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What do you think it says, Dear Reader, given my melancholy cri de coeur? Words of encouragement? Constructive advice? Perhaps even an offer of work?

Here’s what I get. It rather serves me right:

“35 on september the 3rd? my sister used to know you and reckons you are at least 5 years older than that”

Thoughtful letter in the post from Lloyds Bank. They’re going to charge me £35 for a returned Direct Debit. This would be for my contact lenses. £30 a month, and I just didn’t have the money this time. So no lenses, and I end up paying more money for nothing.

This is, I believe, how the debt trap works, how the poor are kept from getting out of being poor. “We are charging you for not having any money”.

I shall get on the phone and beg that they waive the fee, as I’ve done in the past. But I fear I’ve used up all my Get Out Of Jail cards with them. And with the world.

BT want an unreasonable amount of money from me too, ho hum. And Haringey Council refuse to pay me the increase in my housing benefit. Something to do with Rent Officer Decisions: the rent was fixed last March and has to stand for the year. So I have to find the extra £6 a week somehow. Or -whisper it – get a job.

I have to laugh at all this, really. I know it’s my fault for never taking money very seriously. But how can I, when banks charge me for being poor? As you know, Dear Reader, I shall maintain to my death that the world owes me a modest living. I’m Dickon Edwards. That’s my job.

My thirty-fifth birthday is on Sept 3rd. Continuing to live like this, depending on the endless kindness of friends and family, with minus money and bouncing payments just like when I was a student, is getting a bit tiresome for all parties, frankly. When considering life ambitions and choices, you’re meant to say “where do you see yourself in five years’ time?”

Well, I see myself as a poor, debt-ridden, frustrated, lonely, unfulfilled, bitter, anxious and unhappy man of 40, owning no property, living in a rented furnished bedsit. And that’s putting it nicely. Best to keep one’s hopes at ground level. That way, one can only be pleasantly surprised. And I live in a state of constant surprise. Dinner is a success!

The other day I was at my kind friends Charley and Kirsten’s place for a party. They’d laid on food and drink in their lovely Crouch End garden, and I was effusively grateful and happy for it all. There was one slightly upsetting point where everyone else discussed mortages and buying flats as a couple, and I have to confess I saw my life stretched out before me – and behind me – and I nearly started to cry. The drink probably had something to do with it. But I had no right to, of course. I’ve made my own narrow, single, haughtily eccentric bed, so I must lie in it. It’s a statement I’ve said before and must say again, daily. And without wishing to sound too Frank Capra about it, I’m rich in kind and funny friends, and will take them over an income any day. The lack of money is a bore, but I refuse to be judged as a ‘loser’ on that level alone. I can only ‘lose’ if I stop being the way I am.

Ah well, I shall just have to sell more of the possessions I never use, and make serious pitches for writing work. Paid writing work. And try to balance the budget a bit better. Which means not going out much.

Till then, I’ll get by, I always do. I’m not shackled to a day job I loathe and can pretty much do whatever I want to do every day, as long as it doesn’t cost money. I’m not in any physical pain, and whatever the news says, I’m unlikely to be shot at or bombed compared to being in the same situation in a less stable land. So I have no right to complain. I’m surrounded by millionaires here in Highgate. There has to be some way of channelling a small amount of that wealth in my direction, without resorting to illegality or trying to do some job I’m incapable of. Answers to the usual address. And no, I won’t do Boy George’s community service for him.

I continue to live as a beggar with a choice, and I’m not giving in now.

Am currently reviewing films for Plan B Magazine. It’s a fresh new world for me, and I rather prefer it to reviewing concerts or albums. Being of that world myself, I feel too involved to say anything unkind about a fellow musician or songwriter without it looking like professional envy. Writing about films seems easier, because it’s a world I’m detached from, at least on the levels of acting and directing.

What does tend to annoy me in a film is a poor script, because that’s the only contribution I feel a connection with, as a so-called born wordsmith. It’s pretty frustrating when I moan loudly in the cinema at a risible section of dialogue, only to see the film go on to win a Best Screenplay award. Which is what happened with that thriller about London immigrants, Dirty Pretty Things. Well, I stand by my opinion. It’s still a rotten script, even though it means well. You shouldn’t be given awards for good intentions alone. EVERYONE does everything with a good intention! Mr Bush doesn’t spring out of bed thinking “Ah, another day of being unkind to people from hot countries.”

I rather like press screenings. They’re usually in the one part of town: Soho. There’s no adverts to sit through. The sound is just about at the right volume. The screenings are at a civilised time: 12.30pm or 6.30pm. No one talks through the film or annoys you. Some screenings provide free food. Most of them offer free drink. And you can sit down, of course.

In the last week, I have seen six films. This is nothing for proper critics who have to review absolutely everything, with an average of eight new releases a week. But it’s a start.

My Plan B write-ups are anything from a 50 word preview in a column of new releases, to full reviews with interviews, as I’m doing for ‘Brothers Of The Head’, a visually unique ‘mockumentary’ about a pair of conjoined twins who become cult rock stars.

And no, I’m still not getting paid. But that’s okay, it is Plan B. So I’m also thinking of farming out reviews to magazines which do pay. This is common practice. Mark Kermode reviews the same films for about five different magazines or programmes, I notice.

Some quick thoughts on what I’ve seen so far.

DIRTY SANCHEZ – THE MOVIE
Non-fiction. Spin-off from late-night MTV series. “The Welsh Jackass” sums it up, but with more gross-outs, and more bodily fluids. “Like a paintball Saint Sebastian” says my notes at one point.

LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE
US indie flick, billed as a dark comedy. Dysfunctional family road movie with Toni Collette and Alan Arkin. Okay, but not as good as other examples of the genre, like The Daytrippers or Pieces Of April.

SNOW CAKE
A drama that looks cliched and sentimental on paper, but is actually terrific. Sigourney Weaver plays an autistic woman (Rain Woman?), Alan Rickman plays Alan Rickman, who turns up on the doorstep of her remote Canadian shack and befriends her. Both characters need to find ‘healing’ says the blurb, which rather irks. However, it’s actually genuinely moving and frequently laugh-out-loud funny, thanks to Mr Rickman and a witty script. I’d say this is Mr Rickman’s best film outing to date, in fact. It’s true he’s doing his usual sarky old Bagpuss act, but for once he gets to really explore this persona in a lead role, and it’s a treat to watch.

SCENES OF A SEXUAL NATURE
The joke is there’s no actual sex scenes, ho bloody ho. British ensemble drama filmed entirely on Hampstead Heath, effectively a compilation of short sketches about relationships. Great cast (Eileen Atkins, Ewan McGregor, Gina McKee, Catherine Tate, Adrian Lester), but the script is rather inert. Feels too much like a filmed Fringe play, and not a particularly engrossing one at that. Still, worth seeing for Catherine Tate in unusually understated mode, and Ewan McG playing gay, sunbathing by the Men’s Pond.

STARTER FOR TEN
Slight but enjoyable Brit coming-of-age comedy, with an impossibly boyish James McAvoy as a Bristol Uni student in 1985, competing for the affections of his Patsy Kensit-like teammate on University Challenge. The soundtrack is steeped in 80s pop, obviously, especially The Cure. Mark Gatiss has a hilarious cameo as Bamber Gascoigne, and Catherine Tate is droll as Mr McAvoy’s mother, clearly making her the Julie Walters of her generation.

BROTHERS OF THE HEAD
As mentioned above. The story about conjoined twins fronting a 70s British punk band is arguably upstaged by its own novelty factor, but it’s brilliantly realised, and a unique feast for the eyes. Features a terrific performance from Sean Harris (Ian Curtis in ’24 Party People’) as the band’s manager.

Yesterday – a productive afternoon at Tom’s new studio set-up in the countryside outside Hemel Hempstead. Pass his wife Vicky’s beautiful horse in the yard. The horse is having new shoes put on, by a man who I suppose would be called a blacksmith in the past, but is probably described these days as an Equestrian Solutions Manager. He has a white van and does call-outs.

In proper Joe Meek fashion, we record vocals in the bathroom. Rather pleased to finally find a synth sample that actually sounds like a glockenspiel rather than a poor impression of one, so now the album will have lashings of glockenspiel all over it. Suits me.

Evening – a heady night at the Boogaloo. I install myself – Lucifer-like – at the side of Mr MacGowan at the bar. He’s smoking ‘Sweet Afton’ cigarettes, which are named after a Burns poem and feature the poet on the box, but are actually an Irish brand. Burns’s sister Agnes moved to Dundalk, County Louth, and helped to build up a local following for her brother’s poetry. There’s a been a Burns Obelisk in Dundalk since the mid 1800s, near his sister’s grave. Always good to learn new things while getting drunk, I find. In turn, I teach an Australian girl that ‘blond’ is spelt without an ‘e’ when referring to a man. She’s amazed at this information, and thinks I’m making it up.

Babyshambles play a two-set secret gig. I finally meet the famous Mr Doherty, very tall and thin and beautiful. He is Liza Minnelli as a boy. As a band, Babyshambles are impressively tight and un-shambolic, certianly compared to other times I’ve seen them, and put on a rather entertaining double show. I’m not au fait with Mr D’s back catalogue, but I’m pretty sure they play a few Libertines hits: the ones that sound like the Jam. For the second set, Mr D is topless save for his silk scarf. They play a few reggae-ish songs, including a version of ‘A Message To You Rudy’, with a Rastafarian gentlemen called General Santana on vocals. Apparently Mr D met him in Pentonville jail.

Also meet the artist Peter Blake, the Clash & Big Audio Dynamite musician Mr Mick Jones, and Ms Sadie Frost. Who I suppose I should describe as a famous actress, but she seems happy to be better known for just being famous. All these people seem friendly enough to me, particularly Mr Jones. I chat about ‘Performance’ with him, as sampled on that B.A.D. hit. I also insist on discussing Mr Roddy Frame’s Beatles-y haircut in the video for ‘Good Morning Britain’.

A Derry-born chap from the band Vega 4, called Johnny I think, buys me a drink and keeps myself and Mr MacGowan company at the bar. I’d met him the night before, and rather embarrassingly introduce myself to him all over again tonight. He forgives me, but my poor memory for names and faces is getting so bad these days it isn’t true. Or rather, for names and faces that aren’t burned into my cultural consicousness like Ms Moss and Mr Doherty.

But then, celebrity is relative. My father would have recognised Peter Blake more than Mr Doherty, while the reverse is true for a lot of the young people in the room tonight.

The sitting room of the flat above the pub becomes a kind of green room for the gig. Mr MacGowan – who remains at the bar all night except to join Babyshambles in a rendition of ‘Dirty Old Town’ – tells me he’s worried that his rare video copy of Mr Anger’s Scorpio Rising might be snaffled, as he left it in the upstairs sitting room. It’s not the famous ones he doesn’t trust, or the friends of the famous ones. It’s the friends of the friends of the famous ones. The hangers-on of the hangers-on. So I go upstairs to move the tape to a safer location.

I open the sitting-room door to a rather memorable tableau. Ms Moss, dressed in a dinner jacket and black stockings, plus a black wide-brimmed hat (more Judy Garland than Playboy bunny, but with a bigger hat) is tap-dancing in the centre of the room while Mr Jones plays a guitar and sings ‘Should I Stay Or Should I Go’.

Drink too much, say too much, crawl across the road to my bed.

Monday – Write piece for Plan B on ‘Quadrophenia’, newly issued on a Special Edition DVD. Such a frustrating film. The only real schizophrenia on display is certainly not evinced by the Phil Daniels character, who doesn’t have much to do except get annoyed and resemble a meerkat in eyeliner.

No, it’s the film itself that has the titular split personalities – and not intentionally. It tries to portray the 60s Mod scene in a gritty, naturalistic manner, which are the bits which work. But it also suffers from its original brief: to adapt the Who’s slightly silly 70s concept album of the same name, and include its very 70s music. The Who in 1979 are a very different group to the Who of 1964, and bringing these split personalities together just doesn’t work. They should have let the 60s music do all the talking, and kept the prog-rock ‘Hooked On Bach’ synths out of it. Though the brass-section stormer ‘5.15’ is allowable. I’ll let that one through as an exception to the rule.

Leslie Ash’s Karen Carpenter hair is as wrong as the casting of Sting. Toyah Willcox’s boyish blond feathercut is more accurate for the period, but her character is curiously shortchanged. She has some kind of casual romantic bond with Phil Daniels’s Jimmy, but it’s not really explained. It doesn’t help that a lot of the movie is improvised, and the different actors – all still in their teens and needing to learn that improvisation is a team effort, not an audition – are desperately pulling at each scene’s corners. It’s often a schizoid mess, frankly.

Toyah’s character is called “Monkey”, which I used to think was a rather silly name for a girl until I saw the cover of last week’s Time Out Magazine. They’re showcasing people from their personal ads section with full photos, in a vaguely Reality TV manner. One is a short-haired woman who describes herself as “Munkee, 26”. I wonder if she’s a Quadrophenia fan.

Phil Daniels shouting “BELL BOYYYYYY!” rather recalls William Shatner’s similarly hammy outburst in “The Wrath of Kahn”: “KAHHHHNNNN!” I know it’s hard to be an angsty teenager and NOT laughable to others, but the thing is Mr Daniels does manage to be angry and serious in much of the film up to this moment. So it’s so disappointing that this moment comes late in the movie, when we should be feeling Jimmy’s alienation, not thinking he’s a risible Cockney meerkat in a nice suit.

Modern Mods from all over the world come to Brighton and London to do ‘Quadrophenia’ tours, which is great, but the film is frequently undeserving of such affection. A new Mod landmark movie needs to be made. One without Sting – who in Quadrophenia is clearly a New Romantic faking it in the Mod World. I know, we can smell our own.

Yesterday: Spend a nice day in the Reading Room. Enjoy some quotes in the museum literature about the space:

“Some are here because they hope these walls of books will deaden the drumming of the demon in their ears.”
-Louis MacNeice.

“That Happy Island in Bloomsbury”
– Matthew Arnold.

My favourite fictional references include, as ever, Three Men In A Boat. Jerome’s narrator goes to the Reading Room in order to look up the symptoms of a minor ailment. After consulting a medical encyclopaedia, he leaves the building a decrepit wreck, convinced he has everything from A-Z except housemaid’s knee.

I check my email in a nearby cafe during my self-imposed lunch break, and strike up a conversation with two men at a neighbouring table. It transpires they are organising the London International Cartoon Festival 2008, to be held in Museum Street. I ask whether they mean newspaper cartoons or the sort that move about on television. They say, “Both.”

Doubtless it’ll have something to do with the nearby Cartoon Gallery, a terrific little museum in Little Russell St that’s I’ve already visited twice this year. It covers everything from Hogarth and Gillray to Steve Bell and Giles, and includes the history of British comics too.

Speaking of which, I finish Alan Moore’s ‘Promethea’ comic series, which ends with a well-intentioned but rather preachy and dull hippy-ish rant about his interests in Kabbalah philosophy: how we’re all at one with the universe, and all part of the same cosmic consciousness, how time and death don’t really exist, and so on. I’m reminded of the children at the end of Philip Pullman’s trilogy suddenly spouting the author’s personal philosophy for living. And it doesn’t help that the best-known Kabbalah-inspired work in recent popular culture is Guy Ritchie’s Revolver, deemed the worst film of last year by rather too many critics.

Just give us the story, I say. Besides, ‘Sophie’s World’ does the ‘philosophy lesson as entertainment’ thing far better. ‘Promethea’ does have some terrific ideas and scenes, though, which is the sort of thing Mr Moore does best and should really stick to. At one point a lady FBI agent falls through the floor and out of the comic world itself, looking down on it from above and seeing the panel-by-panel structure that she’s been living in all this time. Ideas and beliefs should always be channelled into an entertaining linear narrative, I feel, because the reader needs a handrail. Otherwise you just get the feeling of being lectured, and there’s a reason why that term is often used pejoratively.

I go to Mark Moore’s Electrogogo club at Madame JoJo’s, mainly to see Gene Serene do a late night PA there. It’s been a while since I’ve gone out to a late-night club by myself, and the walk from Leicester Square is riddled with anxiety. Perhaps I’m in just an uneasier state at the moment, but I get such a sense of dread when going out by myself at night. I feel utterly exposed and at the mercy of the night’s louder, stronger denizens. It’s about 11.30pm, so I’m surrounded by drunken people exiting bars and venues, having already completed their night out. I’m stone cold sober, and all too aware of it.

None of your Promethea ‘we’re all part of the same consciousness’ here. Walking up Charing Cross Rd at night, I feel utterly at odds with every other person in this world. Stick THAT in your Kabbalah and smoke it, Mr Moore.

But once I’m at Madame JoJo’s, I calm down a bit. The door staff complement me on my appearance (white suit, a bit of make-up, cream scarf), and Mr Moore’s put me on the guest list. I feel safer, if not quite in my element.

I catch a bit of the band Coco Electrik, who have a rather full-on guitar/electro noise with a girl singer, and are pretty good at it. Meet a girl called Katy who has a feathered hat and says she remembers me from the Club Smashing days. Which is over ten years ago. Gene Serene is terrific as ever, her trademark streak of red across her raven hair still wonderfully intact, her performance full of attitude, but sincere rather than contrived for the music. She’s the Patti Smith of the London electropop scene. In one number, she sings while pretending to pluck the strings on a guitar-shaped shoulder bag.

I say hello to Ms Rhoda, pleased to meet someone I actually know, though tonight she seems rather caught up with her own romantic soap opera. Various attractively androgynous young things are there, all peacock hues and shifting genders, but the more I muse on THAT, the more depressed I get. If this were a movie I’d find someone I like who actually likes me back in the same degree, and we’d be together, and the credits would roll. But this is my increasingly desperate life. I know I’ve made my own narrow single bed and must lie in it, but I look on at the club, at the happy dancing attractive people, and think: it’s too late for me. I’ve had it.

After standing alone, stewing like this for too long, I leave the club and head for the bus stop. Bump into Grant The Club Promoter at the stop. He’s friendly and it’s good to always be able to find people to chat to like this, particularly when feeling fragile and exposed in the dark of Central London at 2am.

It’s not just my dwindling energy and dislike of nightbuses that puts me off going to other people’s clubs at the moment, it’s also the sense that I just don’t enjoy them as much as I used to. What are you supposed to DO there? I love dancing and chatting, but recently I have felt no inclination to dance while at a club, and have had enough of holding conversations that must be shouted directly into each others’ ears to overcome the noise. What I enjoy now more than ever is the company of friends, but preferably outside of crowds, clubs or concerts.

I feel I’ve forgotten how to have fun. Now there’s just a shroud of nerves and anxiety. I suppose I could see my GP about this, but I really don’t want to go back onto the dreaded paroxetine, or indeed any other kind of pill. So I’m reading and writing it out, in order to ride it out. Onwards and upwards, he typed with a heavy heart.

As Mr MacNeice says, I need to deaden the drumming of the demon in my ears. Which is where we came in.

In an attempt to impose a routine on my chaotic existence and get a steady quota of reading and writing done, I have taken to commuting to libraries every day. It’s important that the library hasn’t got a free wireless Internet service, otherwise I’d just be idly emailing and web-surfing my days away like I’ve been doing at home for so long. So the new plan is to get up at about 7 and go straight to the institution of choice, as soon as it opens. I divide the day into periods of ‘work’ and breaks. So I now enjoy the discipline of having a job, without the troublesome business of actually having a job. The larger public libraries of London are my office.

I’m a British Library card holder, but though I enjoy the current St Pancras building (when I have reason to use their collections), I far prefer to sit in its ghost-ridden former venue, the fantastic Reading Room of the British Museum. With its leather book rests and pen-hooks, glorious domed roof, and 99.9% perfect circular structure (4 cm off, I learn), it’s a fitting working environment for a penniless aesthete.

I’d also love to use that Groucho Club of libraries, The London Library in Piccadilly; but alas their membership remains beyond my means at £195 a year. It’s on my To Do list when I have the money. If I ever have the money.

The BM’s Reading Room is now the Museum’s public reference library. Anyone can wander in without registration or membership of any kind and sit down at one of the famous desks. There are rules to observe: be quiet, no eating or drinking, no photography, no mobile phones, don’t leave your bag unattended. Standard stuff, you’d have thought. Yet there are one or two absolute idiots who happily make calls on their mobiles here – without even whispering. Still, the place isn’t that much louder than the crowded Humanities rooms of the British Library proper.

I do wonder how some people can think a public library is a place to use their mobile phone, and glower to the point of threatening violence when they’re politely asked to desist. Is there no act more shockingly arrogant and uncaring of one’s fellow man in the field of modern etiquette? To not switch off your phone as you enter a library just beggars belief.

I did once hear of some kind of technological solution which broadcasts a mobile blocking signal across the building. If such a divine box of tricks exists, it must be installed at every library immediately.

A common source of sporadic income for the penurious wastrel is being interviewed for market research. Many of my friends have earned easy sums of cash this way, pocketing anything upwards of £30 for an hour’s slight inconvenience. All they have to do is go along to these little sessions and help some company improve their product by answering a few questions.

I would like to describe what exactly these events are like, but to date I have completely failed to even qualify past an initial selection process. This is my fifth attempt. I wonder if I can be officially designated as Not Normal Enough.

Their message to me:

“Thank you very much for your time and interest in taking part in our mobile phone research. Unfortunately I am contacting you to let you know that we won’t be able to use you on this occasion – I am sorry, but the client’s requirements were most specific and there was simply a mis-match between your answers and the profile they needed for the research.”

‘Simply a mis-match’. Another phrase for the gravestone.

I suppose I should feel pleased that I fail to fit in with their world of ticked boxes and firmly delineated socio-economic groups. But I’d rather lie that I’m a Target Market and have the money, than be honest and poor. Pity I’m such a bad liar. Or a bad actor.

Thing is, I wonder if it’s occurred to these firms that most people who apply for market research are not going to be a ‘target market’ de facto. They are absolutely desperate for money, and live hand to strawberry-lipsalved mouth. The people they do want to interview are too busy having their careers and 2.4 iPods to take any time out for research. I suspect that an awful lot of game playing goes on at these sessions, as the poverty-stricken interviewee pretends he earns £40,000 and is looking for the right type of mobile phone that protects and deodorises 24 hours a day, for the busy executive on the go. Because he’s worth it.

Then again, it probably wasn’t helpful that I asked the research people why they didn’t have a tick-box under ‘Gender’ for ‘Don’t Know’.

Fascinating interview in Metro the other day, with the always engaging comedian-turned-activist Mark Thomas. He’s a Green Party supporter, and like me often gets fools asking ‘Isn’t that a wasted vote, though?’

My response is usually to point out that no votes for the Greens are wasted: they’re all counted and recorded forever, and are USED to help the party know they’re doing the right thing, to indicate that people actually want something to change. An election is officially announced as a Notice Of Poll, because it’s THE poll. So to vote for one of the big parties purely because they’re more likely to win is like voting for your favourite film from a choice of two, where neither is really you. What’s the point of voting for something you don’t entirely like? A vote for Least Worst rather than what you really, actually want. THAT’S a wasted vote. As is not voting at all.

Mr Thomas puts it better:

MT: I’m a Green Party voter.
METRO: Doesn’t that seem like a wasted vote?
MT: Not unless you say what you want, you’re not gonna get it. I’m not gonna play the game of ‘let’s vote for who came second in the throat-cutting competition’.

Short notice, I know, but tonight at the Boogaloo there’s an ‘indie comedy night’, The OK Club. Nothing to do with me, but I feel obliged to publicise it as the venue’s Ambassador, and I’d like to see more live comedy at The Boogaloo. As long as it’s not the usual ‘trouble with airline food / difference between men and women’ drivel.

I’m also plugging this because Josie Long asked me to, and I think she’s fantastic. She was handing out flyers for this at the Latitude Festival.

So the aforementioned excellent comic Ms Long is hosting the night. Robin Ince is also mentioned as appearing, but given he’s also doing his solo Edinburgh show in Luton the same night, it’ll be interesting to see if he manages to do The Boogaloo as well. The Thameslink to Luton is very fast, but even so…

Anyway, I’ll be there.

Here’s the flyer details:
The OK Club: live comedy, music & DJs. Theme: “My Favourite Mix Tape”.
Thursday 27th July. Starts 7pm. £3 entry.
Venue: The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Rd, N6 5AT. Next to Highgate tube.
http://www.myspace.com/lesmarsh