Wednesday 22nd June – A historic date for some. The head of the UK Civil Service announces the wearing of ties as no longer mandatory for male employees. As long as they’re still smart, office boys and men alike can now wear their shirts open-necked as they oil the cogs of government. Must be a relief for those suffering under the current heatwave in offices built before the invention of air conditioning.

It may just be the Civil Service, but I suspect the trickle-down effect for the world of work will be ineluctable. When a similar guideline was made with bowler hats in the past, the trademark headwear of the English businessman soon disappeared from the streets and onto the naughty head of Ms Minnelli in Cabaret.

I personally welcome this news. Soon, when a man is seen in public wearing a tie, he will no longer be accused of having come straight from work. Tie-wearers will at last be deliberate tie-wearers. All ties will be nice ties, not ugly arrows of drudgery.

This apparently follows an industrial tribunal where a man claimed the forcing of ties upon male workers but not their female colleagues was tantamount to sexual discrimination. He won. The times are indeed a-slightly-changing.

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In the afternoon with Ms Silke to see the excellent Batman Begins at the North Finchley Lido VUE. Tickets are 2 for the price of 1 – a welcome discount due to my ownership of a Orange phone. Orange are one of those curious companies who pay to admit their product can be thoroughly annoying, at least when used without consideration for others. Their adverts are getting a bit annoying in themselves, though. Don’t let a mobile phone spoil your ad break, I say.

There’s currently a campaign to promote UK cinema going, as opposed to DVD renting at home. I certainly agree that watching Lord Of The Rings on a small screen really isn’t the same experience as seeing it at a proper Odeon, but I have some suggestions to make to cinema chains if they want to increase ticket sales.

Firstly, please make the outing more affordable. The Orange Wednesdays thing helps, but what about the food and drink? A Coke and a packet of popcorn for more than the price of the cinema ticket? To me that’s a profit margin worthy of investigation by a trading watchdog, but it’s been like that for years.

Secondly, O Cinema Manager, if you want to save on your overheads, how about replacing the sound system with a cheaper, older one that doesn’t physically assault me? Sometimes the rush to upgrade can go too far. After all, digital watches didn’t quite replace the analogue variety. New doesn’t always mean better.

My father has to take earplugs to the cinema, and I may follow suit if this goes on. Do people really appreciate surround Dolby sound at immense volume? The other day in a cinema I had my ears blasted apart and my seat submitted to intense shaking every other moment. And that was just Ladies In Lavender.

Still, I’m grateful for the air conditioning.

Jen Denitto reminds me of an amusing Andy Roberts-connected memory that we share, this time from the late 90s.

After spending a pleasant afternoon at a Spitalfields small press comics event Ms D, Mr R, Mr Darren Hayman (of the band Hefner) and I repaired to a local hostelry. It was a Sunday evening, and we had found ourselves wandering around in that weekend no-man’s-land part of London where the City merges with the East End. The only bar we could find open on these deserted streets was a rather bare and uncarpeted little room, brightly lit with bare wooden walls, taped music playing in the background but not too loud. There may well have been sawdust on the floor. A dozen or so drinkers were scattered around barstools and tables. It seemed homely enough, and we really had failed to find anywhere else, so we picked a table, got in a few drinks, and sat down to continue our conversations.

One of us remarked how odd it was there were no other female customers. Or even other groups or couples. Just ordinary-looking lone men, mainly in their forties or older, having a quiet drink. We were also aware that some members of this sullen clientele were openly staring at our little party. I’m quite used to that, of course, and dismissed the attention accordingly. It must be just me they’re staring at, I presumed.

After a short while, we were comforted to see a woman enter the room. Thirty-something, a bit washed-out-looking, fairly ordinary. Someone’s wife, I thought. She went to the bar, got a drink and chatted to the bar staff.

Then she stepped onto a little dais in one corner of the room and proceeded to take off her clothes in time with the music.

Our little group’s chat about sensitive indie guitar bands, Riot Grrrl scenes and compatible comic strips had been rather compromised by a strip of a entirely different kind. Martyrs to our embarrassed smirks, we drank up rather quickly and left.

At least now we knew why the pub solely contained staring lone men being a little bit too quiet.

A gentleman I’ve known, liked, admired and approved of was killed by a motorcycle this week.

I knew him as Mr Andy Roberts of Oxford and London, of the band Linus, and of many artistic scenes spanning music and print, genres and countries, appreciation and creation. A beautiful, kind and talented man is now senselessly, needlessly, pointlessly dead. Many people I know are upset, and I’m rather upset too. In the sphere of public media, I think it’s better to breed support than breed grief, and I want to do whatever I can to help those closer to him. Not least writing this diary, which is the one thing many say I am good at or good for.

Me: ‘I’m terrified of saying anything Inappropriate.’
The Reader: ‘Why break the habit of a lifetime?’

Cliches are so very hard to avoid when writing about somebody who has just died. Andy Roberts was an anti-cliché. And then of course, I find myself writing ‘in so many ways.’

There goes any attempt to be entirely sombre. Someone told me the other day that my public diary was ‘so delightfully funny’, which was all very flattering. But then she quoted an entry I had thought entirely sober and sedate, bordering on despair. I pictured her reading my future suicide note in fits of helpless laughter.

Regular readers will know that when I walk innocently around London, it’s quite usual for strangers to openly point and laugh at me. More now than ever before. On an Old Street tube platform last Friday night, three tall black gentlemen in Hawaiin shirts and shorts stopped their conversation as I passed, paused, then broke into fits of mirth. One of them shook his head and said, ‘Only in London. Only in London.’

What’s important to me is that the speaker was smiling as he said this, and it was a smile without cruelty or malice. Although it is never my intention to be a walking, waking source of public hilarity, I am pleased that I can spread a little accidental happiness as I go by. The same applies to my diary. If I were told today that I was actually the tragicomic figment of a bored German science-fiction fan’s unbalanced imagination, my life would finally make sense.

It’s probably better for me to stay accidentally rather than deliberately funny, too. There’s been many occasions where I’ve made what I thought was a highly amusing joke, only for people to not laugh, or worse, take it the wrong way, even finding the joke offensive. We do, after all, live in a culture of supreme carefulness, huddled around words like crystal. Words like ‘inappropriate’ and ‘offensive’ now bandied about with the kind of frequency the word ‘rations’ must have had in the 1940s. ‘Inappropriate’ is off the ration book.

My own sick and twisted taste in humour means that my primary reaction to all the Live 8 philanthropy was to consider having a wristband made with the slogan ‘Make Coldplay History.’ Once again, I apologise to Coldplay and their mothers. Though I do wonder if the mothers of the non-Chris Martin members could recognise their sons, were they not standing next to the singer at the time. (And again, I apologise.)

Mr Roberts had a distinctive and beautiful face, and only ever liked music that was interesting. He could never have been in Coldplay. No greater tribute. (That’s the last time, I promise. Sorry.)

So, stifling another cliche, if the sad clown hat fits – and for me, who I am kidding – wear it. I’d much rather be the ringmaster, a stately trapeze artist, a sexy acrobat, or at the very least Third Zebra, but so be it. I know I am disfigured with a certain innate clumsiness of both body and mind. I can only hope that this clumsiness more often pleases than upsets.

I say something solemn, turn to leave, then fall over. That’s fine. I just want people to smile when I fall over.

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And when it comes to my abiding memories, Mr Roberts really did have a great smile. A gentle, kind, wry, welcoming, intelligent smile. I could never imagine him with a smirk or a sneer or a malign rictus. In fact, the latter sounds far more like the name of a band he would have raved about, than an expression his countenance would entertain. I can imagine him buying the first Malign Rictus EP when it came out in 1992. On, oh I don’t know, Dworkin Records 10″ dogtooth vinyl or something like that.

I couldn’t possibly presume to have been anything more than an occasional and peripheral part of his life, but I have to confess feeling a certain admiration – or do I really mean envy? – for what I did know of him. Like me, he dipped his feet into many pools of experience: band culture, book culture, feminism scenes, radical theory scenes, DIY music scenes, fanzine scenes, comic scenes, and the UK small press comic scene that my father Bib is a fan of. Mr R managed to befriend my father and myself separately, before rapturously realizing the connection. This happened on an occasion when Edwards Senior and Junior were both in attendance at some DIY small press do. ‘Guess who Dickon’s Dad is!’ he told others excitedly. Or to some it might have been ‘Guess who Bib’s son is!”

Added to that were his equally inspiring commitments to adult education, proper jobs, and proper relationships. But unlike the dabbling dilettante, fence-sitting likes of myself, Mr R ensured he got his feet wet. When it came to the things and people he found involving, he got involved. And, incredible to me, he managed to have the energy and know-how to keep all such sides of his life in balance, alternative and mainstream; sensible adult worker, inquiring student gabbling to me at gigs about philosophy, and playful cat-like fanboy. For me, he was The Talented Mr Roberts: not just a talented guitarist and artist, but talented in knowing how to get and keep friends, how to be kind without keeping score, and how to live. I certainly envied him that.

I also admired his sincere and lasting dedication to feminist band culture and alternative queer culture, particularly for a straight male. According to one such lady’s lady, Mr Roberts seemed to know more lesbians than the average actual lesbian. He would often use words like ‘cool’ and refer to some spoken word performance artist by saying ‘she rocks’. Whereas these are phrases I would have to employ a stunt double to use myself, Mr R. could pull them off without sounding a snob, an American wannabe, or an ingratiating twit. I felt that the music and fanzine scenes he frequented could sometimes breed a degree of snobbery and wariness of outsiders. For me, Mr Roberts would often be the one person in a room of intimidating ‘scenesters’ that I felt I could approach and chat to safely, without feeling I’d get told off for NOT using the word ‘cool’. He was never, dare I say it, ‘up himself’. And that’s coming from me.

One last abiding memory. I was never the recipient of one of his famous compilation tapes, but I did once pop into Camden Waterstones, where he worked, to buy the latest Alan Bennett spoken word CD. Mr Roberts insisted on giving me a sly staff discount, even though I hadn’t come to any of his gigs for ages, or even seen him much full stop. I was taken aback by this, and I remain grateful. The CD was ‘Alan and Thora’, a compilation of Thora Hird’s Bennett monologues about dying. Paradigms of English tragicomedy. Which is where we came in.

Andy Roberts – the missing link between my father, Bikini Kill, and Thora Hird.

Splendid boy, all of him. I’ll never forget him.

Having acquired broadband, I’ve started to enjoy mp3 blogs. Everyone’s a DJ nowadays. With mp3 blogs, one gets to asks oneself, ‘if I could play the world one track right now, what would it be?’ Or at least, that’s what they should be asking themselves.

Treasures I’ve enjoyed lately include a live recording of The Arcade Fire performing the Talking Heads song Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place). With guest vocals from none other than its author, David Byrne. Then there’s Final Fantasy’s dreamy cover of the Joanna Newsom song Peach Plum Pear.

I’m tempted to join in a little myself. So today my finger points to the NYC group My Favorite. I first encountered them on the bill at the 2001 Benno festival, which also marked Fosca’s Swedish debut. The event was held in a forest clearing, next to a vast and silent moonlit lake. Instead of dressing rooms, we had our own chalets. The wine flowed, the crowds danced and sang along. Like Fosca, My Favorite seemed to be a band that Swedish music fans had particularly taken to their hearts entirely of their own accord.

My Favorite have a winning line in well-crafted, heartfelt and catchy indiepop. One song they played at Benno was so memorable to me that I could still remember it four years later. Michael from the band emailed me last week to say they’re playing the UK, so I finally asked him to identify that song he’d invaded my mind with so successfully.

It’s called Homeless Club Kids (link expires in 7 days), and is the song I’ve chosen to broadcast to you, Dear Reader. Please enjoy.

As should be the case with all mp3 downloading, if you enjoy the music, do buy the proper CDs. This track is taken from the double CD compilation The Happiest Days Of Our Lives (on Double Agent Records), which includes remixes by the likes of Future Bible Heroes, ie The Magnetic Fields in synthpop mode.

There’s more audio and video at the band’s website. I particularly like the small dog in the rather adorable video for the song ‘The Happiest Days Of My Life’.

My Favorite play a rare concert in London this Friday 17th June, at Club Hemisphere @ Underbelly, 11 Hoxton Square, N1. Support from Plans and Apologies and Strange Idols.

I’ll be there.

Shocked to hear about Andy Roberts’s accident via Jenni Scott.

Fosca are looking for a stand-up violin or viola player to join the band. Pass it on.

I’m tempted to ask Dickon of the Tindersticks. Partly because they appear to be resting at the moment, but mainly because I like the idea of speaking to someone else called Dickon.

Rather impressively, Plan B magazine is now on sale at my local newsagent of choice – Northwood News in Northwood Road N6. Filed next to The Wire, but I’ve never been attracted to that more long-running publication. It takes lesser-known music very seriously indeed, which is fine, but without any sense of joy or playfulness, which for me is less fine. The writers of The Wire like to celebrate music, but without evincing any signs of actually enjoying it. So much for Delighting The Heart.

As for Word magazine, well, it follows up an issue with a Bruce Springsteen cover with one, er, featuring ‘On Tour With Bruce Springsteen’. Any colour as long as it’s Bruce. I suppose someone important must have told them they had to pretend to be Mojo, or die. Such a shame.

‘And what do you bring to the party?’
‘A sense of trying to be someone else.’

Photo of self sent today from Richard Smith of Gay Times. Taken by Piers Allardyce, a charming man who once photographed Orlando at Club Skinny in Camden, circa 1995. Ten years later, he’s still snapping away and I’m still posing away in London clubs. In this case, Kash Point at Moonlighting, Soho, May 2005. Though in 1995, he couldn’t show me the results instantly via the back of his camera.

The lighting makes it look like I’m wearing nail varnish. I’m not. That would be overdoing it, even for me. Apart from anything else, the fumes give me a headache.

After having an email address for ten years, I finally get Broadband. The child in a sweetshop element has yet to die down.

The numerous BBC Radio Listen Again streams are a particular favourite. No excuse to miss anything half-decent on the radio now. There’s the mp3 podcasts of the intellectual discussion show In Our Time, currently holding its Who Is The Best Philospher poll, or Mark Kermode’s deliciously ranting film reviews on Five Live. For the film Palindromes, he manages to not only slag off the director Mr Solondz, but poor old Mr Brecht too. “Brechtian distance? I don’t need to be reminded I’m watching a film or play. I know I’m in the theatre, because I entered a building with the word ‘THEATRE’ on the outside!”

This week, David Mitchell, of the shows Peepshow and Mitchell & Webb, shines on Armando Ianucci’s satirical show Charm Offensive. Proof that, in the hands of experts (ie not 99% of people who write on the Internet), sarcasm can actually be the highest form of wit. He has this to say on the subject of Bob Geldof and the forthcoming Live 8 concert:

“I think he’s saying the real power doesn’t lie in the established forms of government. It lies in a man who by swearing can make credulous people assemble.”

Fosca at Cafe Kosmos, Gothenburg, June 4th 2005.
L – R: Kate Dornan, D.E., Rachel Stevenson.

Back from Sweden in one piece. We are looked after by Erika, Victor and the band Compute in Gothenburg; Said, Mikael and Dan in Malmo. Fantastic response from audience at Gothenburg – where they know all the Fosca lyrics far better than I do. The experience of watching an audience singing along to one’s own lyrics is one that makes everything worthwhile.

On the way home, I manage to set off the Gothenburg airport metal detector. The culprits are the metal clips on my braces. As in the types that hold one’s trousers up. For some reason the machine’s Stansted counterpart isn’t affected. Either the Swedish security devices are more powerful, or the Stansted device is deliberately calibrated to allow for old-fashioned trouser accessories.

Have to write up my notes as a tour diary for Plan B magazine, but readers may be interested to read the blog reports of my bandmates Ms Dornan and Ms Stevenson. Ms Dornan has an additional moose teaser here.

Big piece on The Boogaloo by James Brown in this week’s Time Out magazine. It concludes thus:

Holding court in the corner is inevitably [Shane] MacGowan, these days a Dickensian character who has a live-in butler who serves him sausages. ‘The butler’s a former New Romantic called Mr Dickon Edwards,” says [manager] O’Boyle. “He used to be in that band Orlando. I’ve made him the Ambassador of the Boogaloo. Only Shane could come to the pub with a butler.’

I’m rather pleased about that. Since then Mr O’Boyle has asked me to host bingo nights at the pub. I do hope these happen.

One of those emails that makes it all worthwhile:

Thanks for starting up Fosca again. Wish I could fly a quarter of the way
around the world to see you. But know that at least someone will be buying
whatever you guys manage to put out.

Currently struggling with programs to generate synthy basslines and beats, starting with the appallingly named Fruity Loops v5. Like website design, it’s about time I put in the hours and really taught myself how to do it.

Found myself saying this at a party the other day:

“I’m against the Conservative Party politically, but I’m for them sexually.”