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.

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.