Alex James is unwell - December 1999

Monday I drank for joy, Tuesday I drank. Perdition and the thunder of the Lord's judgement roasted my naked soul all Wednesday and a lot of Thursday as well. It was a muttering kind of hangover, with the occasional moan and it wanted to go for walks in the middle of the night. By Thursday's EastEnders I was more or less answering the phone again and I thought I'd bowl around the Garden and pick up some coffee beans. I called my sis in Farnham for a reality check and got the go-ahead, cleared to operate in Tesco, Bedford Street, WC2.

I was fairly weeping down St. Martin's Lane feeling quite calm and better again. There were lovely smells and girls and noise and it was going to be me, some coffee and a big book about magnets by the fire. Fuck me if I didn't walk straight into Party Nige and his best looking mate right outside that new hotel that's choc full of filthy birds and celebrities going hell for leather. before we'd even got in there they'd filed me in on the next three places they were going later and organised my birthday party in Sao Paolo through someone they know there. Instantly we are surrounded because naturally they know everybody, I'm sipping something fruity and getting winked at, and William Orbit's in town with Madonna, even Mark Owen's over there grinning his chops off God bless 'im and my birthday party is now being sponsored by Chivas Regal Whiskey through someone else in Sao Paolo and everyone's invited and everyone's coming. I want to sit by the fire and know more about magnets and I"m living in an F. Scott Fitzgerald story, a late one. Somehow I made it back onto St. Martins Lane in one piece. Tescos had shut, but there's plenty of PG Tips. I thought about Cleopatra's needle, which is a source of great calm to me sometimes, but it was too cold to go down there and look at the river so I walked home up Endell Street for old times sake.

Jean François Cecillon, who used to run EMI Records and who taught me not to fuck about when ordering champagne, is now running new gaming system Dreamcast. he sent us one and my girl Justine and her friend Tim were in the kitchen eating pot noodles and giggling over the boxing game. I'm addicted to new things, it's a result of being big in Japan. There's no doubt it's good but the technology has improved quicker than the ideas, so it's all old games with a new lick of paint. Jurassic Park syndrome. All fart, no shit.

It's amazing it never crossed anyone's mind that in the same way that pornography is enhanced by being shot in the cheapest, grottiest way, that it might make horror films more gritty to shoot them in the porno style, and then someone did realise and made the Blair Witch Project and it's good, it's funny. It's a cheap nasty film but the fountain of pure evil isn't really well defined enough to keep you awake at night, but then who needs that?  I guess they're saving that for Part II. If you want to be sacred you should drink a bottle of absinthe and wait a few hours. That'll do it. Now there is only peace and magnets, pip pip.