Latitude Walking, Lighthouse Sleeping
My feet are killing me. And my shoes are falling apart. Grumble, grumble, grumble.
I should make it clear I’m having a perfectly nice time here, I just need to sit and rest for a while. This Guest Cafe is within the Press Tent’s wonderful WiFi range, so I can just whip out my iBook and post a diary entry from a field in the middle of nowhere. Well, nowhere as far as some modern concerns go. I’m at the Latitude Festival, near the resort town of Southwold in Suffolk. Southwold is slightly – happily – out of time. There’s even a Campaign To Have Broadband In Southwold, as if it were a small developing Third World country. In fact, I can get a better mobile phone signal in Tangier, Africa, than I can in some parts of Suffolk. Suits me fine, of course, as someone who is a little out of time myself.
My parents are staying at the Southwold cottage they usually rent for a week every year, and I’d be visiting them for the weekend regardless. When I heard a new Mean Fiddler festival – featuring more than a few acts I either admire or am acquainted with personally, or both – was not only taking place near Southwold, but during the same weekend of my stay there, it seemed the height of sarcasm NOT to seek out a weekend pass. So here I am.
At first I attempted to procur a pass as part of paying work, reviewing the festival for a magazine or a commercial music website. I tried two magazines and a website. That failed. No one can accuse me of not trying to apply for work at every opportunity. How can I be anything other than a freeloader if I am deliberately denied employment for the only skills I have been told I am any good at, to wit writing and performing and DJ-ing and looking strange? So I switched to Well-Mannered Hustler Mode and secured a VIP guest pass by dint of being vaguely connected to the better connected. It was always thus.
Actually, Plan B have asked me to review the entire festival for free, but they’ve only demanded a 200 words thumbnail live review. 200 words for about 500 bands and acts. More bands than words to review them with. So I should really select certain adjectives to cover a whole group of bands at a time. How’s this:
“EDGY”
“ANGULAR”
“LILTING”
“SOARING”
“DYNAMIC”
“MELODIC”
“DEBUT”
“CATCHY”
“ECLECTIC”
“BEARDED”
There you go. When dancing about architecture, there’s only a limited amount of steps. Pick and mix the above, apply to absolutely any band ever, and you need never read a music magazine again. All part of the service of being a Dickon Edwards reader.
I like to think I pay my way by looking vaguely interesting, by not letting the side down. Brightening up the place a little. So I’ve got freshly bleached hair, and a freshly dry-cleaned white suit. At a boiling hot rock festival. This is the price I must pay, in lieu of the £105 ticket. Shame that my loafers have decided to give up the ghost, as I’ve had to do an awfully large amount of walking since I’ve been here. But even the most dilapidated loafers look better than brand new puffy trainers. At least on me they do.
Sleeping in a proper room – and one right opposite Southwold Lighthouse – as opposed to a tent really swung it for me. This morning I was awoken by raucous gulls. I think they’re on at the Uncut Stage at 14.30.
I do like tents, it’s just campsites that irk me. At 10.30am today I returned to the site and walked past a long, long queue of people waiting for a shower, even in the Guest Camping area. That’s the side I’m not keen on. Not when I’m wearing a nice suit, anyway.
My last festival as a punter was Reading 1997, when I pretty much said goodbye to the experience. After this, I promised myself, no more festivals unless I’m working, performing or am otherwise involved in a non-spectator capacity. It was the time of Many Endings. Orlando had failed to sell records and be famous, I was leaving the band, so I was spending my dwindling share of the record company money on a vaguely luxurious life, almost by way of compensation. Like a trip to Disneyland for a terminally ill child. Taxis, hotel rooms, binges. The benefits with none of the work. So I blagged a Reading pass, and booked a hotel room within walking distance on the site. Bliss. I shared this wealth, though: making it known that I had a room and the drinks were on me. Erol Alkan, now a top London DJ, slept on my floor. A thin, pretty girl who said she was a presenter on the Nickelodeon Channel shared my double bed, entirely chastely and non-nude. (And as I add that last detail I really wish I hadn’t.)
As Mr Alkan snored, Ms Children’s TV Presenter and I watched the late night movie, sitting up in bed, like a slumber party. With consummate irony, I recall the film was Alan Parker’s ‘Fame’.
So today, as per the whole weekend, I’m wandering around this leafy field-based Suffolk rock festival in a white suit and make-up, lurking backstage at the Literary Tent to chat to acquaintances who are actually booked to perform. The tent is shared by ‘Vox N Roll’, the book reading evening hosted by my friends at The Boogaloo pub, and ‘The Book Club’, the jazz-like comedy variety revue featuring my friend Mr Martin White.
So it’s a fair mistake to make when the most common question I hear from approaching strangers at Latitude is ‘when are you on?’. Even programme sellers have raced over to me ask this question. What can I say? I SHOULD be performing, damn it. Why aren’t I? I’m available and willing and I make the effort in looking interesting. Whether with Fosca or solo, whether doing music or text. Fosca can be invited to play Swedish festivals in lovely lakeside forests – the sort of event that Latitude is clearly influenced by – but none in my own country.
The cynical answer is “Because you’re a rubbish performer, Dickon. And your work is rubbish too. Even the Friday At Noon Acts on the White Lightning Cider Stage are a million times better than you. They have ungroomed beards and trainers and are trying to sound like a watered-down Snow Patrol, who in turn are a watered-down Keane, who in turn are a watered-down Coldplay, who in turn are a watered-down Radiohead, who in turn are a watered-down Pink Floyd. But that’s still better than your brand of ‘well-dressed wordy misfit’ songs and stories. Dilution of fake emotion, darling, is the new rock and roll!”
Maybe it’s because although I’m lucky as a ligger, I’ve never been lucky as a performer. Never have been. Why weren’t Orlando performing at any of those 1996-7 UK rock festivals, despite being on the mighty Warner Brothers? Not even at noon on the Friday on the smallest stage? John Peel played Fosca a number of times, which is more than some acts on the John Peel Stage at Glastonbury can claim. Hah, listen to this faux-haughty bitterness raging!
I can only assume the three or four shadowy people who pull the strings in the UK festival booking world just didn’t like Orlando, as I guess they don’t like me and Fosca. Well, let’s say up until now. Fair enough. But I live in hope things will change. Perhaps it takes a new Fosca album released on just the right kind of label with just the right kind of PR people and management, at just the right kind of time. With just the right kind of soundbitey pitch. ‘Cult Blond Fop-Rock Songwriter Dickon Edwards promotes his new album on Fashionably Acceptable Records’. People need The Angle. The Twist. The Pitch. The Story. Also, many of the music biz and press people in 1997 who clearly didn’t want Orlando anywhere near their nice festival stages have been replaced by much jollier younger models in 2006, who find it easier to defer to my wiser, aloof older man allure, ho ho. My age alone in such an acne-saturated environment suggests I’m ‘someone’. I’m not ENTIRELY joking.
And so I go on. Even though I never ‘go on’.
I was going to write about the bands and acts I’ve seen so far. But I appear to have filled this page quite easily talking about myself.
Hmm.
I’m off to photograph coloured sheep.
Latitude test post
Am at the Latitude Festival testing out the Press Tent’s WiFi.
B&D – Summer Barbecue Party, July 20th
THE BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED – SUMMER BARBECUE PARTY
Date: Thursday 20th July.
Times: BARBECUE from 7pm, Club 9pm to midnight.
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 please dress up.
“Unmissable!” – Time Out, who also featured B&D in their ‘Top 10 Critics’ Choices’.
“A divine London night out” – The Penny magazine.
The well-dressed club night returns, its motto being ‘Never Knowingly Underdressed’. This time, the club starts a little earlier, at 7pm, with a barbecue in the garden outside. Then it’s business as usual inside from 9pm.
The Beautiful And Damned is a timezone-jumping decadent disco curated (as opposed to ‘DJ’d’) by Mr Dickon Edwards and Miss Red. Patrons are encouraged to dress up in their own take on period glamour, ideally with a nod to the styles of the 1920s & 1930s, though anything more stylish than the ubiquitous Old Street fashions is welcome. Cigarillos, braces, tweeds, beads, silk scarves, summer dresses, unforgiving teddy bears, Pimms & high hats. Free cocktails for the best dressed.
Drink, dance, and ponder the nights tenderness to an eclectic but discerning mix of Sinatra (Frank & Nancy), Strauss waltzes, soundtracks, musicals, El Records, Peggy Lee, Doris Day, Gilbert & Sullivan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dory Previn, Bugsy Malone, Cabaret, Chicago, deviant disco, shadowy soul, parvenu pop, insouciant indie, and easy listening for difficult children.
Mr MacGowan Returns (certificate: Moderate Horror)

Photo taken by Mr O’Boyle’s phone. Time: 4.30am this morning. Place: a black cab, en route from the ‘Pirates Of the Caribbean 2’ premiere party, heading across town to the Boogaloo.
A sequel night. Mr MacGowan is back, so it’s Return Of The Odd Couple time. Within seconds of meeting him at the Dorchester’s bar, he suggests another trip to Tangier. It’s ridiculously hot in London at the moment, so North Africa is hardly going to be a cooling break. But he argues that Tangier is used to high temperatures, and is built for them, unlike London. Moreover, it’s on the coast, so you get the Mediterranean breeze. Well, we’ll see.
And tonight we’re off to the premiere of ‘Pirates Of The Caribbean 2’, at the Leicester Square Odeon. There’s five tickets for us, and we’re four: Mr O’Boyle, Ms Clarke, Mr MacGowan, and myself. So we give the spare ticket to our taxi driver, who parks the car and joins us inside. He is absolutely delighted.
I naturally enjoy walking the big red carpet at Leicester Square, and wonder what the autograph hunters and paparazzi think as they see me. I could have sworn I heard someone shouting out:
“Hey! Dickon From Orlando!”
But it’s now occurred to me that they may have really shouted:
“Hey Dickhead! We want Orlando!”
The sequel reunites Mr Depp, Mr Bloom and Ms Knightley from the first film, joined by Mr Nighy as a Lovecraftian villain whose face is a mass of writhing octopus-like tentacles. There’s one scene where he fiendishly plays a church organ in true Hammer Horror style. Except the organ is on a watery ghost ship, and he plays it with his facial appendages. Presumably it’s CGI, but even on a screen as big as the Odeon’s, it’s hard to tell which bits are make-up and prosthetics, and which are applied by someone clever on a computer. Even so, the creature’s eyes – which are all that’s left of the actor’s face – are unmistakably Mr Nighy’s.
Though I love a good children’s blockbuster (I went to see ‘Narnia’ twice), I wasn’t a big fan of ‘Pirates 1′. The funny bits didn’t really work, and although the special effects were impressive, I felt everything else seemed far from special. The fantasy swashbuckling sequences were oddly corporate and soulless, and smacked of going through the motions. I was all too aware that this was not much more than its nominal description: a Disney film adaptation of a Disneyland funfair ride. Though Mr Rush was a fun villain, it was mostly Mr Depp’s otherworldy charisma that justified the movie’s existence. Now, one must never confuse an unremarkable film with a great Johnny Depp performance with an actually great film. But thousands disagreed with me, children, adults and Oscar judges alike, so here we are at the sequel.
While the producer Mr Bruckenheimer is hardly a flamboyant, artistic visionary along the lines of Mr Jackson, Mr Gilliam or Mr Burton, he knows what strangers all over the world will queue up to see. Or even, as in the case of this massive, traffic-halting premiere, what will make strangers queue up to see other strangers going into the cinema to see. He is a master of popcorn.
So I’m happy to report the sequel is a great improvement on its predecessor. The funny bits are actually funny, the fantasy set-pieces are more original and inventive. Mr Nighy’s fishy crew are incredible to look at: mutant faces which draw on starfish and hammerhead sharks, even a crewman whose head disappears into a shell like a hermit crab. There’s also a terrific swordfight on the top of a giant wooden wheel rolling through a tropical forest, which I’m fairly sure hasn’t been done before. Jack Davenport’s character has actually become a character, as opposed to the cardboard cut-out he was in the first film. Mr Depp is as watchable as ever. Although the Bruckheimer sheen still prevents it from being in the same stylish postcode as those wonderful Gothic Rococo movies Mr Depp makes with Mr Burton, it is definitely a lot of fun. The certificate says: “12A – Moderate Horror.”
Speaking of which, Mr MacGowan was his usual self. On the verge of being Difficult (or even Trouble) one moment, a knowledgeable and funny storyteller – and at some gatherings the only person in the room who’ll talk to me – the next.
At the premiere, an actor from “Lost’ asks to be photographed next to him. Although I’ve never seen the series, I’m aware of this gentlemen, who is unusually large for a modern US TV star. Long haired and plump, he looks more like your average comic shop worker than a glossy actor – and thus rather stands out from the rest of the more blandly pretty cast.
Which is to his credit, because I’d never recognise any of the others if they were there at the premiere. They’re entirely ‘lost’ on me, ho ho. Beauty is as much about registering in the memory as it is about surface aesthetics. This is why the large chap has more in common with Mr Depp than his Lost colleagues. And it’s also why Johnny Vegas is more beautiful than Sienna Miller. She’s one of those pretty actresses that the popular press like to spy on. I must have seen umpteen photos of her, yet I still would never recognise her in person. I think she’s blonde. I think.
After a meal at the Dorchester, we repair to Old Billingsgate Market for the premiere party. Lots of piratey props, palm trees, muslin tablecloths, rum cocktails, waiters in pirate costume. We spot Mr Depp, but don’t get the chance to speak to him. We hear later that he was looking for us – well, looking for Mr MacGowan. They’ve been friends since the release of Edward Scissorhands. Mr Depp has played guitar on Mr MacGowan’s solo records, and Mr MacGowan has appeared with him in The Libertine (though cut out in the edit).
In the party’s VIP area, I spot Mr Nighy, and Mr Davenport with a full beard, and a woman from the TV series Green Wing. Not Tamsin Thing, one of the other ones. No, not her either. Or her. The other one. Otherwise, we’re surrounded by people who are either celebrities I’m not aware of, or more likely non-famous people who go to premieres. These sort of massive screenings are mostly attended by competition winners, corporate hospitality types, friends and family of the hundreds involved with the movie, and industry workers. I suppose I’m here as a friend of a friend of Johnny Depp.
I do spot Mr Philip Sallon, who is never knowingly underdressed. He’s in full Georgian frills and lace jacket, which he’d be wearing anyway, pirate theme or no pirate theme. Mr MacGowan chats to him about the Blitz Kids days. It’s fair to say the Pogues singer was never a New Romantic, but he was definitely a well-known face about town in the Punk and Post-Punk days, and claims to have at least dipped his toe in every defining London club and gig scene from those days, regardless of the music. Including the Steve Strange crowd. As he tells me tonight, he even attended some of the early Acid House rave parties. “I just like to go wherever people are enjoying themselves.”
After the premiere party dismantles around Mr MacGowan, who has typically refused to leave until his chair is literally packed away in front of him, he eschews his hotel room for the sofas at the Boogaloo. There, the two of us are left drinking and falling asleep, as Donovan plays on the jukebox and the sun comes up on another unnecessarily hot day.
After a short snooze, I wake up, remember my real bed is yards away and leave him sleeping there. I let myself out of the pub – a privilege I never take for granted – and stagger home.
Modern Friends
Lea in Big Brother:
“These aren’t my friends. They’re just people I know.”
A quote of the year, not least because of MySpace Nation.
(I’ve just come up with that phrase on the spot, though I don’t doubt minds have been thinking alike across the world. I’d lay money that someone somewhere is writing a book called ‘Myspace Nation’. Purely because it’s so absolutely, searingly inevitable.)
I get a kind of cathartic buzz watching Lea on Big Brother. She’s a paranoid, attention-seeking depressive given to regular fits of tears, whose spending of money trying to feel happier and at home in her skin – her plastic surgery – clearly has failed to deliver even an iota of the hoped-for results. By way of excusing my watching of Big Brother at all, I like to think of Ms Lea as doing the side of me that I’d like to have surgically removed myself. She’s my emotional stunt double.
Something currently driving me mad: knowing how to greet people I know. A handshake, a hug, a kiss on one cheek, a kiss on both cheeks, or a kiss on the lips? Which one for which person at which occasion? No one ever tells you this. It’s an absolute minefield of anxiety. People should wear signs. “We should hug.” “A handshake is fine.” “Not on the mouth!”
I can never work out what people want, and am terrified that I’ll do the wrong thing, and they’ll call the police.
A cartoon seen recently, worthy of pre-war Punch, marked ‘Modern London Life’.
Two drawings, each of two women hugging effusively, saying “How ARE you?”. The caption for one says “Best Friends”. The other says “Vague Aquaintances”.
Both drawings are, of course, absolutely identical.
Mythical Joke
Said the pond to Narcissus, “It’s just ‘self, self, self’ with some people.”
DE’s YouTube Favourites #2
Talking Heads: “Nothing But Flowers” (1988)






A rare video from Talking Heads’ last album, featuring not only Mr D Byrne and pals on the verge of splitting up, but also Mr J Marr fresh from splitting up The Smiths. And Ms K MacColl fresh from THAT Pogues duet, to boot. An pro-environmental song of sorts, but with a witty twist. It’s a kind of retort to Ms Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi”, where the protaganist laments Paradise being paved to ‘put up a parking lot’. Here, Mr Byrne’s character is in some kind of post-apocalypse rural Paradise, but misses the parking lots, shopping malls and billboards that went before.
Musically, it reminds me somewhat of The Smiths’ “Ask”: Mr Marr’s jangly summer guitar, Ms MacColl’s winning pop harmonies.
If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower
Here’s another Talking Heads song, the better-known “Once In A Lifetime”. As covered by Mr K Frog and The Muppets. Oh yes!

Finally, here’s fellow New York witty art-pop purveyor Ms Laurie Anderson, delivering a short spoken word piece about Women And Money. Proving her advice on how best to avoid accusations of pretension while making Art: take the mickey out of yourself. I can’t watch her these days without thinking of the UK comedienne Ms Jo Neary, who I saw in Edinburgh last year. One of her character routines is essentially ‘Laurie Anderson Orders A Bag Of Chips’. It was a pretty funny impersonation, though I did wonder if your average UK comedy audience would recognise a Laurie Anderson spoof. It’s not like she’s Tony Blair. Actually, Ms Anderson’s latest show, Happiness, includes her account of SELLING bags of chips, when she worked at a NYC branch of McDonalds, just out of wondering what it was like. In her (puts on Laurie Anderson voice)… de- tached…. ar-ty ec-cen-tric… vague-ly a-sexual… a-loof but po-litical… way.
You can see why I relate to her.

News Of A Curtain-Twitching World
Today’s News Of The World screams predictably about ‘Sarah’s Law’, and the need to keep convicted paedophiles monitored. They seem to be doing a pretty good job themselves, publishing a photo of two gentlemen apparently filming small children in a park. Later that day, the police report they’ve arrested one of the men, thanks to the paper’s vigilence. The papers sell, the readers are happy, the police are happy. Who needs a new law?
In fact, if Sarah’s Law were to come into being, the tabloid would no longer be obliged to do this sort of monitoring themselves. I can’t believe that’s what they really want, deep down. They clearly love taking pictures of paedophiles, and would hate to have to stop. Monitoring paedophiles is the tabloids’ fetish. They’re paedophile-philes. They get off on taking photos of men getting off on taking photos.
Just underneath this story on the NOTW website is a rather shocking juxtaposition: a little ad for a competition called ‘Baby Idol’. Next to a photo of a smiling naked baby is the following invitation. “Does your baby have the X Factor? Do you think your nipper could be Britain’s cutest? Text or email us your top tot photos and you could win a family holiday for four.”
Something else that springs to mind: the editor of The Sun and lately of the NOTW, Ms R. Wade, is married to the Eastenders actor Mr R. Kemp. With his shaven head and moon-like features, I can’t help thinking Mr Kemp rather resembles a giant baby. I’d better not dwell on this line of thinking any further.
I do hope no one saw me looking at the News Of The World. I was doing it purely for research purposes.
DE’s YouTube Favourites #1
YouTube.com is this year’s free-for-all Internet time-manslaughtering fad. It’s a quick way of uploading poor quality videos for the world to see, as long as they’re only a few minutes long. So although most YouTube videos are home recordings of friends at home with a camcorder, usually dancing in their underwear, the format also lends itself to airing pop videos from dusty VHS collections. One can have a jolly time watching wonderful, obscure clips of favourite bands for hours on end. Or at least until the boss catches you. Whatever that’s like.
Doubtless it will only be a matter of time before the site is closed down due to copyright infringement, or because the next thing has come along to replace it. I remember first being told I should sign up to MySpace, “because Friendster is getting too commercial”. And now MySpace is riddled with adverts and is owned by Rupert Murdoch. And so shall it be until the next fad comes along, and we all have to open new accounts yet again, think of yet another password, try to remember what our favourite films are, and so on. All that changes things is someone somewhere thinking about money – and doing something about it. Which is the case with most angles of life.
So I’ve succumbed to YouTube, and am keen to share a few choices before they vanish into the ether. Forgive the indulgence.
First, here’s Galaxie 500 – “Strange”, from UK TV circa 1990. A weird drum-less kazoo performance. Dean Wareham’s incredible voice and guitar. A wonderful song.

Here they are again, this time from “Transmission”, an indie music programme that went out at about 3AM. They’re introduced by a Melody Maker writer from the time, called ‘Ngaire’, though I think she was also known as ‘Ngaire-Ruth’. Note her baggy hooded top – 1990 indie fashion personified. I’m afraid I had one too. We all did. No time is more distant than the recent past.
Still, I agree with her bit about them making perfect music to listen alone to. In your hooded top.
How beautiful is Mr Wareham here? “I see myself as the American Morrissey” he jokes. But he was, in a way, to me.


The Manslaughter of Time
Awake from a ridiculous dream. Something to do with being in a speedboat racing along the Thames near Oxford, with two men who insist on singing Morrissey’s Piccadilly Palare. “I’m more concerned about safety than speed” I say to the driver as he hurtles the machine along.
Then I realise this is all frankly substandard for an ostensibly limitless imagination, and so I do the dream equivalent of walking out of the cinema in a huff: I force myself to wake up. I wake up out of protest at my own dreams. Even the real world has better pictures when one’s dreams are this silly.
It’s 3.30am. I decide to debrief.
The previous day is one of those where I find myself lurching purely from errands to chores, taking journeys in between that take far too long. Waiting for a bus, waiting as the bus gets stuck in traffic, waiting as the bus stops and parks to change drivers (twice in one day). Waiting behind a woman in a coffee bar while she uses a credit card to pay for a ersatz-uccino. During one of these many longeurs, I muse on how normal people manage to get things done. How does anyone even manage to find the time to do their job? I find it incredibly hard just to manage three or four household errands in a day.
Getting up is a monumental task in itself. Washing, shaving, grooming, fiddling with contact lenses. Worrying about whether these lenses are right for me, or if they’re worth the £30 a month that I can’t afford anyway. I used to use disposables, but my eyes didn’t take to them too well. So now they’ve got me on these ‘Night & Day’ monthly soft lenses, which are meant to be okay to leave in overnight for up to a month. It’s true they’re a lot easier to fit than disposables, but I’m still not sure if my eyes will ever get used to lenses at all. From time to time one of them becomes cloudy or irritable. I’ll see what the optician says when I see her next week.
I mention all this, because THINKING about all this takes up time already.
After ploughing through emails, noting events in my diary that I may or may not attend, replying to those that warrant a reply, I finally leave the room at about noon. Already I’ve wasted too much time. But before I manage to make it outside, the phone rings. Can I review Cat Power at the Barbican tonight? No, not at short notice when I’ve got other undone and overdue things to do. And then I waste further time worrying if turning down this job was a bad move, career-wise. I’ll never know now. And already my day is a maelstrom of anxiety. And I haven’t even left the house.
I have to return a book to Holloway Central Library, so that means a bus journey. And then I’ve got to go to the bank. Another journey. And then to Argos to exhange a timer plug for Lawrence & Alison’s flat in Camden, which I’m ‘house-sitting’ while they’re both away. And then to their flat to fit it. Then my bag starts to fall apart, so I have to find a shop which sells Superglue to fix it. And then I have to fix the bag. I pass Virgin Megastore so I pop in to see if they have any copies of the free newspaper The Penny, which carries a large interview with me about the club. I know this because some people have told me they’ve seen me in it.
Z: (via text) Was just in Virgin Megastore. Great interview and photo of you!
DE: Where? What magazine?
Z: Oh, didn’t you know? I thought you’d know.
Me: No. I can’t know anything till I’m told about it. That’s how knowledge works. Which magazine is it?
Z: Oh, it was a free thing in Virgin. Can’t remember what it’s called. I’d have gotten you a copy, if I’d known you didn’t know about it. But how was I to know you didn’t know?
Me: (gritted teeth). Thanks for letting me… know.
It’s a bit like finding out about a friend’s love life status.
DE: So how’s things with you and Mr X?
Y: Oh, didn’t you know? We stopped going out AGES ago! It’s been AGES!
DE: I can’t help that. No one told me. I’m not on your relationship mailing list. How am I meant to know if no one tells me?
Y: You should find out.
DE: I don’t see you that often. I don’t see anyone that often. I’m too busy wrestling with trying to keep sane on a daily basis.
Actually, last I heard, Mr X is now back with Ms Y yet again. I can’t keep up. But anyway. This magazine thing I’m in.
I eventually realise it must be The Penny, and by the time I get to Virgin all the copies are gone. So I decide to go online, find the website, and email them very nicely, asking for copies.
By which time it’s getting on for 5pm, so I have to make it back to Highgate in order to meet Mr Chipping at a Pete Doherty event at the Boogaloo. I could do with sitting down and collecting my thoughts. So I stop off at a cafe with free wireless internet. Where I snap slightly.
Me: A filter coffee please.
Assistant: Do you want it from this machine, which is a bit dead, or a fresh cup from this machine, which is fresh but is a different type of coffee?
Me: (suddenly shouting, trying to disguise it as humour, probably failing) Oh – I DON’T KNOW! You choose for me! I can’t take the uncertainty of the day any longer! Decisions upon decisions!
Assistant: God, you seem stressed out…!
Me: (trying to calm down) I’m so sorry. I’m having a frustrating day. Stuck on buses for errands which didn’t deserve the time they took. I can only deal with a fixed amount of anxiety per 24 hours. And I used that up getting out of bed. It’s the agony of choice. Freedom to do whatever I want is getting to me… All those alternative universes dashed against the rocks… It’s a good reason to be a vegetarian. So you have less to choose from. Less worry that way. Except in a vegetarian cafe.
Assistant: Yes… So, do you want anything else with that?
Me: There you go again! Sorry.
Poor girl. What she makes of this man with funny hair going mad in front of her, I don’t know. I should really get some more therapy.
Of course, this would seem like an entirely blissful existence to your average refugee from ‘Insert Tough Foreign Land Here’. I’m not ungrateful for this life. Not one of these journeys was interrupted by gunfire or violence. I’m just deafened by the sound of wasted time trickling away. I am trying to get things done, it just seems to take so long even attempting to tick off the slightest chore. How normal people manage to live is utterly beyond me.
So, this Pete Doherty event at the Boogaloo. A special press-only gathering to make a ‘career announcement’. The pub is full of journalists and photographers who have actually queued up to get in. A guest list is checked, and there’s security on the door. Inside, the photographers set their tripods up in front of the stage. Once everyone is in, we are told Mr Doherty is not going to be there after all. Instead, a man with glasses from Orion Books says they’re going to be publishing The Doherty Diaries next March. Mr Doherty himself was going to be doing a reading here today, but… it’s “fallen through”. Still, he tells the assembled hacks, there’s a free drink at the bar, press packs to pick up, and thanks for coming.
It’s hilarious. And I thought I was having a wasted day.
Someone does take my photo, though, which is nice. Quite frankly, with all those photographers there primed for snapping Mr D, but thwarted; and me standing near them in my white suit and silk scarf, it seems the height of sarcasm for them NOT to take a photo of me. I should have taken to the stage and read some of THIS diary. And then squirted a syringe at the cameras – but filled with Body Shop White Musk rather than blood. To make the cameras smell nicer.
I chat to Mr C at the bar and mention seeing our old friend Cheska Grover’s boyfriend Gavin in a woman’s magazine. He’s playing in the band The Soho Dolls, and I saw they’re featured in a very Vogue-like article, looking expensively styled on a sofa.
DE: Can’t remember what the mag’s called. ‘Me Magazine’, I think.
TMC: You mean ‘You Magazine’.
DE: That’s it.
TMC: ‘Me Magazine’ would be the magazine YOU would edit.