All poetry and no trousers (Ian Sinclair)

Really I shouldn't go out. One glance at the whisky bottle tells me that. But then again, curiously refreshed having let the devils out to play, I don't feel too bad. I remember the Fat Man wants to take us out to lunch, and I remember Ian Sinclair, doyen of so many of the classes I detest, as being not really much more than Allen Ginsburg for trainspotters (all poetry with no trousers).

Sinclair was talking, as far as I knew, on the subject of Shoreditch. It is only afterwards that I realize that Sinclair's 'reading' of Shoreditch is rooted in the vaguaries of psychogeography. This means basically roving around, preferably on a bike, pausing every now and again to listen to ancient rivers running under manholes, then writing dreamy sequences about such things, or taking blurred photographs at night (see the work of Mark Atkins- a fellow traveller in such endeavours).

This, of course, is the sort of thing I consider bullshit.

I remember the Fat Man (a highly prominent estate agent, and inventor of what you might call 'the real' Shoreditch) being physically restrained from asking a pertinent question (following on from my own) of Sinclair's monologue, where he was no doubt going to point out the materialist basis of Shoreditch's recent history. When I even mentioned the word 'cocaine' there was a possitive heckle of dissapproval from said classes I detest in the audience who were clearly ready to bash me over the head with their bicycle pumps.

I mentioned cocaine because as far as my reading of the new creative industries of Shoreditch is concerned, they run on coke like Los Angeles runs on petrol. However, the facts should be examined, and facts are not really for the psychogeographers. Instead there is a world of delusion out there, so I should indeed stay indoors.

The Fat Man, I heard the next day, was barred for three months from the venue, Shoreditch House, the place he invented.