Diary: Alone on Earth

Friday 31 August Southend is very quick by train from East London: I love the little pier train, which exists purely to take people from one end of the pier to the other. I also love that one can send postcards from the postbox at the sea end. Then I escape back to London before the infamous Essex nightlife kicks into action. My white suit is already getting comments.

The book asks whether a female artist should have children, in terms of having a fulfilling life. Well, I think, that depends on the reviews. This seems an incredibly rude thing to say, even for an arts critic. It is as if the book is criticising them personally for being a different person. Updike went from judging a literary novel to judging all gay people ever. This was not a question posed by the novel, but Mr Updike rushed forward to answer it anyway.

Between parents and the childless, one would have thought it would be the latter who would be more defensive about their choices. With these critics it seems to be the reverse. All reviews review the reviewer. Saturday 1 September I wander around Battersea Park. The Pump House Gallery is closed for a wedding. One of them beckons to me I think.

Near the Old English Garden I find a s monument to animals abused through vivisection. The memorial is a small statue of a dog. A plaque reveals that it in fact replaces a much older memorial from , which a subsequent council decided was too controversial, and removed. Fergus was saved from a lab. He died this week of old age, at two and a half years. The Peace Pagoda is another s fixture of the park. Like the dog statue, it was paid for by the left-wing GLC, and symbolises another protest, this time against nuclear war.

The view of the Thames standing on the Pagoda platform is superb, and underrated. Monday 3 September This is a slight cheat, as I was in Hastings once before. Spearmint, the band in which I briefly played guitar, played a gig there circa After the gig I was left sitting in the tour bus by myself, for some reason. Outside the van, which was parked near the town centre, a group of laddish young men appeared, clearly on their way back from a pub. They then proceeded to have a vicious fight with each other for no other reason than it was a Saturday night.

This went on for some minutes: I had no choice but to sit there until this depressing sight ended. That said, afterwards I noted the pleasing resonance of witnessing a real life battle in that particular town. So here I am. Tonight the upstairs room is hosting a session of role-playing games. Mum has been to Hastings before, albeit not to the Aleister Crowley bar.

I spend a pleasant hour or two just leafing through the hundreds of books they have, with bookshelves coating every wall, ceiling to floor. I look through The Abba Annual As I walk past a pub in the town centre, some pint-downing men outside nudge themselves at my white suit. Hastings really needs to get a better class of idiot. The pier has been refurbished.

Many of the plaques are engraved with the usual memorials. Some mark happy memories of youth, such as the time in the s when the pier hosted concerts by the likes of The Who and Dusty Springfield. Others are mysterious in-jokes: Tuesday 4 September One benefit of living in London without much money is that one can take advantage of last minute tickets. If you turn up at a show with minutes before it starts, there are often cheap or even free tickets available.

Particularly at industry events, where the guest lists are large. The show is a comedy directed by and starring Desiree Akhavan. The Bisexual is more of the same, except in East London. She points out how many lesbian films are directed by men: The first two episodes, which are screened tonight, are very funny and engaging.

Except more queer and more female. It deserves to do well.

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Saturday 8 September To the Rio for another Desiree Akhavan project: The Miseducation of Cameron Post , a new film. This time Ms A stays behind the camera and adapts a novel about a gay conversion camp for teenagers, with s period details. The protagonist listens to an album by the Breeders — on cassette. I wonder what the young actors made of cassettes, those obsolete if mostly unmissed little objects.

That film had the same plot, was also directed by a queer woman, and was in every sense much more camp. Cameron Post is made in a traditional realist style, so it feels like a straight text about gay people. This might be what reading Ronald Firbank novels and watching Derek Jarman films has done to me, though. It can be a style of dialogue: The Bisexual is conventional in form, but the catty quips and bon mots bring the required amount of style.

People are typing away too quickly, posting, tweeting, churning out the content, all the time valorising quantity and frequency over individuality. Writers are terrified of sounding different. As a result, so much content reads the same and sounds the same. Monday 10 September This one has the Shell Grotto at Margate, which I have visited. Wednesday 12 September The library encouraged me to pick books that were in stock at local independent shops, such as GTW.

Very happy to given this shop as much business as possible. Now that Foyles has been taken over by Waterstones, independent bookshops need more support than ever. I ask Jim at GTW which books have been recurring bestsellers at the shop over the years. Friday 14 September The programme is adorable. Some lines from At Your Own Risk: Saturday 15 September The Woolf and Whistle bar has a modest Woolf theme to it.

There is a large, glossy black decoration on one wall, made up of lines from Mrs Dalloway. Monday 17 September I offer my research regarding the often-quoted joke about the Bloomsbury Group: Most sources give no attribution. Martin did say it in a column in , but he was quoting someone else:. The Margaret Irwin source was recently identified in an article by Stuart N. Wem knew everyone who was a philosopher or politician or artist or writer or thinker, or rather, everyone whom he counted as such, which did not mean that his acquaintance was at all wide.

It was in fact limited to a part of London that Peregrine had referred to in his absence from lunch as Gloomsbury. The joke would have been pleased the Bloomsbury gang themselves. For them, gossip was a force for social progress. As Virginia Woolf wrote herself: The sixties were infatuated with the Bloomsbury Group — upper-class Bohemians who led open and ambisexual lifestyles in the twenties and thirties.

There was a spate of biographies.

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The lives of the upper-classes were being popularised. This broke the secrecy that surrounded us and we pitted ourselves against the old moralities. Jarman put this sentiment into his film Wittgenstein One of the supporting characters is Maynard Keynes, who is shown in a relationship with a young man, played by Keith Collins. Tuesday 18 September This is a good reminder that one should consult human librarians over Google, whenever possible. Librarians are the keepers of the Un-Googleable things: So here I am in the LCC, an imposing modern building by the roundabout, where the computer terminals are state-of-the-art Macs.

Today, like many former zine writers, Olivia Laing is a professional arts critic herself. I wonder if her band made any records. Even if we are not parents, many of us now feel a need to pass on our knowledge and experience — our cultural genes — in a wider sense. I recently came across an article on the Bustle website bustle. It needs a film adaptation NOW. Best make everything you do part of your own work as with this diary and put it out there. Wednesday 19 September Two women and two little girls are sitting or standing around in a rather staged manner.

The painting was originally a commission to mark the Festival of Britain. The idea was that a number of artists would provide works on large canvases, in line with the spirit of life coming off the ration. The painting appeared in The Listener magazine, in its original form with the seated woman looking entirely different. Bell reworked the painting afterwards, making the figure more like the adult Angelica. Saturday 22 September For the last tour only one visitor turns up, so it becomes more of a conversation.

It turns out that she was at the Sebastiane screening at the BFI. So I make more of my Jarman-Bloomsbury connections. Monday 24 September One wants to tell them: Tuesday 25 September Thursday 27 September When I put this on Twitter, Richard Hamblyn replies: And often it is. Please donate if you can. Friday 13 July A group of women calling themselves Get the L Out made their own mini-protest against the main march. Before the procession could begin, they lay down in the road, preventing the others from setting off. This argument was soon condemned by more established lesbian voices, such as DIVA magazine.

This year marks the 30 th anniversary of Clause Or it meant abseiling onto the floor of the House of Lords. These were actions aimed upwards in society, against authority. To protest against trans people, whose lives are much more compromised, is manifestly kicking downwards. There are surely worthier fights for the same passion. Around the world LGBT people as a whole still have a hard time of things.

Division among the ranks cannot help. The cover is a decadent illustration by Georges Barbier, of fantastical, semi-nude tango dancers circa Saturday 14 July A comment from my PhD supervisor on my latest work: Now I realise that, contrary to the misconception, many academics value the art of elegant prose.

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Still, nice to know that Dr B associates me with good writing. Sunday 15 July No TV screens, for once. The film follows the usual arc, rags to riches to the tragic early death, with the bonus that the riches are indeed from rags. McQueen played up his Cockney background as a career move — his relatives admit as much. Someone Exotic, I Hope. Still, I find myself drawn to his daring and artistry. He was a rare example of someone in fashion with a sense of individualism, as opposed to joining in and keeping up. Monday 16 July Like Barberette in Hackney, they favour a gender neutral approach.

With no pun intended, this does appear to be a growth industry. Many high street hairdressers seem stuck in the s. My heart sinks at the implication that in order to have a trim I need to talk knowledgeably about football, or am fine about having The Sun or The Mirror as reading matter while waiting. Open Barbers has a library of queer A5 fanzines, and even offers its own fanzine on the way in. The general atmosphere of social progressiveness extends to a pay-what-you-can service. They certainly do a good job with my ludicrous mop, which seems thicker than ever.

Thursday 19 July Reading a couple of books about books. When Big Brother started in the UK, they allowed books. These were soon banned, as images of people reading made for bad TV. This is why appearing on a reality TV show is less appealing than going to prison. In Wormwood Scrubs they at least allow books. Mr Manguel relates an anecdote about Noah Webster, author of the eponymous dictionary. One day, Webster is caught by his wife locked in an embrace with the family maid.

Friday 20 July The green grass in Russell Square is giving way to a rash of yellow. Tempers on the tube flare like forest fires. The original, for once. They fit the franchise theme of replication: On the walls of Caffe Nero are photographs of people drinking coffee in an idealised Italian setting. I once asked the staff of a Pret if they had ever thought of tuning the speakers to a local radio station, like greasy spoon cafes do. They looked as if they were going to set fire to me. Today I sit and listen to the original Cyndi Lauper record, properly.

How tempting to impose a narrative: I look him up: The film is set in the New York club Studio 54 in the early 80s, but now, twenty years on, I see the film as a nostalgia piece for my own youth in Tuesday 24 July It occurs to me that at the age of nearly 47, I still have absolutely no idea what I want to do with my life. I was rather hoping something would suggest itself. This is a government initiative designed to make sure as I understand it that British universities are doing Good Work with Proven Impact. I can only assume that the main purpose of the REF is to put people off a career in academia.

The irony of acquiring qualifications in English literature is that they give one an increased intolerance of the literature of the workplace. In your forties, you start to feel like a ghost. Less visible to the swim of things, but able to slip between worlds more easily. And you know more things. Friday 27 July Today thunderstorms are forecast. I find myself desperately willing them to arrive. On the tube the Victoria Line is especially unbearable. What with the current temperatures, it would be cheaper to put the body on the Central Line and just give it a couple of hours. Linguistic sticking plasters, over gaping social wounds.

I see conversations about the s which are clearly made by people too young to remember them — millennials, as the generation is now known. Two suggestions are sent to me: Thursday 2 nd August This is from a review in the New York Times. Vidal came to dislike Waugh in later life, but the truth of the quote still stands. Friday 3 rd August A suggestion for renaming the Death Star in Star Wars: The Bauble of Unkindness. Sunday 5 th August A headline from an article in Pitchfork: If they are taking donations, they are struggling. Wednesday 8 th August Depeche Mode became globally massive around this time.

Depeche Mode whine in much the same way, and yet are much more popular around the world. I wonder why this is. Their image is of two men, one of whom seems embarrassed to be there, while the other one seems even more embarrassed to be there. Whereas Dave Gahan is more giving of his whining English flesh: Neil Tennant was never one for tattoos. Moore adds that this was not a compliment. The speaker was really admiring the knotty sophistication of the other writers, and was being patronising to her.

But Ms Moore took it as a compliment anyway — which is a very Lorrie Moore thing to do. Better quirky than dreary. Thursday 9 th August The bookshop appears in the diaries page , in the entry for 30 November , though rather unflatteringly.

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Jarman rages against the shop for declining to stock Love Bites , a book of sexually explicit photographs by Della Grace now known as Del LaGrace Volcano. Jesse Helms was a homophobic American politician at the time. I mention this to Jim MacSweeney, the shop owner, who was there in the early 90s.

I like to think he might have changed his mind were he alive today. The shop is still independent and still going strong, even in this age of Amazon, and is still fending off instances of homophobic window-smashing, as recently as this year. Still, I love that a bookshop is not just stocking but celebrating a book which criticises it. Stonewall and Ian McKellen come in for similar treatment in the diaries. I think many readers today will politely disagree with this side of Jarman, and focus on the more positive and inspirational examples of his life and art.

His face was his brand — a celebrity of the early 90s. Indeed, the diaries themselves relate people asking him for his autograph those paper versions of selfies. These days his work takes the focus. One might say his garden is now more Brand Jarman than the films. Certainly the diaries frame his garden as his magnum opus, with the films almost as diversions from the flowers: Edward II, Wittgenstein , Blue.

The new edition has an introduction by Neil Bartlett. Tonight Mr B is at the bookshop to give not just a talk but a tree-planting at the Marchmont Community Garden nearby. Something about the juxtaposition of the concrete Brunswick with this defiant little garden seems fitting for a Jarman tribute. Mr Bartlett tops up the hole with a spade and poses for photos: Wednesday 15 th August Irritations over ambiguities in English. This sort of thing keeps me awake at night. Thursday 16 th August I watch some of the new Celebrity Big Brother.

Friday 17 th August My favourite flower name in his Dungeness garden has to be jack-go-to-bed-at-noon tragopogon pratensis. Closely followed by eggs-and-bacon lotus corniculatus , which I imagine Jack, a night shift worker, having for breakfast before turning in. Saturday 18 th August And not meant kindly. I feel threatened and so leave, though a bleakly positive response occurs to me: What I would have liked to have done is something like the actions of Nick Hurley, a young man whose anecdote became a popular tweet this month.

He had been walking in the streets of Manchester on his way to Pride, and was wearing coloured glitter on his face. Mr H caught up with the car at the traffic lights, and emptied a tube of glitter through the window. Donations to the Diary Fund convince the author of his abiding worth. Sunday 17 June Breakfast at Dalston Superstore, my regular Sunday habit. I sit there quietly by myself at one of the tables, usually reading the Sunday Times for the book charts, careful to finish before the lunchtime cabaret performance by a drag queen.

A audio version of Alice in Wonderland is singled out for verging on the experimental. I discover that the British Library owns an analogue recording of this. It will only be digitised and made accessible if someone puts in a request. I put in a request. Also in the nonsense book, Mr Elliott discusses nonsense in music, both experimental and pop. I love the section at the end when Vivian Stanshall performs a spoken word ramble.

It is a mission statement for misfits; a freak manifesto:. Tuesday 19 June What to believe in, when one writes? Strive for the perfect sentence? Strive to be quotable, too. I like how Hamlet is essentially a string of quotations. Alice in Wonderland likewise. Wednesday 20 June Mr Everett writes, acts and directs the whole thing himself: Both films have scenes in which Wilde reads the story to his sons.

His Wilde is a broken, complicated man at the mercy of his feelings. Young angsty gay men are fine Call Me By Your Name , as are older happy ones with partners, or groups of friends, or poodles. But single, angst-ridden gay men of an older age? So this film does not care who cares for it, and that in itself makes it admirable. With long blond hair he is barely recognisable, and threatens to steal the film.

Bosie after the trial: Still sexy in a reptilian way, but still destructive. Actually, I think Another Country has fallen off the radar somewhat. Thursday 21 June Finished writing the review for The Wire. The lack of money aside, student life is a utopia in itself. Paradise of a kind. There are whispers of mythical things called offices, but no one here has ever seen one.

I think I have about twenty library cards now. In this case, an admittedly obscure collection of essays on Sontag and camp. He asks if I am going to any of the many festivals this summer. No is the answer, really. I had a good time as a hanger-on at the Stoke Newington Lit Fest a few weeks ago.

The thing is, so many live events are recorded or podcasted now Glastonbury on the BBC for instance. At one festival I went to, some young people came up to me to ask what time I was on. Still, there do seem to be more events than ever.

How To Be Punk And Camp

Friday 22 June Someone unkind has installed a flat-screen TV in the corner of the college canteen, tuned permanently to the coverage of the World Cup. But the football burbles on in the background. If Gareth Southgate falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear him, does he still make a sound? In this instance, sadly for me, he does. The repressed sexuality theme is laid on so heavily, to the point where I laugh aloud. The familiar narrative of the bad date.

Mr McEwan tops up what is essentially a short story by adding details of the backstory of each character, and then gives us a look into the future at the end, though only for the young man. The show has become a word-of-mouth hit — indeed, it had already won awards as a stage act. Her Netflix performance was filmed at the Sydney Opera House, no less. I was aware of Ms Gadsby before. Like many comedians, her act involved jokes about the way she appears: But on this occasion she takes the comedy into a questioning of the form itself.

What is comedy for? We learn that in Tasmania homosexuality was only legalised in the late s. How easy it is to forget that the way things are in the UK are not the way things are everywhere, even in English-speaking countries. And art history too: Jonathan Meades and Adam Curtis do it, so why not her? He eats little specialist biscuits, though he prefers to grab each biscuit and scurry under his layers of blankets to eat it, out of sight. I know the feeling. Monday 25 June We spend the day in London together.

I show her the London Library, though she finds the stacks with the cast iron grills set off her vertigo. But the awareness of stepping over so much raw vertical space is enough for Mum.

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A portrait of two female painters by Ania Hobson. Tuesday 3 July Another hot day in a library, working away on the PhD. Except today I make a trip to Oxford to join the Bodleian. So another library card. Except that I only want to access the one item: So the only way to read the thing is to make to the trip in person to the David Reading Room, high up on the fifth floor of the Weston Library, the shiny modern part of the Bodleian. All the previous borrowers are listed on older layers of slips underneath.

The history of an object. Handled by all these other people since And now, today, I add my name to the list. The thesis is an A4 black hardback, made of typewritten pages with the odd handwritten correction. The football is on the screens. I just like the idea of doing so. Saturday 7 July Today is the 13 th anniversary. England are in the World Cup quarter finals, and the big Pride march is on too. My landlady is in the march, which reminds me of something Quentin Crisp says in his one man show, on stage in New York in the late s: More so than Wilfred Owen? For one artist to champion another involves a degree of vanity.

Nothing delights a film critic more than seeing their review quoted on a poster. It makes them feel like they matter after all. Still, it is true that WW1 forced Firbank into taking writing seriously. I like the idea of the spirit of English camp fiction passing from Saki into Firbank the moment HH Munro was shot dead in the trenches. The young man next to me on this window bench has just left and been replaced by someone looking exactly the same.

Shorts, t-shirt, backpack, laptop, quiff hairdo. Wednesday 11 July To Gordon Square for a meeting with my PhD supervisor. This marks the end of my first year as a PhD student. Dr B is more or less happy with my work so far, and gives me plenty of suggestions as to which paths to go down next.

Diary Lyrics

My plan is now to get the second chapter finished by the end of September: I work in the London Library till 8pm, then take the tube home. The World Cup semi-final with England is taking place this evening. The current manager, Gareth Southgate, is known for wearing a waistcoat with suit trousers. So today I have to ensure I do not wear a waistcoat, for fear of being engaged in a conversation about football.

This is evidenced by my tube journey home. Most of the other passengers around me are women. All the men have gone away. At home I check Twitter to learn that England have lost. To stop myself getting too grumpy, I think of the many intellectual and artistic treatments of the game that I do like, such as the novels of David Peace, or the Tom Stoppard play Professional Foul. Seeing him once clad in a sweater and football shorts, I asked him what on earth he had been doing. I was never near enough to it to see that! Donations to the Diary Fund help to convince the author of his abiding worth.

Thursday 17th May To the Birkbeck Cinema in Gordon Square for an evening of archive documentaries, all on the subject of Raymond Williams. He mentions this anecdote in his spoken introduction, thus getting mileage out of the joke after all. The book is a set text at Birkback: I consulted it when writing an essay about London. Both these films feature Williams wandering around the landscape of England and Wales, on the s. He walks and talks to the camera, and often smokes a pipe while doing so.

Sometimes he uses the pipe as a means of punctuation, finishing his sentence, then inserting the pipe into his mouth and walking off into the distance. A fluid, natural movement to him, but one which these days would be rare. People regard them as part of their own body.

Possibly BBC2, late night. Or Channel 4, from the time when Channel 4 catered for intellectuals. Terry Eagleton, Stuart Hall and others sit apart from each other in a circle, in an overly lit red-draped TV studio, with a mysterious vase of lilies in the middle. It is the Open University as directed by David Lynch.

Afterwards, some of us repair to a pub in Marston Street, an unpretentious one of the kind that still exists in London. Friday 18 May Working on the paper for the Work in Progress conference at Birkbeck. Perfectly acceptable in its place, such as on the cover of a book by Patrick Leigh Fermor. They are merely going to work. The backpack has replaced the briefcase. On the tube, every day is Glastonbury Day.

These things are ugly enough, but the imposture extends when the backpacker gets into a congested tube carriage or a lift, like the ones at Russell Square that I endure every day. Soon, without realising it, the backpack is pushing into the face of a stranger. More considerate wearers take their backpack off, holding the things in front of them until there is more space to become the human version of a long vehicle once again. I long for this fashion to move on. Saturday 19 May A British prince and an American divorcee get married, with pleasing historical resonance.

I avoid the wedding itself, but glance at some of the reports and photos. There probably will not be another royal wedding on this scale for another 25 years, so I suppose one must not begrudge the pleasure this one provides for so many. I do find it intriguing how the royal-loving public nevertheless likes some royals much more than others.

It seems that even people who like royal weddings have taste. Sunday 20 May His dandyism was a hangover from the New Journalism movement, when American writers were encouraged to look as stylish as their prose. They worked on their brand. When it comes to beach shorts and Hawaiian shirts, Hunter S Thompson is the exception that proves the rule: And so it was with Tom Wolfe. The white suits kept his writing on the radar.

I discover now that he was fairly conservative in his politics. Quite why a pipe should signify socialism is beyond me: The other lefty look is, of course, the Bob Dylan cap. As favoured by Lenin and, indeed, Lennon. Dylan himself did both looks, exchanging the cap and the denims for Swinging London suits when he went electric. In the process, he adopted if not quite a conservative look, certainly a more camp look an electric guitar is more camp than an acoustic one.

He warned that hard drives can start to degrade after a mere five years. Magazine adverts in the s promising the glories of extra RAM chips of 64k. I find an old review of the first Fosca album. The critic is an Orlando fan who says I went from articulating universal angst Orlando to peddling idiosyncratic misanthropy Fosca. The truth is that these were not phases but facets. The idea that people are monolithic has never found favour with me.

People are complicated, but this does not fit with the instinct to judge someone as one thing only. Still, no review lasts like a negative review. The original is not online — I think it was just written for a webzine. The author may even have forgotten it himself. But years later here I am brooding upon it.

It was the most praised album of its time.

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This was mainly because it came on the heels of Britpop, and everyone was just relieved that bands were now allowed to sound different from Oasis. Yet the singer, Mr Yorke, was shown dwelling morosely on a rare negative review he had come across. It was the only one he believed. Many people flatter their favourite writers or musicians in an attempt to become their friend. If you really want to make an impact on the mind of your hero, give them a bad review. Wednesday 23 May To the Rio to see Jeune Femme.

It burbles along pleasantly in this picaresque, if narcissistic fashion; not so much a story as time spent with a character. Thursday 24 May He in turn reads a piece by Olivia Laing, who also put out a book on loneliness. We talk about the dilemma of being Morrissey fans, now that the great man has begged his admirers to vote for an anti-Islamic political party, For Britain.

Friday 25 May To 30 Russell Square for a Birkbeck talk about careers after the PhD — specifically ones unrelated to academia. One speaker works for the Ministry of Defence. Owen Hatherley is the other speaker: He bemoans not making a huge living as a freelance writing — especially now that freelance rates are frozen or are even getting lower. So any factual errors in the book are left seemingly unaddressed, shaming the writer down the years. Wednesday 30 May Here the emphasis is on teasing the audience that the good guys might not win after all — indeed that some favourite characters might die.

Immortal as in the way Sherlock Holmes is immortal: Genre heroes are also trademarks and franchises, and any franchise similarly exists in a spirit of infinity. How many branches of Pret A Manger can be enough? Saturday 2 June This is a laid-back affair. It is organised by students in the upper years and generally intended to get us in the habit of academic life.

I learn that the language Farsi has genderless pronouns. As progressive as this may sound, it has meant that some Iranian poetry expressing same-sex love has been translated into English with the wrong pronouns, effectively heterosexualising the work. Helena Esser presents research from her thesis on steampunk, which comes with that very contemporary reference: Camp is not just playing with gender: Sunday 3 June I attend a few events: They remind me that so many well-known diaries are by gay men: This year the guests are all record sleeve designers.

The thing is, I wonder how Lennon himself, who would be in his seventies now, would vote. Given the musical conservatism of his solo work, I can easily see him supporting the Leave vote. I speak to Andy Miller off the Backlisted podcast. I also spot Suzanne Moore, the recognisable columnist, closely followed by Thurston Moore, the even more recognisable rock musician. For the festival guests there are not only books to read, but also a free prosecco pump.

Monday 4 June Tuesday 5 June If The Argonauts is a gateway drug, Testo Junkie is the hard stuff. Wednesday 6 June To Senate House in Malet Street, to see my mental health counsellor. In Senate House lobby there are lots of security guards standing around. To each side of the central staircase are groups of young people lying on the floor, blocking the way.

Some of them are blowing whistles. The protestors let me pass, thankfully. I am sympathetic with their cause, though not to the point of joining them in the dust. Jokes about arses suggest themselves. I remember having whistles blown in my ear, and feeling utterly out of place. It felt — perhaps unfairly — that protest was a social pastime first, and a means of change second. It felt like you had to enjoy crowds to do them; all shouting and chanting and the joy of being the one among the many — a joy which I do not share.

I feel awkward and unsafe in a crowd. As Quentin Crisp said, there is danger in numbers. Dandyism is the only solution: A protest march made up of one person. And a dandy can still vote, and sign petitions, and raise awareness. Thursday 7 June The film is well made, if fairly standard arthouse fare: Rather close to home, the murders aside. Friday 8 June Monday 11 June This is conducted by a third party tutor, Dr Caroline Edwards, rather than one of my supervisors.

It all seems to go well. Four papers accepted at conferences, plus at least 27, words written for the PhD itself. The trick now is, as Dr E says, to keep up the momentum. Wednesday 13 June I am one of four PhD students addressing a class of MA students, telling them about my experiences of doing a thesis. Grace encourages me to be honest, so I talk about the idea of worth: This is not a rare emotion, though, and a few of the other speakers are equally gloomy about their financial prospects.

Plus I acknowledge the worth of the fee waiver, and the unpriceable worth of my supervisor. I still struggle with the fact that I am essentially doing an unpaid internship — for myself. But the positive spin is that this is still preferable to doing an unpaid internship for someone else. Thursday 14 th June I meet up with Sarah K Marr for a drink in Bloomsbury. Have just finished reading her debut novel, All the Perverse Angels. The book jumps between a contemporary narrative and a Victorian one, via diaries and letters. She sees the world, and events and emotions and memories, first as colours, and then more specifically as known paintings.

As she is the main narrator, the reader is forced to share her strange, unreliable, dream-like perspective. The story gets going when she finds a Victorian painting in the attic of a Cotswold cottage. Because of the heavy use of paintings as part of a homosexual narrative, I thought of the tradition of ekphrasis the rendering of paintings into prose as a queer literary device.

Ekphrasis can reclaim the default framing of the world: All the Perverse Angels is an example of lesbian ekphrasis: The theme of dream-like crushes between girls in historical settings also evokes Charlotte Sometimes and Picnic at Hanging Rock. I spend my life going to classes on gender theory, queer theory, feminist issues and transgender issues, and somehow expect everyone else to be doing the same. Or perhaps these men are really historians dressing up in tribute to the way men used to be, like the Sealed Knot Society is there a society for reconstructing Civil War reconstructions?

A Sealed Knot Society Society? Friday 15 June India has suddenly invaded Pakistan due to their age-old hatred. Droves of people are committing suicide throughout the world. President Obama has put the U. Military at Defcon 3. Animals, particularly birds, are very hard hit by this humming noise. All the talking heads on the news channels are describing the day's bizarre events.

That night, David goes to sleep with his beloved beagle, Ralph, at the foot of his bed. They both feel a little sick, both hope the humming noise is past them. David thinks tomorrow it will all have blown over. Why not your own Review for this book? That is, until it actually happens. David is a senior citizen who has reasons for wanting to cut himself off from the rest of the world. He finds an isolated house outside of a small town in Alabama, where he plans to spend the rest of his days with his faithful dog, Ralph. One day, the whole world is menaced by a strange humming sound. The media is full of speculation as to the cause.

Several hundred people are driven to suicide, including one of David's neighbours. Countries are ready for war, convinced that their 'enemy' is about to attack. David goes to bed. The next morning David wakes up to no electricity, and no battery power, either.

Even new, freshly charged batteries are dead. David travels to the houses of his neighbours, to find them deserted. He visits the small town, a place called Axis, to find it also deserted. He finds a motorcycle that he can push start, and visits Mobile, Alabama. He finds hundreds and hundreds of abandoned, burning cars, like people were in a panic.

But there are no people, not even dead bodies.