and it still surely remains the best music video in the history of foreverness.

Being that camp doesn’t come easily you know. It’s a fabulously fine line.

Full many a time our eyes together drew
That reading, and drove the colour from our faces;
But one point only was it that o’ercame us.

Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating.
Galeotto was the book and he who wrote it.
That day no farther did we read therein.”

this morning i woke up on the wrong side of bed and didn’t get out of it until my body had already left the house.

“This is a difficult time for us. Your reception to things is going to get a little odd. “
“What do you mean?”
“You’ll find out.”

i hardly blinked on the tube today because my head was so full of thoughts. i only knew this when a tear welled and fell from my eye. i didn’t even even feel it sting at first. isn’t that just the way it always goes though? i’m doing weird things again, like pretending i’m drunk when i’m not because it absolves me of responsibility - no one expects anything of you. no one asks what’s wrong, or asks questions you don’t want to answer and then storms off declaring with a look that you’re being difficult. no one gives you that insufferable face of tireless sympathy because they want to help. it’s much better being stupid. infinitely so. the bruises come before the blow. i looked at your face this morning and it occurred to me how much you look like the person i used to know. and then i thought about the conversation i had with another sort of you, the one where, yet again, i got kicked around the room with the best of intentions - stabbed with a smile and punched with a hug. the broken tart with a broken heart slipped through the earth and i barely noticed, until i found myself reaching out for him - clutching hold of him, half conscious of what was happening. as for the flesh that sprouted through the earth in the first place, i couldn’t care less. i have no history here. they are all dreams made real. why do dreams hurt? why are the most savage weapons intangible? mirrors and cycles, and the spinning apes who stare into themselves, the nature of what it is to be human. I am sick of it. I am become flesh. what is there in this dizzying spinning ball of neuroses and self-obsession, clinging to the nearest ball of light in an endless place of darkness and cold? what is there here that is real?

Leaving Euston tube station on the escalator, a tall balding man with glasses stepped in front of me with one of those huge luggage trolley things. He plonked it next to him on the right hand side of the step, with himself standing beside it on the left, completely blocking any way of getting past him.

I hate this.

I really hate this.

This happens everyday and it really irritates me. I like to get where I’m going and get there quickly. I don’t dawdle, I don’t like wasting time and I try my best not to get in anyone else’s way. Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner, as the song goes, that I always seem to be in a hurry. I just think that you get all the time you want to waste when you’re dead, and being forced to walk at someone else’s painfully slow pace reminds me of decomposition more than anything else. Perhaps it’s just my own particular brand of malaise, but when I’m forced to wait for no good reason beyond simple thoughtlessness - these are the times I feel most trapped inside myself. These are the moments that I can so painfully feel the flesh of my body aging all around me - stifling me, smothering me - suffocating me like a python.

And I hate it.

“Excuse me,” I say from behind him, politely, and doing my best to conceal the frustration that I have to deal with this ignorance and inconsiderateness everyday.

He turns his head slightly, but doesn’t reply. I know he’s heard me.

“Could I get past please?” I try again.

He turns irritably round to me, looks at the not exactly corpulent luggage next to him, and shrugs. Then he shifts himself all of two centimetres to the right, and thrusts out his shoulder so the bag draped over it is also blocking my way up the stairs.

I try and move past him, but it’s practically impossible. This man is not overweight. His bag is not huge. He could easily have stood behind it. He could easily have stood against it. But for some reason, this man does not want to let me walk past him. And I have no idea why.

That doesn’t mean I don’t give it a bloody good try.

“You shouldn’t be walking up escalators anyway,” he hisses in a thick Scottish accent as I squeeze past him. “It’s dangerous, you twat.”

“And you shouldn’t be standing on the left,” I reply plainly, as one of several small signs glides past that verifies this.

I realise as I speak that my voice is trembling. When I get to the top of the stairs my heart is racing. My fists are clenched. At first I think I am furious but I just feel like I want to cry. Why?

Why?

That’s pathetic! Why should something like that make me want to cry? I’m not normally the kind of person who cries at anything anymore. I get angry. I throw things at walls and snap at people. Mostly I just drink and smoke a lot when something’s happened to upset my day. But I do not cry.

I was confused. I just didn’t understand. I didn’t understand how someone could be so selfish, so wrapped up in their own concerns that they don’t appreciate anyone else’s - how they couldn’t imagine that someone else might be in a hurry or have even the most basic level of empathy to hazard a guess as to why. And I didn’t understand why he had to be so rude. It was just unnecessary. It was hurtful.

And that was why I think I suddenly felt so helpless.

In that moment I think I was afraid that I can be like that. That I get so wound up in my own problems and dramas and fabulous neuroses that I can forget that there are other real, living, just as suffering people around me. Sometimes I can be quite rude.

As I walked back to the office, shaking a little for some reason, I went through the usual list of witty retorts that only ever turn up at the long-set scene of an accident, rather than immediately after it took place. An entire Greek chorus of Wildean put-downs and one liners marched in a showcase procession through my conscious mind, until it occurred to me that that most appropriate thing I could have replied with was just two words long.

“Thank you.”

That would have been the most appropriate thing to say by far, and in so many ways. Thank you.

So thank you, tall balding Scottish man in glasses, travelling to God knows where on the escalator at Euston station. Thank you for helping me with a much needed refresher in empathy and self-awareness. Thank you for reminding me that you can’t always rely on the kindness of strangers.

Thank you for being, in many ways like myself, an ignorant, self-absorbed, selfish and offensive prick.

The compacted innards of a cherry tomato can be expelled over several miles at speeds in excess of 100 kph when the mouth is not properly closed upon biting.

Ergo, never try and talk whilst biting on a cherry tomato.

Trust me.

Darling, I’m going to be on television.

Regretably on neither The Late Review, Parkinson, or certainly not BBC One’s Imagine again (or not technically again since I fell frustratingly short of actually appearing on there in the first place), but in fact The Album Chart Show as an adoring member of the the great unwashed.

Any footage of me dancing awkwardly and cheering in the front row to either the Super Furry Animals or The Kaiser Chiefs is, I can assure you, shamelessly edited in, as you might be able to tell from skew-whiffy continuity resulting from my removing my coat just before the second take of a charming new ditty called The Magic Position which we left shortly after. This final offering was from an up and coming artist named Patrick Wolf. You might have heard of him.

Hopefully they’ll leave in the footage of Olly giving me a smug elbowing after Pat made eye contact with him, and me mouthing “f**k off” to Olly by way of retort.

It was all very different from The Union Chapel performance last month. Pat seemed at times almost painfully nervous setting up just before he walked on, and though he laughed off a few false starts on both Get Lost and The Magic Position, looked a little pissed off talking with the band backstage afterwards. Performing your own concert at an intimate venue you love and being the first act on a TV show in a large commercial venue are clearly two different things. I may be biased, but I thought he was fantastic regardless, and Mr Wa-Wa and I were definitely cheering, stomping and clapping because we wanted to, and not because the scary man in the sweaty green tee shirt who swore a lot told us we had to for the cameras.

Patrick (or indeed Ben) fans can see our mutual second UK terrestrial televisual appearance* at 12:10am Saturday 13th January on Channel 4, or repeated the same day at 2:00pm on E4.

*Ben once appeared for several seconds on Match Of The Day in the mid nineties as a blip in Stamford Bridge’s West Stand, after his father took him to see his arbitrary supported football team get stuffed by Chelsea. Ben shortly after surrendered all attempts to lead a good, solid heterosexual life.

Hello darling readers,

I’ve finally got round to doing something about a huge backlog of photos left metaphorically lying around for, ooh, yonks. Some of these may interest you. Some of these may not. There is no real need to let me know if you are of either persuasion.

Happy days,

b x

“Tonight Matthew, I’m going to be as belligerently pretentious as possible.”

Keep busy. Do more things that you can possibly have time for. Never turn down a dinner with an old friend, a night out with new ones or an invite to the pub with someone who’s just been paid. A true gentleman has no idea what his bank balance is. Learn to say yes. Learn to say no. You need only 4 hours sleep a night - anything else is an indulgence. Take only one day or evening off from keeping busy a week. Don’t do guilt - don’t hate yourself for not having the time, energy or inspiration to do everything at once. Know that you will get things done when you can. Never force anything to happen when it’s not ready, just as you must never force anyone to do anything they don’t want to do. Enter competitions. Win competitions. Win small amounts every week on The National Lottery. See Patrick Wolf at least once a month. Listen to his new album until your heart races and your ears bleed joy. Always have a song on in the background. Make time for your friends and family when they need you - when they really need you. Don’t do anything you don’t want to. Waste time playing The Sims 2 and love it. Keep looking for new jobs. Take photos - take lots of photos. Dye your hair whenever one colour bores you. Love your coat and scarf. Keep your room tidy. Don’t be frightened. Don’t waste time on grudges, jealousy, rude people or selfishness. Don’t feel lost. Know that everything has its place, its time and its purpose. Shinbo.

Loving 2007 so far.

Me to old school friend on MySpace:

“Lawd. This is a teeny world.

Hello!”

Old school friend to me, in response, several weeks later:

“Were you the guy I met in that pub off Charing Cross Road about 8 months ago?”

In assorted images…