The video for that song about chocolate biscuits by The New Royal Family is online:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N1qFjZc7_g

It’s like a kind of jolly dream – the ones you really have as opposed to the ones Dr Freud wants you to have. I have a cameo role as a butler, and filmed my bits a month or so ago. For the record, I prefer Fig Rolls.

I have sheepishly joined Facebook, the latest online networking playground. I don’t really understand it. It just seems to be the latest faddy thing to do, following on from Friends Reunited, Friendster and MySpace. Heigh ho, another ‘log in’, another password to forget, another web Inbox to check when I already have a perfectly good email address. But it’s clearly the latest thing to do if you want to be contactable by those who understand the real world more than I. So, as I have a mobile phone in order to pass through the realm of those who live and die by their mobiles, so I must join Facebook.

On Have I Got News For You this week, the guest host is the veteran newsreader Moira Stuart. In the early 80s, she was seen as radical: the first black woman to read the news for the BBC. Recently she was taken off the news, and I think it’s partly because of her very rigid accent – once labelled as BBC Received Pronunciation – sounding out of place on 2007 TV.

In fact, on HIGNFY she was asked what her accent was. “I don’t have one,” she replied. Well, she didn’t have one when she started out. In the 80s, all BBC TV announcers spoke in the same way. But the world has changed around her: they now either have articulate regional accents (Welsh and Northern Irish are particularly popular: “Noy on BBC2…”), or they have a kind of false-modesty, non-specific Southern English voice, like BBC RP but with the edges filed off. Like Mr Blair. In order to haughtily address the nation, you must no longer sound like you’re haughtily addressing the nation.

Ms Stuart has gained an old-fashioned accent simply by not changing the one she thinks she doesn’t have. She could probably move to Radios 3 or 4, though, where such voices are still monarchs. Albeit more honest monarchs.

The HIGNFY writers made her read out various jokey appeals for work, purely so they could hear her anachronistic tones grappling with the latest networking jargon:

“If you’re watching this and you’re a TV producer, why not ‘Poke’ me -”

(She pulls a shocked expression, and the audience laughs.)

“I never thought it would come to this… (she tries reading it again) Why not ‘Poke’ me on… Facebook?”

***

Tuesday. For no reason, I’m in a stressed-out, upset mood. So I find things to upset me rather than be upset because of things. A sticky day, pushed against other people on a packed 43 bus that stops everywhere, then pushed against other people on a packed Silverlink train that seems to take longer than usual. Add to which spending four hours solid in a hot underground studio, finding that I have to phone up Tom and get him to email me a drum track for use then and there, finding that my email isn’t working just when I need the track, wondering if Rachel is getting my messages about singing tomorrow, and so on. None of this matters in the greater scheme of things, obviously, but when you’re in just the wrong frame of mind, everything matters too much.

The garish new London Olympics 2012 logo is the city’s current talking point. It gives me a headache, and the animated version reportedly produces epileptic fits. Still, I’m proud that this is a city where the aesthetic qualities of a mere logo can be the subject of intense feeling. Other countries get upset about content; we get upset over style. Or rather, the money behind the style. Once people could put a price to the logo (400,000 pounds), it was back to the price of everything, and the value of nothing. No story about a painting in the news comes without a mention of its fiscal worth.

Without the price tag, the furore over the logo would have no index. It’s ugly – that should be enough. But no, the consensus must be: it’s ugly AND it costs a lot of money. It’s like the old joke: “The food’s terrible here. AND it’s in such small portions.”

Many people use price tags in order to understand the world, which I think is their failing. I don’t, which is mine.

Last night: in the Hackney studio again, this time for ‘Come Down From The Cross’. I add new vocals and revise the lyrics to fit producer Alex’s new edit. Originally the song did bang on for a bit, and he’s now brought it in under four minutes. The trouble with having unlimited time when recording – at least, for me – is that I think of more and more riffs and melodies around the same chord structure. The result is seven catchy riffs all fighting to be heard at once, where one would do. The ear can only really pick out one melody at time – the rest is all background warmth. All notes should form part of one melody, or nothing. With Alex on board, we’ve cut it down and let the songs breathe a little.

On the overground train to Hackney, a fifty-ish man with greying sideburns and baseball cap gets on, reaches to the ceiling for a handrail, then stops himself in time when he realises it is actually a fluorescent lighting tube. Unfamiliar with the Silverlink line, I’ve made the same mistake myself. He suddenly speaks to me, with a heavy accent:

Man: London is horrible.
Me: I’m sorry?
Man: London. London is horrible.
Me: Aha.
Man: Milano is much better.

I want to say something in my city’s defence, about how he’s probably not seen all of it in order to make such a judgement. The free parks, the free galleries and museums, the architecture, the history, the secrets, the adventures. But I keep quiet.

To be fair, the Silverlink train line is not one of the capital’s highlights. Florescent lighting tubes where there should be handrails don’t help, and neither does the system’s current incompatibility with the Oyster Card. It seems ridiculous to have to buy an overland rail ticket to get from Camden Road to Hackney Central, and not be able to do so via the Oyster Card, which integrates all the city’s buses and underground trains. Still, this is such a common gripe that it’s only a matter of time before the inevitable. (I check – Oyster will be compatible with Silverlink from November this year).

I wonder if my Milan friend is aware of the Oyster card system. If not, I can appreciate that London’s travel prices are indeed horrible for the outsider. All visitors to London for more than a day must educate themselves about Oyster Cards, or end up spending a fortune unnecessarily.

I review some music for Plan B:

Candie Payne “I Wish I Could Have Loved You More” (Deltasonic)
Rose Melberg “Cast Away The Clouds” (Vinyl version: Where It’s At Is Where You Are)
Suburban Kids With Biblical Names “#3” (Yesboyicecream Records)
North Sea Radio Orchestra “The End Of Chimes EP” (oof! Records)
Andres Segovia “The Fabulous Andres Segovia” (El Records)
Steven Brown “Brown Plays Tenco” (LTM)
Sebastian Cabot, Actor “Bob Dylan, Poet: A Dramatic Reading With Music” (Rev-Ola)

Some notes on each one.

Candie Payne: Young Liverpool singer, unabashed ersatz retro in the John Barry / Phil Spector mode. ‘One More Chance’ is far and away the best song, well-written and well-sung, and deserves to be heard by everyone.

Rose Melberg: US twee-pop veteran (from such bands as Tiger Trap) going all Virginia Astley and pastoral. Best track is the vinyl-only one, which is just as well. I have to get a wet cloth out and clean the caked dust off my turntable for the first time in centuries to review the album. Bonus track in question is a gorgeous cover of a 1971 song by English folk artist Anne Briggs. The LP insert sports a poster-sized photo of the singer against a snowy landscape, immaculate in red coat, white socks and black wellingtons.

Suburban Kids With Biblical Names – the Swedish Pastels, or one of them. Quirksome but never irksome, flaunting their jauntiness.

North Sea Radio Orchestra – chamber-folk ensemble who use dead poets (eg Longfellow) as their lyricists, and thus are right up my street. Have played libraries and churches and have been featured on BBC Radio 3’s Late Junction programme, to no one’s surprise whatsoever. Coming from the classical side of the spectrum but with an indie bent (how many other classical ensembles put out 7″ vinyl EPs in 2007?). I am an instant fan.

“The Fabulous Andres Segovia”, a typically stylish El Records compilation of classical guitar recordings from the pioneer and virtuoso Segovia, who’s credited with rescuing the humble acoustic guitar and rebuilding it for the classical world. Includes enlightening sleeve notes on his historical importance, plus a dark beauty in period Spanish garb on the cover.

“Steven Brown Plays Tenco” – a curiously arty mini-album from the late 80s. San Francisco avant garde artist Brown interprets the works of Luigi Tenco, a Brel-esque Italian songwriter who shot himself dead in the late 60s, because a mainstream pop festival rejected his work. I’ve had some unkind reviews too, but I think that’s a rather overly dramatic response. Even for me.

Sebastian Cabot was a rotund actor popular on US 60s sitcoms for playing posh English gentlemen, and provided the voice of Bagheera in Disney’s Jungle Book. In 1967, for no discernibly good reason he released a spoken word album reciting Bob Dylan lyrics to a freestyle musical backdrop. Suffice it to say, the album begs to be filed alongside similar works by William Shatner (Like A Rolling Stone is particularly Shatner-ish), but despite that, the charming, twinkling backing arrangements render it frequently engrossing, even touching. Certainly unusual.

Two fascinating articles on waste and recycling: I would print them out and send to family and friends, but that would be an unnecessary waste of paper and thus invoke the gods of irony. If you can stand to read long articles on a computer screen (and chances are you probably do spend hours as it is staring at one), please do so in this case.

One is a full investigation by Andrew O’Hagan for the London Review Of Books. He hangs out with those who collect the bins, the managers of landfills and furnaces, and a curious pair of gentlemen who shun money, live together in a van and exist purely on the food thrown out by supermarkets (though as one letter the following issue asks, what about their fuel, insurance, road tax? What happens if they crash into someone?).

Mr O’Hagan points out how it’s easy to forget that recycling is older than modern consumerism. Many have memories of used bottles taken back to the shop and exchanged for pennies, and the term ‘dustcart’ in the first place refers to the dust recycled in Victorian brick manufacture:

The 19th century was the age of salvage, and Victorian Britain was a recycling nation by necessity: wood was redeployed and bone was ground down; ash was spread on the land, and the only things buried were bodies and vegetable matter.

He also touches on the more poetical and philosophical side of current waste concerns: waste as a record of life, and thus death. The landfill as monument:

At the near edge it seemed there were Tesco bags as far as the horizon; I looked down and saw a bottle of children’s bubble mixture, a squashed box of Typhoo tea, a tin of Dulux paint, a Capri Sun fruit drink carton: the recent detritus of an average life, and in the distance there were more plastic bags trapped in the branches of a copse of trees and blowing in and out like struggling lungs.

Mr O’Hagan’s wonderful essay is here in full:

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n10/print/ohag01_.html

By way of contrast, his fellow LRB contributor Mary Beard emails me the link to her “all very well, but…” piece in the Times, addressing the selfishness of liberals who use recycling purely as a way of salving their 4×4 conciences. Recycling as a kind of liberal confession booth:

The problem is that the amount of high-minded effort that goes into recycling at home (all that careful sorting of the plastic bottles from the glass ones, the removal of the plastic cover from the newspaper supplement you never read, and so on) tends to make you feel that you have already done your bit for the planet. ‘I recycle so I’m OK.’

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/06/does_recycling_.html

***

Last week I announced I’m retiring from DJ-ing for a bit (with the exception of the Latitude Festival – though they seem to be dithering). And since then, I’ve had more offers of paid DJ work than ever before. Typical. It’s a career move based on The Cutty Sark via Joni Mitchell. You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.

***

A reader emails on the ‘the world behind every mirror’ theme in the last Doctor Who and the Sandman story I was reading at the time:

The concept is also there in a Borges story (which inspired China Mieville’s novella ‘The Tain’, where the very peed off people from behind the mirror gain their freedom and revenge).

Sounds great; must read that. For a Get Out Of Genre Free card, it’s always best to mention Borges. And I understand Mr Miéville is one of the few sci-fi authors allowed to be on BBC Radio 3 arts programmes without the world coming to an end.

On genre:

The odd thing is how certain authors get rescued – Ballard, for instance, is now regarded as a literary writer, ever since his books became set in a recognisable present (whether his writing has changed, or reality has become more Ballardian, is another case entirely). More accurately, ever since his publishers started marketing him that way.

I would say the same about Ian McEwan, whose earlier books like The Cement Garden were dark and strange and ‘cultish’. Today, he’s part of the UK arts mainstream.

Tory leader David Cameron has done a Doctor Who and turned himself from a lofty superhuman (from Planet Eton, an eternal plane of the powerful and godlike looking down on the real world) into an ersatz normal human of sorts – a living zeitgeist index of what he regards normal people do. To this end, he has had his photo taken reading the latest McEwan novel. On the train.

I think I may have to finally stop reading the blogs and online diaries of people I know personally when I’m feeling a bit down. The trouble is, if they’re writing about being sad and miserable, it’s depressing. And if they’re writing about their successes, name-dropping anecdotes and their careers soaring, it’s… even more depressing.

Well, no, of course, one really thinks, good for them; I’m happy for them, and I wish them well. But during one’s darker nights, I regret to confess the presence of an inner imp of Envy, pouting childishly and whining “how come THEY’VE got a huge house / perfect lover / perfect career / their own private elephant, and I haven’t?”

And that’s just one’s friends. Enemies get a far easier ride, because at least you know where you are with them. I really must get that imp painlessly put down.

Envy is not only a perniciously pointless and unflattering sin, it doesn’t even make sense. Not only could I be getting on with pursuing said objects of desire for myself, what’s crucial to the mix is I’m not anyone else and they’re not me. People say “I wish I could spend a day in David Beckham’s shoes”, but if they really did switch bodies, they’d lose everything Mr Beckham had in seconds. They’d mess it up. The change would be so pronounced, it would lead to the footballer being thrown into an asylum for good.

Besides, I’m as happy as can be expected at the moment. I’ll admit I have a fridge that still holds unopened bottles of expensive booze, gifts from others, which I have promised to only drink with a lover. I’ve had them for nearly a year, now. But I don’t mind. I’ll just have to find another reason to drink the champagne – the release of the Fosca album, perhaps.

(and as I type this, someone I don’t know in a country I’ve never visited sends me several times the minimum donation for the Diary Angels fund. I really can’t complain.)

What does matter is that I’m not in any physical pain. Even those various aches and bouts of mysterious localised soreness have gone away. The ointments have run out, but so have the ailments. Just as well.

***

Thing is, although I don’t have a cold of any sort, at this time of year I am likely to occasionally find myself suddenly sneezing. Just once or twice a day – not even worth buying the anti-hay fever treatments. What I would really like to know is: why am I cursed with such a loud, outrageous bellowing comedy sneeze (like something off a 1950s radio comedy), while daintier sorts get to make a noise akin to a sniffly kitten? Can I train myself to sneeze in a quieter fashion?

***

Thought when buying razors. I bridle at the Gillette latest Men’s brand – FIVE blades on one head plus a sixth tucked away, presumably for special occasions. It’s such a male kind of marketing – more of anything is meant to be better, regardless. I will never fill manly enough to buy anything from Mr Gillette, so I plump for the Boots’ own brand – a comparatively sissy three blades. When buying razors, I go by Ockham’s.

***

Innocent, the aggravatingly pretentious drinks firm, has renamed its ‘Juicy Water’ range, which is more water than juice.

The drink is now called ‘This Water’.

Still on Genre, I pull myself away from reading Neil Gaiman’s Sandman saga, at the point where one powerful character in female form – Despair, Sister of the Endless family – is shown to be living in an eternal realm that lurks on the other side of every mirror.

From this, I watch Doctor Who, which ends with a powerful character in female form – The Family Of Blood’s Sister Of Mine – imprisoned in an eternal realm that lurks on the other side of every mirror.

Sandman homage or not, this latest Doctor Who story is bold enough to move the programme from its nominal sci-fi genre into something more mythological, classical, dream-like. The ‘Sister Of Mine’ character is left in the form of a sinister little girl, still clutching her balloon. It’s the keeping of the balloon, even behind the mirror, that I like. Very reminiscent of Ovid’s poetical, creative punishments metered out by the ancient gods on their enemies. The Doctor is said to visit the little girl behind the mirror once a year – why? And why not put all the aliens in the same void, rather than dole out individually-tailored fates? Because it makes classical sense. One of the aliens is even transformed into a statue based on his own creations, which is VERY Zeus.

Genre can sometimes stand in the way between a story and a reader who might otherwise enjoy it. The Time Traveler’s Wife is a good example of a science fiction novel successfully marketed to people who don’t like science fiction.

Sometimes, it’s because people are put off by a perceived notion of what the audience is like:

“I do not like or am not like the audience, therefore I cannot or will not enjoy this material.”

The reverse theory can be just as damaging:

“I do not like this material, but I will pretend I do because I am like the audience. Or because I want to BE in the audience.”

Ideally, there should be no such thing as genre at all: no stories for boys, or stories for girls, no ‘gay interest’. no fantasy fiction or crime fiction or romantic comedy. Just well-written stories and badly-written stories. But I realise this is a naive way of thinking: people will always like their filters and signposts, award nominations, plaudits from names they like or admire. Everyone has their own way in.

With the new, go-ahead 21st Century Doctor Who, a traditionally boyish sci-fi programme has finally become more girl-friendly and ‘Time-Traveler’s Wife’ compatible. David Tennant’s Doctor, mysterious as he is, is clearly into human ladies, who in turn are better written than the archetypal damsels in distress of old. The price paid is that despite all the flirting he can never be allowed to truly get off with them. Or can he? This is what keeps people watching, of course.

What’s particularly interesting is that the latest Doctor Who tale is also an adaptation of a book in the 90s ‘New Adventures’ spin-off novels. The original novel (“Human Nature”), regardless of its merit, would only have been read by the most devoted of old-style Doctor Who fans, as opposed to normal people. So its new life on TV this week represents a kind of triumph for those fighting in the genre wars. It’s one thing to moan about how awful such-and-such a popular band or film or author is, while much better artists and works reach tiny genre-based or ‘cult’ audiences. It’s another to actually do something about it.

Thoughts on genre. Am currently working my way through the works of Neil Gaiman for the first time, including his short story collections and graphic novels. Reading them in public – on the Tube or in libraries – I feel, despite myself, the shadow of the literary prejudice afforded genre fiction (sci-fi, fantasy, crime, thriller, mystery) and serious comics. I was shocked to read an arts journalist recommending one graphic novel in their column with the disclaimer that “as we all know, all graphic novels are embarrassing rubbish, but this one is an exception.” A statement of such ignorance, it really should do have done him no favours. But in this country at least (I understand France has a more enlightened attitude), the sentiment is almost default. Which is the real embarrassment.

Funny how graphic novels are even considered a genre as opposed to a medium, whether it’s The Beano, the DC / Marvel superheroes titles, or the likes of ‘Ghost World’. I feel that even mentioning them turns some people off, which is a terrible shame. From the mainstream looking in, any discussion becomes defensive against the perceived snobbery.

Jackets of popular fiction boast a ‘master storyteller’, which is never the sort of phrase that appears on the cover of Booker Prize fare. Dick Francis is a ‘champion storyteller’. Within the genre audience, there’s another kind of snobbery – not knowing enough. You have to be a fan, and have read the whole oeuvre, or nothing.

I love that scene at the beginning of ‘Educating Rita’, where Rita’s essay on Harold Robbins is dismissed by her lecturer. As far as Rita is concerned, she was asked to write an essay on a favourite novel, and did so. But however much thought and work she puts into it, her tutor gently explains, the essay can only be rubbish, because the book itself is rubbish. His task is to show her why this is, why airport fiction isn’t literature. Why there are such things as standards. Why she should read more widely in order to experience the joy of a well-honed sentence.

And though these days there are more university courses that enable students to write serious essays on trashy fiction – such as, say, a dissertation on the craft of popular storytelling which takes in The Da Vinci Code, it’s no good without reference to a wider knowledge of the classics.

All reading in any area must be a point of departure rather than a final destination. It’s one of the reasons I call this more of a diary than a blog, because I want readers to turn off the computer and do something else – books, magazines, DVDs, gardening, snogging – not direct them elsewhere on the Web. I equate that with in-breeding.

Actually, that’s recalling another Educating Rita scene, right at the beginning. The lecturer (played by Michael Caine in the film) stops his own English class with his normal students, out of his own personal despair:

“Look out the window. It’s a lovely day. You’re all young. Why don’t you go outside or something? Why don’t you all go off and make love (his voice cracks) … or something?”

He’s really talking about himself, of course, but I like the sentiment. It’s fine to have an anorak; as long as you take it off from time to time. Or you won’t feel the benefit. Get off Facebook for a bit and go frolic in the park. Read the genre fiction AND the Booker Prize winners. Don’t dismiss an entire genre or medium unless you really have read a good portion of the better examples. It’s all about balance.

Vastly enjoying the latest Doctor Who story, “Human Nature”. The normally manic, modern-London-accented Doctor becomes a gentle human schoolteacher with period-drama BBC Received Pronunciation, falling in love and being normal and being quite happy about it. Except, of course, there’s the small matter of having to save the world every Saturday tea-time.

There’s references to If…., The Shining, Goodbye Mr Chips and most of all, the film Superman II (early 1980s, like most of the greater things in life), where Superman also turns himself into a human.

Obviously, it’s hardly a spoiler to say that Superman gets back to normal by the closing credits, just as we all know The Doctor is going to be himself again in time for ‘Any Dream Will Do’ or whatever programme is on afterwards. But when the story is told well, you believe it as it happens, and you believe that it IS happening.

These days, Superman II is often regarded as the most memorable of the Christopher Reeve films, and I’ve seen it referred to in the likes of The Family Guy cartoon and Russell Brand’s stage routines. Everyone remembers the one with General Zod. And though I have difficulty remembering what I did last week, I can still remember a couple of memorably droll quotes from that film, decades on:

Clark Kent: (on finding out about some terrorists’ plot to blow up the Eiffel Tower) But jeepers, Mr. White, that-that’s terrible!

Perry White: (with heavy irony) Yes. That’s why they call them terrorists.

And when the US President has to kneel before Terence Stamp’s conquering supervillain, General Zod:

President: (despairing for the world) Oh God…

General Zod: Zod.

It’s funnier if you imagine Terence Stamp pronouncing the word ‘Zod’ as only Terence Stamp can do, with his kind of half-camp, half-Shakespearean relish.

But whereas the Doctor opts to become human in order to escape some nasty Time Lord-sniffing aliens, falling in mortal love only by accident; the Man of Steel’s motivations in the 80s film are rather more selfish. He becomes human purely in order to properly love a mortal woman in the first place: Lois Lane.

It seems rather amusing to set this down today, but all of the instances I’ve cried my eyes out at the cinema, one of the biggest was when Superman gave up his powers to snog a girl. The film was new, I was nine or ten years old. As our hero emerged from the Humanizing Chamber and jumped into bed with Ms Lane, it seemed a move worse than suicide – it was a betrayal. When faced with a strict choice between asexual immortality with super-powers and sleeping with a pretty girl for a lifetime, few boys would opt for the latter.

Well, all right, few pre-pubescent boys.

Well, all right, the pre-pubescent me, anyway.

One does wonder about the moral message of such a storyline. It could be interpreted as saying: if you go with girls the world will be dominated by three supervillain overlords in black lycra; comprising Terence Stamp, Servalan from Blake’s Seven‘s stunt double, and a big bearded gay bear.

(Actually, the idea of being dominated by one or preferably all of the above is just the sort of thing certain friends of mine would actually prefer, as opposed to the more conventional likes of marrying Ms Lane, but you get my drift.)

Could Superman II be a message of comfort – that it’s okay for fans of fantasy to never go steady with girls? The unkind joke writes itself.

What I think it does do, along with the current Doctor Who, is build on the theme of the powerful hero doomed to solitude and never getting what they want, which is as old as the Greek and Roman myths. Coupling between the unlike usually leads to trouble – and a great story. From Zeus and his chums, to Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Consummation turned Ms Buffy’s boyfriend from a kindly ex-vampire into the murderously evil villain he once was. It’s a twist that carries mythical resonance and Angela Carter-esque sexual allegory. You can write a thesis on it, sure, but the main appeal is that it’s a tried and tested tool of good storytelling. Thesis, schmesis, the viewers will be back, the page will be turned. What worked for Ovid in 7 BC works for the writers of Doctor Who in 2007 AD.

Gods in metamorphosis, coupling with mortals, romance and battles – it’s classic stuff, because it’s the stuff of the Classics.

Rachel W wants me to solemnly promise to avoid Big Brother completely this summer, for the sake of my general mental health. It became one of those addictions that one just keeps up without knowing why, like junk food that leaves you hungry and no less unhappy. We’ll see. If there’s someone I find attractive on it this year I will probably find it hard to resist.

What started out as a sober, social experiment where people were allowed to read books became a book-banning showcase for breast-enhanced blonde flibbertigibbets and shrieking TV wannabes. As the unusually sane former housemate Jon Tickle said on the brilliant “Big Brother – Where Are They Now” documentary, pleasant people who get on with each other make for bad TV.

Interesting to find out about Anna N, the sensible Irish lady from the first series who sang songs on her guitar about hating being on TV. She seems to have been barely off Irish TV ever since, as a presenter.

Upset and appalled to see the video footage of the Moscow gay rights attacks, on the BBC News site:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6698173.stm

Peter Tatchell, Richard Fairbrass amongst others, punched full in the face by Russian fascist thugs while they’re just standing around talking to journalists about, well, how wrong it is to be punched in the face for being gay.

What’s worse is that the police have arrested the peaceful demonstrators, and not the thugs – even though the latter were caught on camera. And though it’s hardly on the same scale, I think of the times at school I was put in detention for being attacked by idiot bullies:

(A Suffolk classroom, sometime in the 80s. A lesson is in progress. Two boys, who do not wish Young Mr Edwards well, are sitting behind him. Within kicking distance. So they kick him.)

Me, aged 14: OW!
Teacher: Be quiet! One more word from you, Dickon, and you’ll be in detention.
Me: But –
Teacher: Don’t FUSS! I’m warning you.
(the boys kick him again)
Me: OW!
Teacher: Right, you’re disrupting the lesson. Go and stand outside the Head’s office. I’ll deal with you later.
Me: But it wasn’t me! Those two kicked me!
Teacher: Don’t tell tales. Get out. And stop whining.

I’m sadly aware that this isn’t a unique experience, and never understand the motivations of such teachers – do they genuinely believe a pupil is shouting in pain on purpose, or trying to stitch up some obvious bullies?

Perhaps they just don’t like the victims in question, dismissing them as milksops and whiners, and are pleased to find a reason to eject them. Just as Mayor Luzhkov of Moscow is a self-confessed homophobe, regarding homosexuality as ‘the work of Satan.’ He turns a blind eye to the local fascists, and instead arrests the likes of Mr Tatchell. Because to be punched in the face makes you a ‘troublemaker’.

It’s easy to make jokes about the singer from Right Said Fred, the “I’m Too Sexy” band, but I admire Mr Fairbrass far more than any more cool and with-it popstar of the day who plays anti-Nazi benefit concerts or Pride in the UK. Ask them to go on the annual gay march in Moscow and risk genuine fascist persecution, face to fist, and it’s a different matter entirely. I take my hat off to Mr Tatchell and Mr Fairbrass – gay men who make most straights look like, dare I say it, a bunch of poofs.

I’ve uploaded the final mix of “It Only Matters To Those To Whom It Matters” to Fosca’s Myspace page. It’s extremely catchy, features Tom’s guitar at its most spangly, NO KEYBOARDS WHATSOEVER (Kate borrows my guitar when we do it live), and has a big singalong chorus – you have been warned.

Listen:

www.myspace.com/foscatheband

Lyrics:
some shudder at the way you shrug off days / but it’s galvanised this idle stray
a photogenic ghost who’s lost on most / a secret caption: ‘Joy On Toast!’
well here’s a new twist upon trysting / have you ever stopped and considered
that many daily concerns can be adjourned / once you have learned
that
it only matters to those to whom it matters
it only matters to those to whom it matters
you’re musing if it’s worse to live than to rehearse
and is being ‘right’ all the time your curse?
needles in the park, the teenage watermark
lovers through the Brain, not through the Heart
there you go, scolding your shadow
in the hope that no one will notice
why you always carry a book
not as something to read  – but somewhere else to look…
it only matters to those to whom it matters
it only matters to those to whom it matters
(unabashed indie guitar solo)
oh save me, oh help me / from judging Life so easily
oh save me, oh help me / from judging Life so easily
it only matters to those to whom it matters
it only matters to those to whom it matters

The Swedish band Friday Bridge have released their excellent new album “Intricacy”, which features speaking and singing from myself on one song, ‘Pigeon’:

www.fridaybridge.net

Another Swedish band, This Year’s Model, have an album called “The Clock Strikes Ten” out soon. That’s the one with the CD booklet featuring short stories from myself, Jessica Griffin (as in The Would-Be-Goods)and Vic Godard (as in Vic Godard). Bid (as in Scarlet’s Well & The Monochrome Set) is also on the album. It’s very nice indeed to be in such company. My story contains the line “We could always mail it to Cliff Richard.”

www.thisyearsmodel.co.uk

Monday: A mysterious chemical odour is in my room. Paint, cleaning fluid, something like that. I tidy up the cupboard under the sink where the usual sprays and cloths are stashed, but can’t find any spillages. Still, it forces me to generally tidy up, and in the process I discover not one but three umbrellas I thought I’d lost. I open the window, but as it’s a rather chilly, windy and rainy Bank Holiday, it doesn’t stay open for long. When I do want to brave going outside, however, at least I’ve no shortage of brollies.

Later, I walk into the shared hallway and notice the odour is definitely stronger. So it’s one of those instances where one has to brave not just the sound of whatever music or shouting or drilling is going on next door, but the stench of whatever odiferously-charged home improvements they’re implementing as well. The price one pays for living near others. I am fuming at their fumes.

Writing this in producer Alex Mayor’s underground studio, in a complex near Hackney Downs station, evening of Tuesday May 29th. We’re working on the Fosca song ‘Kim’, which mentions Archway and vaguely chronicles certain London types I know, or have invented. My notes on the lyrics say ‘New Song – October 2003.’ Better very late than never.

It’s all been recorded by Brother Tom, but needs a good mixing. Rachel has said my vocal take on this one sounds a bit strangled at times, but when we play them back they sound fine enough. Well, as fine as I can be as a singer. I redo a section here and there, however.

I say ‘we’, but I really mean Mr Mayor. He’s doing all the work. I’m just sitting here typing. He says that down the corridor Darren Hayes’s new album is being mixed. The boy from the band Savage Garden.

As I write, Mr Alex is adding a woodpecker-like percussion sound. What do I think, he asks? I say I think it sounds like a woodpecker. I want more glockenspiel. If in doubt, add glockenspiel. He does, and it sounds much, much better. The woodpecker has been blended in.

The song now sounds a bit early Saint Etienne (echoey guitar stabs dotted around a blissful bass guitar riff, loops fading in and out), even a bit ‘Steve McQueen’-era Prefab Sprout. Kate D’s strings are a joy – a subtle arrangement within an arrangement. I panic at first when we can’t find them on the computer, and phone her in case she can pop into the studio to re-record her part.

“Um, it’s not really convenient… I’m laden down with shopping and am on my way home.”
“Oh, it’s okay, we’ve found them now. Fell down the back of the Pop Sofa.”

Plans for Fosca’s gig in Sweden now include the recording of our set with the possibility of release as a live EP on a Swedish label, perhaps even a live album.

Studio sustenance: I tentatively try Snack-a-Jacks crisps, Caramel flavour. I decide they’re essentially flattened-out cinema popcorn, sweet as opposed to sour.

I note for the first time that Snack-a-Jacks are made by the Quaker Oats company. I keep noticing Quaker-related things lately – my cottage in Sedburgh, Cumbria was next to St Andrew’s Church, which the Quaker founder George Fox spoke at. Before I go to the studio, I spend time in the Quaker bookshop and cafe in Euston Road. Going on Facebook for the first time, I note the first person I look at describes herself as an ‘Atheist Quaker’.

Lately, I’ve found myself keen to find out more about Quakers; it’s the one religion I’ve always been the most intrigued about. They’re anti-war, anti-aggression, anti-heirachy, anti-priests, anti-waste, anti Making A Fuss, pro-environmentalism, pro-honesty. They commune with The Divine in utter silence. Meditation with an centuries-old English tradition behind it, as opposed to a self-help fad. They see other religions as something to learn from rather than rival, and actually rent out their properties to other faiths when they’re not using them. And apparently, some Quakers really do describe themselves as agnostics or even atheists. That’s a pretty tolerant religion.

The Friends House on Euston Road includes a public garden. I like how this oasis of humanist reflection is on one of the noisiest streets in London.