Wednesday, 3rd December, 2003 – The Diary of Bryan ferry (Part 2)

The men who do the bins came this morning. I heard the van pulling up outside and nipped down to chat to the brown-haired friendly man who does my house. He’s very nice, and we usually stop and have a quick natter. Me in my Burberry dressing gown, him in his workboots and fingerless gloves. He is very knowledgeable about music, and we talked about The Strokes. He said that he thought they were over-rated. I agreed. Then his colleague shouted at him to get a move on, so he went.

Nice bloke.

Since I was awake, I thought I’d stay up. I finished off last night’s Chicken Jalfrezi, and watched GMTV. Eamon Holmes was talking about pyramid schemes. He was saying that he couldn’t believe people could be so stupid to get involved in them, as they are obviously all cons.

Not obviously Eamon. Not obviously.

At 10am my mobile phone reminded me that I had to call Eno’s solicitor. He is an extremely rude and ignorant man. I can’t stand talking to him. And worse still, I could hear Eno in the background: “What’s he saying? Tell him he can fuck himself. Tell him not to even bother fucking with Eno!”

As ever, it was a wasted call. He is never going to budge. He refuses to speak to me in person, which I can understand. If I were him I would be consumed with guilt. I’d probably kill myself. I trusted him – I believed him when he told me that he needed me as a counter-signatory for planning permission for his new guest bedroom. I should have known better than do sign anything put in front of me by that poisonous little shitbag. All the same, I trusted him. Goodbye all royalties from Roxy Music, hello one-bedroom flat in Stroud.

Anyway, I bet you he is consumed with guilt. Consumed. He’ll probably kill himself. I’ll go to his funeral, and everyone will think how big I am. But inside I will be laughing: Ha ha ha ha! He is an impossibly vein man, and will no doubt have an open coffin. And as we file past his corpse, I will lean in very close to his dead face and whisper: “Suck on that you talentless prick, I hope you rot in hell!”

And I will leave it at that.

I went for a walk to clear my mind. I walked past Threshers but didn’t look in. I got as far as CostCutters when I was suddenly filled with a yearning just to see her. My Charlotte. Just a glimpse at her would soothe my troubled mind. Maybe one day we will be together, and I can lie with my head in her lap as she gently strokes my hair, taking care not to crumple it up, so it doesn’t kink. So I adopted a quizzical expression, clicked my fingers as if I had forgotten something, and turned on my heels.

As I reached Threshers again I glanced in casually. There she was, at the till, counting in bags of change, her hair swept back into a divine ponytail. And by her side a lumbering, dead-eyed, acne-scarred youth, leering at her brainlessly. The sight of this heavy-browed moron looming over my beloved set my blood rising. Then he looked up, and his primitive features settled into a cruel smirk of recognition. He raised a finger to point at me and I looked down.

What was he doing? How did he know me? Did he recognise me? Granted, I still get collared by the odd Roxy-ite, who asks if I ‘didn’t used to be that Bryan Ferry’, but I always tell them no. Oh God, can he have recognised me as ‘that creepy bloke who is always walking past and looking in the window?’ Please no. Were they at that very second laughing about me?

Against my better judgement, I turned back. I had to know. I marched decisively past the window and turned to look. And there they both were, staring back at me. Her as radiant as ever, a smile playing at her lips (a smile of sympathy I thought, and of kinship), him grinning charmlessly, before giving a sarcastic wave.

What could it all mean?

I was so upset by this turn of events that I went straight home (the long way, so as not to have to pass by Threshers yet again) and got into bed. By the time I woke up, I had missed the first half of Judge John Deed, so I ended up sleeping straight through to the morning.