I've just returned from the newsagents where I've purchased my irregular copy of "Time Out". I'd decided to pay strict attention to this week's edition, as Joe Murphy (aka Sergeant Buzfuz) contacted me last night to say he was being interviewed about the anti-folk scene, and I wanted to read a whole lot of stuff about gig nights and bands I already knew about. (This is untrue, of course - I just wanted to pick it up and read what Joe had to say, and also gloat about the fact that I was on to the scene a whole three years or so before Time Out bothered, and perhaps highlight any inaccuracies the journalist created in the article with a flourescent marker and send it back to them).

As it turned out, though, it wasn't just the anti-folk article that I should have been interested in. You see, today's "Time Out" is a "Secret Scene" special, focussing on all the underground movements in London that everyone should pay attention to. And, to my excitement and genuine shock, there are tons of people in the magazine who are either friends, acquaintances or associates of mine.

It all begins rather ominously on page 16, where Adam Ant is being interviewed. He mentions that the first gig he ever saw was Lol Coxhill playing at the Roundhouse in Camden. Lol Coxhill, of course, is a jazz gentleman whom I know from the Klinker club where I have performed. This isn't much of a coincidence, though, because Lol has been a part of London's underbelly for decades now. He even performed in a band with Ray Davies out of the Kinks for awhile, and is very much a hard-working, ever-present feature on the circuit. So we'll chalk that one up as a coincidence.

On page 24, however, under the headline "Stand and Deliver!" (though I fail to see the Adam Ant connection here) is a full two page article talking about the London poetry circuit, interviewing Niall O'Sullivan, Tim Wells and Nathan Penlington. Photographs of Graham Buchan and John Citizen also accompany the lengthy article, which is aggravatingly inaccurate in places. I wouldn't say that humour or swearing are necessarily defining factors in the success of the spoken word, for example (at least not yet, and when we get to that stage I'll happily call it a day and attempt a more lucrative career as a stand-up comic instead) and nor would I say that the movement is "rowdy", although I suppose it may seem that way if you are nervously waiting to perform at an open-mic. Still, the appearance of the feature came as an unexpected surprise, and is likely to do the circuit more good than harm, provided we don't get hoardes of Comedy Store regulars turning up expecting knob jokes.

On page 26 is the aforementioned anti-folk article, which actually quite successfully and succinctly explains the movement in my opinion, though it would seem a few of the artists are quibbling about details. If that proves anything, I suppose it's that people operating and working on the inside are always the most sensitive to and aware of glib journalese about their movements. In that piece you will find an interview with Sergeant Buzfuz, and a mention for Spinmaster Plantpot, as well as Paul Hawkins who I reviewed on this LiveJournal a couple of months ago. A nice little hat-trick there. All three artists have tags on my LiveJournal if you're curious enough to read about them in any more depth.

Lastly, on page 32 is a picture of dickon_edwards bringing up the glamorous end of London's underground, although I must confess that my involvement with Dickon hasn't really extended beyond the odd LJ comment and e-mail. It still capped everything off for me very nicely, though.

I can't explain how it feels to pick up a magazine about the underground and be told that you already know about and are already immersed in it, to be informed that the "freaks" and "uniques" of the city you should look out for are people you've had drinks with. As I flicked through what was ostensibly a primer for people who were unaware of the capital's less mainstream events, I found myself wondering what this all meant, if indeed anything. I suppose my tastes over the last few years have been a genuine reaction to the increasingly bland, marketed NME/XFM-ification of things I previously held dear, and as a result I've found myself sweating in dingy basements and pub backrooms watching the best alternative performers I could come across. However, as the Daily Telegraph article I pasted up on here last week proved, and now this Time Out article, to every action there is always a reaction. Perhaps a few people who have been cruelly sidelined will be enjoying a higher profile over the coming years. I certainly hope so. Although if they end up becoming what they originally hated, and London becomes awash with Nathan Barley poets and posh anti-folkies, maybe I actually don't.

I'm also forced to giggle at the irony of the fact that to some Time Out readers knowing about this stuff probably all seems very exotic and fasincating, and the reality is I'm sat at home in my flat with a depleted bank account surrounded by a huge pile of washing up that has yet to be done, and I'm about to make myself a cheese sandwich (except, of course, I don't think there's actually any cheese left in the fridge, so I might have to go to the Polish corner store). Or conversely, perhaps that does define certain unifying aspects of people's lives in the so-called "subculture" of 2006.

Normal service will be resumed next week, I'm sure. And could somebody please tell me why Adam Ant of all people seems to be the central thread in all this?

I may have been rather socially inactive for the last few weeks, but I seem to have been making up for it in spades since I returned from Cornwall – maybe a period of seclusion really was what I needed.

On the other hand, it’s really not every week that one of your teenage heroes dies, and as such I felt duty-bound to attend the "Blang!" Syd Barrett tribute at the 12 Bar on Wednesday night. I first heard about Syd’s death whilst I was at work in the office and my mother texted me. When I blurted out the news to some fellow workers, I was met with blank, hollow stares. They appeared to think I was talking about one of the janitors downstairs. It wasn’t really the best of moments to have found out, and from that point on I felt as if I hadn’t really spoken or shared time with any people who were also affected by his work.

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Last night was spent at Poetry Idol, which, for the uninitiated, is rather like a “Battle Of the Bands” style contest for performance poets. Events like these aren't often attended by me, and when I do show my face I'm always shocked by how few people in the audience I know. This might sound like a rather meaningless statement to make in London, but poetry audiences in the capital are notoriously insular. Slams and contests, on the other hand, seem to bring out the local hipsters in their droves. It was a hot and sticky and totally sold out venue yesterday evening.

Of course, there were people there I did know, including some of the starrier, boozy schmoozy poets of the circuit, several of whom abruptly interrupted conversations I was having with someone else, failing to greet me or apologise as they did so despite the fact that we must have been introduced at least nine or ten times in the last few years. Aren't famous people rude nowadays? Except of course, none of these people are actually "famous" as such. On the poetry circuit, only John Hegley is really "famous" in the outside world sense of the word, and he seems only too keen to chinwag with absolute strangers, never mind folk he's already familiar with. The same applies to a great many proper "famous" people in my experience. Only absolute bottom rung scenesters and superstars tend to have such bad manners, and I think we all know what category a performance poet is most likely to belong to.

Despite such gripes, I found myself strangely enjoying myself. Kevin Reinhardt put in a truly bizarre, dreamlike set involving a squeaking puppet bird and a rendition of “In Heaven Everything Is Fine”. I was heartened by the fact that at least half the audience loved it, though he obviously still didn’t win - the whole thing was almost as culty as Julian Cope's "Fried". Joshua Idehen (http://www.myspace.com/apoeminbetweenpeople) did though, and that was warming, since I think he’s a great writer and performer who will unquestionably go on to greater things. He has the astonishing ability to hop skip and jump between awkward ideas and direct, mainstream proclamations, as well as having a brilliant observational ear for language and the rhythm of conversations. If you haven't checked him out yet, you should do.

So... my social diary is open again. Take note. Though no doubt my money will run out fairly soon. But get in touch if there's anything going on, I may start taking more notes.

Tuesday night saw my reluctant return to Poetry Unplugged to continue the Spinster propaganda. Nothing much had changed from my last visit, though what I perhaps understated last time round was how damn popular the night has become - too popular for the frankly tiny confines of the Poetry Cafe, in fact. The downstairs performance area was crammed with poets, Pete Doherty obsessives (who clearly hope he still comes down to PU, even though he hasn't since about 1999), glittery indie princesses, disgruntled looking men in their thirties (guess which demographic I belong to?), and confused looking library readers who probably expected the occasion to be rather more sedate. So crammed is the night that half the audience sit upstairs whilst many of the readers are on, and talk loudly so that a few of the newer poets on the mic are actually largely obscured by the noise.

One more thing marked the new Poetry Unplugged out from the old, though. During my somewhat pedestrian reading of some of my material, I completely fouled up a fairly untried poem entitled "Collector's Riddle", which to be honest probably wasn't worth airing in the first place. My verbal stumbling and admission of "I've fucked it up" lead to wild sarcastic cheers and a couple of catcalls. I don't mind this much - I've been doing performance based poetry and readings for nearly eleven years now, so I do realise that periodically I will be beaten with the shit stick - but it's surprising to find that kind of aggressive response at a Poetry Cafe open mic. In the old days I would have got everyone's sympathy, but in the new, harsh, competitive world errors are leapt on with glee. Still, in a matter of years the new young Turks will realise what they've got themselves into, and that they're not exactly likely to make a living from poetry, and they'll end up spending their late twenties in bedsits in North London wondering where the hell their lives have gone. So the joke's on them, really. Don't look at me like that, either, I've already sat through the punchline for myself.

Last night was a slightly cheerier occasion, spent at the Blang night at the 12 Bar. I didn't stay all night, but what I caught was intriguing. Joe Buzfuz's solo acoustic set appeared to feature a number I've not heard before which I believe was entitled "Kay Malone", an anti-love song which featured the bitter chorus "You think that getting drunk/ and losing control/ You think that's punk" which doesn't read back very well, but is the perfect centrepiece to a melancholic, weary observational song. And it also rather neatly sums up a lot of Londoners I've met in the last year or so. It may well be the best song Joe has ever written, or then again I might have been world-weary and in the right mood for it (he'll probably come on here and tell me it's a cover version in a minute and totally shame me).

The man who nearly was Joy Division's replacement lead singer, Kevin Hewick, takes the stage afterwards with some brittle acoustic songs which sound very nice indeed, and he was followed by the spiteful Celtic sounds of Kinkajou, who were inconsistent but generally very intriguing. At best their lyrics told grand, whiskey-fuelled tales which shone lights in all sorts of perverse nooks and crannies. At worst, they were rather too self-consciously abrasive for my tastes. The lead singer, Polly MacLean, also looks (and talks) frighteningly like an old housemate of mine, which I believe I spent the first three songs struggling to get past. To make matters worse, this particular friend had a number of endearing and amusing habits, one of which was turning up to student Role Playing Games sessions with bondage trousers on in order to frighten and frustrate the male virgins there. Much as this didn't feature in any of the band's lyrics, it very easily could have, and I was mildly disconcerted.

I left after that - not as a result of my confused state, but as a result of tiredness - so I didn't catch anyone else on the bill. Nice night, though.