Thursday

I have an astounding head cold, it's killing me.

Today was market day in Hastings. Lots of facial tattoos among the vegetable stalls. We have a busker who only sings post punk indie, mostly Radiohead, today he tried a reggae version of 'Halleluliah' - it didn't work. A fat woman in leggings flashed her vagina at me in the street for no reason. It had a large butterfly tattoo. I saw something very novel, now that Hastings is getting trendy - we have the odd hipster, today I saw one in town who complemented the beard/cap/lumberjack shirt and cut-off jeans by being a dwarf and riding a mobility scooter.

One of my mates was a bit down, and I needed cheering up myself - so I popped into his rather fantastic 5 story town house on the way home yesterday and took him for a drink in a lovely pub garden  (probably where I got my head cold) - he's a film and video director - he probably shot every important music video of the 1990's - but can't really remember the next 10 years, which I find quite charming. He's a lovely bloke and a very good friend - I'm trying to persuade him to write a book. At one point he was in a serious relationship with Shinead O'Connor, who he describes as the only girl he ever went out with who now refuses to talk to him. He has her picture in the toilet. He told me some staggeringly funny anecdotes - my favourite being the one where he went over to visit his best friend when he was about 15 or 16, at the time he was  a punk and had a mohican, his mate lived in Notting Hill - he knew that the guy's mother was getting re-married, but as kids - you don't really think about who grown-ups are. Turns out they were Antonia Fraser and Harold Pinter - he spent the reception crowded into a house full of grand society ladies who thought his hair was lovely - talking to an old man who he realised was Lord Longford, and couldn't think of anything to say so they just had a friendly chat about Myra Hindley.

Another anecdote - which frankly, I cannot repeat, involved his friend Tracey, a very attractive woman with an oddly familiar face - turns out her parents were Stuart Grainger and Jean Simmons. Life as a Hollywood child sounds very strange indeed - the best bit was last year when she gave him a lift somewhere and the car was so full of stuff, he had to place a box on his lap for the journey - he eventually asked what was in it 'oh, my mum' - having a Hollywood legend in your lap is quite an achievement - even if they have been cremated - beats my dad's Liz Taylor story. One of the strangest things about Richard (for that is also his name too) is that he appears in the Derek Jarman film for the Smiths 'The Queen Is Dead' - he's the blonde boy spinning around - I was mesmerised by that as a teenager - very strange to be sitting in the pub with him 25 years later.

My head is still thumping, going to work at home tomorrow, very behind already and the house is a mess.