{"id":5205,"date":"2020-01-04T20:13:55","date_gmt":"2020-01-04T19:13:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/?p=5205"},"modified":"2020-01-06T12:04:13","modified_gmt":"2020-01-06T11:04:13","slug":"some-passing-maniac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/some-passing-maniac\/","title":{"rendered":"Some Passing Maniac"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Wednesday 14 August 2019<\/em>. I renew my passport. This is not because of any panic over Brexit, but because the ten year expiry date happens to be this month. I opt for the no-fuss renewal service offered by the Post Office. Contrary to the stereotype about the British, no true Londoner likes to queue.  Queuing in London is for tourists. Real Londoners know there’s usually a less busy version of whatever one wants, whether it’s a chain of cafes, a Post Office, a bank or an ATM. One quiet Post Office is in Grays Inn Road near Chancery Lane station. It’s hidden in the basement of a branch of Ryman’s, like a secret members’ club. There’s no one else there at all when I go today, even during lunchtime. Today I present my old passport, they take my photograph with a machine at one end of the counter, and it’s all done in five minutes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within\nthe week, a new passport arrives in the post. It looks the same as the old one,\nwith the same burgundy red colour. It takes me a moment before I realise there\nis one difference, though. The words ‘European Union’ are missing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Evening:\nDrinks and Thai food at the Hemingford Arms with Shanti S., which warrants a\nselfie:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

**\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday 16 August 2019<\/em>. To Bethnal Green Working Men’s\nClub, to DJ for the wedding reception of Maud Young. I play many of my old\nBeautiful & Damned tracks. It’s a fun return to a previous life, but as\nwith making music I don’t have any further interest in dj-ing. Passions can wax\nand wane across a life. Some people are happy doing one thing all their life, and\nI envy them. Others are drawn to paths not yet travelled, even if it means leaving\nold worlds behind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday 17 August 2019<\/em>. Some old worlds are never quite\nleft behind, though. In Russell Square today I receive a catcall from an older\nman on a bike: ‘Stop dying your hair, you poof.’ <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nwonder if that happens to Nick Cave?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 18 August 2019<\/em>. To the Rio for Marianne and Leonard<\/em>, Nick Broomfield’s documentary\nabout Leonard Cohen and his muse. Mr Broomfield declares an interest early on:\nlike Cohen, he too once dated Marianne. There’s a sense of bragging here, and\nindeed Mr B can’t resist showing photos that show just how attractive he was in\nthe 1960s, like Liam Gallagher with a thesaurus. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nwith all Nick Broomfield documentaries, the choice of interviewees is wonderfully\nsuspect. We get the testimonies of sacked collaborators, spurned relatives, or\njust some passing maniac. Still, Mr B always makes his subjectivity clear. The\n‘official’ documentaries try to pretend otherwise. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nvisit a new bookshop and caf\u00e9 in Dalston, ‘Ripley & Lambert’. It\nspecialises in books about film. This might seem rather niche, but then ‘niche’\nis now thought to be the way forward. Magazines on prog rock are thriving,\nwhile general music ones like NME <\/em>have\nbitten the dust. A display about women in science fiction explains the shop\nname: Ripley and Lambert are the two female characters in Alien<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday 26 August 2019<\/em>. A stiflingly hot bank holiday. I\nloaf in Dalston all day, only venturing out to see Once Upon A Time in Hollywood <\/em>at the Rio. Mr Tarantino is acquiring\na Dickensian touch with age. There’s an idealised little girl who offers advice\non acting for Leonard DiCaprio: ‘It’s the pursuit that’s meaningful’. Sadly,\nthere’s not enough of this sort of thing, and the end of the film is the usual\nTarantino bloodbath. Except that times have changed, and this sort of trashy\nviolence \u2013 particularly against women \u2013 is now more of a problem. Or perhaps\nnot. Perhaps this is what his fans just expect. Comfort in the familiar,\nhowever problematic. All of which makes Quentin Tarantino the Boris Johnson of\ncinema. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday\n28 August 2019. Pain and Glory <\/em>at the\nRio, the new Almodovar. In a way, this film is just as indulgent as the\nTarantino, with much idolising of the culture of old films. But Almodovar at\nleast nods towards the universal. There’s a beautiful scene early on of women\nwashing blankets in a country river while singing, straight out of a painting\nby Sorolla. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday 29 August 2019<\/em>. Seahorse <\/em>at the Rio, being a documentary on a British trans man as\nhe goes about becoming pregnant. The birth itself is in a birthing pool, making\na neat extra nod to the seahorse analogy. Though the film is subtitled The Dad Who Gave Birth<\/em>, the experience\nis not previously unrecorded. Last year saw a documentary on a different trans\nmale pregnancy, A Deal with The Universe<\/em>.\nAnd in Seahorse <\/em>Mr McConnell mentions\nbeing in a Facebook group for ‘seahorse dads’, plural. The logical next film\nwould be a portrait of such a group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ncollective noun for seahorses is a ‘herd’, which seems too commonplace for such\nan unconventional and ornate creature.  A\nbetter choice now, given the analogy for pregnant trans men, would surely be a ‘pride’.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 1 September 2019<\/em>. To the Posy Simmonds exhibition\nat the House of Illustration. I like her cover design for the 1966 gay-themed\nnovel The Grass Beneath The Wire <\/em>by\nJohn Pollack, with two men in dinner jackets, one with his arm around the\nother. Her 1981 book True Love <\/em>is\nlabelled as ‘the UK’s first modern graphic novel’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\ngallery also shows Marie Neurath’s illustrations for 1950s children’s science\nbooks. One caption has a response from an 8-year-old reader: ‘They are wizard\nbooks! I can read them by myself. I don’t need help from anyone.’<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nthird exhibition is Quentin Blake’s latest work, direct from his studio.\nThere’s a John Ruskin children’s story, a wordless book of his own called Mouse on a Tricycle<\/em>, a collaboration\nwith Will Self titled Moonlight\nTravellers<\/em>, and drawings for the corridors of Sheffield Children’s Hospital.\nAnd this is just Mr Blake’s work for the first half of 2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 3 September 2019. <\/em>My 48th<\/sup> birthday. I go\nto Rye and Camber Sands, mainly on an EF Benson tip. There is a beach caf\u00e9 that\ndoes prosecco at eleven o’clock in the morning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Dinner\nat the Mermaid Inn, then a look at Radclyffe Hall’s house.Back to Dalston in time for the launch of La JohnJoseph’s book A Generous Lover<\/em>,at Burley Fisher. At 48, I am all about books and book-related places.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4 September 2019.<\/em> I read an Observer <\/em>review by Peter Conrad, which discusses Benjamin Moser’s\nnew biography of Susan Sontag.  It seems\nthe woman who gave the world ‘Notes on ‘Camp” wasn’t immune to moments of camp\nherself: ‘When, on one rare occasion, a man chivalrously supplied her with an\norgasm, she complained that the sensation made her feel ‘just like everybody\nelse”.   <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nphrase ‘a man chivalrously supplied her with an orgasm’ also says something about\nMr Conrad. All reviews review the reviewer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr\nMoser’s book claims that Sontag’s partner in later life, the photographer Annie\nLeibovitz, treated her to limousines, first class air travel, and an apartment\nin Paris. As Sontag never earned very much from her books, compared to Leibovitz,\nher partner served as her ‘personal welfare state’. Some welfare. Mr Conrad supplies\nthese details to suggest Sontag was a terrible role model. But I see nothing\nwrong with being a kept intellectual. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 10 September 2019<\/em>. To Stanford’s in Covent Garden\nfor the launch of Travis Elborough’s latest, The Atlas of Vanishing Places<\/em>. I chat to Daniel Rachel. Last time I\nmet him he was telling me he was writing a book on the 1990s Cool Britannia era,\nDon’t Look Back in Anger<\/em>. The book is\nnow out and has had good press. Mr R tells me tonight that he wanted the subtitle\nto contain the phrase An Oral History<\/em>,\nbut the publishers had vetoed this wording, worried that the average reader of a\nbook on Britpop might not know what ‘oral history’ meant.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\nwonder if this is down to the image of Britpop as anti-intellectual and laddish\n(or laddettish). Both Gallagher brothers still seem happy to perpetuate this\nimage, like the cool boys at school who belittled the geeks. When Brett\nAnderson of Suede received rave reviews for his memoir recently, the reviews\nhad overtones of surprise. The implication was that, as he was a rock star from\nthe 1990s, it was a miracle he could string a sentence together at all. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday 9 September 2019<\/em>. A useful retort: ‘I’m afraid I\ndon’t have the budget for any more unpaid work’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday 12 September 2019<\/em>. To Kings Place to be in the\naudience for a recording of the podcast, Girls\non Film<\/em>. The film critic Anna Smith presents three guests – all women –\ndiscussing the latest releases. Two are actors, Ingrid Oliver and Tuppence\nMiddleton, the other is the BFI’s Director of Festivals, Tricia Tuttle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nrise of podcasts against mainstream radio hit a tipping point for me when a\nyoung guest on Radio 4’s A Good Read <\/em>recently\ncalled the programme ‘this podcast’ \u2013 and was not corrected. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drinking\nin the Kings Place glass-plated bar afterwards, looking over the canal and\nGranary Square. This shiny redevelopment, all plate glass and escalators, seems\npopular and utopian, if still finding its feet. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 **<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 17 September <\/em>2019. All work is acting work. The\ntrick is not to be miscast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday 19 Sept 2019<\/em>. I meet Shanthi at a cocktail bar\nin Islington, only to realise that drinks start at \u00a39 \u2013 and that’s just for a\nglass of house wine. There has to be a word for the trick of trying to keep a\nstraight face when such prices are communicated, and indeed for a staffer\ncommunicating them with their air of complete normalcy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday 20 Sept 2019.<\/em> From today I’m being paid the\nLiving Wage (17k) to do a PhD. Less money than the office job I had ten years\nago (which was 19k, in 2009), but my gratitude for not being forced to do unsuitable\nwork more than makes up for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday 23 Sept 2019<\/em>. I read an article about a young Instagram\n‘influencer’, Caroline Calloway, and the world of pursuing internet fame for\nits own sake. This is new and yet not new. I’m reading about the Bright Young\nThings of the 1920s: pretty people whose lives and relationships were\ndocumented in the press without them appearing to actually do anything. So\nperhaps social media has just made that kind of lifestyle more democratic. Today,\na 1920s figure like Stephen Tennant would have to maintain an Instagram account.\nOr rather, as seems to be the case with ‘influencers’, he’d have staff to\nghost-write his posts for him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 25 Sept 2019<\/em>. I read Olivia Laing’s Crudo<\/em>. The use of Kathy Acker reminds me\nhow Acker has become hip all over again. I think of KA’s line ‘Dear Susan\nSontag, please can you make me famous?’, the most honest statement in the\nhistory of literature. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 25 September 2019. <\/em>Tonight, my seahorse brooch is\ndescribed as ‘very Lady Hale’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday 5 October 2019:<\/em> Checking in on Twitter after a gap\none feels besieged by the sheer infinitude of the lives of others. All I can\nadd in response is that I too am alive. Still.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 8 Oct 2019. <\/em>One of the delights of library\nbooks is encountering the traces of previous readers. In a London Library copy\nof Ronald Firbank’s Five Novels, <\/em>from\n1949, I recently found a ticket for Carmen\n<\/em>at the New York Met opera house, dated October 2014. Today I’m reading a\nbook from 1927, Movements in Modern\nEnglish Poetry and Prose <\/em>by Sherard Vines, which has an early assessment of\nFirbank. A slip of paper falls out. It is a handwritten note from the London Library\nto an anonymous reader, informing them that a couple of books they ordered are\nunavailable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nwould normally be dull, but the note is dated 20 April 1954. I can’t help\nscrutinising the handwriting of the librarian \u2013 a beautiful looping hand in\nfountain pen ink, and wondering about the lives of the reader and the staffer, and\nif this disposable note has now outlived them. I look up the unavailable books it\nmentions. Time and Place <\/em>by Lyde and\nGarnett, a 1930s geography book which was ‘not possessed by the Library’, and A Myth of Shakespeare <\/em>by Charles Williams\n\u2013 one of the Inklings \u2013 which in 1954 was ‘missing from the Library shelves’. I\nlook both up in the Library’s catalogue. The Library never did acquire Time and Place<\/em>, but the Wilkins is back\nin stock. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 15 October 2019<\/em>. The Booker Prize is awarded\njointly. One book is Margaret Atwood’s The\nTestaments, <\/em>the sequel to The\nHandmaid’s Tale<\/em>,which has had a\nhuge amount of publicity already, including midnight bookshop openings with actors\ndressed as Handmaids. The other is Bernadine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other<\/em>, which hasn’t. If you can’t decide between two\nbooks in a prize set up to raise the profile of literary fiction, why not give\nit to the book that hasn’t already had its profile already massively raised?\nThere’s something of the spirit of the times in this decision: a misplaced\nsense of righteousness, and with a terror of divisiveness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 16 October 2019<\/em>. On a Sontag tip again, this time\nbecause of an excellent essay by Johanna Hedva on the White Review <\/em>website. A quote by Sontag connects with my own\nthoughts:  ‘I wanted every kind of life,\nand the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday 19 October 2019<\/em>. Finish reading Firbank’s New Rythum <\/em>(sic), his unfinished novel\nset in New York. There’s a couple of superb set pieces, such as the\nstrawberry-picking tea party held in a ballroom, and the arrival at the city\nharbour of a huge nude male statue. I wonder if the latter inspired the end of\nJoe Orton’s What the Butler Saw<\/em>,\nOrton being a Firbank admirer. <\/em>There\nwas talk lately of a new statue to Orton in his home town of Leicester. He’d\nhave like that to be nude, too, but with his socks on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 20 October 2019<\/em>. I listen to two long interviews\nwith Chris Morris, on the Adam Buxton podcast. The latest Morris project is a\nfeature film, The Day Shall Come<\/em>,\nwhich I’ve just seen at the Rio. The film is in a similar vein to Four Lions<\/em>: a conventional comedy drama,\nscripted and directed by Morris, and based on his research into real life\nincidents. Morris himself doesn’t perform in the film, and I come away missing\nhis greatest asset, the one which made On\nThe Hour <\/em>so distinctive: his voice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 ** <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 28 October 2019<\/em>. To the Tim Walker exhibition at\nthe V&A, which ticks so many of my boxes: Tilda Swinton as Edith Sitwell\n(who turns out to be a relative of hers), Aubrey Beardsley, Angela Carter, Lord of the Flies<\/em>, fashion, glamour,\ncamp. In the exhibition shop, there’s a display of Mr Walker’s favourite books.\nThese include The Swimming-Pool Library <\/em>and\nTintin in Tibet<\/em>. And inevitably, Orlando<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 29 October 2019.<\/em> To Homerston Hospital for surgery.\nThis is a septoplasty (with ‘reduction of turbinates’) to correct a deviated\nseptum. The procedure is to address the nasal breathing problems I’ve been\nhaving for some years. I go under general anaesthetic. All is well, though I have\nto spend the next 14 days at home to minimise the risk of infection. My\nlandlady K is my designated escort, in that she collects me from the hospital\nand checks up on me during the first 24 hours. It’s a level of concern for a\ntenant that is difficult to imagine from many landlords. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday 31 October 2019<\/em>. Halloween. It’s only today that I\nnotice the first name of Kenneth Williams’s vampiric character in Carry On Screaming<\/em> is Orlando. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday 9 November 2019.<\/em> Irritations over redundant adjectives. A book review in the Sunday Times<\/em> refers to ‘a little novella’.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 10 November 2019<\/em>. Less Boris Johnson, more BS Johnson. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 17 November 2019. <\/em>I read about the rise of gender\nreveal parties, and wonder if fans of Judith Butler hold gender congeal parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 24 November 2019.<\/em> Today’s disproportionate\nirritation: Eve Sedgwick making the common error of thinking the song ‘Over the\nRainbow’ is called ‘Somewhere Over The Rainbow’ (Epistemology of the Closet<\/em>, p. 144).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 1December 2019.<\/em> I’ve turned my PhD thesis into an\nonline Advent calendar. Every day in December I post an image on Instagram and Twitter,\nrelating to camp modernism. Some of these ‘windows’ are writers like Gertrude\nStein. Others are illustrations like Alan Cumming in Cabaret<\/em>, to represent Christopher Isherwood. The resulting Camp\nModernism Advent Calendar bears the hashtag #CaMoAdCal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Link:\nhttps:\/\/www.instagram.com\/explore\/tags\/camoadcal\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday 12 December 2019.<\/em> I cast my vote in the constituency\nof Hackney North and Stoke Newington. The polling station is Colvestone Primary\nSchool, near Ridley Road market. I’ve voted here twice before for council\nelections, with barely anyone about. This time there’s a long queue that snakes\nout into the playground, some forty people strong, even at 7.30am. I put my X\nnext to Diane Abbott, for Labour. It’s not without some guilt as I’d rather\nvote Green, but removing the Conservatives has never been more important. The\nlocal result is that Ms Abbott is re-elected, while the Greens increase their\nvote, no thanks to me. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As\nI walk away I am so convinced of the unsuitability of Mr Johnson and the\nnobility of Mr Corbyn that I feel even long-standing Tory voters will not bring\nthemselves to vote Tory now. Only masochists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday 13 December 2019<\/em>. Masochism triumphs. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nsubsequent days see constant post-mortems. I have to admit that I was ignorant\nof Mr Corbyn’s complete lack of appeal to voters outside of cities. My mother,\nwho lives in the English countryside, is utterly unsurprised by the result.\nWhereas I am not immune to social media bubbles, little illusory worlds in\nwhich everyone appears to share the same opinion as you. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\nseems incredible that between these two men Mr J appealed to more people than\nMr C. Between Johnson’s Wodehousian blather and Corbyn’s inflexible sternness,\nit was the former that offered more space<\/em>\nto more people. I thought that the public might at least give Corbyn a\ntentative go at the steering wheel, what with a decade of the Tories and\nseveral disastrous months of Johnson. But no: better the devil you know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\novernight TV election coverage does not help. All the presenters and pundits seem\nunlikely to know what it’s like to, say, live in a rented room over the last\nfive years. Channel 4’s programme is billed as an ‘alternative’ election night,\nbut the pundits are equally comfortable and well-off, including Rachel Johnson,\nsister of Boris. In the 1980s Channel 4 was synonymous with proper ideas of the\nalternative: seasons of foreign films, a simulcast of Derek Jarman’s Blue<\/em> with Radio 3, the Dennis Potter\n‘Seeing the Blossom’ interview. Today, ‘alternative’ just means a different\nmember of the Johnson family. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 24 December 2019. <\/em>I’m so easily tired that even the\nidea of fun exhausts me. Whenever I see an event is sold out, I feel the warm\nglow of a lucky escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 25 December 2019<\/em>. Christmas at Bildeston in\nSuffolk, visiting Mum, including a visit to Dad’s memorial in the village\ngraveyard. Mum finds an old photo of myself where I’m slouching on the sofa in\nthe living room, the cards on the wall dating the image to a Christmas past. I\nthink it’s from 1989, so I would be 18. My hair is my natural brown, but I can\ntell it’s from my phase of slightly lightening  it with Sun-In spray \u2013 my gateway drug to full\nperoxide. I’m also wearing a black polo-neck jumper, a look I took to during my\nstage management trainee phase, first as an intern at the Wolsey Theatre in\nIpswich (1989-1990), and then formally at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School\n(1990-1992). I now think I just wanted a job that allowed me to wear black\npolo-neck jumpers. By 1992 I had lost interest in the jumpers, and indeed in\nstage management. But working on productions of Company <\/em>and Side By Side By\nSondheim <\/em>made me realise that I did want to be a writer of thoughtful and\nquotable phrases, beginning with lyrics for songs. I still use ‘Move On’ from Sunday In The Park With George <\/em>as\ninspiration. There is also the pleasing irony of not moving on from listening\nto ‘Move On’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday 26 December 2019.<\/em> I make the mistake of looking at\nTwitter over Christmas. Such relentless anger. It’s one thing to disagree about\nsomething, quite another to devote large amounts of passion arguing with people\nwho have no intention of changing their mind, at least not on Twitter. Less energy\non what one dislikes or finds offensive, more on what one likes and finds\nbeautiful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

**<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 31 December 2019<\/em>. The cover of the late Alasdair\nGray’s Unlikely Stories, Mostly <\/em>(1983)has as good a New Year’s resolution as\nany: ‘Work as if you were living in the early days of a better nation’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

**
This online diary was begun in 1997. It is thought to be the longest running of its kind. The archive contains over twenty years of exclusive knowledge, all searchable and free to read without adverts or algorithms or clickbait. It depends entirely on donations by readers to keep it going. Thank you!
<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Donate<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
\"Donate<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wednesday 14 August 2019. I renew my passport. This is not because of any panic over Brexit, but because the ten year expiry date happens to be this month. I opt for the no-fuss renewal service offered by the Post Office. Contrary to the stereotype about the British, no true Londoner likes to queue.  Queuing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[591,1546,1544,1545,97,1388,837,24,126,711,1541,245,1542,1543,477,1547,1180,1474,116],"class_list":["post-5205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bildeston","tag-camoadcal","tag-camp-modernism","tag-camp-modernism-advent-calendar","tag-catcalls","tag-dalston","tag-dalston-rio","tag-dj-gigs","tag-dj-ing","tag-elections","tag-maud-young","tag-mum","tag-nick-broomfield","tag-ripley-and-lambert","tag-ronald-firbank","tag-septoplasty","tag-shanthi-sivanesan","tag-susan-sontag","tag-the-london-library"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5211,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5205\/revisions\/5211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}