“We drank hard and talked about what Debord, who drank persistently and prodigiously, had written about alcohol" (15th Sept 2006)

“We drank hard and talked about what Debord, who drank persistently and prodigiously, had written about alcohol. 'I admire Debord as a perfect and dedicated drinker.' We talked about how, in the early years of his career as a drinker, Debord was always in pursuit of or just arriving at a perfect point of intoxication which, unlike paid labour or any other servile activity, would reveal ‘the true taste of the passage of time’. Drinking was a beautiful poetic game, with its rules and protocols. Debord devoted pages to describing this notion.”
Irina suddenly leaned over to me and said to me “I’m sorry, you’re a nice guy, but you drink too much” before giving me the ultimate private dance. I said to Viktoriya “You hate me?” and she exploded back with real venom “Yes. Because you’re always drunk.”

“I am at the stage now of Paris in 1875" (14th Sept 2006)

“I am at the stage now of Paris in 1875, starting to rebuild itself, glorying in the spectacle of the Garnier Opera opening, a sparkling renaissance is beginning, like the war, siege, and commune never happened, like I had learnt nothing. But what else can you do, you must go on, you must find enjoyment and pleasure; though now it is more realistic, blackened and tempered with sorrow and realisation it is merely consolation.” I had to rebuild myself after the failed relationsip with Black Bob, with Pooky, with Florence. All my books will be seen in a post-Florence yellow light now. A Yellow Claw fog on the Embankment of London. A murderous plot is hatching, Fu Manchu is about to strike again. Once the clocks go back I can indulge myself again. Maybe I could go to Berlin in December! I suppose the main theme of my books is “the simple pleasures are the only realities”.What happened with my paradigm shift was that overnight I simplified my life. Write about what you know. Well, what do I know about? I know about strippers, and I know about scopophilia. I know about the nervousness that almost stops you from breathing, as you near Nuremberg, or walk into the entrance hall, or go up the stairs to a model’s door. Or walk from the 91 bus stop down to the Midnight Bell. I know about watching and watching, and never wanting to actually do anything. I know at first that intrigues the girls, then entices them, then bewilders them, and finally makes them contemptuous and disgusted.
“His pamphlets, articles and letters during his thirty years in London form a coherent commentary on contemporary political affairs in the light of his new method of analysis. They are sharp, lucid, mordant, realistic, astonishingly modern in tone, and aimed deliberately against the prevailing optimistic temper of his time”.

The Vienna visit feels like such a waste when I have nothing particularly to go for except that it will be Christmas (13th Sept 2006)

The Vienna visit feels like such a waste when I have nothing particularly to go for except that it will be Christmas. At least in Berlin I have got La Traviata and Carmina Burana to see in January, that is the hook I can hang the visit on, and in April I have got Katarina Dalayman’s Salome. But Vienna seems pointless and totally obscenely extravagant when I am already so much in debt and probably by then paying such huge interest on it. What other chute moments have I had? The American girl on the Eurostar to Brussels. That ruined my entire four day stay before I got there. I could not get over it. A crippling indecision what to say and inability to act meant I let her just walk away from me and killed myself. The pink top blonde on the plane to Munich. The crippling fear is that once I start talking to them they will realise I am not the man they thought I was from looking at my pretty eyes and sweetness. Once I try to get involved with a girl, my total inablilities in that area become exposed, as they did with Lotta and Chess Goddess, when normally I keep them so well covered up by my silence and my reticence, which attracts them and lures them in. Florence hushed me with a gesture when I arrived, that is her revenge for me turning away from her when she tried to say “It is nice to see you again” last time. And the last time she collected she didn’t just hold out her jug, she plumped both elbows on the bar and leaned there next to me as if this was an invitation for me to say something but again I just put the pound in without a word and she quickly turned and left. It is like it took her so many months to lure me out of my shell, and now I am never going to let her lure me out again. I have crept back under my stone and I am going to stay there. I had my chute moment with Chess Goddess too, that is why I left a trail of blood along the Exhibition Road. And of course with Pooky, that led to the psychological destruction during my trip to Oslo. When you are going through a psychological meltdown people seem to sense it and rush in to give you a kick while you are down. It is like a joyous, gleeful feeding frenzy. Indeed people are like wolves to me. As they were to Kaspar, to John Merrick, to Van Gogh, to Oscar Wilde after his imprisonment. All these beautiful, sensitive, gentle people were absolutely ripped to shreds by gleeful, vicious society.

I feel an almost physical revulsion at the thought of going back to Cotton Club and Demi and Pamela. But what else is there, so I will eventually. When I know the pleasures I have felt in those places felt so intense. I feel a physical revulsion for going back to those nighttime Vienna places and the nighttime Berlin places. I feel a physical revulsion for spending any money when I am in this saving mode. That is good. I have become allergic to spending money when before I seemed addicted to it. I feel an almost physical revulsion for women. I am a strange man. How can Florence or anyone have a relationship with a strange man like me. I am like Ralph Fiennes's Spider. I only learnt how to be alone when I was a baby, and I always will be. I love places where I can be alone surrounded by loud pounding music and naked girls, that is why I love the dream world of the Bell and the Cotton Club so much. It is the ultimate detachment. The ultimate transcendency. The ultimate lens. The ultimate gateway to the state of bliss that is the Kingdom of Death. Ultimate nothingness. Florence’s finger to the lips in a hushing gesture seems a very big moment. That nervousness so intense I cannot breathe as the train nears Nuremberg & as I got off and walk along the corridor to the entrance hall, and the nervousness I felt so intense I could not breathe as I went down the steps at the Astral, I now feel when I walk to the Scotsman from the north from the 91 stop. I feel it too when I enter Sunset Cinema, hoping to find a woman being monickered, and also when I go up the models’ steps. That is the high. That is the drug.

I will try to go straight home Wednesday night (12th Sept 2006)

I will try to go straight home Wednesday night and not come back till Saturday morning, that will minimise my costs as much as possible. A missed call from Olga at 23:06 on Friday night apparently. Strange I did not notice it before. I should not feel too bad. Going to the Bell to see Florence only cost me £20 on the girls and £12 on drink. That is only £32. That is not bad for a Saturday night when I won’t have another Saturday off for three weeks. It is good to be there when it is so busy. I look forward to getting to work to listen to Boogieradio, and to read the newspaper articles of Karl Marx. “Berlioz’s unstinting lionisation of Beethoven in the pages of La Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris,the most important and influential music journal in 19th-century France, also played a major role in establishing him at the centre of the repertory for the concert hall.” In my journal, what would I write about, who would I lionise? I would lionise the Midnight Bell, perhaps, and its dancers, extolling the virtues of Sylvia and Florence and Janet above all others. Extolling them in messianic, apocalyptic, grandiose, diva-esque terms, like they are Sarah Bernhardts. Invoking Hungarian history. Giving reviews of their performances just the way one would with reviews of violinists or pianists. They are all on a stage, why not? Instead of one paragraph reviews of Anita Berber’s Bethanien or Marlene Dietrich’s grave, extend them into full page articles, enabling me to digress into talking about the Blue Angel, Lola, etc. Berber at the Romanisches Cafe, Tucholsky. It would be a journal devoted to the strip clubs of London, the pubs, to Berlin, and Vienna, and Brussels, and Munich. Florencia, from Brazil, has made Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie her own, Crazy her own, Check On It her own. Talk about them the way you would about great opera singers of the 1880s, from the stage side box. Write a magazine where on one page there is a review of Barbara Frittoli at the Wigmore Hall on Wednesday night, and on the facing page, a review of the Flying Scotsman on Thursday night, each with equal analysis. My reviews are scurrilous and scandalous, like James Ellroy, Charles Bukowski. Winter is coming. Remember those cold icy days when I first moved in here? Remember the excitement of those Astral nights? Missing in Action Painter film? The unable to breathe shaking with excitement as I headed down the steps not knowing what I was about to see? Remember that unbelievably huge breasted beautiful Czech girl at the Boulevard? It is almost like a dream. I cannot believe I witnessed something so spectacularly sexy as her and made so little of it. If only I knew where she was now.

I would like to write my own magazine like the Fackel, full of my hard-hitting sometimes scurrilous articles and reviews of London life. Write about Barbara Frittoli and the tyranny of not being able to write about the singer’s beauty, and sexual allure, as if this must not be mentioned, like some guilty secret. Write about La Traviata at the ENO, a weepy opera about “some consumptive whore, when in real life whores are treated like the lowest of the low, yet here she is celebrated as something glorious”. I love writers like Peter Wilby, Sidney Blumenthal, Naomi Klein, Maureen Dowd, and in the past of course Karl Kraus, Karl Marx.

The sensible thing is to not go to Vienna but to keep saving and rid myself of this crippling, dangerous debt. I have been reminded for the first time in a long while of the psychological horror of my missed opportunity with Florence. The Tombe moment came in two parts, like a double break of a bone. It is sad what our friendship has turned into. When she spots me her face is so bleak and stressed and unhappy.

I would rather write a paper magazine. People get tired of scrolling and clicking on links. Only if they have got a physical paper magazine in their hands can they leaf through and see everything in one place. My magazine, which no one else need ever see, can run alongside and counterpoint to my books which people also never see. This will be my Fackel and my Simplicissimus side by side with my Grundrisse, the manuscript copy of Das Kapital.

The fact that I have paid £600 off my Barclaycard in the space of a month shows what is possible (11th Sept 2006)

The fact that I have paid £600 off my Barclaycard in the space of a month shows what is possible. I don’t think I am going to go to Vienna in December. I think I would rather keep waiting and keep saving. So when I do travel I will have a real war chest to travel with. I was thinking in the Calcutta on Thursday that there is nothing worth spending money on except sex. If it is a choice between seeing Volver or A Scanner Darkly,or going to see a girl take her knickers off to music, then there can only be one winner. You see people who go on beach holidays, or Amalfi, and I think how bored I would be. The only holiday that means anything is in red light districts. To meet new strippers and new Esmeraldas. What is wrong with running a high debt? We will see how high my Virgin interest is when that hits in October. In McDonald's most beautiful gorgeous voluptuous brunette girl, maybe 18 or 19, skin tight black top over rolls of fat and big fat huge breasts, thick yellow snakeskin belt, blue jeans over fat arse, pretty pretty face, little snub nose. I could not take my eyes off her & she knew it as she finally shot me a glance as I stepped forward to order. Nothing in the city matters except sex, the buying and selling of it, young women stripping for you, young women lying back on the bed and opening their legs for you, men all with their cocks out in a dark porn cinema. This is the reality of my life.

Vienna is still a mystery to me. With three consecutive visits to Brussels, then three to Munich, then three to Berlin, I felt I cracked the nut of all those places. I still have not achieved that with Vienna. Viennese Eroticism is very important to me. Primitive London. I am very intellectual yet I live very primitively, my animal instincts always winning out over my cerebral ones. So much drink has sozzled my brain that I doubt I have any cerebral instincts left at all. What an animal I was with Anya at the stag party; how impressed Sylvia seemed to be & so much more warm and friendly to me than she had ever been before. When people write about my life 50 years from now, they will have to write about the Calcutta, the Flying Scotsman, Sunset Strip and Carnival. About Astral, Soho Cinema, and Sunset Cinema. About Atlantic City. About Stutti Frutti, Mon Cheri, Golden Gate, Monte Carlo and Ciro. If I do not travel to Vienna and Berlin in December and the New Year I will have no chance to meet a new Irina or Susi, Patricia or Viktoriya. Things happen when you travel. In Brussels I met Clarisse. In Frankfurt Katerina. In Berlin Erika. It is important to keep exploring.

I live in a kind of Francis Bacon London. I live in the gutter like him. My writing is visceral and from the guts, full of pinks and reds and purples, like his paintings. I too am fascinated by a Pope. I am visceral and fascinated and turned on by my naked self like Egon Schiele. Do not apologise for this. Exult in it. I am priapic and I will just do it more than ever. I am saving money by not doing it so much just so I can do it more. I am going to Vienna at Christmas to fuck a couple of Viennese whores. In strip clubs every night is like Sylvester’s Eve; or Walpurgisnacht. The more bawdy and raucous the better; that is why I like the Bell on Saturday nights. In London all the strip pubs are packed with men; again I ask the question, where do all the men go in Berlin? In Vienna? In Brussels?

The usual post-drinking depression and low mood. Brain like Swiss cheese. As I came out of the lavatory, Florence was already up on stage, dancing to Promiscuous Girl, in a new white top covered with red & green spots. She spotted me almost immediately, and was looking a lot in my direction, but it was only after I got my drink & leaned against the post, that I made eye contact with her. She was obviously waiting for the eye contact, because she immediately put her finger to her lips as if telling me to be quiet! Now Florence is being sarcastic to me. A new development, perhaps brought on by me walking out during her first dance last time. Next time she collected she said Hey, and hit me on back to get my attention, then put her face to mine so I could kiss her cheek. Later, she leaned on bar with both arms till I put the money in the right pot. We never exchanged any words all night. Also there Demi, Camilla, Tequila, Maira, Helen, Arleni, and for one last dance Zoe and Cristina. Quite a strong night, Florence, Maira, Arleni, Demi, Helen. I will return on Saturday 30th September. The affair with Florence, the year-long affair with Florence, proves that I will always be alone. As the affair with Chess Goddess, and with Lotta, proved that I will always be alone. My books are about alienation, anomie, detachment, solipsism, solitude. A strange Dr Who dream with David Tennant repeatedly being pulled back to the same bleak planet, where a military garrison stroke Saddam-like palace was all hustling and bustling preparing to get out before the evil forces on the planet arrive and destroy them. The last time,the Doctor goes up the big wide steps to the palace, into the commander’s office, and there is Vicky sitting head down at desk as his secretary. And then there was Anya all in starched white tunic and trousers.

The 91 makes getting to and from the Bell so quick and easy. What a discovery, so late in the day! Like discovering I had been taking the long route back to the Brussels Ibis all these years. That was hilarious. Think of the miles I walked in the early hours of the morning unnecessarily. I had two pints in the Calcutta & four in the Bell. Did not see anyone interesting, was worth it to see Florence again. The sensible thing would be not to go to Vienna in December, but it would be nice just to take a break. The thought of going round the Gurtel for ML Revue, and Manhattan, and Pour Platin, just makes me feel tired & filled with ennui, as the thought of going back to Atlantic City or any of the Berlin places does, but….what else is there to do? I am tired of it all but it is all there is. Think how much I masturbated my first time in the Dorint on my psychological meltdown trip to Oslo. I came over myself again and again every night. I need an exotic five or six days away, in the lush flora & fauna rainforest of Brussels and Vienna. It will be expensive but worth it. You cannot measure the value to me of these trips; it outweighs the cost.

I love the scientific analysis of my life (10th Sept 2006)

I love the scientific analysis of my life, like Nietzsche. In Nietzschean numbered paragraphs. Like the Rhine Zeitung newspaper articles of Karl Marx. Like the Die Fackel magazine articles of Karl Kraus. Apocalyptic, messianic, satirical. All of them supposed to have some Jewish blood in them, as I have Irish blood in me. This is not possible when I have drink in my head all the time. It is also true that some of the high moments of my life have come in the Astral Cinema and the Boulevard Cinema and the Sunset Cinema. Remember that big mullet-haired guy who pulled his shorts down all the way to his ankles & sat there with a tube of soap or vaseline, regularly applying it to his cock in the Astral. Remember Red Riding Hood night when I sat for six hours in the front row of Soho Cinema till I was raw & practically passing out from the smoky, fuggy, sticky, lubricious atmosphere and when I finally left I crossed deserted Leicester Square in the lashing rain. Remember black dress Kay in the front row of Sunset sitting completely naked as black man put his huge dick in her mouth, businessman with trousers round ankles put condom on & fucked her, before “monica'ring” her over her breasts, all the time while she stroked my cock with her hand. Remember red bra girl in the Sunset. Not to mention the highs I have reached in Berlin Erotic Centre, or Sarah Young, or Atlantic City or Sexyland kabins, or ML Revue cabins, or the Brussels Gare du Nord cabins. Melani said she wanted to go with me to the opera & I stayed away from her. Pamela hinted she would like to go to the seaside with me & I stayed away from her. Florence said she wanted to go out with me & on that Madonna Hung Up and Beyonce Check On It night, when —– thanked me for the postcard, I let her go. I do not want to go out with girls. Going out with Chess Goddess and Lotta were horrible stressful experiences and like Jason Bourne I was checking sightlines and looking for exits the whole time. The happy, magical nights I have had in the crowded bearpits of Sunset Strip, Gold Dress Gold Shoes girl on The Beast December night, Jolanda Red Right Hand, or Flying Scotsman Sex on the Beach, Sylvia Walpurgis Night, Tais Lola, Janet Material Girl, or Atlantic City. And they are only any good when they are crowded bearpits. Remember how crowded the Atlantic City cinema used to get when the girl came on to strip just once an hour? They are only good when the men are screaming at the girl on stage as like beasts in the menagerie. Yes, it will be too soon to go back to Vienna but the thrill of being in Vienna in December…? Yes, I do not want to go back to the drunken, tiring Midnight Bell but it is very special to see Florence dancing to Shakira or Gnarls Barkley…? Afterwards I could come back to Charing Cross on the 91 and then get a 176 up to Tottenham Court Road tube to walk down to Sunset Cinema. I will start to allow myself every Saturday off as my Hogarthian night. My Rake’s Progress night. My Frank Wedekind night.

La Traviata, the opera of a consumptive whore, is coming to mean something special to me, since seeing Stefania Bonfadelli at the Deutsche Oper, and Christine Schafer at the Staatsoper. It does remind me so much of Riccarda, Diana, Iga, but also of Lela, Ana Maria, Olga, all of whom I have seen deteriorate before my eyes. It is back at ENO this month. There is also Anna Caterina Antonacci and Marina Domashenko as Carmen at Covent Garden.

I have to go out today to get my bus pass, so I will get the bus to Charing Cross & one in the Calcutta & then see what happens from there. I think it is better to go to Vienna in December and Berlin in April for Katerina Dalayman’s Salome. Vienna is a little bit more exotic & still unexplored compared to Berlin. I think if I stayed home in December & then got to Berlin in January I would feel bored there & feeling I had missed something special. Munich was poor in January because I travelled so hard up. Well, by the time of Vienna in December I will still be even more hard up! Go and spend so much money that Berlin in the New Year is out of the question and I can instead concentrate on saving up for April. Walpurgis Night arrival in Berlin. I will have a strictly clinical visit to the Bell tonight, if at all. You have to go out on a Saturday night. Otherwise there is no point being alive.

On the train into London last night in the pitch dark, I felt so much like I was on that train to Nuremberg. It crept and creaked along & I felt with every minute that passes I am getting nearer to Nuremberg and I remember that absolutely mind-blowing nervousness I used to feel on those three visits. By the time I got off & was walking along the station corridor from the platform I could hardly breathe. I was gasping and hyperventilating and shaking, knowing I would soon be in the Pils Bar and the Caribic. Also I felt like I was on the train into Vienna.

If I’m excited and inspired by doing some good writing & thinking I do like to go out & enjoy the Scotsman on a Saturday (9th Sept 2006)

If I’m excited, and inspired by doing some good writing & thinking, I do like to go out & enjoy the Scotsman on a Saturday. That is the secret. I don’t just earn it by saving money, I earn it by doing some great writing—then I deserve it & feel I deserve it.
I am a great believer that you carry the weather with you. If you travel with a spark, a dancing flame inside you, you will have a great time. If you travel unhappy, and in a black place, weighed down by worries and debts, you will have a sad time. I cannot say the well in Munich has run dry; probably it is my well that has run dry. When my well fills up again, by making myself happier, ridding myself of obsessions, financial worries, anxieties, paranoid depressions, I will find Munich’s well is full to over-brimming again, "stars filling the throat to the crop", as it was absolutely full to over-brimming when I met Susi, Irina on the night of Turkey v England, Patricia, Emily on the Night of the Snow, Viktoriya in those four magical life-changing visits in the space of six months. I love loud pounding music. Muse Starlight. Even in the Scotsman standing looking up at the screen I loved hearing the loud pounding music from behind me, Pink Who Knew. The start of Miami Vice suddenly starts with loud pounding music in a club & a girl pole-dancing.

I love looking at stars in the black sky and colourful gassy nebulas, as it reminds me of the old E ships idea. Elric ships in space. Pope in his velvet lined spaceship. On the 91 to King’s Cross a brunette girl vaguely Canadian-looking came & instead of sitting on empty seats beside me, sat on the seat facing me, reading a book, so I could get get a look at the deep cleavage under brown jacket, beautiful globes visible & she knew I was looking. Then I knew I DID want Bell. Evanescence. You never call me when you’re sober. Jokeren Gravol. DAD Scare Yourself. Gnarls Barkley Smiley Faces. Oh I’ve just remembered those two Brazilians running for 87 yesterday, blonde & brunette. The brunette in white T and blue jeans over most incredible bubble butt bulging all over the place though she was really slim. Brazilians have got the best butts. Bloodhound Gang Uhn Tiss. Robbie Rudebox. Zero 7 Throw It All Away. Nellie Furtado Maneater.

I think after all it might be possible to achieve a balanced lifestyle for myself. Paying my rent, and allowing myself one night out a week, so I can still get to wallow in the Libertinesesque/Hogarthian/Rabelaisian/Rake’s Progress life, and still seriously paying off my cards so I can get to Berlin or Vienna a couple of times a year.

It is always hard to drink, go to cinema, then start drinking again. I was tired & run down yesterday & still quite enjoyed Zoe and Jane and Leah, how much better if I am sober and excited? The Francis Bacon Gilded Gutter Lily/Ernest Dowson/Frank Wedekind/Oscar Wilde Feasting With Panthers/Vincent Van Gogh Hour of the Flesh life. Kanye West Number One. Kelis Bossy. Junior Senior Get to Know you better. On my last few trips I have been hoping to get lucky and have a great time on just a very small budget with just a very small outlay & that is why I got so little back. You have to speculate to accumulate. I had so little starting capital to gamble with so I was only ever going to get little back. You have to gamble big if you are going to gamble at all. I should have gone with Alla & Olga and to hell with it. I should have gone with Clarisse & to hell with it. What memories that would have been! Justin Sexyback. Sugababes Red Dress. After all, the great thing about the Bell is that it can cost as little as £5. One pint and two girls and then push off. Cotton Club is a minimum £19 to start off with. How I always remember Masha dancing to Global DJs. That is why I travel. I will go back to Vienna, I will go back to Munich. I will owe £6000 or £7000. So what? For those memories. Habit encrusts itself to us, like barnacles. Every few years one finally makes the effort to scrape all the barnacles off, and uncover the shiny ship’s hull underneath, as if new. Such I have just done.

The graph proves that the flat is affordable (8th Sept 2006)

The graph proves that the flat is affordable, allowing me one night out a week. I think I will have to choose between Berlin or Vienna though. Yes I fell off the wagon again, but I do not feel so bad because I had decided to go on Saturday which I will now not do(???). Layla Jane Stella Nicki Zoe Camilla Crystal and after 7 Leah and Sol. I stayed just to see Leah otherwise I would have left after one. It is so nice now I have discovered the 91 bus to get there & back again! After three pints in the Calcutta I did not feel like Scanner or Volver, so went to see Miami Vice instead, in the front row. It was very good. I will have to go back to the flat tonight, Friday night, because there are engineering works on the train all weekend.
Yes my love is like poison, but the Flying Scotsman is like poison too. I am so much like Bob, throwing away all my savings, —– is so much like Jenny. —– is so much like Ella. It is Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky made flesh. It is the Libertines. Perhaps I will go Saturday! Just to look! Just for one pint to see the Victim’s Board! What is the point saving money to see strippers in Vienna when the best one is right here in London? Oh no I don’t want to go through that tiring sleazy drunkenness again just two days after the last one. No wait for the dark rainy days. Yesterday was horribly sunny & Saturday will be the same. Two fortnights in a row I have paid £300 off my Barclaycard! That proves the flat is affordable to me. Sunday and Monday are going to be 27ºC. This summer is hanging on & coming back for more. The dog days.

I slept all day again to quarter to 7 on the floor (3rd Sept 2006)

I slept all day again to quarter to 7 on the floor. Uneventful journey to work. Two more nights to get through. DR radio has stopped working. It was playing fine when I came in, so I do not know what has happened to it. I fear sabotage, but I am sure I have not left my seat or turned my back the whole time other people were here. What has gone wrong with it? Maybe it is a DR website problem and it will come back later?************Yes it came back! I was feeling so calm all through the night, I don’t know why suddenly I felt so disintegrated by the time I left. I failed at the Midnight Bell and felt defeated. When I always used to stand there so in control. I feel like going out for a drink before work tonight. I need to let off pressure.

I have financial issues (2nd Sept 2006)

I have financial issues. It is like being tied up with ropes. I dream that with one bound I could be free. Like Fantomas. I am tied up with £6000 worth of rope.*********Everything is starting to come good again. The black stormy cool weather has arrived. September has arrived. I have got my bus stop back. I am free of the obsession with Midnight Bell and Cotton Club. Free of the obsession with Lilith. I have saved £400 in four weeks. Reduced my Barclaycard debt from £1600 to £1200 and imminently down to £900. I seem to only be drinking seven beers a week at the moment, instead of fifteen-twenty! Going to Vienna for five days will blow £900 that it has taken four months to save. But “those who run seem to have all the fun”. It is time for another adventure. My life couldn’t go on as it was. It was madness.***********An uneventful journey to work. Three more nights to get through! Then what? Listening to DR Boogie Radio makes me feel like I am on holiday already. Loft Pussycat Lounge. Nik & Jay Boing. Amerie One Thing. Rammstein Keine Lust. I am worried that if I do not do the naughty things I will lose the knack. You get out of the habit. It just shows every time something apparently bad happens, good comes out of it. When Florence destroyed me the other week, it led me into the paradigm shift, and finally saving money, ending my obsession with Midnight Bell and Cotton Club. When I came in & found all the radio stations gone on my work pc, it led to me finding DR Boogie Radio, the best radio station I have ever found. Being given so much more work to do at nights has cured me of the long boredom & made the nights go much faster. Blaze feat Barbara Tucker Most Precious Love

Just in January & February I spent £638 on Tallulah and £500 on drink. Just two months of not going out to Bell & Cotton Club would save me £1100, enough to go on holiday in the New Year. I spent most of my earnings in the Bell and the Cotton Club.

Finally roused myself from bed to record 11.04am Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia antarctica (1st September 2006)

Finally roused myself from bed to record 11.04am Vaughan Williams: Sinfonia antarctica.
11.48am Scriabin: Sonata No 9, Op 68 “Black Mass”. Let this be like the months preparing for the Swedish visit, after the Sleeping Beauty is a Junkie newspaper article. Berlin Phil at the Proms tonight.
All that matters is the books. Autismus. Black Narcissus. The Cold Icy Air of the Mountains. Casanova.
Do I really want to go to Vienna and Berlin so much? Wasn’t the Midnight Bell better? Those heady nights watching Florence Crazy, Hips Don’t Lie, Check On It, Martini, Janet Material Girl, Amanda, Sylvia Dip It Low, Vicki, Anya, Lucky. Bodyrockers I like the way you move. Kelly. Thais Lola. Carla. Sunny No One Knows. The Bell is so far and away the best of the strip pubs in London. Yes, I lost myself there, but isn’t losing yourself exciting. I want Berlin and Vienna for really exotic, dirty sex. Wait for the really dark, black, rainy nights before going out. I am completely carefree because I am a writer. I am Ernest Dowson and that is all that is important. I am Frank Wedekind. I am Karl Kraus. “A terrorist launched a series of bomb attacks against chamber music venues around London.” “Amidst the destruction and bloodshed, the piano player and the violinist played on, refusing to let the terrorists win”.
“Curling tendrils of black ink like blood, growing like flowers around the doorways and streets and buses. Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy started up from somewhere amidst the towering foliage. Somewhere, at the Midnight Bell, Florence started to dance.”
Yes I question if I want to go to Vienna wasting all that money after working so hard to save it, but that is to forget the excitement, the nervousness so intense I cannot breathe as my train pulls into Vienna.