Where are you? Highgate, the curtain-twitching capital of North London.

What are you? A crushing argument for abortion.

What do you make? A great cup of tea.

What do you love? Skinniness. Short hair. Nice suits. Politeness. Honesty. Wit. Whit Stillman. Walt Whitman. Whittington’s Cat. Unsolicited kisses. Well-shaven napes. Ally Pally on a Sunday afternoon.

What do you hate? Facial hair, including sideburns. Long hair. My speaking voice and teeth. The Daily Mail. Baroness Young. British People In Hot Weather. Two-facedness. Betrayal by so-called friends. Having my passivity exploited. Fibs.

What do you listen to? The hum of my fridge - insert Warp Records joke here -. Mike Alway Core. Ms Ross. The usual twee suspects. Sondheim, Nyman, Carole King, Bacharach. ‘An Evening With Quentin Crisp’, twice a day.

What do you watch? Squirrels from my window. Lindsay Anderson films. Anything with Jude Law or Ben Affleck in it.

What do you drink? Aspartame cocktails.

What do you smoke? Menthol ciggies, because I hear they make you sterile. And they don’t have a nasty brown filter.

What do you take? Stick.

What do you believe in? Death, the Internet, Truth, Beauty, Childishness, Childlessness, Billy Childish, forgiveness, bed, soft toy dogs. Homosexual shenanigans to Style Council records.

When We were 16.

Where were you? Great Cornard Upper School, Sudbury, Suffolk.

What were you? Prodigiously developed in the showers, apparently. I was banned from doing the hurdles ever again.

What did you wear? Ghastly grey school shirt. Still wear it occasionally.

What did you listen to? Radio plays.

What did you watch? My chances of a well-rounded personality sail out the window.

What did you love? My prowess at cross-country running. The showers again, I’m afraid.

What did you hate? Any other sport. Still do.

What did you drink? School water. Sanctimoniously.

What did you smoke? School smoke. Fumes from the catfood factory next door.

What did you take? Beatings from those I was trying to hang out with.

What did you want to be? Terminally ill.

Who did you fight? Myself.

Who/What did you believe in? That education was an escape. Foolishly.

Where did you go? Into the ‘whatever makes you happy’ file.

What did you learn? There’s been a terrible mistake. And I think it’s me.


august 1998.