(Part 1 is here, and Part 2 is here.)

I sure I must have said this before, but what the hell. If you blog for long enough, you're bound to start to repeating yourself sooner or later, right? Just stop me if I start turning into Julie Burchill. ("My dear old dad, he was the salt of the earth! I used to work for the NME! I'm Britain's Worst Mother! Aren't Brighton Council awful? I was Queen Of The Groucho Club, you know! Tony bloody Parsons, eh? Did I ever tell you what I think of the Spice Girls...")

So yes, I've probably said this before: these days, in stark contrast to most of the previous decade, I spend very little time in exclusively gay company. Not because I have anything against the concept, but because the circumstances of my life have changed. Which means that when - as happened last Sunday - I do spend time in exclusively gay company, the contrast makes the experience all the more delightful. It's a chance to top up my Gay Batteries; to reconnect with an important side of my identity that, although largely dormant now, will always still be there.

Of course, it helps a lot when the company is as delightful and stimulating as the massed (and ever-growing) ranks of Royal Vauxhall Tavern bloggers (the South London Action Bloggers Society? the SLABS?) and their friends. I'm here for Marcus's birthday celebrations, which start off with booze, fags and presents in his kitchen. Marcus is on top form, with enough stories to keep me in stitches for hours. At times, it's rather like having Bboyblues2000 on a live audio-visual stream - and if you read his site regularly, then you'll know just what a treat that could be. I simply cannot remember the last time I laughed so hard, and for so long.

David has made me a compilation CD, which he has entitled Box of curiosities. Its contents include two tracks from the debut solo album (Unrest) from Erlend Øye, who is currently better known as half of the Norwegian duo Kings Of Convenience. I have since gone out and bought the entire album, and must heartily recommend it to absolutely everybody. This could so easily be the next Lemon Jelly / Royksopp / Goldfrapp / Moby slow-burning, word-of-mouth crossover hit.

-oOo-
As I am comparatively - I say comparatively - more sober this time, compared to my three previous visits to the Royal Vauxhall Tavern, I am able to concentrate more closely on the D.E. Experience, whose weekly hour-long show has become the stuff of legend. The stand-up routine is perhaps not her best ever (wot, no topical Jacko gags?), but the singing...oh, the singing. What I hadn't fully acknowledged before (being too busy joining in, along with half of the rest of the pub): Edna's whole interpretive style bends to fit each song in turn, with intonation and timbre to suit each of the singers she pays tribute to. Thus when she is "doing" Karen Carpenter, she manages to catch that characteristic slight delay on the last word of the line. It is in details like this that Edna sets herself apart from other common-or-garden drag acts.

Not to say that she can't be common herself, mind. In fact, she can be uncommonly common at times. But in the very next line of the song, while the grin is still on your face, you'll realise that she's now playing it straight from the heart, her neck veins sticking out, her falsetto soaring out into the smoke and the sweat. Sometimes, she'll play it both ways. Thus - having already made us cackle with a naughtily reworded first verse - she will sing the rest of Atomic Kitten's Whole Again with an absolute, yearning sincerity, while still rewording each and every chorus as "you can fill my hole again", the original gag long forgotten.

Interestingly enough (in the light of information which I have only just discovered for myself), Edna also treats us to a scorching version of Don't Leave Me This Way. As well she might, bearing in mind that Edna/Jonathan used to be the lead singer of Bronski Beat. After Jimi Somerville, after his replacement Jon-Jon - well, after all the hits, frankly. Except for the collaboration with Eartha Kitt on Cha Cha Heels, of course - on which a certain "Jonathan Hillyer" (sic) is credited with backing vocals.

Oh look - I've still got my 12-inch copy in the attic. Oh look - there he is!



[Jonathan Hillyer? Shouldn't that be Jonathan Hellyer? Or should that be Jonathan Paule instead? (***) Oh, it's all so confusing.]

-oOo-
Straight after the show, wandering around trying to find my posse (they have now taken to watching Edna from the balcony - a move of about four paces which, in RVT terms, is equivalent to migrating to a different galaxy), I am greeted by a tall, slim stranger in a rubber vest. Goodness me! It's Steve from My Ace Life! I have no idea why, but I had mentally cast Steve as short-ish and stout-ish. However, I had also - quite correctly - cast him as friendly. We talk, but inevitably not for nearly long enough. This happens far too often when I meet new people whose blogs I follow. Mind you, it's mainly due to my impatience to introduce Steve to everybody else: David, Marcus, Ian and Luca (he already knows Jonathan, who has sprouted a handsome beard since the last time we met).

David, Marcus, Ian, Luca, Jonathan, Steve and myself. That's seven bloggers and counting. Oh look, there's Dave! Hi Dave! Make that eight bloggers.

I later discover that there were also at least two other bloggers in the building that evening, who I didn't meet: Dave from Sydney, and The Brick, who only started his site 11 days ago. Any advance on ten bloggers? And this wasn't even a "Blogmeet" as such - just a regular Sunday in a pub in South London. Do you suppose that there is any other venue in the British Isles which can boast quite such a high proportion of personal publishers amongst its clientele?

On the pavement outside, I am talking with Ker-ching, and a journalist friend of his who has been to see Soft Cell over the weekend. I am just reading through the draft review when - lo and behold! - I hear the familiar strains of Soft Cell's The Night (Almighty remix) wafting through the door. Excusing myself, I am gone in a flash, and back into the heaving throng for a fully fledged Moment.

-oOo-
As always - even on the coldest, bleakest, most drizzly of days outside - most of the pub have now flung their shirts off, and are pressed nipple-to-nipple in what is supposed to be dancing, but which has been more accurately described (bearing in mind the tightly packed crush inside) as "arranging oneself". Not wanting to be a completely prissy prude, I have elected to meet them halfway - by undoing my shirt, but not actually removing it. It's my usual sartorial smoke-and-mirrors trick in these situations - giving the illusion of unabashed flesh-flaunting, without actually revealing more than a three-inch wide strip down my front. It's also a handy disguise for that awkward little abdominal jut of mine, which no amount of stomach crunching will dispel.

This isn't good enough for Ian though, who turns to me with a somewhat sly expression on his face. The tone of his voice has become slow, smooth, measured...and deadly.

- "Now then, Mike. Take a good look around you. How many people in here do you see with their shirts still on?"

- "Well, um...there's still quite a few dotted around, actually."

- "And how many do you see with their shirts off?"

- "Er...quite a lot."

- "Exactly. Now tell me this. How many people do you see with their shirts still on, but left open?"

- "Ah. That would be just me, then."

- "Precisely. So don't you think you look just a bit [evil stress on the next word] provincial, still dressed like that? You don't want to give yourself away, do you? So take the bloody thing off!"

And so - in something of a fit of "I'll bloody show you!" defiance - it came to pass that those tired old tits of mine got flopped out one more time, for the benefit of the whole tavern. Which was, of course, deeply liberating, and blah blah blah blah blah.

Let's leave me there, shall we? Pissed up, topless, with yet another fag on, arranging myself around the dancefloor of a shabby South London pub, in the company of some of Britain's finest online diarists - and increasingly dear friends, I might add - beaming from ear to ear, lovin' it lovin' it lovin' it.

Apotheosis of Blog. Re-connection with the Mothership of Queer. Not forgetting a joyful re-acclimatisation with the unsubtle pleasures of Cooking Lager.

Mission accomplished, then. Take me home.

Quick! Quick! This is your last chance to send out one of Meg & Davo's genius Be My Anti-Valentine e-cards.

K got the one which says: Happy unimaginative, consumer-oriented and entirely arbitrary, manipulative & shallow interpretation of romance day. He rang me up to thank me with tears in his eyes. It's as slushy as we ever get, quite frankly.

Let's have another rummage through the compartment marked "Post-Punk", shall we? Because I know it's one of your favourite compartments...

  

Item 109. Everything's Roses - Fire Engines (1980)

This is the equally fine flip-side of their debut single Get Up And Use Me (which caused such a strong favourable reaction when I posted it last November). As I said last time [control-v] it is only listening to it now, after a gap of many years, that I can grasp just how groundbreaking and influential it turned out to be.

Item 110. Love Sick - Orange Juice (1980)

The flip-side of Orange Juice's second single (Blue Boy), this is the tune that first introduced me to the band, and which I fell head over heels in love with, playing it over and over again on a tape I had made from the John Peel show. I am particularly struck by the tension between ambition and technical ability, as the band struggle to do justice to the songwriting and the arrangement, pushing the limits of their capabilities. If the playing had been slicker, and if the full range of modern studio resources had been available, then I don't think the track would have had half its impact.

Lyrically, this was one of those "Oh God, it's me! It's me!" tracks, with its self-pitying, slightly accusing bitterness which could hardly fail to strike a chord back then. Indeed, I spent most of my late teens in a constantly shifting state of unrequited lovesickness, with an extensive array of blithely unwitting targets who were selected seemingly at random. These scattershot attachments, while intense and fairly all-consuming, usually ran in parallel with each other, sometimes up to three or four at a time. Thus even as a lovelorn romantic, I was already a bit of a tart. Listening to the song again, I must confess that I have absolutely no idea who I was thinking about at the time.

Sensitive, slightly fey young men with floppy fringes and jingly-jangly guitars, singing about how sensitive and misunderstood they were, and yet undercutting this with a hint of tongue-in-cheek self-mockery? People these days always seem to credit The Smiths for giving birth to this particular sensibility in rock. There was nothing like them before, we are told. Well, I never agreed. Indeed, my very first impression of The Smiths was that they actually sounded a bit derivative. Orange Juice were mining that particular seam a good three years earlier, taking their influences from the Buzzcocks, Byrds and Velvet Underground while they were about it.

Item 111. Your Attention Please - Scars (1980)

An adaptation of the Peter Porter poem of the same name, this live recording was given away on a gold flexi-disc attached to an early copy of i-D magazine, of all things (back in its early, independent, semi-underground, beat-of-the-street days). With tomorrow afternoon's (hopefully) massive Stop The War demonstrations planned in London, Glasgow and in major cities around the world, there could scarcely be a more apposite time to make this available once again.

(And if downloading the track doesn't interest you, then do at least read the poem.)

Item 112. Private Plane - Thomas Leer (1978)

One of the very first - practically the first - home-made DIY electronic singles to be made, this appeared around the same time as The Normal's T.V.O.D/Warm Leatherette and Robert Rental's Paralysis/A.C.C, on a tiny self-financed label.

There are two reasons why I have suddenly remembered this single:

Firstly, David recently posted an MP3 of Snobbery & Decay by Act, which Thomas Leer formed with former Propaganda singer Claudia Brücken. Its airbrushed Eighties sleekness is a long, long way from the dour mumblings you'll find here.

Secondly, Nigel recently posted a great article about this single, which finally made me drag it out of storage for a re-assessment. I don't suppose I had heard it for at least twenty years. Extraordinary to think that there are now records in my collection which can languish unheard for so long, before the sudden urge to play them again creeps up on me.

To be honest with you, the jury in my head is still out on this one. Is it merely a roughly executed period piece, of historical interest only - or does it have an intrinisic worth of its own? Anyway, see what you think.

  

Update: Sorry - you weren't quick enough. These MP3s are no longer on my server. I generally make them available for a week or so (sometimes less) before substituting them for new ones. Better luck next time!

I've been up since 5:00 this morning, and I've spent six hours of today sitting on trains. I think there might be a neat little story to mine from the journey, but I need to sleep on it first.

Actually - I just need to sleep, period. My brain feels like a detached lump of concrete, floating in a viscous gloop. Ee, I wasn't put on this planet to work for a living, I'm telling you.

So if it's all the same to you, I'll get me tits out tomorrow instead...promise. (Such a tease. I'd never cut the mustard at the Nude Blog Awards.)

In the meantime, and since words fail me tonight, let me hand you over to Stuart, who has penned an outstanding account of our visit to Tate Modern last Saturday, with particular reference to The Bloody Great Big Red Thing by Anish Kapoor.

I am now going to collapse onto the sofa with a bottle of supermarket beer and some agreeably exploitative Trash TV. Because I'm worth it...

Someone came surfing on in here this evening, searching for the following:
"I'm sorry I haven't a clue" samantha picture.

Someone's seriously missing the point there. They'll be looking for a beginner's guide to Mornington Crescent next.

...now have all have full mouseover text (see below), like all the rest of my links. (You do hover over my links, don't you?)

I must say that I've thoroughly enjoyed spending some time off my usual blogroll rounds today, getting to know some of the other people who read me a little bit better. They're all good blogs, every single one of them, in their own very different ways - and all are definitely worth an exploratory click or two.

As a result, you'll have to hold out a just little bit longer for Apotheosis Of Blog Part Three - Tits Out At The Tavern. But I dare say you can probably hazard a guess at the general flavour.

I am truly delighted to discover - quite accidentally, as it happens - that almost exactly a year after he stopped blogging, Jeff the Tin Man has started up once again. Personal writing of the highest order, as I hope you will soon find out for yourselves.

I hadn't read anything on Paul Ford's extraordinary Ftrain site for quite some time, until I stumbled across these excerpts from an imagined future autobiography by Michael Jackson's youngest son. In its own idiosyncratic way, this piece actually says it all.

It's high time that I said a public Hello and Thank You to some of the sites who have stuck me on their blogrolls, link pages and the like, and who continue to visit here regularly. I'm chuffed to bits that you all think I'm worth reading - and yes, I do try and pop over to your places every now and again, to see how you're doing.

Alex McChesney Dot Com · Notes From An Eclectic Mind · (leto) · Anita Rowland's Home Page
It Always Rains In Wales · frizzy logic · The Temperamental Wench · Blue Witch · Terradyme
are the stars out tonight? · Tales From The City · Flightless Farrago · Hurtling towards obscurity
Dragonthief · Bacon, Cheese and Oatcakes · Come Back To What You Know · A Blog's Life
Something · Terreus · Plep · Brainsluice · blogmeblogmoi · Spindled Brocade · etceterate
Elkit in Wonderland · Just A Little Something · A letter from the Olde Countrie · Toddski.net
Life As It Happens · Sleeping Dogs Lies · Living Proof · Parallax View · The Unbeaten Path
Enigmatic Mermaid · Isabella's Teddy Travels · Todd's Web Page Dot Com

(Part 1 is here.)

On the train journey back to Stuart's place, we make the acquaintance of a flamboyantly inebriated barman from [hang on; I keep forgetting that people actually read this stuff - perhaps I'd better not say]. The barman homes in on poor old Stuart, with whom he is alternately extravagantly flirtatious and mercilessly catty, to hugely entertaining effect (if you're 'bel or me, that is - although Stuart does hold his own pretty well under the circumstances).

Eventually tiring of Stuart as his comic foil (or his Straight Man, if you will), the barman starts flirting, equally fruitlessly, with a rugged looking Australian who has spent most of his evening in a strip club. What a melting pot we all are! It's all perfectly good-natured stuff though - and before long, most of our compartment has joined the general conversation. In all my years of using public transport in London, I don't think I have ever witnessed something quite like this before.

Blogwhores to the end, Stuart, 'bel and I even end up scribbling down our URLs on a scrap of paper, so that the barman can look us up when he gets home. Hey - stats is stats, right?

-oOo-
After breakfast the next morning, the three of us play Thank God Or Not Thank God? - a game devised by David and Marcus a few months ago. Basically, this involves picking a soul/R&B CD and trying to guess whether or not the artist thanks God in the credits. As Stuart has loads of soul/R&B CDs in his collection, this keeps us amused for ages - especially as we soon realise that a) they nearly all thank God (only Erykah Badu and Princess Superstar failed to do so, I think) and b) they never just say something simple like "Thank You God". Instead, they can merrily dribble on for whole paragraphs at a time, singing His praises for all they are worth. Maybe we should be keeping a word count: Who Is The Holiest Diva Of Them All?

Update: Mind you, if we had, Angie Stone would have been a clear winner. Her endless screed on Black Diamond (as transcribed and commented upon by Stuart) had us in fits.

-oOo-
Most of the rest of the day is spent mooching round Tate Modern and the surrounding environs. Stuart has an enviable knack of pointing out all the little architectural details which we might otherwise have missed, and I rather enjoy borrowing his eyes for a while. He has also taken this rather splendid triptych shot of the three of us reflected in a riverside window.

As we wander round the Turbine Hall of the Tate (where Anish Kapoor's vast Marsyas installation overwhelms me every bit as much as it did the first time I saw it), something struck me for the first time. Back in the 1990s, all my visits to London would always, always lead me to Old Compton Street. Nowdays, every visit to London will inevitably lead me to Tate Modern and the South Bank...and that, I have to say, is the sort of generational progress with which I am entirely comfortable.

-oOo-
Taking my leave of Stuart and 'bel (with a firm, manly shake of the hand and a continental-style double-cheek-peck respectively), I travel down to see my old chums (and - gasp! - non-bloggers) Brimus and Royac in Brixton. After dinner, we assess our options for the night ahead: Queer Nation, Duckie, Two Brewers or stay in?

Duckie it is then. Hey, maybe I'll meet Dave Spellcnut and his fella down there! They're down there most Saturday nights, after all.

Sadly - and despite scouring the entire club whenever a Peaches record comes on - the Drigs-Spellcnuts are nowhere to be seen. Which serves me right for being spontaneous for once (not something for which I'm particularly known, as it happens - I do like to plan ahead).

Anyway, my second ever visit to Duckie is as fantastic as it was when we last went about five years ago (me to promoter Amy Lamé at the end of the previous night, pissed beyond redemption: "Thank you for providing the first ever gay club which my boyfriend actually likes!"). There's something about the place which demands consumption of whole oceans of cooking lager - a requirement with which I gleefully comply. As the resident DJs (the soon-to-be-famous Readers Wifes) play Bow Wow Wow's C30, C60, C90 Go!, I am busy excitedly texting a "Guess what!" message to Stuart, who offered it as an MP3 on his site a couple of weeks ago.

A pervy electroclash duo called Atomiser takes the stage. Their lead singer, one Jonny Slut, is the DJ/host at the uber-hip Nag Nag Nag club night, and was also a member of 80s goth band The Specimen. Goodness, he's worn well for a man of his age. Mr. Slut appears bare-chested, with solid circles of thick black make-up around his nipples, and a pair of leather kecks which are eventually discarded to reveal quite the most sumptuous jockstrap I have ever seen. In fact, it's more like a theatrical mask than a jockstrap. There are feathers coming out of it and everything! Atomiser are immensely entertaining, on every level. Royac dubs them "the punk Pet Shop Boys on acid", which I'd say was about right. OK, add Suicide and Soft Cell to the equation and you're just about there.

The theme for tonight is "Bad Hair Night", and so there's a related quiz, with three contestants plucked from the audience. The first round is a "beat the intro" round of classic hair-related tunes. One poor fool presses his buzzer seconds into the very first track. "Is it Kylie Minogue?"

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. This may only be my second visit, but even I know that the words "Kylie" and "Minogue" should never be uttered on these premises. The crowd are already baying for blood. The poor bewildered kid is summarily kicked off the stage by Amy Lamé, and immediately replaced with a new contestant. It's Rough Justice down here at Duckie all right.

The last track of the night is the utterly fantastic forthcoming debut single from the Readers Wifes, Bitch At The Brits:It comes out on my birthday next Monday, as the debut release on the Popbitch label. However, it's in a limited pressing only. Stockists will include Rough Trade, and the following Virgin stores: London (Oxford Street, Camden, Kings Road, Piccadilly), Bristol, Nottingham, Norwich, Brighton, Cardiff, Leeds, Glasgow and Colchester. Frankly my dears, you should kill to get it.

In only a few hours, I'll be back at this venue (the Royal Vauxhall Tavern) for a second time. Fancy coming all the way down to London and then spending half your waking hours in the same crumbling old boozer! But I know what I'm doing - and this is no ordinary crumbling old boozer.

(...to be continued.)

Just before lunch, I added myself to GeoURL (via David & Duncan), which lists your nearest personal publishing neighbours based on your respective latitudes and longitudes. It's quite easy to install, once you've been onto Streetmap and worked out your co-ordinates from your post code - all you then have to do is paste a bit of code into your template, press a button, and wait a few minutes.

Disappointingly, it turns out that GeoURL hasn't exactly set the East Midlands personal publishing world on fire just yet, as the results page for this site will show. I checked the half a dozen sites which cropped up in the Nottingham area, added the green GeoURL button to my sidebar, thought no more of it, and went out to lunch.

Imagine my surprise therefore, when on glancing through the window of the Indian restaurant on the corner of this very street (just three doors away from where I'm sitting), I caught sight of one of the people whose (academic) site I had just been peering at. There was absolutely no question that it was him, either. What are the chances of that happening, eh?

Well now. Weekends are just not capable of getting any more bloggerish than the weekend I've just had down in London. Ee, I had bloggers coming out of me ears, so I did. And I ask you, what could be more pleasant than that?

Things kicked off with the Great UKBloggers Blogmeet, which took place in the downstairs bar of the Green Man pub, opposite Great Portland Street tube station. Any initial collywobbles I might have had about stepping into a room full of strangers were immediately disspelled when the very first person I clapped eyes on turned out to be someone I already knew: David, a.k.a. Scally. A few moments later, Meg was warmly greeting me, and a few minutes after that, I was sitting with my pint and nattering away with Gert as if I'd known her for months.

But of course, in a way, I have known Gert for months. In fact, I think I have now reached the stage whereby meeting online pals in the flesh is no longer the surreal headf**k that it used to be. It actually feels normal now. It also helps when - as is the case far more often than not - the person in question is more or less the person you had imagined them to be from their blog. Gert was definitely one such person.

Blogger followed blogger followed blogger. Let me try and remember who I talked to, roughly in the right order. Stuart of course, with whom I was staying. Then Marc, who has a copy of one of my musical Holy Grails: the NME Neon West cassette of country music, from 1984. Owen Bloing, Tammy Squodge and Cath Abraxas. Three old hands from the UKBloggers mailing list: Cal Henderson, Matt Webb and Mo Morgan, all of whom were doing a fine job of circulating from group to group, introducing themselves and making sure that people were getting to know each other. Not a clique, see? Nick Jordan, briefly. Pete-dot-Nu, Michael Dragonthief, then Simon Pearson, who still wouldn't spill the beans on his forthcoming Blog Idol project. (Incidentally, I was tickled by the way that we introduced ourselves: Hi, I'm Cath from Abraxas - Hi, I'm Michael from Dragonthief - Hi, I'm Mike from Troubled Diva, etc. This made it sound like we all had these major organisations behind us, rather than some dinky little personal webspace or other.)

Next up, a good long chat with the deeply lovely London Mark, whom I then introduced to Anna Kookymojo (the three of us reconvening for an even longer chat towards the end of the evening). This is starting to read like Jennifer's Diary in Harpers & Queen, isn't it? Tom Coates, briefly (we were largely hovering in different orbits, as it transpired). A longer chat with Meg and Scally (which reminds me: I must tell you the Trough Man story), before intercepting Vaughan (whom I was particularly pleased to meet, as I think we have been regularly reading each other for over a year now). Over to 'bel at long last, where I then ended up flanked by Petes: Pete-dot-nu and Pete Ashton. And I know there were others - many others - but it was all such a blur by then, in the nicest possible way. There must have been at least thirty of us in total. An altogether successful evening then: friendly and welcoming, lively and fun, and with barely any intimidating tech-talk whatsoever (phew).

(Other accounts of the evening are, of course, plastered all over the Internet - and to that end, 'bel has been good enough to provide a useful guide to the various reports and photo galleries that are knocking around.)

My Estonian reader Al tells me that - despite being the public favourite on the night - Vanilla Ninja's Club "Kung-Fu" was beaten by Claire's Birthday, with Eighties Coming Back. In fact - and quite astonishingly - Club "Kung-Fu" came equal last. (For more explanation on this, see the comments.)

This is a crushing cultural loss which impoverishes us all. I am too upset to blog anything else right now.

Update: Well, whaddya know? I have just received a really sweet, upbeat comment from none other than Piret Järvis of Vanilla Ninja, who is clearly taking everything in her stride and maintaining a positive attitude towards the whole experience. I do sincerely hope that this isn't the last we hear from Vanilla Ninja. Club "Kung Fu" is an absolute belter of a single, and I wish the Ninjas every success in the future.

Troubled Diva - the blog that the STARS read!

I feel much happier now.