...goes to cottage, greets weekend guest, goes down the pub, hosts an all-back-to-ours-for-Big-Brother, stays up until age-inappropriate-o'clock...

wakes up at student-o'clock with thudding hangover, goes for bracing stroll, comes back, slumps into armchair while awaiting inspiration for blog post...

...and feels like a prize cock.


(Taken by K at the Manifold Valley Agricultural Show, 8th August 2009. Click here for the full set, or here for the slideshow.)

If I'm going to get through a month's worth of daily postings, then Fridays are going to be the toughest gigs of the week. For traditionally, Friday evenings fall into four tightly packed sections, with scant room for a fifth:

1. The frantic weekend packing session. Undies to sort, shirts and shoes to put out, CDs and papers to pack, laptops to stow, bins to put out: in nearly nine years of splitting our lives between town and country, we've yet to learn the fine art of Travelling Light.

2. The drive to the village. Fifty minutes on a good run, but almost always interrupted by the statutory two pints of Marston's Pedigree in the Red Lion en route. That first sip of that first beer is one of the absolute highlights of our week. Simple pleasures.

3. The frantic weekend un-packing session, followed by the week's one and only microwaved ready meal. Fridays aren't for lingering over gatsronomic delights; they're for chowing down and moving on through...

4. ...to the sofas in the sitting room, for Friday Night trash telly. Tonight being a particular highlight, as it's - as of course you all know - the grand final of Big Brother Series 10. Yes, we're still watching it. Yes, it's still compelling telly.

So with the bags all packed and K due back in seconds, I've only got time to chuck a few Spotify playlists in your general direction:

1. Hits of September. One song per year, from 1960 to 2009 - the common link being that they all entered the UK singles charts in September, and reached the Top 20 at some point thereafter. Starts with The Ventures and The Shadows; also includes The Temptations, Mott The Hoople, Japan, Cameo, Inner City, Suede, Hole, Rachel Stevens, Justin Timberlake, and many more.

2. A Touch Sensitive. A fine playlist from William B. Swygart. Laura Cantrell, The Doobie Brothers, Saint Etienne, Kevin Ayers, Chic, etc...

3. And speaking of Saint Etienne: its three members have compiled three playlists, in a mostly mellow vain. Bob Stanley's is here, Pete Wiggs' is here, and Sarah Cracknell's is here.

4. All the Top 40 hits of 2009, in chronological order. A vintage year, I'm telling you!

5. Seminal by yer_mam. I love this playlist, compiled by a Manchester blogger: it's wildly eclectic, yet cannily sequenced, and frequently gem-revealing.

6. Late Summer Laziness, by Unreliable Witness (he of the eponymous blog). Belle & Sebastian, The Cure, Tindersticks, Pavement, Hot Chip, Mazzy Star... oh, and is that Saint Etienne again?

7. Best Beatles Covers Ever! The Beatles aren't on Spotify, but plenty of their songs are. This playlist arose from a couple of threads on ILM.

8. Pitchfork's Top Tracks of the 2000s. Some OCD sweetheart out there has compiled the US music site's critical picks of the last decade - all 500 of them - into a series of lists. I could kiss them. 500-401 - 400-301 - 300-201 - 200-101 - 100-51 - 50-21 - 20-1.

Will that do? For I must dash. Happy weekend listening.

Labels: spotify

"A naked man who leapt from the fourth plinth in a stunt which involved a live chicken and sex dolls has prompted tighter security in Trafalgar Square."

Suddenly, I feel so tame.

Labels: plinth

As promised, here are some more details on my upcoming bid to turn myself into an unseemly public spectacle - and to turn the rest of you into "creative collaborators" in the process.

Q: What are you going to be doing up there?

I shall be dancing. Non-stop. For an hour. Stone cold sober (they reserve the right to test for these things), and trying not to let vertigo get the better of me (there's a huge safety net, as yet untested by toppling plinthers, but I'm a trusting soul).

Q: What are you going to be dancing to?

A home-made mix of tunes, spliced together as a single, 60-minute MP3. As to what the mix contains: I have a shortlist, I'm already onto the fourth draft, and BLOODY HELL it's been a struggle thus far. The loose concept is to start the mix with tunes from the upper reaches of the 2009 singles charts. It's been a vintage year for chart pop - the best in many years, in my estimation - and so I'd like to celebrate that. Thereafter, I shall move on to The Golden Classics That Made Me A Man. Expect 1970s soul/funk/disco evergreens, 1990s dance anthems, and maybe a swift nod to dear old Eurovision. The general vibe will be relentlessly cheerful, bouncy and uptempo. Happy music makes me happy. 'Twas ever thus.

Q: But Mike, I've seen you dance. Are you sure this is wise?

Oh, I'm under no delusions. I'm a crap dancer, and I'm not attempting to turn myself into an object of awestruck wonder and desire. Instead, my aim is to dance - how can I put this? - honestly. "Like there's nobody watching", as the saying goes. I'll be the random stranger that you see in the crowd: lost in his own little space, oblivious to the world beyond his headphones.

Q: But Mike, this is all very well for you - but what about the rest of us? Much as we love you, the prospect of watching you jig about in silence with your headphones on, for a full hour, is hardly an enticing one.

OK, so here's where this gets a bit more interesting. Well in advance of the day itself, I'll be making my mix available to anyone who wants a copy. Then when my hour begins, and on a pre-arranged cue, I'll be inviting you all - whether physically present in Trafalgar Square, or watching the live stream from elsewhere - to un-pause the pause buttons on your MP3 players of choice, and to dance along with me. For what is dancing, if not a social act? (And if nobody else was listening, then I'd just be a self-indulgent berk, pleasuring himself on a perch.)

Q: So it's basically a Silent Disco, yes?

In a certain sense, but hopefully with a slight twist. If you're coming to the Square in person - and I very much hope that plenty of you do - then it would be great if you could spread yourselves out a bit, find a spot of your own, and dance along in the same spirit: tuned out from your physical surroundings, lost in your own little world, not caring what you look like to anyone else. And if that means minimal jiggling rather than full-on flailing, then that's fine - as long as you're comfortable, and as long as you're dancing honestly.

If it all works, then other observers and passers-by will hopefully witness a curious, vaguely mystifying spectacle: a seemingly regular crowd of random strangers, subtly subverted by a smattering of lone individuals, all happily lost in their music and doing their things. Separately, and yet together.

(I'm also toying with the idea of giving you occasional instructions along the way, overlaid within the mix: a jump to the right here, a jump to the left there, maybe the odd hands-aloft moment during a chorus, but nothing too tricky or absurd. I'm thinking that these occasional bursts of synchronicity could add another dimension to the mystery. But we shall see.)

Q: Will you be using any props?

Nope - just a plain, unadorned plinth. I hate those little plonked-down bags of crap that plinthers take up with them. They're just not sculptural, darlings.

Q: And what will you be wearing?

Probably just a T-shirt and jeans, in plain, dark colours. Or maybe I'll wear my smartest suit and tie. I haven't quite decided yet. What do you think?

Q: Any plans for later on?

I'd like it very much if you could join me and K in the pub afterwards, for a post-plinth de-brief and a mutual bout of self-congratulation. There are some people coming along who I've wanted to meet for ages, and there will be others who I haven't caught up with in way too long. As to which pub: I don't know the area, so does anyone have any suggestions?

(This would also be a good moment to mention that Heidi "H Factor" Stephens - you know, her what live-blogs the telly for The Guardian - will be plinthing later the same night, at 1:00 am. So if you haven't made it home by then, why not turn up and cheer her on?)

Q: I'll be otherwise engaged on the night, so I'm going to miss the whole thing. Boo! Waah! Not fair!

No matter; the whole performance will be archived on the official website. So whenever you're overcome by the irresistable urge to watch Mike off Troubled Diva prancing about in the name of Art, at any time of the day or night, all you'll need to do is click, sit back, and enjoy. Isn't the modern world wonderful?

Labels: plinth

My mother doesn't own a computer, she has no desire to own one, and her interest in the Internet barely registers as negligible. And yet on her most recent visit, we could scarcely drag her away from the laptop on the kitchen table, such was her fascination for one particular site.

Glued, she was, to the live stream from the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, where a constant procession of cheery blokes in chicken suits, bubble-blowing ladies in capes, middle-aged lecturers, twee librarians, mumbling texters and other assorted show-offs kept her entertained and enthralled. Anthony Gormley's "One & Other" project has already been dubbed "Big Brother for the middle classes" - and if my mother's reaction is anything to go by, then the dubber was spot-on.

There was, however, an additional dimension.

Once again, I sense that you are ahead of me.

On Thursday September 17th, between 18:00 and 19:00, I shall be confounding my vertigo in the name of Conceptual Art, by mounting the plinth and placing myself on public display. And you are all invited to come and watch me.

Even before filling in the application form, I knew what I would do if picked. Quite simply, I'm going to dance. Non-stop. For an hour.

Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that for a 47-year old with a sticky-out beer belly and lamentable co-ordination skills - who has always compensated with limbs-akimbo enthusiasm for what he so patently lacks in technique - this might all be a little... undignified. But the way I see it is this: I'm too old for nightclubs, I'm the wrong age to get invited to many weddings, and yet I still LOVE dancing: sociably, in public spaces, with all the happy communality and shared, channelled emotion that goes with the territory.

Faced with such diminishing opportunites, my decision is merely a practical one. If there's nowhere else left for me to shake my protuberant tushie, then I shall just have to create my own, eight-metre high, 1.7 metre wide space, slap bang in the middle of the London rush hour.

Tomorrow, I'll explain how this foolhardy (yet artistically valid) little venture is going to work - and, crucially, how you can all join in, even if you're on the other side of the world.

Labels: plinth

A few weeks ago, I set up a "portfolio blog" - as I believe these things must be called - as a place to dump my freelance writing. (You can find it here.) It's something that I should have done a long time ago, when it first became apparent that commissioned "professional" writing and free-form personal blog posts just don't sit well together - the theory being that by doing so, I could free up Troubled Diva for more of the stuff that I used to do here on a regular basis.

Well, that was the theory. But of course, the reality turned out to be somewhat trickier. Because - and I think you might be ahead of me here - I've become woefully out of practice at the whole free-form personal blogging caper, to the extent that opening up a "Create Post" window has come to feel like a task of almost insurmountable difficulty.

So I've set myself a challenge. During the month of September, I'm going to try and write at least one post a day on Troubled Diva. It's going to feel weird - hell, it already does feel weird - and the fact that I've left my first blog post until the final hour of the first day of the month probably tells you all you need to know. But, bollocks to it. I want to know what free-form personal blogging feels like again. Maybe I'll re-discover my blogging mojo - or maybe I'll struggle and splutter my way to the end of the month, still wondering how on earth I used to bung content up here in such vast quantities during the first half of this decade.

So, wish me luck. And tomorrow, I'll tell you all about The Plinthing Thing, OK?