than the other way around.

Not only do I not find these satsuma-skinned strumpets in the least bit attractive, I don’t think I know anyone who would. I never understand just what’s wrong with being pale and pasty: it’s far more honest, and honest is attractive. Indeed, ‘Pale And Pasty’ sounds like one of those specialist magazines. There’s always something for everyone.

Orange skin may be the fashion for mainstream pop stars and TV presenters, but I think it’ll be the kind of trend that future decades will look back on with a certain mockery.

One can imagine the call going out in 2050:

‘We’re having an Early 21st Century-themed party. Don’t forget to paint your skin bright orange, wear pork-pie hats, sports trainers and baggy jeans halfway to the ground. RSVP.’

Last Weds: To the Canal Cafe Theatre in Little Venice. It’s a venue that is more Edinburgh Fringe than London, and plays host to many performers trying out their latest shows before they transfer to the festival.

I’m here to see Martin White and his Mystery Fax Machine Orchestra. He sings, plays accordion, piano and ukelele, while a changing gaggle of young minstrels back him on vocals, cellos, clarinets, glockenspiels, trumpet and so forth. Something of the vaudeville as opposed to cabaret, it’s idiosyncratic and charming fare. Mr White’s friendly and self-deprecating stage manner is central to the appeal, particularly on songs like ‘Mystery Fax Machine Girl’. Here, he recounts a true aspect of his former life toiling behind an office desk in London’s corporate salt mines. His daily drudge is mitigated by seeing a pretty girl on the other side of the umpteen glass walls, caught in his desk-bound field of vision by the fax machine, and never once spoken to.

If Nick Cave had written the lyric, it might have been stalker-like, even murderous. If the writer were me, I’d probably lace the song with attempts at arch aphorisms of tragicomic despair and general separation from the world. The usual Dickon Edwards-y sort of thing.

But Mr White’s sentiment is more sweet and romantically funny in a manner comparable with James Stewart in It’s A Wonderful Life, or Jack Lemmon in The Apartment. Romantic comedy, but with a nod to the pathos of the individual bucking the system. And therefore romantic in that sense, too. He is the James Stewart of the accordion.

His opening number is a setting of James Elroy Flecker’s Golden Road To Samarkand. Which is something of a happy coincidence, as an hour or so previously, I was in the British Library finishing Neil Gaiman’s ten-volume Sandman series. The last of which, The Wake, opens with a few verses from Mr Flecker. Typical. It’s like buses. You wait ages for instances of inadvertent exposure to the verses of James Elroy Flecker, then two come along at once.

In the bar afterwards I meet Ms Angelique (who sings with the band), and her partner Mr Ben (who doesn’t). She comes from Los Angeles, and corrects my pronunciation of the city. It’s ‘An-jer-liss’, not ‘An-jerlees’ as I’d called it.

She says she’s a big fan of musical theatre, especially Sondheim, is a great admirer of Alan Cumming and Stephen Fry and loves Shaun Of The Dead. I tell her I was one of the zombie extras in the film, wearing a tie. I also mention that I didn’t feel particuarly well cast as one of a large crowd, zombie or not. That without wishing to sound haughty and ungracious (Reader’s Voice: ‘Why stop now?’ ) I’m possibly more suited to being a lone vampire or a dandy ghost. Or that man in the suit who gets chased on the Underground in An American Werewolf In London, who THEN gets to come back as a zombie.

She wonders in turn which kind of monster she’d be best suited to play.

I suggest, entirely affectionately, ‘The Fag Hag From The Black Lagoon.’

Which is a comedy skit that writes itself.

From the Holy Moly gossip newsletter, which I really shouldn’t read, but occasionally do:

Producers of ‘The South Bank Show’ ran into a bit of trouble when making a programme about Morrissey. There was no shortage of people willing to take part and express their (almost exclusively positive) opinions on the singer and his career. Unfortunately, he stipulated that there be no opinions from music journalists to be aired on the show… The only people allowed to be interviewed on his glittering career would be the Arctic Monkeys and a very good-looking young male Latino gang from LA.

If this is true, I heartily agree with Mr M. I don’t care for the music of the Arctic Monkeys, but would rather listen to their televised opinions than those of any hack who’s never made a record themselves. People who mainly make music have far more to say about it (if you must say anything) than those who mainly write about it. Or at least, they don’t tend to miss the point. Or at least, they’re somehow more permissable on television.

Music journalists who go on television are one of the categories in Mr Dante’s circles of Hell. I’d have them all banned from going the wrong side of a camera. There are one or two exceptions with genuinely interesting and original things to say, such as Paul Morley, but that’s the price one must pay.

Other TV types who set my teeth on edge:

– Record producers and musicians filmed in front of mixing desks.
– Writers, literary experts and journalists filmed in front of bookcases.
– People who use the phrase ‘Don’t get me wrong.” Unless they are Alison Steadman in Abigail’s Party. Or The Pretenders.

Besides, too much has been said about Morrissey anyway. One really wants to hear more from the man himself. There must be no more books on Morrissey or The Smiths. Unless they’re by women. I’ve said this before, but it does seem to be the case that though Morrissey has a 50/50 gender divide with his fans, it’s nearly always men who write about him. Women are more likely to go to every concert and buy every record. They keep their fan love direct and private. Men have to put it into writing. Men make lists. ‘Top 50 Best Smiths Songs’. Who on earth cares? Men, mainly. Which I find more interesting than the lists themselves.

From now on, only women should be allowed to write about Morrissey. Oh, and me. And Mark Simpson. And Morrissey. That’s it.

Trendy male comedians and male novelists must now keep silent about being Smiths fans. For their own sake, and ours. We’ll take that particular detail as read, thank you. Are there any trendy male comedians and novelists who DON’T like Morrissey?

I was talking about bands who take their names from novels, but it happens the other way too: books helping themselves to names and lyrics from bands they like.

Douglas Coupland naming a novel Girlfriend In A Coma after the Morrissey song made me wince, as does any author who quotes Talking Heads or even the Magnetic Fields. I love those bands, but authors quoting pop lyrics sets my teeth on edge. I don’t know why, but it does. Poetry, sure, but not pop lyrics.

Yet shoving one’s favourite music into a movie works fine, and many soundtracks these days may as well be compilation CDs made by the director. Everyone’s a DJ.

I owe the diary four entries today. Here we go.

***
Putting together the set list for Fosca’s 45 minute performance in Sweden next month. The set is going to be recorded, possibly even released or broadcast. So now comes trying to strike a balance between what we think the audience would like, what we think we can do well in concert, and just the right amount of new songs too. It’s all very well someone writing in to ask us to play a particular song. It’s another when the song in question is nine minutes long and isn’t a particular favourite with most other fans, or indeed some band members.

***

Am alerted to a concert by an artist calling herself Scout Niblett, taking her first name from To Kill A Mockingbird. There’s also been a band called The Boo Radleys, and I’m sure there must be an Atticus and the Finches out there somewhere. It might be possible to put on an entire festival of bands helping themselves to Ms Lee’s characters.

See also A Clockwork Orange and The Naked Lunch. Books that bands like, or want people to think they like.

I’m guilty too, with Fosca coming from the Sondheim musical Passion and Orlando managing to reference at least four different things I like: Woolf’s gender-switching immortal in the novel (made into a film after I named the band, honest) / As You Like It / Orlando The Marmalade Cat / Orlando Furioso. But I like to think these are at least less obvious than To Kill A Mockingbird, the archetypal student’s favourite book.

Other obvious sources to avoid when naming a band are The Bell Jar, The Catcher In The Rye, The Naked Lunch and A Clockwork Orange. Steely Dan being one notable culprit.

Then there’s the other cliche: naming one’s band after something to do with World Wars 1 or 2. Mark Radcliffe’s book Showbusiness also points this out, and he confesses to his own school band: The Berlin Airlift.

War: what is it good for? Naming bands, apparently. Spandau Ballet, Joy Division / New Order, Franz Ferdinand, Dresden Dolls, Free French, Vichy Government, Lancaster Bombers. I like all those bands (he hastily added, before the people in some of them end their friendships with me), just not the names.

Band names are nearly always embarrassing, though. But at least they’re a formality: once the music connects, the name means the music, not what it means.

Some other great artists with terrible names: Prefab Sprout, The Field Mice, The Pastels, Talulah Gosh, Marine Research, Neutral Milk Hotel. Blur, Pulp and Oasis are all terrible names, too. But again, only when you look at the words away from the music.

On one drunken occasion, I came up with an increasingly silly list of war-related band names only schoolboys would use: The Nazis. Hiro and the Shimas. The War. Rudolf The Red Nose Hess (doesn’t even work). Camp Concentration. The Hitlers. The Kaiser Chiefs.

Ho and indeed ho.

Calming down from my Exercise Book shopping joy, I sit down and start the entry about the night-time caller anew. It becomes riddled with crossings-out, floating corrections and other revisions: quite shockingly so. Were I back at school and the entry a piece of English homework, my teachers and parents would be very worried indeed. But the draft of the subsequent entry (this one) is a definite improvement, with such mistakes in markedly reduced abundance. It is an exercise book in every sense: my longhand muscle is getting a workout.

After the first entry is finished, the results are so full of corrections that I decide to go to a second draft, this time using an A4 London Library notebook, with a matt blue cover. I rewrite the Silvine draft, and incorporate the better elements from the aborted Moleskine attempt of the previous day. Even so, there’s still quite a few crossings-out and corrections.

Finally, I go online and type up the entry. And even at this stage I am revising and changing things.

So there it is. My first diary entry to be drafted in three separate notebooks. I don’t think it’s noticeably better than the best of my diary archives, but it’s certainly better than the first Moleskine draft. All I’ve done is try to make it as good as all the entries I’ve written digitally, except that I have evidence of the process on paper. And it’s being presented with this detail that I hope will train me to write more accurately from the off.

Thanks to the notebook drafts I can see every early wording, every single one of the changes, and not have them lost to the ether as soon as a ‘Save’ button is pressed. Longhand drafts shape the mind in an entirely different way to computers, logging each decision to omit or augment, every choice in the void of all possibilities.

I don’t deny there must also be a sense of unfettered nostalgia in the mix, reclaiming my pre-digital years as a boy of letters and diligent school pupil. But either way, the switch to paper drafts has given me a rush of pure satisfaction unparalleled by any drug, legal or otherwise. It’s so good to see my handwriting again.

***

In the British Library today. As Readers arrive, they have to pick up a special transparent carrier bag for taking into the Reading Rooms. This way, the security guards can quickly check they’re not stealing any of the Library’s stock.

In the cloakroom, as I’m preparing my own clear bag, I can’t help noticing one item that the young lady next to me is placing in hers. It is a large white frisbee.

I wonder if she uses it when staff aren’t looking, like Steve Martin’s roller skating in art galleries in LA Story.

Additionally, I note that the man on duty at the Library’s Information Desk is wearing a monocle.

***

Dad relates a story from my childhood. It’s a hot summer day, and he’s meeting me when school is out at the crossing by the gates. I am wearing my neat school grey sweater, with my shirt collar buttoned up, and an immaculately knotted tie.

Dad: Don’t you want to take off your tie and sweater like all the other boys?

Me: No.

Dad: (puzzled) Why not?

Me: I like to be smart.

I am all of seven years old.

[Thanks to Dad for the title pun]

The previous diary entry is, I’m fairly certain, my first to be drafted in longhand. I’m startled by just how out of practice I am with the medium. The last time I was regularly composing prose of any length away from a computer, as opposed to just taking notes, must have been at school.

No, it’s later than that. It would have been writing letters to friends and family in the early half of the 1990s. Then email came along, which suited me so innately that I acquired an email address two years before owning a Net-compatible computer. Somewhere along the line, the parts of my brain used for regularly setting down linear prose – with very few mistakes – began to rust and stiffen. At a computer keyboard, I can rattle out words fluidly, chopping and changing and chiseling till I’m more or less happy. I simply hurl words at a screen, then arrange them in a pleasing order afterwards. Mistakes are so easy to correct and purge from the digital manuscript, with no trace left to muse over. Computers train the mind to see writing as a final version of linear perfection, belying the work that went into it. Perhaps this doesn’t matter to others, particularly those of younger generations who grew up writing on computers, but on the strength of two entries so far, I think it matters to me.

When I decided to force myself back into longhand drafts, it was partly out of a concern to cut down my dependency on electricity or expensive equipment; a back-up on paper being always wise. But it was also because I’m ashamed that my then high-graded teenage knowledge of French, German, Latin and (to a lesser extent) Esperanto had been bevelled down to a few bare phrases of each, through sheer lack of use. As the vernacular of the day would have it, one must use it or lose it. And I was beginning to worry that I was losing the ability to compose in longhand entirely.

So yesterday I started the entry about the strange man on my doorstep. I eschewed my Mac iBook for a pocket Moleskine notebook – the squared paper variety – with a Parker Vector fountain pen and a cartridge of Quink black ink. I’d been experimenting with a couple of other cheap fountains – the Parker Reflex and the Lamy Safari – but the Vector seemed to work best for me. I can actually read my own handwriting with it.

But this tentative step into longhand composition turned out to be hard going. The entry faltered, meandered and spluttered to a halt. Admittedly my severe day-long hangover was probably part of the equation, rendering any reading (let alone writing) nigh-on impossible without a splitting headache. After starting and stopping throughout the afternoon, I reluctantly gave up and vowed to try again the next day.

This morning I awoke with a whimsical compulsion (I rarely have any other kind) to buy an old-fashioned A5 school exercise book, with a proper stapled spine. I spent a deliriously happy hour or so looking at the various dusty brands in the many newsagents and stationers of North London, including brands by the Post Office and WH Smith. The outright winner so far, I am pleased to report, has to be the 20-leaves red Silvine Exercise Book Ref 130F, with the matt finish, lovely old logo and a list of conversion tables on the back cover, including ‘Area And Mensuration’. Capital Newsagents of Tottenham Court Road sell them for 60p each.

Some people get hot under the collar about the latest developlements for Mac computers, iPods or mobile phones. I get a similar thrill from 60p exercise books.

Apart from the expected barcode tucked away on the back, the design has remained the same for decades:

In the middle of the night, the doorbell rings.

It’s about 1.30am, and I’m checking my email before turning in. My lights are on and I’ve not bothered to close my curtains. I had left the house during the day, returning very late and a little drunk. So as I’m emailing away at my desk by the curtainless window, I can probably be seen from the darkened street outside. Or watched.

The moment the doorbell sounds, my somewhat feeble reaction – after the surprise – is to turn off my lights and pretend I’m asleep, or that I am not in. I am, after all, a creature of timidity and detachment, and have only two modes: anxious and really, really anxious. A tightened stomach is my usual reaction to anything unexpected. And to much that is entirely expected, too.

‘Not me,’ I think as I hit the light switch. ‘Let it not toll for me. Or if it’s for anyone who can help, let it be one of the other tenants who answer. Not me. Please.’

Again the bell goes, breaking the night like a siren. This time, I faintly hear the other bells being tried. But no one else is shifting from their flats. I muse that it could well be a fellow resident who’s forgotten their front key.

So I go downstairs. And I open the door.

It’s a man I don’t know. He’s drenched in the rain with no umbrella, hat or hood. He bears a passing resemblance to the Cockney actor Phil Davis: 40-ish, a thin, long and boney face, light sandy hair. He’s wearing one of those fluorescent yellow jackets favoured by outdoor workers of all kinds, from civil engineers and architects to stewards at rock festivals. And he is also wearing an expression of anguished apology.

‘I’m really sorry to disturb you so late,’ he begins. And then he stops. I attempt a kindly smirk.

‘Well, go on, then.’

And he tells me that he lives around the corner. That his car broke down in Lewisham. That he doesn’t have quite enough money to pay the tow truck driver. That he badly needs his car in order to collect his wife in the morning. So could I possibly – and he’s SO sorry about this – could I possibly lend him the £18 he needs to pay the driver? Well, he says, call it £20. If I want, he’ll leave me his mobile phone by way of security. I tell him not to bother.

‘Where do you live, exactly?’ I ask. And he hesitates.

‘Southwood.’

‘Southwood what?’ There’s a few streets in the area which share this prefix. Southwood Lane. Southwood Avenue.

‘Southwood Lawn. 40 Southwood Lawn.’

There IS a Southwood Lawn Road around the corner, and though I’ve never heard anyone abbreviate it like this before, I suppose it’s possible he lives there. To my wary Londoner shame, I don’t know who lives opposite, let alone around the corner.

Something about his jacket, his manner and the time of night convince me. I find myself digging out a £20 note and handing it over. Part of me is doing so just to get rid of him, and in the hope he won’t bother anyone else. I add that I’m currently jobless and so can’t really afford it, but that I’m obliging him because he is a fellow human being in need. What I don’t add is that I’ve been reading about the Quakers, who see the good in everyone, and the God in everyone. And that I’m a little drunk.

He thanks me profusely, promises to repay me in the morning via an envelope through the letter box, then returns to the rainy darkness that spawned him. His expression of mortified apology remains in place throughout, even after I give him what he wants. I feel sorry for him. Which is the whole idea.

It’s now two days later, and there’s no sign of any envelope. So I wonder if I’ve been the victim of what’s called a damsel-in-distress scam. If so, I have to admire the man’s rain-soaked resolve, his Oscar-winning performance, and his sheer nerve. To ring a stranger’s doorbell in the middle of the night and simply ask for money: that takes a talent of a kind. I wonder if he had been watching me from the street earlier, my open curtains advertising that I was awake, alone and had a face that suggested I’d be kind enough to help someone in need. Or gullible enough to believe his story.

If he was indeed a crook, I’m grateful that he took off with only £20 in cash, nothing more, and left me entirely unstabbed. And I’ll be more on my guard next time. ‘Tuition fee’ says my father at any mistake that costs money.

And I will advise my London friends to look out for a man in a yellow fluorescent jacket asking for financial aid, who vaguely resembles Phil Davis. You know, I will say to them, that Cockney actor who’s in lots of things. Vera Drake. White Teeth. Notes On A Scandal – he’s the other teacher who fancies Cate Blanchett. That’s him. Well, not really him, obviously. I realise actors in the British film industry aren’t exactly rolling in it, but when it comes to finding an income between jobs, even they must draw the line at doorstepping strangers in the middle of the night.

Then I realise that putting the same sign on both tubs is unnecessary: one will suffice. So I don’t bother with affixing the other sign, but do decide to add the words ‘IN BOTH TUBS’ in the only space available on the first sign: at the bottom. I also add brackets, to indicate an afterthought, but really indicating that I’m someone uncertain in my life and prone to making a mess of things.

So it now reads:

‘PLASTIC BOTTLES ONLY

– SEE LEAFLET IN HALL.

(IN BOTH TUBS)’

Clearly, I’ve made it even worse. Not only does it look messy, it now sounds that it’s the leaflet that’s managing to be in both tubs, as well as in the hall. A kind of God-like, omnipresent leaflet that will be with us at all times.

The only clear message that the sign does carry is one to myself: everything needs a draft version first. And that slower people prone to making mistakes should allow for this when dividing up their time.

At this point, it’s getting on for nine, and I have to get on with other things. So I leave the awful sign, a testament to why I am best sticking with my own little world rather than dabbling with the real one, and decide to remove it later.

The thing I first have to get on with is filling out a payroll form for my DJ spot at the Latitude Festival. It’s pretty simple stuff: address, bank details. Except, of course, I make mistakes, and the thing is posted off in a fit of frustration, speckled with crossed-out words and tiny correct numbers floating limply above the blacked-out wrong ones they should have been.

I check my email, and Tom tells me that I’ve put the wrong date on a Fosca rehearsal – again. Have I changed the session, he reasonably enquires? I can see what I’ve done: copied from an old erratic email but failed to copy the correction. Do I mean the Saturday or the Sunday, he asks. I go a bit hysterical by this point, writing back, “It’s SATURDAY SATURDAY SATURDAY!” And then I fire off another mail, saying “SORRY SORRY SORRY”.

I’m a wreck of nerves and bad temper, and it’s not even half past nine. How do all those other people cope, I wonder, looking at the commuters walking off to the Tube outside. Why is it just me? If I had a sniff of a normal working life, would I be better, or worse?

I stagger out of the house, my thoughts in spiralling hysteria. Feeling doomed to making a mess of things and take too long about it into the bargain. Worrying that I’m ‘losing it’, or that I’m just the most useless person in the world. That life is essentially a race I have no hope in ever properly taking part in, let alone winning or losing. That I am going mad. AND that I’m slow.

Then I calm down, pledge to spend less time on the computer and more time writing on paper. And I decide to go shopping for a nice fountain pen.

Just as well no one’s life is in my hands. It could be worse. I could be a surgeon.

I have to remind myself to make drafts for everything involving writing. Some golden people can just put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and write something quickly, straight out, with no mistakes or typos, making linear sense and requiring no rewriting. I’m not one of them.

I wonder if this is what years of using word processors has done to me. They enable me to be used to making erasable mistakes and move sentences and clauses around so easily that when it comes to using ink on paper I make far more errors than I did before owning a computer. Or perhaps it’s just my funny little brain acting in not quite the normal way, as ever.

On Monday night I open the shared recycling tubs by the side of my front door to discover some fellow tenant has put plastic trays and cartons inside. Even though such items are marked with the little recycling arrow, it doesn’t necessarily mean one’s local council will recycle them, at least not yet. The only plastics currently accepted are bottles. Anything else is what the council collectors regard as ‘contamination’, resulting in the tub either being ignored, or the contents tipped into the landfill-bound van along with all the non-recyclable domestic waste. If so, all that diligent sorting by myself and the other tenants has been for naught. The details of what can and can’t be placed in the council tubs are on a leaflet I’ve pinned to the board in the shared hallway, by the taxi cards, takeaway menus and local information sheets. I had assumed everyone keen to use the tubs would read the leaflet. In this case, I sigh, it seems not.

Although I note the plastic trays and cartons, I decide to do something about it first thing in the morning, with the excuse of needing sunlight. Though it’s probably more down to my general tendency to procrastinate.

Feeling terribly worthy with that sense of being the first one in the queue, I bound out of bed at 7am, dress quickly, and write a couple of stern paper signs to affix to the tubs: ‘PLASTIC BOTTLES ONLY – SEE LEAFLET IN HALL.’

I take a reel of sticky tape, go down to the tubs, and lift the lids. The trays and cartons have gone. Someone has beaten me to it; perhaps it’s even the erring resident in question, correcting their oversight. It’s a mixed feeling: I’m pleased that other tenants are as environmentally concerned as me, but feel slightly shown up for leaving it to the next day and being trumped in the good deed contest.

But I still have my signs. So I tape one sign to a lid. It’s only now that I’m aware my text isn’t good enough. ‘Plastic bottles only’ could mean that this tub must only be reserved for plastic bottles and nothing else; no newspapers or tins or glass bottles or other perfectly recyclable materials that the council do allow. So I go back in, grab my permanent marker, go back out, and heavily underline the word ‘BOTTLES’, hoping this will improve the sense of the message.

Dad, a fellow Doctor Who fan, asks if the Gormley statues moved when myself and Mum were looking at the nude bikers, and thus not looking at the statues. He’s referring to the Doctor Who story that evening, “Blink”, where the monsters are the kind of stone angels found in cemeteries. They move and get you whenever they’re not being watched, or even if you blink. Truly gripping in the old-fashioned 70s Doctor Who style (even though it involves the world of DVD extras), well-written and beautifully acted. One can certainly imagine the army of bronze Gormleys going after people. I imagine his big box of fog is a particularly good place to attack victims.

***
Sunday afternoon – to the Wolseley in Piccadilly for afternoon tea. I always have Earl Grey with scones. Present are Xavior Roide, Suzi Livingstone and Hazel Barkworth. Suzi and Hazel have tickets to the Princess Diana memorial concert, at which Duran Duran and the Spice Girls are playing. Xavior still has a seemingly charmed if deeply unusual life where strange men he found on the Internet come round and pay him for the pleasure of cleaning his flat. It’s their fetish, their sexual kink: cleaning the flats of young men, and paying for this pleasure. Like a naughtier version of the Tom Sawyer fable. Apparently these men don’t even wear special clothing in which to do it.

Everything is sexy to someone: you just have to find them. There must be people somewhere in the world who derive erotic pleasure from filling out other people’s tax returns. Though there is always a line drawn somewhere. “I’m only attracted to filling out the tax returns of buxom blondes between the ages of twenty-five and thirty who wear opera gloves. Nothing strange.”

***

Mum and I walk through the courtyard of Somerset House, as we’ve never seen it outside of winter when the famous ice rink is in place. On this scorching June day, the courtyard is host to a grid of fountains set in the ground. A few brave tourists walk through the narrow gaps and take photos of each other, fully-clothed. Small children in swimsuits jump about in the jets with their Dad, while their Mum sits at the side with the piles of shoes and clothes. It’s the sort of thing one sees on the front of newspapers the next day, always with some caption about record temperatures. The hottest June on record. The hottest day of the year so far. The hottest day since last Tuesday.

Many of the offices around the courtyard still belong to the Inland Revenue. For years this space of ice rinks and fountains and simple joy was a car park for tax inspectors. I like the juxtaposition of these eternal extremes: uncomplicated children’s happiness against complicated adults’ grumpiness. If you do have to work in a tax office, I imagine there’s worse sights to look out of the window at in between all those forms and filings. Beats car parks, anyway.