Have bought train tickets for Edinburgh (arriving Mon 22nd, returning Thurs 25th) without confirmation that I’ve got somewhere to park my sleeping bag for those three nights. It’s such bad form to nag when you’re asking a favour, so I sincerely hope the person who offered to help returns my last email. Otherwise, I shall have to depend upon the kindness of strangers.

Some days ago: As I queue up at Angel Waterstones, buying Mr Kundera’s The Book Of Laughter And Forgetting, a slightly grizzled 40-something man in a Hawaiian shirt is signing a book for a staff member. I glance over to see it’s a copy of Simon Reynolds’s ubiquitous doorstopping guide to the post-punk genre, Rip It Up And Start Again. He is not Mr Reynolds, so I assume he must be in one of the bands covered in the book. Should have had the nerve to ask. He looked the way many 40-something former band people look: an air of lost boyishness.

This week: rather excited to meet the utterly recognisable Ms Maureen Lipman. Chatted about her late husband Jack Rosenthal’s TV movie Ready When You Are Mr Gill, about the pathos and tragicomedy of the film extra world. Made 30 years before Ricky Gervais’s new series Extras, and remade with Tom Courtenay, Bill Nighy and Amanda Holden for Sky Movies two years ago. One hopes that it will see a DVD release if only to compare and contrast with the Gervais programme.

The latter is a bit Nathan Barley: has its funny moments, but there’s something not quite right about the whole tone. In the second episode, the main joke is meant to be that Mr Ross Kemp thinks he’s terribly tough and can handle himself in a fight. Not only is this rather obvious and not funny enough per se, but the whole premise is rather upstaged by the grimace-inducing sight of Mr Kemp mugging his part. He’s such an astonishingly bad actor, he can’t even play himself convincingly.

Email from someone at the Evening Standard. They read my 2002 diary entry about how the classical music-dominated Royal Festival Hall has become such a great venue for enjoying alternative rock music in a civilised, seated fashion, without the danger of cigarettes burns, sweaty moshpits, spilt beer, and where the audience is less likely to chat during the performance. Ms Jude Kelly has just taken over the building, and there’s fears in the classical music world that she’ll have the RFH booking more Brian Wilson and less Beethoven. The ES person wanted me to comment. I said I’m very glad the RFH is in the hands of the director of The National Theatre Of Brent’s Messiah, one of the funniest 80s TV shows unavailable beyond a deceased Betamax video recording. Probably not what the ES wanted to hear, but take away my love of obscure comedy references and I am nothing.

Time slips through my fingers, while piles of things keep growing. Piles of CDs to listen to, piles of books to read, piles of magazines and papers on the floor to sort out, piles of rubbish, piles of emails. Too much to do, too much to read, and I hate to throw anything away at all. I appear to have forgotten How To Live.

A strange thought: I am not getting any work done, because I am far too busy. Doing what? I’m not sure.

I keep saying Yes to far too much, and my appointments diary quickly fills. Oh, but this is London. Everyone’s got a gig or club or an art show or a birthday party to go to… Everyone is talking… and… no one is listening! No, that’s unfair.

But I don’t feel so worried about it any more. It did seem until recently that I woke up, spent my entire waking hours apologising to people by text or email that I can’t make their gig or party, then so to bed. A full time job! No more. One mustn’t worry about losing friendships. People know where to find me if they really need to. Come to the Bistrotheque cabaret every Friday night, or come to the Boogaloo in Highgate.

A Tiresome Frequently Asked Question: “We haven’t seen you for ages, where have you been?”.

Answer: Trying to Live! Trying to Create!

Recording sessions with Tom E going well. Have also been offered recording time with Tommy B and Aug S. Very pleased about that. I turn up with guitar, lyrics, notebook and ideas, and we make recordings together. The DIY solo recording thing is not for me: I always need a producer.

Enjoying my weekly residency at the Hanky Panky cabaret at Bistrotheque, but still get terribly nervous about performing solo. Still, the more I do it, I can only improve. Have been singing using the brand new Tom E demos as backing. Hot off the press music, indeed. The debate panel is fun, and last Friday I was roped into improvised acting as part of a bizarre sketch. I was a toyshop owner presenting three Courtney Love dolls (all male: David R-P, Ryan S and an appallingly drunk Citrone, all in Ms Cobain drag). Xavior as a townie dad and Lucinda as daughter wanting a present. To impress her, the Courtney dolls then lipsync, then perform “Doll Parts” live, then play musical statues. Ye gods, what Nu-Romo chaos. It’s the sort of thing that could only happen in Camden circa 1995… which is now Old Street / Hackney 2005.

Toying with the idea of going up to Edinburgh for a few days at the festival. Accommodation might be a problem on a zero budget, though.

The cabaret aside, I’m taking any excuse to get out of town right now. Too hot, too hot-headed. I hear a man was stabbed to death on the Holloway Road-travelling 43 bus (which I use frequently) last Friday night, purely for asking a hooded youth to stop throwing chips at him. The feeling is if the Night Lads and the bombers don’t get you…. Well, they shoot electricians, don’t they.

Reading As You Like it. At the start of Act 4, Rosalind mocks Jacques for his grumpy affectations:

look you lisp, and wear strange suits

She appears to be accusing him of trying to be me.

Last week – stay a couple of days with Captain Hughes on his green and red narrow boat moored at Oxford. See photo, taken near Folly Bridge. Capt H would like to point out the actual mooring work here was carried out by himself, and that this photograph is more of my attempt to strike a manly pose while holding onto one of the boat’s rope.

He takes it down the Thames to Abingdon, and I get the chance to rope the vessel to the bank while it waits at the locks for the water level to change. It’s my gentle nautical debut. Iffley Lock has two lock keepers (one wears a blue lettered jumper reading ‘Assistant Lock Keeper’) and a small lock keeping dog who stands on the towpath staring out the boats. When I get back to Highgate, I re-read Three Men In A Boat, mainly for the bits about Iffley and Abingdon. The Hampton Court Maze scene inspires me to write ‘Narcissus In The Maze’ for Scarlet’s Well, with Martin White’s music.

Saturday – catch The Would-Be-Goods and Scarlet’s Well at the Water Rats. I’ve seen both bands a few times now, but can never take for granted a concert by these two previously studio-bound artistes I’ve adored for years. For me, the concert is a celebration of Ms Griffin and Mr Bid’s musical existence. I am paying homage, even if I don’t pay to get in. Both should be winning awards for songwriting and fearless dedication to original British pop music. Ms G is backed with other cult legends – Andy Warren (Monochrome Set / Adam and the Ants), Peter Momtchiloff (Talulah Gosh / Heavenly), Bongo Debbie (Mr Childish’s Headcoatees). Ms Griffin herself looks like no amount of stifling July heat could begin to affect her delicate-yet-invulnerable BBC announcer’s poise and singing voice. She does a couple of late 80s Would-Be-Goods crowd pleasers: The Camera Loves Me and Velazquez and I; but it’s the achingly desolate solo rendition of Too Old, from her most recent album The Morning After, that steals the show.

Scarlet’s Well are as giddy and colourful as ever, and air a new song about mermaids by Mr White, which has a particularly fantastic melody. Ms Dornan takes lead vocal on Pirate, and is rather superb at it too. Mr Bid still swears too much. Night of the Macaw is pure El Records. Bid tells me he likes the new song I’ve written, so I’m obviously biased.

Sunday – to brother Tom’s new home studio in Radlett to record demos for the new Fosca album. Well, I say “demos” but with unlimited studio time one may as well keep polishing, mixing, re-doing takes, trying out ideas and working on the tracks till you can’t hear anything that could be improved. And if you do that, you may as well release the track properly on the album, I say. It’s nice to not have the stress of being up against the studio clock, a factor which must affect the way many records turn out.

That said, if Fosca can afford to use a studio and producer with a history of making proper records, we should do, even if it’s just for a few “stand out tracks” (if not singles). Regardless, I do hope Tom can work with me more regularly now he’s living closer to London. Not least because we get on, which is something one can never underestimate with producers, related or not.

He’s managed to salvage a piece of our childhood from the Suffolk garage and mount it on the wall of his new home. It’s a present from our artist sci-fi-loving father from when we were both small – a huge piece of hardboard, painted and cut to resemble one side of a silver Flash Gordon-like spaceship, complete with portholes and “D & T” in Roy Lichtenstein-esque lettering. We would spend many endless afternoons with it propped up in our bedroom (by our bunk beds), and pretend we were in a spaceship by sitting behind it. Tom points out today that although we couldn’t see any of the painted side of the hardboard ourselves, and there was no one else in the room to watch us behind it, this didn’t seem to matter. We knew we were in a spaceship together, that was enough

I can’t help equating this example of unfettered, uncynical childhood faith in imagination – and the fact Tom now displays the hardboard ship over his new staircase – with our work in his studio. We go in and have creative adventures that please us both. Except this time, I want people to watch us from the painted side.

Friday – Perform at Mr Xavior’s now weekly Hanky Panky Cabaret. I decide to read selections from the eavesdroppings website Overheard In New York, my flimsy excuse being the editor is a Fosca fan.

Three selections I read out:

St Mark’s between 1st & A:
Girl: I’d sleep with a big midget.
Guy: A big midget is a normal person.

Toys R U, Times Square:
Girl 1: So when I was in Italy, I went to France.
Girl 2: What did you do there?
Girl 1: I went to the Leaning Tower Of Pisa.
Girl 2: Still Italy.
Girl 1: Really?
Girl 2: Yeah. So what did you do in France?
Girl 1: I guess I didn’t go to France, then.

91st & Amsterdam:
Girl 1: You know, if you think all songs are sung by a penis, they suddenly become funny.
Girl 2: You are high, you know that?

Then I sing a new number written for the band Scarlet’s Well (though I don’t yet know if they’ll like it), “Narcissus In The Maze”. Vamping music by Martin White, lyrics by self. Parts of it are like a Gilbert & Sullivan patter song. Rather proud of the line:

If a fop falls in the forest / does he make a sound impression on the trees?

Finish with a rendition of the Fosca song “Rude Esperanto”, self on vocals, Xavior on piano and backing vocals at end. Am also involved in a debate panel, which is a lot of fun. Questions put by the audience include “Is Cheddar overrated?” and “Who will kill you?”.

On the whole, rather enjoy myself and look forward to the next week; I can only get better at this sort of thing. I also use the spot as a writer’s discipline tool, ordering myself to have a new song ready for the next cabaret.

Have been teetotal this past week due to the dentist’s antibiotics. Is it a coincidence that I’ve also been more creative in that week than in the past 18 months? Or recent events emphasising the “live today, for tomorrow you may die” sensation? Am considering giving the teetotal thing a try for much longer. Only danger is, as a substitute I’ve been consuming more caffeine and sugar than usual. This can sometimes be good for a frantic writing pace, but renders onstage performance a little jittery to say the least.

Board a tube for the first time since the bombs last week. As it goes through Kings Cross without stopping, my stomach turns.

Mr Shaw writes to remind me I’ve made an appearance in the latest edition of “M” magazine, the business publication of the MCPS-PRS Alliance, who collect royalties for the UK music industry. It’s sent to all kinds of recording artists and composers across the genre spectrum.

He suggests my readers might want to see a scan of the anecdote I was invited to recount, as part of a feature called “My Worst Gig”. I’m next to someone from The Stranglers.

Typically, I end the story being toyed with by inebriated women rugby players with 50s quiffs. They kept singing Japan songs at me, I recall.

M Magazine also used my photo for the contents page, as scanned here.

Note that I’m by my computer, looking at a photo of myself on someone else’s web diary.

The pattern of the curtains was also used on photographer Sarah Watson’s business card.

She was rather taken with my curtains. The credit can only go to my tolerant landlady of 11 years.

Elsewhere, I’ve stumbled on a new photo of myself (below) from the site of Mr Michael Malice, who runs a successful and very amusing site of NYC eavesdroppings.

He is also the subject of a forthcoming graphic novel by Harvey Pekar, of American Splendor fame.

In the photo, I’m posing with Mr Grace from the band My Favorite, at their London gig the other week.

Mr Malice writes “this is quite possibly the gayest photo ever taken.” I think I must have been in an usually silly mood.

I watch Closer, and rather enjoy it. Despite the explicit dialogue, it’s otherwise entirely old-fashioned. Consisting mainly of couples shouting clever but cruel things at each other, it has much in common with the 60s Burton & Taylor film Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf, not least the same director. Although there’s many generously detailed references to sexual acts, there is no nudity, and no sex scenes. The film is about people talking in the hope of sex, people discussing the sex afterwards, and the taking down of clothes to be used in evidence against them. But the only on-screen congress is undertaken via an Internet chat room, and even that’s part of a practical joke on the part of the bored (and fully clothed) Mr Law, pretending online to be female for the unwitting Mr Owen.

The dialogue may be peppered with Grade A swearing, but otherwise the characters speak in theatrical, well-honed sentences that could have come from any British 20th century playwright pre-Pinter. Mr Owen says things like “Oh, the moronic beauty of youth” about little Ms Portman, before promptly requesting her to bend over. It’s George Bernard Shaw does gynaecology.

Though the film is an ensemble piece, Mr Owen steals it effortlessly from the others. I understand he is the only actor to have been in the original stage production, and it really shows. He first appears in the aforementioned Net chat room scene, when the camera pans from his PC screen to his charismatic fingers typing on the keyboard. Before we even see his face, we know instantly the film is all his. A safe pair of hands indeed.

I’ve not seen the stage play myself, but I have read the book. There’s a particularly memorable line I was waiting for when watching the movie, only to find it’s been cut. This occurs in the strip club scene, as said by Ms Portman’s character (who appears to have stolen Ms Johannsen’s pink bob wig from Lost In Translation). In the original play, she declares “all men really want is a girl who looks like a boy.” Not so in the movie. Perhaps it was omitted because this argument-starting statement is not really discussed or developed, just thrown out as if to make people sit up in the theatre. Perhaps the writer changed his mind. It makes sense, though, as Ms Portman is not a girl who looks like a boy. She is a girl who looks very much like a little girl. In a bedtime scene with Mr Law, she jumps on the mattress as if she were his pet kitten. And very apt too, as the movie is really about possession and the battles for power in the relationships it depicts. Mr Owen’s marriage is even likened to a dog and its owner by Mr Law. Some pets give the orders to their owners.

The analogy has been touched upon before in The Good Father, an excellent 80s British film about middle class CND-supporting people being unkind to each other. Its principals are Anthony Hopkins and Jim Broadbent, and though a young Stephen Fry has about two lines in it, it’s a very serious film. To gain custody of their children, the men use the “old boys’ network” against their estranged wives. In their own uneasy phrase – challenging their liberal views – they have to “jerk their leads a bit”.

Both films are engrossing and intelligent looks at anger and emotional damage in relationships. Though perhaps not recommended for watching on a first date.

I’ve submitted an album review for Plan B magazine: “Has A Good Home” by Final Fantasy. It’s the solo project of Owen Pallett, violinist for umpteen Toronto bands. They said “no word limit: it’s for the web”. Regular readers will know this is something you should never ask of me. I do have a tendency to go into Alistair Cooke mode and ramble on about some broader subject that occurs to me halfway through. All very nice if you like seeing my brain flail and flounce skittishly before your eyes, but not so readable if you actually want to hear whether the album’s any good.

So I gave them a more concise piece, and present the offcuts below. The Gregory’s Girl quote is as remembered, so it’s probably not verbatim.

=========

Perhaps there’s something about the way a violin seems above the grubby indie band world. One can play it standing up, dancing about. Unless you’re Mr Chuck Berry, dancing with a guitar can look very embarrassing indeed. But it’s hard to look a fool with a fiddle. Is the violin the haughtiest, purest, most edifying of instruments? Would Mr Pallett’s life and work be quite the same if he were playing a trombone? Did he choose the violin because it suited his character, or was his character shaped over time by being a violinist?

An instant survey suggests itself. If you have ever played a musical instrument, Dear Reader, what was the reason for picking up that specific item? Did your parents have a thing for the oboe? Why did the tilted circles and spider-like poles of the drum kit speak closest to your heart? Was the bassoon the only one left on the list, and you were late getting to class that day? Just what is it about violinists that have all the fun, that get to play the catchy bits? I’m reminded of an observation on this theme in “Hymn” by Alan Bennett:

“An orchestra has a class system all its own, of which the strings are the aristocracy, the intellectuals the woodwind, and the proletariat the brass. The players take on the characteristics of their instruments, brass jolly and fat, clarinets and bassoons soulful and reedy, most of the raffish romantic players in the violins and cellos. Of course, it’s not hard for the strings, who so often have the melody, to seem transported and full of feeling. They have none of the handicaps of the brass, and had they to stop every so often to empty the spit out of the violins, it would be a different story.”

Lately I saw the unquestionably raffish and romantic Mr Pallett on the dreaded Jools Holland programme, sawing frantically away as part of The Arcade Fire. Wonderful stuff, but the perfection of the set-up did remind me of that less perfect, more decorative cliché which TV often indulges – The Rock Band Recruits A String Section. I’m thinking of the Manics playing A Design For Life on Top Of The Pops, dressing down with their own clothes but dressing the song up with a string section. Cue instant hit. Likewise The Verve with their Bittersweet Symphony, Oasis with their Wonderwall cello, and pretty much every Britpop band with a decent budget. Menswear’s fourth or fifth single down the line? Time to call in the violins. Even the original version of the most recorded Beatles song, Yesterday, is dominated by a string section. Guitars be damned, most real people prefer strings, really.

Even the most token and lazily-arranged of string sections will bring a tried and trusted illusion of ingratiating sweetness against an uninspired XFM-targeted guitar sound. Even the most rotten and tuneless rock song becomes a listenable and approachable Radio 2-baiting number that your mother would allow into the house. Poor old string sections- what must they think, phoned up only when some hyped indie rock band needs a lazy, desperate stab at a chart hit? No wonder Mr P refers to his lot as a musical rent boy. A gaming boy on the game.

Another quote suggests itself, this time from the film Gregory’s Girl:

“Is he still a virgin?”
“Wouldn’t have thought so. He’s been in the school orchestra for over a year now.”

So, if we’re all agreed that string arrangements in rock are usually a Good Thing, why not sack the dreary old guitar band and let the string section write the songs?

This may be one reason why the Final Fantasy album is a record so instantly classic-sounding, yet still tangential and clandestine.

I’m tending to leave announcements of my events to the Fosca or DE mailing lists, so if you’re interested in not missing out, Dear Reader, do go and sign up at www.fosca.com or www.dickon-edwards.co.uk.

Next Friday and every week after that (until further notice) I’ve got the following intriguing little residency.

LONDON – Every Friday night from July 15th.

More info at:
http://ebeau.co.uk/hp.htm

It’s all the work of Mr Xavior. He plans panel games and debates, and chat-show bits. A bit like on the radio or TV, but in a Bethnal Green bar. I’m doing it partly to shake myself into a creative and performance routine, and mostly because it sounds like fun.

Watch a documentary about the rise of Ms Abi Titmuss, a youngish blonde cypher of a woman whose face and body regularly dominate the UK tabloid press and men’s magazine covers at time of writing. The curious thing is, she admits to being a fraud as a celebrity and a fraud as a model. Her position, such as it is, is because she has realised how to make an enormous amount of money very quickly, doing fairly easy things and have a rather nice time doing it. It’s an opportunity that she’d glimpsed as the girlfriend of a famous man, then pursued with the dedication and relentless tenacity of a zealot. The tabloid spotlight first hit her as The Girlfriend of Mr X, while she was still working as a nurse in a London hospital, earning much less money for much less fun. The day she decided to get a PR person of her own, quit her job and ‘do’ fame, she felt she’d ‘paid her dues’ to the world, and wanted something more.

I can’t possibly blame her for that. But I’m just not convinced the hospital’s loss is really the media’s gain, and I don’t think she is either.

There are accidental celebrities, those who do something successfully enough that their name is known to millions of strangers, but who accept the fame as a necessary side-effect. Then there are deliberate celebrities, who actively enjoy and encourage the trappings of fame, but also like there to be something to point to by way of explanation for the attention-seeking. A song, a book, a film, a TV series. Something to qualify them. These two types have existed since the invention of showbusiness. It’s only recently that I believe a third category has come into being, of which Ms Titmuss is very much a member: disposable celebrities.

It’s an oxymoronic tag. If you can earn money from being a famous Name alone, that surely suggests you can’t be undone. But with Ms Titmuss, she admits she is not unique, that it will be over sooner rather than later. Blonde women willing to be photographed are not in short supply, and she has not made herself into anything more than a blonde woman with a name. Fame itself doesn’t really suit her. In one interview, she tries to say what she does for a living. She can barely describe herself as a model, though that’s what she technically is, because she says she doesn’t feel like a model. So you’d think she’d have something interesting to say about the nature of modern celebrity, about mass sexuality, about why she does it – money aside. But no. Money aside, there really seems to be no other interest in fame for her. It’s just a job she can do which is better paid than nursing. I’m fascinated and appalled at the same time.

If a celebrity gets on a train full of great thinkers and scientists, and the train crashes, the newspapers will report their name first. That’s what fame means. At the time of the tsunami disaster, one newspaper devoted its front page to an unsmiling photo of the great director and actor Richard Attenborough, because he’d lost his granddaughter in the tragedy. Other bereaved grandfathers were not given a look-in. Even when the great anti-showbiz DJ John Peel died, there were photographers at the funeral service poised to snap celebrities in attendance. The implication being, if a celebrity is involved with an event, the event is somehow elevated – even death or disaster. It can only be a matter of time before there is a publication devoted to funerals attended by celebrities: inevitably called Goodbye! Magazine.

During the BBC TV coverage of the Live 8 concert, a blonde woman called Ferne Cotton was employed to ask inane questions of celebrities in the backstage area, helpfully mentioning the word ‘amazing’ in every other sentence. The cameras cut away from a glimpse of exiled Zimbabwean singer Thomas Mapfumo at the Eden Project concert, in order for Ms Cotton to speak to Neil Morrissey.