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.

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.

From last month. Number Six – The Nightclub Of The Beast:

“Unmissable!”:

Time Out, June 14-21 2006, page 131. Click to enlarge.

Afternoon – to Claudia Andrei’s to continue helping her with some gardening. It’s the closest I’ve come to actual physical labour for some time. Essentially, she’s cutting away the decade-old mass of twisting foliage, rogue rose bushes and thorny branches that have obscured her back yard for so long. Armed with secateurs and gloves, we get to work, while temperatures hit 30C. For once I’m living up to my namesake from The Secret Garden, with the therapeutic metaphor all too obvious. A decade of unchecked strangulating weeds, snipped away with immediate visual results. It’s work completed which looks like work completed. Something has been done. Progress has been made. Her bathroom window finally has a clear view to the yard. Though her cat is pretty annoyed with us for destroying his private playground.

Then to the Gate cinema in Notting Hill for a rare concert by Robin Guthrie. Rose thorns fall out of my hair on the way in, which seems a suitably Cocteau Twins-y thing to happen. Emily and Kate H from Client say hello and keep me company. The performance is Mr Guthrie plus guitar and trademark effects units, plus laptop plus backdrop of a specially-prepared film: “Lumiere”. Only halfway through, the Gate’s DVD machine gives up the ghost. Still, we’re happy to just hear Mr Guthrie perform, backing visuals or no. And it’s absolutely, blissfully special stuff. Perfect for a sweltering night surrounded by football insanity elsewhere. Here, you can buy a drink from a bar and enjoy something other than football. It can be done.

I recognise a few pieces from his recent score to the movie Mysterious Skin, and presume some of the other instrumentals feature on his latest album, Continental.

Kate Holmes: Doesn’t it sound fantastic? Exactly like the Cocteaus, when we went on tour with them…

She means her stint with the band Frazier Chorus.

After the main solo set, Mr G takes a Q&A from the audience. He seems rightfully cheesed-off about the venue’s DVD player letting him down, and it doesn’t help when, for a encore, the venue fails to provide him with a working microphone to do the Q&A with. It’s like Whit Stillman at the ICA the other week: London arts venues being all too happy to put on great events with an overpriced bar, with lots of management running around. But the merest basic technical requirements seem to elude them. London can be a broken embarrassment at times. Everything’s expensive – AND it doesn’t work properly.

He does mention how much he loved working on Mysterious Skin, and that he’d been waiting since 1982 for a movie soundtrack commission, always thinking his music would really suit the genre. It seems ridiculous that Mysterious Skin is his first (and to date, only) movie score. But then, it’s also ridiculous that the venue is barely half-full, despite the prescence of Emma Anderson (Lush, Sing-Sing) and Sonic Boom (Spacemen 3) after the Q&A, performing live improvisations with the man of the evening. It’s a kind of Shoegazing Legends Tournament.

Meanwhile the latest Orange Mobile TV ad features an ambient tune from the band Oceansize. It sounds impossibly like Robin Guthrie. Elsewhere Mogwai and Sigur Ros, who must surely include the Cocteaus as an influence, sell out venues several times the size of this one. I’m reminded of the time Patti Smith and PJ Harvey both had dates at the Brixton Academy. Ms Harvey’s tickets were somewhat pricier than Ms Smith’s. Once again, no glory for pioneers. Oh, except for The Smiths.

I buy the NME for about the first time in 5 years, because of The Smiths’ ‘The Queen Is Dead’ anniversary feature. And of course, it makes me annoyed. Too many swear words and exclamation marks. What is interesting is that they now carry an expanded personal ads page, including a Boys Seeking Boys section. I’m fairly sure that wasn’t in place last time I took the magazine regularly.

NME gay ads, June 2006:
“You must have GSOH, be emo, skater punk. ”
“WLMT (sic) a caring, romantic, funny, friendly, emo guy.”

DE to Emily: You’re a well-connected young person. What does ’emo’ mean?
Emily: I have absolutely no idea.

Page 46, album review: The Klaxons. I spot at least three mistakes in the following sentence:

“Klaxons once remarked to NME that they bridge the gap between Atlantis and Interzone. Yes, that’s Atlantis the lost Greek and, let’s not forget underwater island and Interzone, sci-fi writer William Burroughs’ dystopic and, let’s not forget fictional place.”

1) William Burroughs is not best described as a sci-fi writer. He is a Beat writer, or a cult author, or an experimental author, or just an author of general fiction. I’m fairly certain a librarian would back me up on this.
2) Interzone isn’t strictly fictional, as it’s Burroughs’s term for the International Zone of Tangier. Which is a very real place. I was there last December.
3) It’s Burroughs’s, not Burroughs’. Burroughs is a name, not a plural, so adds an ‘s’. As in Bridget Jones’s Diary.

Walking home, a man in a football strip kicks me as I pass, and calls me a f—- poof. I blow him a kiss and shout ‘Ah, the Beautiful Game!’. And increase my stride.

I get in to a nice chatty email from Scott Heim, author of the novel Mysterious Skin, which begat the film. So that gives the evening a pleasantly rounded finish.

[The new Robin Guthrie CD, Continental, is on Rocketgirl Records. Highly recommended.]

Designed by Lawrence Gullo.

BEAUTIFUL & DAMNED – ANTI-WORLD CUP EDITION
Date: Thur 15th June.
Times: 9pm to midnight.
Club title: The Beautiful And Damned: A Thoroughly Splendid Club Night.
Venue: The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, London N6 5AT, UK. 020 8340 2928.
Tube: Highgate (Northern Line). Buses: 43, 134, 263.
DE’s well-dressed club night returns on Thursday June 15th, defiantly not caring three figs about the dreary old World Cup. Time Out magazine featured the last B&D in its Top Ten Nights Out.

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, though anything more stylish than the ubiquitous Old Street fashions is welcome. Cigarillos, braces, tweeds, beads, silk scarves, unforgiving teddy bears Drink, dance, and ponder the nights tenderness to an eclectic but discerning mix of Sinatra (Frank & Nancy), Strauss waltzes, soundtracks, musicals, El Records, Gilbert & Sullivan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dory Previn, Doris Day, Bugsy Malone, Cabaret, Chicago, deviant disco, shadowy soul, parvenu pop and insouciant indie. Free entry, but please dress up.

This week, I applied to no less than two jobs. Both were brought to my attention via email, so I thought I’d give them a go.

One was a position – oh, let me use the term ‘situation’, it rarely sees action away from the phrase ‘Situations Vacant’ – one was a situation on the editorial team for Plan B Magazine. So I emailed off, and babbled on about what I would do. Plan B is undeniably the finest UK music magazine, at least in terms of presenting a selection, attitude and perspective which doesn’t sound like they have one eye on the rest of the media, desperately in need of Being In Touch. They carry interviews on the likes of Franz Ferdinand, but put someone far lesser known on the cover. That’s pretty commendable. But If I were on the Team That Must Be Obeyed, I feel I could improve it a little.

First of all, I’d only have one or two people from a band on each cover. Looking at all the different Plan B covers to date, the ones that stand out feature just one or two people: the woman from Cat Power, Stephin Merritt, The Arcade Fire’s Win & Regine.

Band shots are frequently dull, unless all the members are visually striking and unusual, or wear a uniform. The current issue’s cover features the group The Long Blondes, all of them. Without hearing a note from their oeuvre we already know that the singer is more important than the rest of the band. She is better dressed, and stands in front of the others. A couple of the rest of her band let the side down. They’re there to play the drums, or whatever it is, not to pose for covers.

The cover should always have the singer by themselves, whenever possible. The others can be featured in photos for the accompanying article, if they absolutely must. This tactic would also be a lot more honest. We KNOW there’s other members in the band, they needn’t be on the cover as well. Unless they have a dress code like The White Stripes or Ladytron, most eyes are going to go straight to the singer. When it comes to photos of The Charlatans, do people seriously find their eyes drifting to any member other than Mr Burgess the singer? It’s an indulgence for the lesser members’ friends and relatives only.

In fact, the same issue carries far more striking images of another act: Final Fantasy. Owen Pallett is the only member in his own band, so every photo opportunity is already more arresting than any five-piece shot de facto. Mr P is also clean-shaven and beautiful at a time when most people in bands are encouraged to sport an unattractive patch of stubble or an Accidental Beard. It’s a fashion that was last around circa 1970, with The Beatles et all letting their facial hair grow out to Biblical Prophet lengths, including the neck hair under the chin. Mr Lennon and Mr Harrison just about carried it off, and it certainly suited Mr Ringo, the token ‘homely’ band member. Mr McCartney, on the other hand, looked like a serial killer. It wasn’t the best Beatles phase, in terms of band photos.

I don’t mind proper beards, deliberate beards, and they obviously are flattering for men with weak chins or odd mouths. It’s just the fashionably unkempt, unshaped variety on men who clearly would look better without, which engulfs my goat.

But I digress as ever. Mr Pallett would be on the current Plan B cover if it were down to me. The Long Blondes singer has commented that she was only singled out on a magazine’s ‘Cool List’ because “they probably didn’t have enough girls. It was so overrun with boring boys, they needed someone to bring a touch of glamour.”

So what’s clearly needed is a few more glamourous, interesting boys. And if anyone is an Interesting Boy right now, it’s unquestionably Mr Pallett. I saw him play in Kilburn recently. His encore was entirely cover versions: the first four songs from OMD’s Dazzle Ships album, followed by Mariah Carey’s Fantasy, which is based around that keyboard riff from Tom Tom Club’s Genius Of Love. And people call ME fixated with the 80s!

I’d also cut down on the swearing in Plan B magazine. It’s not nearly as bad as NME who, once they were finally allowed to print swear words, went somewhat overboard. But it’s still a bit tiresome. It’s people trying to be ‘cool’. I can’t stand people trying to be cool. I don’t have to be cool: I already am me. Unless you can swear like Richard E Grant in Withnail & I, you shouldn’t attempt it without stabilisers.

I think I said something along those lines in my email to Plan B regarding their unengaged Situation. I’m not holding my breath that I’ll get the job, but nothing ventured. Mr Simon Bookish for one thinks it could only be a Good Thing for all concerned, bless him. Though he probably suspects I’d do my utmost to put HIM on the cover as soon as possible. And he’d be right.

The other Situation was for Borkowski PR. They’re after someone with blogging experience to do some kind of market research for one of their clients, a mobile phone company. Given the popularity to voice your opinions unsolicited on blog comment boxes, message boards and Have Your Say forums, one can understand that a company would switch from stopping people in the street with a clipboard, to joining the world of blogging.

So I went for an interview at Borkowski HQ off Holborn. And yes, my first impression was ‘very Absolutely Fabulous / Nathan Barley’. I was completely out of my depth. All open plan terminals, paper everwhere, people on phones, or people on salad wraps. The real world? Well, no. Just a different world. I can’t do that world. I did my best in the interview, mentioning that my online diary was started before the world ‘weblog’ was coined, let alone abbreviated to ‘blog’. But no one likes a pioneer, as Tim Chipping told me lately. He’s just been promoted and given a raise as Features Editor on the Channel 4 website’s music section. I’m happy for him, though I do think it’s amusing that ten years ago he was taking the mickey out of me for dashing off to internet cafes on tour with Orlando. I had an email address in 1995, two years before I got a computer. Others who sneered at me then for being ‘geeky’ and using email (“what’s wrong with picking up the phone?”) now have jobs where the Web and Email are essential to the work in hand.

One problem is that I can’t be doing with hustling for a job if others are after it. The only race I can run is one with no other competitors. Otherwise, I’m only too happy to step aside. “You want this job badly? Fine, have it.”

I’m nearly 35, so when it comes to a job that anyone other than me could do equally well, it’s going to go to someone younger and prettier anyway. I refuse to fight for work. I genuinely couldn’t care less. I’ve worked in every form of shop, and done my share of shelf-stacking and pub work. I’m somewhere else now, someone else now.

But I’m just trying to put my name and face about in worlds outside of this one. Let people know what I’m like, what I know, how I write, how I can attract readers. I’m optimistic that something will come along soon. And if it doesn’t, I don’t mind too much. Better a life of penury being who I am than fake it for a wage.

Postscript: Email from Tim Chipping. “What I actually said was ‘There’s no glory in being a pioneer'”.

In my field of vision from this desk by the window, I can see a car parked on the other side of the road. Two England flags fly from its roof. There really is no escape from the World Cup, this year more than any other.

Someone somewhere has decreed that the World Cup must be watched, and more to the point people must pay to view it on a big screen in a public place. Even though they could all watch it at home on terrestial TV for nothing.

My favourite local places have succumbed, too. Jacksons Lane Community Cente has large banners with the dreaded red cross boasting its big screen set-up for the England matches. Likewise the Finchley Phoenix – usually the best cinema in London; independent, long-running, non-popcorn, but not an arthouse snob place either. It shows The Da Vinci Code one week, Tarnation another (Tarnation being the lowest-budget popular indie flick I can think of – made on a Mac computer).

Well, apparently films are not enough for a cinema. Because The Phoenix is showing the wretched matches on its screen too. Though they are combining the football with football-related films: Bend It Like Beckham followed by Andorra v Rutland or whatever it is.

Even my beloved Boogaloo pub has broken its commendable sport-free status, and is screening the England matches. One of which falls on the same day as my club, The Beautiful & Damned. The game ‘kicks off’ (you’ll have to imagine my pained expression at typing such phrases) at 5pm. So one hopes it will all be over long before my club starts at 9pm. Still, I’m sure the Boogaloo football fans won’t exactly be your average Switchblade & Firkin crowd. A bit more Nick Hornby than Nick Cotton.

With the media saturation of the game, I find it hard not to sincerely wish the England team the very worst of luck. Apparently all it takes for a player to phone in sick is a slightly achey ankle. Dare I pray for eleven achey ankles on the day of their first game, then? And all possible substitutes?

No, that’s me being a bit too arch. I’m a peaceful, gentle person, and rarely wish anyone harm, let alone wishing to spoil anyone’s fun, as baffling as it might appear to me. And I don’t actually hate football per se. It’s just the bullying ubiquity of the World Cup. I want this madness to be confined to the places it already rules every other month of the year: stadia, living rooms, and sport bars. The implication is that the World Cup attracts people who aren’t usually interested in football. Fairweather fans.

“Come On England! Keep kicking that… ball… in that direction.”
“Oh! That must be, um, an offside… penalty… conversion.”
“I think we have a chance. David Beckham is really good at football.”
“Yes. And so are the other ones. They also are good at football.”
“Yes. Wayne…”
“Wayne…”
“Wayne… Sleepy.”
“He’s my favourite.”

Why do these temporary fans do it?

The media don’t hype up the things I myself like, such as Doctor Who, do they? Oh, wait a minute, they do. But do fans of Doctor Who shout scarily in massed groups? Well, I’ve never been to a convention so I suppose it’s possible. But that’s my point: the appreciation is restrained and confined to places like that. It should be the same with football. If you find yourself attracted to the sport, you should seek it out and congregate with like-minded individuals away from the rest of the world. Not assume the rest of the world is interested too. We’re really not, you know. I have such fun when I go to the hairdressers.

HAIRDRESSER: So, did you see the match last week?
DE: No. I don’t like football.
HAIRDRESSER: Oh.

(haircut contines in silence. Bliss!)

I went onto Google today and found my diary was the only page on the entire Internet to contain the phrase ‘modish onanism’. References to the phrase ‘World Cup” are sadly a little more numerous.

I can still see the flags on the car across the road. I may have to walk around with a permanent squint for a few weeks, in order to avoid seeing an England flag on the street. Wish me luck.

In Bildeston for a few days, visiting Mum and Dad. I write this entry on my new iBook, connected to the parental wireless broadband, while sat up in bed. Though the bed is different, this is the exact same space I did most of my sleeping as a child, on a bunk bed with Tom. The room is now Mum’s quiltmaking studio, and various elaborate quilts crafted in her Cathedral Window style now calm the noisy walls of boyhood past. Though I’m very much a non-adult, I prefer the room as it is now; a tasteful and tranquil space for Mum’s creativity. She gets things done here, makes things, shares the knowledge. Her new book is Stash-Buster Quilts: 14 Time-Saving Designs to Use Up Fabric Scraps.

People are meant to be nostalgic for their childhoods, but for me it’s like feeling nostalgic for a directionless early draft, when you have a more polished version to hand. I wince at the thought of some of the posters that were on these walls before: indie bands and film stars I didn’t really feel strongly for at the time, but thought I probably should. Trying to do what teenagers are meant to do. Keeping up and trying to stay in touch.

I wouldn’t go as far to say my childhood was a ‘forgotten boredom’ like Mr Larkin’s, nor was it the happiest days of my life. It passed, I drifted through. Took a bit longer than I’d have liked, but otherwise I can’t moan. Searching for a memory of the village, all I can recall right now is the locals kids suddenly deciding to play Knock Down Ginger on me whenever they passed the front door. I was about 15. They started it completely out of the blue. Most times, they just knocked and ran. It went on for months. But I vividly remember the one time my mother answered the door too quickly, unknowingly catching them out. She presumed they were friends. I was sitting inside, knowing already what was going on.

“Oh!” I heard them say on seeing the door open too fast for them to escape. “Um, is Dickon in?”
“I’ll just get him. Dickon, it’s some friends…”

Of course, as soon as my mother’s head was turned, they ran off giggling into the night.
I was just there. Some kids are monsters, but others are only slightly cruel, and need people like me to be slightly cruel to. It wasn’t like I was being physically beaten up on a regular basis. That happened once or twice in my entire schoolhood, but even then it was hardly the stuff of tortured genius-style biographies. The schools weren’t rough, the village was hardly a ghetto. I was slightly targeted, by minor bullies.

It was annoying to be on the receiving end of cheap unkindness, but at least it prepared me for my life now. I rarely walk along Archway Road without attracting a shouting from a passing vehicle. It happened today, setting off to catch the train. What did they say? Oh, it was “NICE TROUSERS!” in a sarcastic yawp, or something similar. Just another minor attack for a minor eccentric. But thanks to a lifetime in the trenches converting my ridiculousness from accidental to deliberate, I don’t get upset anymore. I smirk back, or blow kisses.

Even my friends do it. Ms Claudia texted me the other day, presumably from a passing bus:

“JUST SAW YOU RUNNING ACROSS THE ARCHWAY ROAD. YOU DID LOOK FUNNY!”

And I was happy about that. The teenage me would have been mortified.

Like most things, childhood wasn’t really my cup of tea. It was very gracious of me to give it a go, though. I’ll try anything once.

Recovering from a bout of addiction to nothingness. Even modish onanism, junk food and junkier TV have lost their appeal. And I think I’ve actually developed bed sores.

One fix is to become distracted from the distraction. Put off the procrastination for another day. Creep up on yourself when you’re not noticing it. Take yourself from behind. And bingo – you’re writing again. Just don’t tell the black dog on your shoulder. Or is it a monkey on your back? I’ll settle for a sardonic dodo on the elbow.

A lot to debrief. The other weekend: a wet weekend of old friends.

Saturday: to Ms Charley Stone’s in Crouch End for her birthday barbecue. I stop on the way to pick up Ms Rhoda, who’s just moved to the same area. She was effectively made homeless a couple of weeks ago, by a very unfeeling – if not to say criminal – former landlord. But her friends came through for her in a really rather touching and uncommonly selfless display. In mercenary old London too. They helped her move at extreme short notice, provided her with somewhere to stay, and lent or donated essentials.

What’s particularly interesting is that Ms R used her blog – LiveJournal and its comments system to be precise – to alert her friends to her crisis, and the bulk of the rescue was organised online. I admire her greatly. She says she admires me for NOT having that kind of blog, for deliberately cutting myself off and writing a diary where others can’t comment or chat in the space underneath. It’s not like I can’t be contacted: people can email me easily using the box on my site.

You’d have thought people would prefer the equivalent of private one-to-one tuition over a classroom environment. I think it’s the ‘Have Your Say’ Culture of internet message boards and comment boxes. Apparently this is now called “Web 2.0”, ho ho.

The one-on-one way is the way I’ve always liked it. I tried an evening class recently, and rediscovered my old school habit: I don’t get on well as part of a group. Instead, I’d always be either directly addressing the teacher one-on-one – if not actually sucking up to them – or performing for the rest of the group as if on a stage. I just can’t ‘do’ groups. On school trips I’d always walk with a teacher, and rarely chat to my classmates. The teacher had all the secrets, all the answers. Whereas with groups I felt then – as I do now – that whenever I try to fit into a class or a room of people or join a discussion, the darts suddenly pause in mid-flight. The room goes silent. Or worse, I’m ignored. On top of which, there’s the sensation that a comment left on a blog is given an un-looked for permanence way above its station. Some casual fanboyish query I might make about “Star Trek: Voyager” in a newsgroup circa 1995 can remain on the Web today, staring back at me down the years. Perhaps it will be there forever. And to what end? The chat must stop. If I have anything to say at all, I should say it here alone, the only place it’s actually looked for.

So it’s a gamble of sorts. By not wishing to be at the mercy of others, I may cut myself off from those who could rescue me in hours of need. But this distinction is enough to keep me out of the loop. For better or worse, it’s what suits me. I want people to read me, and go. Like an 80s brand of shampoo.

Naturally, I wonder about myself being in the same position as Ms R. If I were made suddenly homeless, could I rely on the same sort of rallying-round? I wouldn’t like to burn that bridge till I come to it.

There’s a more publicised case of blogs curing homelessness in the news this week. A middle-class thirtysomething London woman had a breakdown, was made homeless and ended up reduced to sleeping in her car for months. By using the internet terminals in public libraries, she kept a blog about her daily struggle to survive, to keep clean, fed, warm and safe. And the good news is she found somewhere to live thanks to the international attention generated by her blog. And yes, she’s now got the inevitable book deal from it.

Incredibly, her blog also attracted some abusive comments accusing the woman of exploiting her own news story, and for placing a donation button on her pages. People can be very strange when they see an apparent patch of greener grass on the other side, even if it’s part of a wasteland. Resenting a homeless person for not suffering enough takes some doing. Well, yes, it IS a form of begging, and I was accused of doing the same the last time I had a donation button on my diary. But I see it more as Busking With Text. What would you prefer: someone collaring you on a train or bus for money? It’s a familiar sound: the train compartment door slams open, and the passengers’ hearts sink… “Ladies and Gentlemen… I’m sorry to disturb you, but…”

Would you prefer someone physically invading your space to ask you for spare change? Or someone playing Bob Dylan songs loudly and badly in a subway? Or someone providing you with entertaining – and silent – reading matter, which you’ve sought out yourself?

Well, apparently there are people out there who DO prefer people in penurious states to be sitting on the pavement with a sign and an upturned cap, or playing a harmonica badly, rather than writing a public journal and asking for donations. I shall take great pleasure in disappointing them.

This is the logic of such detractors:

“Dear Dickon. Just get a sodding job. Preferably one you hate. Like mine. I’m having to work hard at something I hate doing, so I don’t see why you shouldn’t too.”

I’m lucky to vaguely know hundreds of people to nod across a noisy room to, and to be read by thousands more as a public diarist. But though I have many favourite authors, I wouldn’t necessarily want to lend William Burroughs a set of cutlery or leave DBC Pierre alone with my possessions for an unspecified interval. Indeed, many writers I admire on the page would have me crossing the road to avoid them in real life. I’ve ploughed my own aloof furrow for so long, that I do rather have to take the attendant cons with the pros. But it’s what works for me.

At Charley’s bash, I drink and eat too much – for which I’m grateful. And I make a slightly drunk but sincere speech about Constant Friends.

Sunday, to the Queen’s Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. Again with TMC, again for a Q&A with a joint hero of ours. This time, Mr Stephen Sondheim. Introduced by the interviewing critic as just ‘Sondheim’, one word. Like Morrissey or Donovan.

He reveals there’s going to be a movie of Sweeney Todd, directed by Mr Tim Burton with Mr Depp in the lead role. Everyone says ‘Ooooohhh!’.

He describes the Menier Chocolate Factory’s current production of Sunday In The Park With George as one of the most moving theatrical experiences of his life, and I’m rather pleased. Because I saw it myself last December, and spent most of the evening in a mess of gushingly appreciative tears. I’m keen to revisit the show in the West End, though I’ll have to go alone to spare any companion the embarrassment of having me sob on their shoulder for the best part of two hours. At the Q&A, Sondheim particularly cites the opening moment in the show when a slash of animated colour tears across the white canvas backdrop, synchronised with Seurat doing the same in the foreground with his pencil on his notebook, all in time with the musical’s opening arpeggiated chord. Taking a line for a walk, indeed.

Audience member: What’s an ideal day for you?
Sondheim: I’m incredibly lazy. So every day is remarkably pleasant.

A composer after my own heart.

I think about the homeless woman with no friends, finding help – new friends – via keeping a public diary. I think about Ms Rhoda finding who her real friends are via her online ‘Friends’. I think about people I’ve known who come and go through my life, all the people I know only vaguely, but for so long, and the people who are the nearest thing I have to long-term friends. I think about Tim Chipping, and Charley Stone, and lines from the Sondheim song “Old Friends”.

Most friends fade
Or they don’t make the grade.
New ones are quickly made
And in a pinch, sure, they’ll do.
But old friends let you go your own way —
Help you find your own way —
Let you off when you’re wrong —
If you’re wrong —
When you’re wrong —
Old friends shouldn’t care if you’re wrong —
Should, but not for too long —
What’s too long?
Old friends do leave their brands on you,
But old friends shouldn’t compete.
One upbraids you
For your faults and fancies,
One persuades you
That the other one’s wrong.
Here’s to us — who’s like us?
Damn few!