Don’t Stop Believin'

… Bollox. Wonderful wonderful Bollox. Perhaps the best one ever for me. Wore make-up and a completely GAY outfit. I’m 31, I’m allowed …


… Unintentionally boozy Sunday following an intense tete-a-tete about The Novel. Sailor Jerry and ginger beer at home followed by Guinness with the lovely Emma and Guy (clang) at Briton’s Protection shivering under a feeble heat lamp in my Jimmy Dean jacket. Finished up listening to Ella Fitzgerald at Guy’s well past bedtime before I threw up from too much pear cider into his loo. Epic fail. But funny too. Had a quick scout around for the Brit award on the dash to the bathroom, didn‘t see it. I know, I know, I have serious problems …


… Took Helen for her leaving dinner at Wagamama. Sob. Then on for cocktails at Socio Rehab and some Tiki bar next door I can never remember the name of. We had a BALL. Had a ginger Manhattan and something with a burning sugar cube floating in it. You can’t really go back to pints after that can you? On to Nik’s flat party where people raided his wardrobe and got dressed up as him and I stole paperbacks for reasons unknown to even me …


… Kneehigh Theatre Company’s excellent production of Brief Encounter at The Lowry. Proper good funny musical tear-jerking inventive theatre with a fantastic cast and sublime mix of cinema screens, music hall, romance and stiff upper lippage. I cried! I never cry! …

… Cocktail party for Katie’s birthday. Clang Joe clang Stretch clang came clang. Great fun but things got out of hand and I have consequently been reported to the building management. Oops. Feel like a halls of residence crim now. I wish the neighbour had come to me instead of going straight to the Headmaster, as it were, seems a bit much. Perhaps the slight, single, bespectacled homosexual at number 43 is a threatening presence after all (that’s me by the way). Seriously though, I feel a beast about the whole thing so am being an absolute model neighbour from now on, cushions tied to my feet, listening only to Eno’s ambient works on Volume 1 with the headphones on and my head inside a sleeping bag …


… Facebook hiatus for me for the time being, at the very least until after New York. Facebook, designed as we all know for ‘sharing’, has been facilitating some kind of mental episode with me. I think I shared too much and now everyone hates me. Ah well, win some lose some, innit? All the mistakes, drunken, emotional, personal and otherwise are essentially sitting there in hideous summary each morning waiting for me and I just can’t bear it. Plus I’m an emotional cutter, I have to investigate the absolute worst of any given scenario and Facebook is a charm for doing such things. In short, I have gone a bit mad. As I type this I 'm actually listening to Marillion. (I blame Nighty Night). Oddly enough this is sort of the territory Joe’s new novel covers (Facebook, not Marillion) so perhaps the whole thing is timely and will do me some good. (I was beginning to think in status updates, I’m not kidding) …


… Passed Jarvis Cocker (clang) on Oxford Road, looking like a cross between a Vileda Supermop and a geography teacher, in other words amazing …


… Goodbye Manchester, hello Manhattan …



Soundtrack: Self-made punky playlist that sounds like this.

More Than A Feeling

… Slaughtered with Celebs Part 2: this time the charming Guy Garvey and lovely Marc Riley at Deaf Institute with various marvellous people talking about novels and Morrissey and shit and Everything Everything who were also in partial attendance (minor clang?). Great night which somehow ended with fearsome attack of the miseries on my part. Blub. At midnight it was my birthday and for some reason it bit like a bugger. Something to do with me being an habitual underachiever. I forget now …

… Leading to lovely but emotional birthday lunch next day with Dee at Golden Rice Bowl (Manchester’s oldest Chinese restaurant by the way). I looked terrible. One has been trying to work out whether one is happy of late but I suppose it’s a bit like being in love isn’t it? If you have to ask … Anyway, lovely food and good old chat with Dee which always helps and got a fantastic DAB radio for my birthday which has been my faithful bedroom companion ever since. Have promised self and dozen friends I WILL start listening to Radio 4 this year. Sigh …

… Excellent beery sesh for some reason or other with cracking company at student cum cycle courier hangout Sandbar. It seems I’m drinking/smoking again. Pah …

… Disappointing Club Brenda at Deaf Institute (not working, sorry) leading to best night in Poptastic EVER, no joke, Soul Wax remixes in the indie room (!!!) and massively cool overspill from simultaneously failed night up at Islington Mill. Brilliant times …

… Driven to the sticks (in fact all the way to Lancashire!) for lovely Evan’s 1st birthday party. Where has that year gone? Great fun pretending to be Katie’s husband / young Eddie’s Dad. Soon rumbled though. I think I must have said ‘fabulous’. Damn it. Brilliant fun, best party for ages. I ate too much veggie lasagne and cake and got hyperactive and cross and had to be taken home early without so much as a balloon …

… Joined new gym but to date have spent almost all my time in pool/sauna/jacuzzi. Looking great on it though if I do say so. The men are WAY too ripped and beautiful, I'll have to go in the dead of night when they're all at Essential …

… Dinner at Cocotoo with lovely company but less said about the food and MUSIC the better (Elton John hits played on a Moog, no joke) …

… Little Boots plays Night & Day. I love a couple of her tracks but I wish she was writing them for Kylie or The Aloud. Teeny tiny lady with not bad stage presence but massive comedown for me after the superb Everything Everything tear the place apart. Well, tear me and Katie apart anyway. Said it before, best band in Britain, so fuck you. Read my ancient but ground-breaking review here! …



… Rejection letters begin to roll in for The Novel. One in particular gives a spark of hope though with good suggestions for a restructuring to give the book more cohesion. Similar advice comes from the ever-wise Katie and the possibly even wiser, and terribly kind, Nicholas Royle (clang) so a restructure is under way as we speak. I was hoping to have it DONE before New York but I can’t stop trying on New York outfits and dancing around to the Pet Shop Boys long enough to knuckle down to it. Fail …

… Party to defy the recession and celebrate Pam Ayers’ birthday (not). Marvellous fun, got dressed up and everything. David Hoyle (clang) rolled in at some point, I do love him …



… Disappointing Howling Bells gig. Absolutely blown away by The Joy Formidable though who are ACE …



… Scrummy dinner at Tampopo followed by Macbeth at the Royal Exchange which I liked but some people really didn’t. They foregrounded a whole war-torn military vibe at the expense of the more supernatural pull of the play, which I agree is partly what makes it great. Still, wonderfully violent and sexual with a disturbing portrayal of the weird sisters by three very young girls, children actually, as possibly dead and in one case certainly raped displaced war children. Great performances by those three, the weakest player in fact was Macbeth himself. Lady M couldn’t stop ACTING in the first half but pulled it out of the bag magnificently for her mad scene which took place attached to a drip and behind glass. Great stuff. The scene where the little boy is drowned to a soundtrack of his mother’s screaming and a thunderously loud ‘That’s Not My Name’ by The Ting Tings was brilliant I thought. Macbeth got his cock out too. It’s art baby …

We Built This City On Rock And Roll

A flurry of diary-like entries presented here, named, for mysterious reasons, after classic Soft Rock anthems. I thought I should get something about Manchester and my old life down before I get to New York and cannot be bothered with this old place and the boring old me a moment longer. Things of the following nature have happened in the last couple of months (caution: I name-drop like never before so prepare for hideous CLANG! of minor celeb names hitting blog-shaped buckets) …

… Watched Milk at the Cornerhouse, quite beautiful I thought, fairly sexless which upset Mark Simpson, but to be honest when you’re gay there’s often barely another way to make yourself heard other than bleating about sex, so a good thing I thought. Ruined as ever by heterosexual/ist audience sniggering of course (see also Brokeback). Can’t we have our own cinemas? …

… Drinks at new bars Apotheca (good music if slightly officey crowd and downright mental bouncers checking underneath stall doors for drug users even though it was barely dark out!) and NoHo (cool, East Villagey vibe but big space in the middle with no dancing and no furniture that made we want to FIGHT) …

… Attended my friend Reena’s marvellous R-Themed Fancy Dress 30th Birthday Party upstairs at Revolution dressed as James Dean (‘Rebel Without a Cause’). Managed to sculpt two inch forelock into world’s smallest quiff. Bought gorgeous American Apparel jacket specially (it’s a dear do there isn't it?). Smoked copiously. Finished the night at Kirsty and Keith’s now sadly defunct Are Friends Eclectic? night over at Retro Bar. Oh wait, I actually finished the night in Company Bar where I misplaced my friend’s Trilby then had a prolonged and plastered conversation with the lovely David Hoyle (clang!) all about motherhood and Blackpool and Longsight …

… A right good ‘boogie’ at Underachievers Please Try Harder at Saki Bar, Rusholme, excellent music on both floors but upstairs better, PROPER piss-up, lovely crowd, danced to The Cure with my sister, not done that for ages. Abiding memory is James dropping the same bottle of beer, round about six times. Funny. Oh and bonded with lovely Ruth …