I've had complaints.

"We don't know who or what you're on about", they wail. "Give us a glossary", they beseech.

Fair enough. Fascinating as I am, I can't realistically expect you to maintain a detailed working knowledge of the minutiae of my daily existence.

Besides, any opportunity for converting my life into an alphabetised list has to be seized with both hands.

So here you are then:

Troubled Diva: The Revision Notes.

Alan.
Former guest blogger Alan is my number one midweek drinking buddy slash partner in crime. Hailing from Cape Town, he fetched up in Nottingham towards the end of 2003, working on a short-term contract. Having seemingly left us for good in the Autumn of 2004, he miraculously returned in the early weeks of 2005, to general jubilation. Generally thought of as something of a "catch" in the circles which we frequent, his life is therefore never without incident, and his conversation never fails to intrigue and entertain.

"Bob".
"Bob" isn't really called Bob at all, except on computers and mobile phones, and who am I to deny his right to experiment with his identity? The proud owners of no less than five sheds, each with specific alloted functions (respect!), "Bob" and Mrs. "Bob" live in The Village (see below), and accompanied us on our "challenging" trip to Peru in the Summer of 2004. If this blog were JonnyB's Private Secret Diary, then "Bob" would be Big A. (He couldn't be Short Tony because he doesn't live next door.)

Buni.
Another partner in crime, with a colourful past and a ready wit, I have known Buni since the mid-to-late 1990s. He has guest-blogged here on a couple of occasions, and even had a blog of his own for a while. Buni was raised by bunny-girls, dragged out of the closet by pop stars, and toughened up by the Royal Navy before coming to Nottingham as a mature (hah!) student. He has a robust appetite for life's pleasures, and a sharp take on life which chimes in with my own in many respects.

Chig.
A friend since the spring of 1990, when his pert young bottom collided with my outstretched hand in the middle of a crowded dancefloor. Heady days! Uncanny Kiefer Sutherland lookey-likey Chig lives (and blogs) in Birmingham, where his status as Midlands "scene" correspondent for Gay Times magazine sends him automatically to the front of every nightclub queue. Chig's knowledge of popular culture is truly unparalleled; his home is bascially one vast media archive, and he has exchanged words with just about every boyband member and disco diva of the last fifteen years (sometimes on the way up, sometimes on the way down, and sometimes both). His specialist subjects are a) Aston Villa and b) the Eurovision Song Contest, for which he attains press accreditation every year. On the all too rare occasions when we meet in person, our conversations generally morph into extended Pop Culture Data Dumps, as we breathlessly exchange details of every bit of trivia which we have amassed since the last time. And what could be more pleasant than that?

Cottage, the.
After four nights a week in Nottingham, Friday evenings see us morph from City Boys to Country Squires, in the fifty minutes it takes us to drive from one home to the other. Our second home in the country (feel free to puke) is a renovated 17th century cottage, which has been knocked through into an adjoining building which used to serve as the village bus depot. Scrupulously maintained by K's mum and dad during the week, the cottage bears the imprint of a look which we have dubbed "new rustic minimalism". In other words, it looks like a combination of show home, boutique hotel and holiday let. Hey, who needs "lived in" anyway?

Dymbel & Dymbellina.
My oldest friends in Nottingham; I have known Dymbellina since 1981, when we were fellow students with overlapping social circles, and Dymbel since 1984, when within only a few minutes of meeting me he had already offered to make me a Billy Bragg and Prefab Sprout compilation tape. Dymbel is a long-established writer of Young Adult fiction, and a lecturer in Creative Writing who would never have let me get away with such a clunking sentence as that last one, with its cavalier attitude to tense. He also has a blog, although he prefers not to call it a blog. Another fellow music obsessive, Dymbel has a touchingly loyal devotion to Elvis Costello and R.E.M., and an inexplicable fondness for Clem Snide and Aimee Mann. Dymbellina is a Something in Education at a nearby university, as well as being a published poet. She also has the neatest handwriting of anyone I have ever met. She will find it bizarre that I have singled out this particular accomplishment, and quite rightly so.

K.
My partner since April 1985, K is Ver Class while I am Ver Trash. Or at least that's what we like people to believe. I don't deserve him, and he doesn't deserve me. (Note the dual usage of the word "deserve" in that last sentence, and misinterpret it at your peril.)

Lathbud.
A former colleague who lives in Ashbourne, thus straddling the city-country divide that is my Preferred Lifestyle Choice. Lathbud has been responsible for first recommending many of the attractions of the region, including the incomparable Best Country Pub In The Whole World Evah: The Gate at Brassington.

Mish.
MissMish is the enchanting if at times somewhat misleading online persona of someone who has become a dear friend since she guest-blogged on this site in the summer of 2004. Glamorous, cultured and generous to a fault, I feel privileged to have been welcomed into her charmed circle of café society butterflies.

Our Journalist Friend.
I've never really settled on a good name for Our Journalist Friend, or his lady partner. (In the dim and distant past, I used to call them OldEngland and NewEngland, but there's something not quite right about it.) Like us, OJF works in Nottingham during the week and comes over to The Village (see below) at weekends, where his partner (a "retired" (hah!) interior architect) now permanently resides. OJF is a formidable networker, with a ready hotline to The Great, The Good, and the Just Plain Fascinating. The two of them were the first people to make us feel welcome in The Village, and we owe them A LOT.

PDMG.
PDMG = Princess Diana Memorial Garden, so named because the Famous Garden Designer who made over the L-shaped patch of land behind our cottage had also been commissioned to remember England's Rose in horticultural form. Since this project ultimately fell through, we have taken it upon ourselves to continue to uphold her memory. Cellophane-wrapped floral tributes may be left by the front gate.

Stereoboard.
Another former colleague, and devotee of both the music of Stereolab and the joys of snowboarding. (It's a "portmanteau" word. Do you see?) Stereoboard and Stereboardina (it's the best I could do) have a young son, whose progress has been mapped on a secret invitation-only "baby blog", with an admirable lack of sentimental language and disturbing "Mummy says I'm a good boy" psychological projection. We go gigging together, when parental duties permit.

Village, the.
Our weekend cottage is situated in a quiet but rather smart village in the Derbyshire Peak District, somewhere between Ashbourne, Bakewell and Buxton. Its name remains a secret for Google-related reasons, and to preserve what little mystique I am able to wrap around myself. After moving there in Autumn 2000, we took to our status as The Only Gays In The Village as if to the manner born, and soon learnt to relish being referred to as "The Boys" by all and sundry. At our age!

(I might add to this. We'll see.)

...and I answered it in her comments box. Ooh, satire!

...I'm fine; just having a short rest from all of this, as I was starting to feel a bit burnt out.

I originally intended to post an announcement to this effect over the weekend, but realised that if I did, then my natural contrariness would kick in and I would end up making loads of long posts, just to confound expectations. (I have a troubled relationship with expectations; the best way of getting me to do something is to set up an expectation of the opposite.)

By the way, I owe loads of people e-mails. When they start to stack up, then I tend to revert to ostrich mode and ignore the whole lot of them. Particularly if they contain a request for something. So apologies if you've been feeling slighted.

Anyway, since I'm here (uh-oh, slippery slope)... here are some things which I might have blogged about if I hadn't been "resting".

1. Mish's Royal Wedding party last Friday night, hastily re-conceptualised as a stag/hen do following the one-day postponement of the ceremony. It won't surprise you to learn that I made a thematic mix CD for the event, with a selection of tunes designed to appeal to Royalists and Republicans alike. With inspiration partially coming from this thread on I Love Music, tracks included "Chapel Of Love" (The Chiffons), "Starting Together" (Su Pollard), "I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do I Do" (Abba), "Year Of Decision" (Three Degrees), "White Wedding" (Billy Idol - "it's a nice day to start again"), "Tired Of Waiting For You" (The Kinks), "You Can't Hurry Love" (The Supremes), "I'm Getting Married In The Morning" (from My Fair Lady), "Some Day My Prince Will Come" (from Sleeping Beauty), "Killer Queen" (Queen), "My Lovely Horse" (Divine Comedy), "Galloping Home (Theme From Black Beauty)" (London String Chorale), "Queen Bitch" (David Bowie), "It's A Sin" (Pet Shop Boys), "Sir Duke" (Stevie Wonder), "Duchess" (Mish's favourite band: The Stranglers) and "Perfect Moment" (Martine McCutcheon). I decided against "Dirty Diana" (Michael Jackson) and "Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead" (Klaus Nomi) on grounds of taste.

2. The Shocking Scandal which took place at said party, news of which continued to bounce around from PC to PC and mobile to mobile for most of Saturday. ("She didn't? He didn't? They didn't? But she's a... and he's a... did they get so drunk that they forgot?") As I commented to Mish at the time: a proper lady has no business unveiling her lady garden in another lady's garden.

3. The Awful News concerning Former Guest Blogger Alan. Having just moved back to Nottingham, and having just installed himself in a truly delightful furnished apartment on our collective spiritual home of Broad Street, next door to the late lamented Georges Bar, Alan was then informed that his project was being "mothballed" and that his contract would be coming to an end in just four weeks' time. Too cruel! Too, too cruel!

4. K's I'm The Media Whore Round Here! counter-offensive. Cover story in last week's Business Post (already blogged). A self-penned "My Week" diary column in next week's Business Post. Not one but two interviews on BBC Radio Nottingham, if you please. The distinct possibility of a TV appearance next week; I was particularly tickled by the way they politely asked him not agree to any other TV appearances in the meantime. As if! An invitation to meet Michael Howard yesterday, on his "secret" visit to Nottingham. (Don't worry; he declined. Better things to do.) Okay okay, you're the star - now enough!

5. The unseemly collapse of my Linkrack. Now, I just get one e-mail a day from my failed Crontab job, bearing the cryptic message /usr/libexec/ld-elf.so.1: Shared object "libintl.so.4" not found. But I didn't even touch anything! Honest I didn't! So, yeah, there's no linklog for now. Apologies for that.

6. The Pope's funeral; Ken and Deirdre's wedding; Charles and Camilla's wedding; the General Election. Too much excitement! (I might return to the last of those four tomorrow, in Another Place.)

7. Saturday's Boys Night Out Bender To End All Benders, with Alan, Chig, Buni and a supporting cast of thousands. Only the most fractured of memories rise to the surface. Misreading a text message and sending a WILDLY inappropriate reply in the, um, heat of the moment. Picking up illicit cans of Stella from a speakeasy at the back of a chip shop at three in the morning. Doing Eastern European comedy voiceovers to an "adult" DVD with the sound turned down, at stupid o'clock in the morning. Oh, and... nope, not telling you that bit. Anyway, it was all a welcome contrast to falling asleep in front of the telly and then getting up early to do the mulching - and as such, it served its purpose admirably.

8. Getting an e-mail from a long-time reader who works in the music biz, to tell me that MARIZA THE GODDESS OF FADO HAS READ MY BLOG!!! Specifically my review of her Birmingham concert from late 2003. Apparently, she pronounced herself "flattered".

Can I say it again please? Can I? Can I?

Troubled Diva - the blog that the STARS read!

9. The Blue Witch Party Election Manifesto: an ongoing series which ranges from the brilliant to the bonkers and back again, but which is never anything less than challenging/thought-provoking/carefully conceived. (Start here for the serious stuff, then work up.) Thanks also to BW for pointing me to this site, and its somewhat alarming conclusions. (I absolutely DENY being more favourably disposed to UKIP than Labour.)

---

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome: Liberal Democrat

Your actual outcome:

Labour -22
Conservative -33
	Liberal Democrat 52
	UK Independence Party 7
	Green 9

You should vote: Liberal Democrat

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

10. The exciting new Top 40 singles chart, to be unveiled next Sunday with the addition of sales figures for official downloads. I am in two minds about the impact that this will have.

On the plus side, it will extend the singles-buying demographic to a wider age group. On the minus side, this age group will mostly consist of trendy dads buying nice polite guitar bands like The Stereophonics.

On the plus side, "proper" hits will hang around the charts for a bit longer, whilst flash-in-the-pan marketing exercises will have less of an impact. On the minus side, we might end up with a stagnant chart which is clogged up with two-month-old hits from nice polite guitar bands like The Stereophonics.

On the plus side, we might once again see "climbers" in the charts, as singles are allowed to build a natural "buzz" and increase sales accordingly. On the minus side, a truly idiotic rule is being implemented whereby downloads only qualify for inclusion if the same track is also available in the shops as a CD single. This automatically disqualifies hits in the current download-only chart from Snoop Dogg/Justin Timberlake, The Caesars and Ciara/Missy Elliott.

The impact of the new chart will also be diluted by the newly shifted Top Of The Pops, which has been moved from Friday evenings to Sunday afternoons, just before the new chart is announced. As the show will presumably still be driven by the previous week's chart, this is therefore the worst of all possible screening times.

I therefore recommend that everyone switch their allegiances forthwith to the Troubled Diva Parallel Universe Top 40, now in its fifth week, and based on a much fairer principle: my personal whim.

After last night's astonishing live show (of which more later), the very least I could do was send the brilliant Rufus Wainwright all the way to the top slot; there's also a new entry for his support act, Joan As Policewoman. Melodic soft-rockin' pop is the order of the day, with Maroon 5 as the biggest climber and strong new entries from the likes of Nathalie Nordnes, Robyn, Weird War, 33hz, Tahiti 80 and The Magic Numbers. Meanwhile, it's time to say goodbye to Elton John, Daft Punk, Secret Machines, Brand New Heavies, Roots Manuva, Handsome Boy Modelling School, Lady Sovereign, Terri Walker, Studio B, Nas and Katherine Williams.As for this week's stance on The Magic Numbers: having heard over a dozen of their songs, I'm rapidly coming round to them. In a fragile state of mind, they can be remarkably soothing.

Thanks also to Dead Kenny for pointing out that one of my Hot New Band plugs was misspelt: The Long Blondes are the band you should be watching out for.

11. The wonderful stage adaptation of the classic 1960s radio comedy series Round The Horne, which is playing at the Theatre Royal all this week. This takes the form of a simulated live recording of the radio show, with the cast of regulars stepping up to their microphones as needed, and assuming the voices of their large array of characters: Gruntfuttock, Rambling Syd Rumpo, Charles and Fiona, and, best of all, Julian and Sandy. It was a particular pleasure to hear Julian and Sandy's Bona Law sketch in full: "We've got a criminal practice that takes up most of our time." But really, who knew it was all so RUDE? Not by current standards maybe, but for a Sunday lunchtime in the 1960s, I am amazed that the scriptwriters got away with so much for so long. Needless to say, my mucky-minded media whore of a boyfriend was in stitches throughout. You might find a subtle reference to all of this next week in his diary column.

12. Last night's amazing Rufus Wainwright concert, which deserves a seperate entry of its own. Soon come, no doubt. Oh, but then I'll be setting an expectation, won't I? Well, we shall see.