I often wander about London in a bit of daze. This is just my way. Full of thoughts, ideas, musings. Sometimes I stop on the pavement and stand still, thinking. I’m just thinking about things, that’s all. Some people sit in parked cars for ages. I see these car-lurkers as I saunter along the residential avenues, and I’m slightly disturbed by them. Why are they sitting there? They can’t all be cab drivers.

But I don’t have a car. So I can only be strange and contemplative on foot. That’s my excuse.

I went to the Green Party office this afternoon to collect some leaflets, and when I left I was convinced they thought I was a bit strange. Then again, they must be used to dealing with people far stranger than me. Famously, their British media spokesman was once Mr David Icke, just before he got those visions about the importance of wearing turquoise, shape-shifting lizards controlling the world and being a Son Of God. And once he did start making public declarations about that sort of thing, the Party understandably relieved him of his position. There’s off-message and there’s really off-message.

I may not be that eccentric, but I do feel unusual enough to tempt suspicion from some strangers. My defence is, I’ve never been strange in a dangerous way. I’ve never gone up to someone and physically threatened them for no reason, for instance.

Which is what happened to me today on Archway Road at about 5.30pm. I was standing in my usual thoughtful daze, looking at the Green Party Shop from the other side of the busy road, trying to work out if its closed door meant it was actually closed or not. Sometimes the owner Mr Lynch keeps it open at this time, you see. I was also daydreaming at the same time about, oh, everything and nothing.

I then was aware of a 40-ish white man in a white baseball cap, white tracksuit and white trainers dodging the traffic and crossing the road from the other side, walking towards me. He was carrying a large plastic tray of washing-up implements: sponges, cloths, brushes, that sort of thing. They looked brand new, so my first assumption was that he was selling these items door-to-door, and that he was now about to ask me if I wanted to buy anything. I got ready with my expression of kindly dismissal. I was entirely unprepared for what happened next.

He made it to the pavement, stuck his face very close to mine, and burst into a torrent of expletives and violent threats.

“What the f— are you looking at, you c—? Are you f—ing looking at ME, you f—-ing c—? Why are you looking at me? Eh? Well? I’ll cut your f—ing face open. Were you f—ing looking at me?

Some of his teeth were missing.

I was very shocked at all this, suffice it to say. I wanted to say, no I wasn’t looking at him. That I hadn’t noticed him at all until he started crossing the road towards me. I wanted to say I had been staring at the shop across the road, and that he must have been standing in front of the shop and thought I was staring at him. I wanted to say he had made an entirely understandable mistake. Even if he was now reacting in a rather less understandable manner.

I wanted to say all that. But I just said, “No, I wasn’t looking at you. ”

He continued his onslaught of violent strangeness in my face, now telling me to go away. Not in so many words, of course. In fact, I think I’m pretty sure I heard him say “get the f—- out of here, you bald c—t.” Even though he was the bald one in this relationship. Presumably he meant to say “blond c—t”, but I definitely heard it as “bald”. It’s fair to say neither one of us was thinking particularly clearly at the time.

Part of me was thinking about what he was actually going to do to me, and what it might feel like. Could it be I secretly, sexually wanting him to hurt me? Was I deliberately acting in my dazed way in order to attract people like this, because I’m so untouched by human hands right now? The pain as proof of attention, as proof of deliberate contact. Masochism as a by-product of intense loneliness. A boy’s bullying at school being his first formative sexual experience, colouring everything in later life. These are, after all, things I’m fascinated about as a writer.

But this is what a therapist might infer. I disagree. I am not my work. Not all of it. Not all of the time. So I walked away down the street.

I really wanted to tell him, “You’ve just crossed a busy road at the risk of your own life, purely in order to come over and threaten mine. Can’t you f— off?”

But I didn’t, of course. I just staggered home, my Dickonish daze now upgraded from thoughtful and daydreamy to upset and shocked.

I got in and wanted someone to put their arms around me and comfort me. But there was no one, of course. I’m too strange for that.

A reminder. This Easter Monday (April 17th) I’m playing a four-song acoustic set. I’m billed as Dickon Edwards solo, but will be accompanied by Tom Edwards on guitar.

It’s at the Boogaloo, as part of Ms Anna Page’s 4×4 night. Four songwriters each play four songs, and I’m one of them. Not sure what the running order is, but it all starts at 9pm. Free entry.

The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, Highgate, London N6 5AT, UK.
Nearest tube: Highgate (Northern line).

Please come.

Muriel Spark dies. Tributes rightfully abound, concentrating on The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, but I prefer A Far Cry From Kensington, with its depiction of 1950s Highgate. And most of all, for the following priceless piece of advice to budding novelists (which I feel also applies to public diarists). I was alerted to it by John Mortimer’s Where There’s A Will.

“[When you write, you must feel like] you are writing a letter to a friend… Write without fear or timidity. What you have to say will come out more spontaneously and honestly than if you are thinking of numerous readers. Before starting, rehearse in your mind what you are going to tell. But don’t do too much, the story will develop as you go along, especially if you write to make your reading friend smile or laugh or cry. Remember not to think of the reading public, it will put you off.”

Photos taken during last night’s Fosca gig at The Windmill, Brixton.

Photo credit: Bob Stuart from Underexposed.org.uk

DE:

Tom Edwards:

Kate Dornan:

Rachel Stevenson:

Just a reminder that Fosca are playing tomorrow night at the Brixton Windmill, supporting Amelia Fletcher and Claudia Gonson in Tender Trap.

Full information on the gig here.

I’m told the gig is close to selling out, so if you’re coming it’s advisable to book tickets online at:

http://www.wegottickets.com/event/9462

You should also be aware that Brixton tube station is closed this week, with bus replacement services running from Stockwell. However, Brixton National Rail station is open as usual, and trains run there from Victoria every 30 mins.

Once in Brixton town centre, you can take a longish walk or get a bus to the venue: 59, 159, 133 or 333.

Alternately, take a tube to Oval then one of the above buses directly to the venue.

The Windmill is three stops up Brixton Hill from Brixton town centre. Get off at the Blenheim Gardens stop, cross the road (Brixton Hill), and walk down the small road opposite (Blenheim Gardens). It looks all residential, but the venue is at the end on the right; just before you get to the actual real windmill.

Fosca are onstage at 9.30pm.

(thanks to Matt Haynes for the travel info)

The trouble with staying in bed because of a feverish cold is that – if you’re me – you get rather accustomed to staying in bed per se. And the negative voice in my head that’s been troubling me for most of my life says, ‘Why bother getting out of bed at all? What’s the use? What’s the point?’ And so on until the grave.

I wonder if the builders of the new Wembley Stadium feel like that.

‘So, why is the stadium so delayed?’
‘Well, what’s the point… when you come down to it…Oh, it’s all so fruitless…’

The blank slate of the day ahead. A world of possibilities, or a frightening abyss. Vote Dickon Edwards.

There’s a long list of things I could do with my waking hours. Indeed, many of them are tasks I’ve promised to do for others, or which others expect me to do. I may not have any money or source of regular income, but goodness knows there’s people of unkinder ages in unkinder climes who’d regard my circumstances as enviable, penury or no.

Just had a chat with Ms O from upstairs. She recommends I loaf around the Muswell Hill Road / Archway Road junction in the rush hour to view the long queues of commuters who have to make their tube to bus connections there. To get a sense of perspective: I could be doing that every day.

I’ve started attempting to get some exercise into my life. I do possess a pair of trainers, but purely for their intended purpose. T-shirt, jersey, M&S jogging bottoms, trainers. I’m not proud, but at least it’s the uniform for the job. Currently I run around Highgate Wood for about 45 mins, plugged into my very small Creative Muvo Slim MP3 walkman, listening to downloaded podcasts of Woman’s Hour. I now realise why many joggers have portable players: to minimise the embarrassment factor of being seen jogging at all. If people are giggling at you as you jog by, it’s okay. Because you can’t hear them.

****

Last Monday: to the Boogaloo with Ms Anna to see Bert Jansch, backed with Bernard Butler. I don’t know much about Mr Jansch, but Ms A is a fan and I’m happy to accompany her. This is the way I’m going out most of the time. I’m not keen on going to events by myself much at the moment. Given the choice between seeing a gig by someone I admire by myself, and meeting a friend or two in the pub or at a dinner party, it’s the latter every time. I’m starting to really crave friendly company when going out.

It’s actually a book launch-cum-gig (which the Boogaloo specialises in), to promote a new non-fiction book by Will Hodgkinson called ‘Guitar Man’. The tome is partly an account of the author’s own experiences in learning to play guitar from scratch in his 30s, and partly a portrait of the noted guitar players he tracks down for tips. Among the big names sharing his jolly guitar-related adventures are Roger McGuinn, Johnny Marr, Mr Jansch, and Mr Les Paul.

Mr H has that kind of curly mop which 2006 fashion smiles upon. If you’re born with curly hair, the trends of the times may persuade you to keep it short, even straightened-out, unless you want to risk being labelled ‘retro’ in some way. Though that’s never bothered ME, of course. Now, you’re allowed to let curly hair grow out with pride in the clubs and bars of Old Street. As long as you look more Marc Bolan than Miriam Margolyes.

Curly is definitely ‘in’, for now. Tick, tick, tick. That’s a Fashion Clock ticking, not a comment on head lice.

So, Mr H opens the event with a reading from his hair, sorry, book, and it does sounds funnier and more entertaining than a book about playing guitar could nominally have a right to be. He rightfully cuts the actual muso stuff down, concentrating on the quirky travel-writing, anecdotal side of his adventures.

I hear he writes for The Idler, and wonder if he’s related to Tom Hodgkinson, the Idler editor and author of the excellent ‘How To Be Idle’. Possibly a brother? There is a facial resemblance, but it could just be a coincidence… I wonder this aloud at the gig and am told that, yes, he IS the brother of Tom H.

Occam’s Razor in action there. Though not used to cut hair.

Despite his documented new guitarist skills, Mr H doesn’t play any music himself at this event. He instead introduces Mr Jansch and Mr Butler and leaves them to it. Their hair is comparatively minimum-risk and sensible: Mr J sports a thinning but entirely present crop – looking pretty good for a sixtysomething. Mr B has his usual floppy but tidy fringe – looking pretty good for a thirtysomething.

Glancing at 1965 photos from when he was called ‘The British Dylan’, it’s clear Mr Jansch cares as much about his appearance as his guitarist skills. Back then, he had a thick mass of sexy beatnik tousles framed with devilish sideburns. A very cool, very deliberate look. Likewise, when Bernard Butler first appeared in national press photos circa 1992, as the guitarist and tunesmith in Suede, his hairdo was definitely striking. It was floppy and girlishly long, as opposed to long in that rather tacky ponytail way that men who work in guitar shops (or comic shops, or advertising) have. These are men who understand the importance of beautiful hair as much as beautiful guitar playing.

I mention all this Good-Looking Guitarist stuff because the audience for this gig has a notably high female presence. Unusual for what you might presume is a rather blokish, Mojo-reader event. I’m not saying women only listen to records by good-looking, cool-looking men, but the aesthetic side of things must help.

And the two gentlemen do make a gloriously sweet and beautiful sound together. Mr J sings and plays a chiming acoustic, Mr Butler accompanies on electric. The latter employs his trademark indie-glam riffs and pronounced melodic flourishes (ie the Bernard Butler Sound), but carefully adapted in just the right way to suit Mr Jansch’s songs. And that’s about as ‘Guitar Player Monthly’ as I get.

I chat and drink for a while afterwards, with Ms Anna, Ms Shanthi, Ms Leigh, Ms Terri, Ms Lora, Ms Emma J, Ms Anneliese, Ms Red. A nice evening.

In the fading grip of la grippe, or at least a cold with feverish elements if not full-blown flu. The usual hot and cold shivers, like a broken shower. But yesterday seems to have been the worse of it: I could barely leave the bed.

Phone call from a journalist who wants to interview me about the ‘Beautiful And Damned’ club night. He was there and loved it, apparently. It’s been a while since I’ve been interviewed for a proper UK newspaper as opposed to a fanzine or webzine. I pride myself on giving good interview, and am looking forward to it. As soon as I can think clearly.

Official confirmation comes in that I’m definitely on the ballot paper for the May council elections.

One more very Don Loos quote:

Mr Coogan has a very curious accent in this movie. His character Charley is a rather goofy and uptight English gay man who’s lived in the US for the last twenty years. Accordingly, his accent is a mix of slightly-camp Mancunian with a Mid-Atlantic twang. He calls chocolate ‘candy’. It takes some getting used to when you’re familiar with Coogan’s usual voice. We’re also treated to an unlikely scene where an attractive young man pleasures himself to secret closed-circuit TV footage of Mr Coogan sweeping up in his underwear. The other way round would be more believable, but then, much of Mr Loos’s movies involves a certain suspension of disbelief. You just sit back and enjoy the unlikeliness of it all.

But Mr Coogan’s main storyline, involving a fear that his boyfriend’s sperm has been used by their lesbian friends to father their child, suffers the ensemble movie curse of being upstaged by other more engrossing plots. Not least the storyline involving Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character, an older and less rabidly evil version of the Christina Ricci role from “The Opposite Of Sex”. Ms G is a homeless gold-digger who inveigles her way into a wealthy household, bedding first the (gay) son then the father.

She even gets a poolside bikini seduction scene, just like in the other film:

From The Opposite Of Sex:

From Happy Endings:

(to be continued)

Saturated with the inevitable cold that’s going round, I stay in and rent a new movie. I’m rather enamoured of the DVD vidcap function on my computer, where one can pause the movie complete with subtitles, and save the image. It enables you to quote the dialogue and visuals at once, being careful to avoid spoilers.

In fact, I think I can get away with showing stills from late in the movie without blowing the main plot developments, as long as they’re out of context and out of order. Proper trailers do that all the time. This still, for instance could be from the last scene, or the first. Actually, it’s from about 15 mins in. But that’s a one-off detail, don’t fret:

This is from “Happy Endings”, a US title made in 2005, released on UK DVD this week.

Summary: “The Opposite Of Sex” director Don Loos does more of the same in his unique style of self-aware black comedy. His favourite themes are all present and correct (blackmail, definitions of parenthood, abortion, adoption, gay relationships, family secrets) but this time they’re played out as a multi-plot ensemble piece. Lisa Kudrow is fantastic, Steve Coogan acts straight as a gay man (Cashback Mountain, anyone?), Maggie Gyllenhaal steals the film. Not as striking as “The Opposite Of Sex”, with which it’s inevitably compared, but worth watching for the performances, Coogan novelty factor, and Mr Loos’s unique meta-narrative title boards that punctuate the action. They’re in the same vein as Christina Ricci’s waspish voice-overs from that previous film:

In fact, this very night (Weds) also marks the “Happy Endings” UK cinema premiere as part of the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival Opening Gala night. While Ms Kudrow and Mr Loos are a few miles away at the Leicester Square Odeon, presenting the movie on a huge screen to a sold-out crowd, I’m watching it here at home on DVD. So it’s technically not quite “straight-to-video”, as the painful euphemism goes.

Things are changing in that respect, as it is. I’ve read a number of recent articles about the cinema versus DVD schedules now being on a par with hardback books versus paperbacks. Big screen distribution costs so much money, that in terms of recouping finance, a cinema release can often be just an expensive, luxurious, limited-edition advert for the later DVD version, where a profit margin is more likely.

(to be continued)