Am writing this all alone in the Coleridge Room at the top floor of the Highgate Literary & Scientific Institution, which I’ve just joined.

As a library junkie, I’d been in a mood for joining a Secret Library or two for some time. Well, by secret, I mean independent subscription libraries, but there’s the same atmosphere. You pay up for the year ahead (and in the case of the London Library, obtain a reference to prove you’re vaguely decent AND pay), then browse, read and write in studious comfort without the encumbrances of many public lending libraries: the trilling of mobile phones, the odour of fallen men, the chatter of loose children. There’s also the sense of commitment and dedication: if you’ve actually paid to join a library, you better damn well use it.

I’d also worked out that I’d been spending a fair amount of money in the free libraries anyway: on fines for late books at my local public outlets, and on the pricey Wifi service at the British Library. With subscription libraries there’s no fines, and free Wifi.

So here I am at the HL&SI, off Pond Square. It’s a curious entity, somewhere between a village hall, a Women’s Institute, and a gentleman’s club, with a library attached deep within the building. There’s all kinds of lectures, film societies, classes, art exhibitions and so forth. But I’m more interested in the Secret Library and the Members’ Room, with its newspapers and open fire.

On entering the place today, I bump into my neighbour Ms L from upstairs. With outrageous synchronicity, she’s decided to join up too. I can only assume we gave each other the same idea telepathically through the ceiling that separates our beds. Or that we had it programmed into us during the night by an alien who works part time for the Institution.

Ms L says she used to naughtily sneak into the place when the door was opened by an exiting  member, in order to sample the heating, the big armchairs, the lovely fire and the decent selection of newspapers. She was found out and asked to leave. But clearly there’s no hard feelings and they’ve let her join legitimately.

Evening – to the Apollo Lower Regent St, for a press screening of Sunshine. This is the new sci-fi film from the 28 Days Later team: director Danny Boyle, screenwriter Alex Garland, star Cillian Murphy. Best summed up by a comment overheard on exiting:

“I had no idea space was so noisy.”

Just a test post to check the diary is working on the new server. Excuse me.

Ms W the life model tells me about her recent work posing for the artists of London. Some are famous: she’s been to Bridget Riley’s house to sit for her. Synonymous with those much-reproduced mathematical abstract works in her name, it transpires Ms Riley is keen to rediscover the more old-fashioned art of drawing or painting nudes. While Ms W was there, a package arrived for the great artist: an original Renoir, newly purchased for her own private collection.

Ms Riley preferred silence or conversation for the sessions, but some artists like to have music on in the background while they daub at the canvas. According to Ms W, art teachers in schools and colleges often go for albums by wispy girl singer-songwriters such as Dido or Norah Jones. “Girl singers who look like art teachers’ girlfriends,” she muses. While, indeed, she muses.

She says that sculptors, on the other hand, prefer Led Zeppelin or ranting on about conspiracy theories. Or both.

Feb 21st: My brother’s Tom’s birthday, who shares it with WH Auden.

Today is the 100th anniversary of Auden’s birth, and I watch an unusually old-fashioned South Bank Show from the weekend about the dead poet in question. Various solemn talking heads all queue up to sing his praises, which is fair enough, including Andrew Motion, the Laureate who seems happy to come across as more of a poetry groupie than a poet in his own right. Just like he did at the Betjeman plaque ceremony, he can’t resist mentioning that he met Auden in person. “It was like meeting God.” I can’t help thinking that Mr Motion sees himself as a carrier of the classic British poet torch if only because his surname ends in an ‘n’ sound.

Lark-in. Aud-en. Betjem-en. Mo-tion.

More endearing, as ever, is Alan Bennett. He appears on this TV celebration to confess that he actually prefers other poets and doesn’t always get what Auden is on about: (paraphrasing a little)

Alan Bennett: The fact you don’t quite know what the poems always mean adds to the fascination.

Melvyn Bragg: Why is that, do you think?

AB: Well… (he flinches with slight irritation, as if his answer was enough)… it’s the same principle as why the Book Of Common Prayer is a magical book, because you don’t always understand what the prayers mean.

MB: So where is Auden on this… pecking list of favourites?

AB: Well… I’m lazy, and you can’t be lazy and just pick it up as you can with Larkin. Larkin has you by the hand throughout the poem. With Auden you have to concentrate on it to find out what it means, at least with the longer poems. So I don’t get as much pleasure out of Auden as I do out of Betjeman or Larkin. But I think he’s probably got more clout and not merely because you don’t always understand him.

(satisfied pause)

MB: Why, then?

AB: Oh Melvyn! (laughs, shrinks visibly into chair) Oh…. Um… Oh… I don’t know! Poems and discussions like The Sea And The Mirror… I’ve no idea what they’re about. Commentators have said there’s wonderful things in them, but… they need far more work than I’m prepared to put in…!

MB: I’m very relieved to hear you say that.

(both laugh)

That said, Mr Bennett goes on to impressively recite an Auden poem from memory: his memorial to Yeats.

The programme also features some fascinating interview footage of Auden himself, constantly interrupting the presenters’ questions mid-sentence, like a big rude old prune. He’s happily puffing away on a fag, a vintage TV detail that’s instantly shocking these days. It’s an old clip, we can tell, not because we know the interviewee is dead, but because we can see he is smoking. I think that famous 90s Dennis Potter interview where he’s terminally ill – swigging from a flask of morphine AND smoking – must be one of the last instances.

Auden’s disowning of one of his biggest hit poems, ‘1st September 1939’, makes him seem like the George Lucas of poetry. It’s the one about war with that incredibly simple yet powerful line, much quoted in times of mass grief or fear, such as 9/11:

we must love one another

or die.

Yet Auden himself later found the poem too simple, and jejune, and actually requested it to be omitted from the Collected Works published in his lifetime. “It doesn’t even make sense!” he splutters during one interview. “We must love one another and die ANYWAY, for a start.”

Ridiculous behaviour. If you’re lucky enough to create something that becomes loved by the public, it no longer belongs to you. You can collect the royalties, sure, but you no longer have the right to mess with it, like Mr Lucas messed with the Star Wars films. You may create a world, but fans live in it. It belongs to them now, not you. Box sets of rock CDs must be curated and overseen by fans, never by the original artists. ‘Director’s Cuts’ of perfectly successful movies must be viewed with suspicion. People liked it: so you mustn’t mess with the bits they liked.

we must love one another

or die.

Another favourite line (from Auden’s memorial for Freud) which I find equally inspiring:

able to approach the future as a friend

without a wardrobe of excuses

Why do I bother even checking my Myspace messages, when most of them are either along the lines of this:

“Hey, I noticed in your profile that your [sic] into interesting music,
you may like to check out ours…”

Or:

“Do you want to track who is visiting your MySpace page? Sign up here.”

Or:

“This user has had their profile deleted before you’ve even read their message. A waste of time all round, really, isn’t it?”

I have a perfectly serviceable email address. Quite why this has to be eschewed in favour of a message system that’s saturated with ads and doesn’t even work properly is beyond me. My MySpace profile even tells people I only regularly check my direct email, not my MS page. And yet, I get streams of pointless advertising and bored souls suddenly popping out of the ether to tell me they quite like my funny name, or my funny look, or that they quite like one of my favourite films. Direct email has more consideration, in every sense. Which surely makes it more attractive. Consideration and deliberation.

I would delete the page, but feel I should hang onto it for the same reason I hang onto a mobile phone. It’s not so much going with the crowd – which is the very reverse of my philosophy – but knowing that you must never turn your back on the crowd’s preferred methods of communication. You have to be contactable on others’ terms, in order to exist on yours.

My three DJ gigs last week were all very enjoyable. I’m not exactly one of those DJs who show off their mixing and matching of tempos and the like – I just play records.

I suppose I’m a DJ who doesn’t like DJ culture (which is also the name of a rather tuneless single by the Pet Shop Boys). I can barely bring myself to even type the phrase ‘mash up’, let alone attempt such a thing on the ‘decks’. My aloofness helps – I like to think I’m playing to the one person in the room who feels the most alone. It’s all too easy to feel alone in a crowded room, far more so than when you’re at home by yourself.

At How Does It Feel on Sat, I manage to play Judy Garland, Ute Lemper, Bugsy Malone selections and so on alongside the Chills ‘Heavenly Pop Hit’ and Dressy Bessy’s fantastically sassy two-chord delight, ‘Girl, You Shout’, with HDIF host Ian Watson’s specific encouragement. He pointed out that the whole idea of being a guest DJ is that you play the sort of thing a club doesn’t normally hear. That said, I was torn between playing what I wanted to hear, and what I thought people would get up and dance to. Still found myself reaching lazily for ‘Roadrunner’ when I should have gone with Dory Previn’s ‘Yada Yada La Scala’ or the Shock Headed Peters’ ‘I Bloodbrother Be’. Next time, I’ll be more assertive. This Thursday is Beautiful & Damned, and if I can’t be assertive in my own club, where can I be?

The aloofness also helps bat off people requesting something you haven’t got. I’m getting quite good at maintaining an expression evincing something along the lines of “I suspect you’re going to ask me to play something I haven’t got. Don’t even think it. I am not of your world. Not with those shoes.”

Taylor Parkes tells me of his newly born son. For the name, I suggested Dickon. It was worth a shot. He’s toying with ‘Mohammed’, if only to make life more interesting; the boy is Caucasian. He was joking.

I’m happy for Mr P, though I wonder if this means he’ll gradually revise his social circle to increase the parent to childless wastrel ratio among his friends, as many parents naturally do. Most of my acquaintances are childless, even the ones over 35. It’s not that I find the childless more interesting, it’s that people with children rarely seek to know me. Babies are narcissists by default, and I’m a narcissist by admission. There may be a conflict of self-interest.

Actual children I tend to get on with, having baby sat for years, though never for actual babies. It’s the under 3s I can’t deal with. All that lying in bed and screaming for undeserved attention: I get enough of that at home.

What does fascinate me is the business of naming. If you don’t name your child within six weeks of its birth, the Government fines you. And then, I wonder, does it allocate a name itself, like orphans and foundlings, going through the alphabet? “We’re up to C. We haven’t had a Carruthers in this parish for a while, so…”

I had to make it back from Tangier for Saturday evening as I had a DJ booking at a private party for a friend of a friend. They paid well, though Shane offered me the same money to stay with him and miss it. I couldn’t possibly renege on a gig booking, and Victoria Clarke turning up at the Minzah on Thursday made it easier to say goodbye and make my way home solo on Sat morning, leaving him in more tried and tested company. He grumbled but let me go. I think they’re still there now.

It did mean me getting my first ever plane by myself, and spending a dreary five hours in the dull departure area at Casablanca airport. Would love to have walked around Casablanca for a bit, but the way my passport was stamped meant I couldn’t even visit the outer section of the airport, the one with proper shops rather than duty frees.

Found myself waived through the customs at Heathrow like royalty, even though I was a slightly alternative-looking man coming back from a druggy country. I swanned past while sniffer dogs were set to work on the suitcases of families with small children. Perhaps I just have Harmless written all over my face. Still, I was hardly complaining, as I made it back to Highgate with barely 30 mins before the DJ gig.

Two more DJ dates this week. One is tonight, a late booking at ‘Loss: An Evening Of Exquisite Misery’. I am told I have to play the most miserable songs I know. Given the date, Nico’s My Funny Valentine is a must. The Carpenters, Smiths, Shangri-Las and Mr Cohen willl also be on the menu. I’ll put down the list here afterwards.

Then on Saturday I’m the guest DJ at 60s girl group / 80s indiepop club How Does It Feel To Be Loved, the first time time back since I started Beautiful & Damned. It’ll be hard to not punctuate the Smiths and Supremes with the likes of Ms Garland and selections from Bugsy Malone. I may not entirely succeed. We shall see.

How Does It Feel To Be Loved?
Saturday February 17th
The Phoenix, 37 Cavendish Square, London W1G 0PP,
three minutes walk from Oxford Circus tube station,
9pm-3am, £4 members, £6 non members.
Membership is free from http://www.howdoesitfeel.co.uk

One of the appointments I have to cancel in order to dash off to Morocco is with an ADHD specialist, to see if I might have Attention Deficit Disorder. So I miss it due to being distracted.

Back in Highgate, up at 6am to watch the world coming to life and force myself into a writing discipline once again. This time, it’s the coming back that energises, rather than the holiday itself. Tangier Mark Two was more restless and stressful, with me worrying about money, Shane’s health, my health, being bothered by hustlers (I wasn’t really, after we’d escaped the port), being mugged at night (not at all). A complete bag of nerves. Shane offers me some kif (the local dope) to calm me down, and even valium, and I give it a go. But of course, it isn’t really me. Though the problem IS me. I don’t think I’ve ever calmed down in my life. I don’t know how to.

As part of this general restlessness, I do a bit of hotel hopping in the week I’m there, with Shane’s permission. I go from the £105 a night five-star Minzah to the £9 a night Hotel El Muniria in Rue Du Magellan. This is Tangier’s Beat Hotel, or their equivalent of the Chelsea Hotel, compared to the Minzah’s Ritz. Also known as the Villa Muniria or the Villa Delirium, it’s where Burroughs installed himself for much of his Tangier days, holding druggy parties with his naughty chums: Ginsberg, Kerouac, Francis Bacon, and so on.

The actual room where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch, No 9, is now ‘privee’. The owner, a tall mustachioed gentleman, now lives there. I meet him in the bar below, the Tanger Inn, when Shane & I go there one night. These days the Muniria is a family-run pension. Clean enough, and the wardrobes and beds themselves are agreeable, but most rooms have to share toilets or bathrooms across the corridors, and many of the doors are so stiff, it’s impossible to go to the toilet without summoning the strength of Hercules and making an almighty slamming sound. All those Beat types must have been pretty butch. Well, compared to me. Need I even make that observation?

I am shown what used to be Jack Kerouac’s room, with a fantastic view of the sea and the city from the rooftop terrace, but turn it down because it means sharing a toilet. There’s my life for you in a single sentence.

Early February appears to be Tangier’s coldest, wettest time of year, and the Muniria has no heating. So getting up at night to go to the loo is even more of an ordeal. There’s the freezing cold, the having to nip across the public corridor to the shared lav, and the ridiculously stiff doors to wrench noisily open and slam deafeningly close at every stage. Add to that the danger of being caught by a some fellow guest – inevitably a badly dressed backpacker spending a night here on their way to Fez – in one’s night clothes. The shame of it.

The lady in charge of the Muniria kindly lets me switch rooms for one night. I go from No 3 to No 6, which does have its very own toilet, shower and writing desk, at no extra cost. You’d have thought this would make me happier, but then I dwell on the cold, the fact there’s only hot water in the morning and evenings, that I left my umbrella in the first taxi we took, and that the Rue Du Magellan outside is a pretty dodgy street, particularly at night. It’s on a steep slope, and some sections are steps only, so cars can’t come here. No street lights, though there’s a safer stretch of road halfway along which one can take as a diversion. Twice the time to reach the main streets, but half the fear. One evening I look up the steps of the shorter, steeper route and note there’s one light in the darkness. It’s from the cigarette of a man standing alone in a bricked-up doorway. And I wonder what it’s liked to be mugged at a 45 degree angle.

I consider this place is ideal in the summer, but not for early February. After two nights at the Muniria, I up sticks and move to the Hotel Rembrandt around the corner. £28 a night, three star, heating and en suite bathroom and toilet, on the main high street (Boulevard Pasteur), built in the 1950s in a kind of mock Art Deco style, and yet another relic from the Interzone years. It’s the Tangier equivalent of the New Piccadilly Cafe, and suits me to a tee. Not too much, not too little.

When I get home, I discover that the Rembrandt was the hotel of choice for one particular visitor to Tangier, who went there regularly. Someone who I therefore have more in common with than the Beats, whether I like it or not.

Kenneth Williams.

Writing this from the El Minzah Hotel’s 1930s Moorish Wifi. Fezzes everywhere. And yes, I did have to look up the plural of ‘fez’.

Mr MacGowan is still here. The El Minzah is very Moorish.

I bet I’m not the first to make that joke, but I don’t care, frankly.

Here’s this month’s details for B&D:

THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED – FEBRUARY EDITION
Date: Thursday 22nd February
Times: 9pm to 12.30am.
Venue: The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, London N6 5AT, UK. 020 8340 2928.
Tube: Highgate (Northern Line). Buses: 43, 134, 263.
Price: Free entry, but patrons are strongly encouraged to dress Timelessly Stylish.

More info on the News page.

A number of friends and fellow online diarists I enjoy use the Livejournal system to host their entries. I’d love to know what they’re up to this week, but weirdly the Moroccan government blocks the entire LJ system from the nation’s net. The other big blogging site, Blogger, remains untouched, so surely it can’t be deliberate. Anyone wanting to say something against the government can just get a Blogger account instead.

Seems rather harsh on the entire LiveJournal world. It’s not always photos of cats and talking about Harry Potter.

O LiveJournal people: I do hope you haven’t been wiped out by bird flu. And if you have readers in Morocco, or rather if you want to have readers in Morocco, you should bear this in mind.

Update: one way of getting around this block is by going to www.mathcookbook.net There they are! After a fashion.

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