Alex James is unwell...(Q June 2000)

There goes another glorious day in rock, another sunny hazy Monday at the top.
It started badly. There might have been coffee, but there was only tea, then an objectionable schlepp to an unnecessary spot for pointless nothings. I was piquey until I got back into town again.

Dave Rowntree was "nerding" in the Tottenham Court Road, doing his secret Dave stuff. I picked him up at the Dominion Theatre, standing in all that chewing gum they keep on the Tottenham Court Road pavements.
We'd been to Cash & Carry on Friday, me and Justine. It has an austere Eastern bloc glamour, as everything's in brown boxes, and you get a long wheel-base trolley and a hundred of everything that's boring to buy, like a dustbin of mustard and "Big D" nuts.
There is an easy freedom to be found in bulk buying. Things stop being brands and start just being stuff again if you buy enough of them. Enough Heinz beans is just beans, or enough cola is just a load of brown sticky shit instead of whatever it is on the telly. Dave particularly loved all the tins of beans, so I nominated him for membership of the local Booker.
We strolled round to Foyles, the dusty decaying aristocrat of book consumption. Foyles is the tits. It hasn't even acknowledged the late 20th Century and is everything a bookshop should be; ramshackle & stuffed with ancient treasure dark corners.
Dave never wants lunch so I had proper chip sandwiches on my own at The Franx. It' got a bit silly with bread and chips in the posh places these days. They've stopped peeling the potatoes, they've taken our butter away and the sliced bread paradigm is a universally acknowledged breakthrough - so why cubes?

I'm teetering on the brink of the crazy world of film. The film world has more posh birds than the land of rock - it's too noisy and smoky for them down here. They like to make noise and give everyone a hard on, which is exactly my job description, so we get on fine. I'm doing a film score. (Everyone else is and you get an orchestra!) There was a test screening for a target audience at, inevitably, the suburban Bluewater shopping mall. It's exactly the opposite of Cash & Carry and Foyles - cleaner than a poof's pantry, devoid of any dust or surprises. I was immediately buying stuff I don't want, so it obviously works.
Our test screening "focus group," who are basically Joe Public having a lovely day, get to scare the shit out of a score of ruthless film executives by telling them what they thought of the film. The production team sit at the back as the street experts expound that such and such a scene "wasn't funny". A multi-million pound pride and joy if briefly and totally in the hands of the public. It's terrifying. I was thinking what a good job it was there was none of this bollocks where I live, and then remembered the Top 40 and shat myself.
They all seemed to like the music and then we were free. There is always so much to talk about in film circles. I may be some time.
Cheerio!