THURSDAY What is it they say about Heroes, that they always let you down? Clearly they say this behind their backs, but it's a point well made, if a trifle obvious.

I haven't personally had many heroes, although I suppose Geoff Hurst and Bobby Moore (from when West Ham beat Germany in the 1966 World Cup Final), and Daredevil or Cerebus come close, even if those last two are both from comics. I have no literary Heroes whatsoever, and in music probably just the one, Adam Ant. So it was sad, if enthralling, to see the state this manic depressive had got into, as displayed in the The Madness of Prince Charming documentary on Channel 4.

The Ants were the most wildly exhilarating, imaginative, funny, and sexy band Britain produced in the Punk era, and could have gone on to shake the music world for years in a way that few bands ever manage, as they could have crossed all boundaries after their Kings Of The Wild Frontier album. As well as Punk spirit, they had subversive commercial stylings and a phenomenal knack of writing addictive lyrics and melodies.

The Ants arose during the time I was becoming mentally fuelled by music, but virtually all music journalists loathed them with a curious intensity, so by dint of quality and situation, they became the ultimate underdog, worshipped by clandestine fans, and causing the first travelling pack of followers, who went to all the gigs.

No matter how much derision the papers unleashed, here was a band capable of selling out seriously big venues in most major towns, several time a year, (something which has never happened on this scale since). It would only be a matter of time before a major label sniffed a goldmine and went prospecting.

Which one did, whereby it all went horribly wrong, and this programme finally explained why. Adam craved success, for whatever reasons of personal failure he had trapped within him. He couldn't retain objectivity and adhere to artistic principles.

Having become a massive star, with the perfect synthesis of natural, credible vibrancy blessed with pop perfection, his intense determination to cling on to success seems to have created in him a foul need to do whatever it took to perpetuate commercial, chart-based glory. The inevitable result is you fall on your arse, make increasingly duff records, after which you become a laughing stock. If he realised that before he'd taken the wrong move he'd have saved himself an awful lot of trouble.

To many he was just a pretty boy popstar with a few flash videos, and completely meaningless, even by 1985. To me he still remains someone who might bounce back. From dashing anti-Hero to mental breakdown isn't a new thing, as there's many who have gone before him, and doubtless many will follow, but at least we got to see a burst of the old Adam humour again. While revisiting a mental hospital, now deserted, he'd been in during his late teens, he wandered the corridors sporting a modern version of a Mad Hatter's outfit, complete with tailcoat, rosette and top hat.

FRIDAY

Humour can be a shameful thing. Having been motivated into writing my story and begun sifting somewhat addled memories, there was one thing which brought me up sharp and delivered a smart slap around my face. When a girl in her early teens recently had half of the European police and American military searching for her and the retired Marine she'd met on the Internet you couldn't help but tut mildly and think, uncharitably, how stupid some children are.

But because I'd recently found one of my best friends from childhood was living round the corner from me, I have been remembering incidents that involved us, and one took place when we about eight or nine. We'd gone to meet another friend who lived in a block of nearby flats, and from there we' d planned to go over the park to play football, but a few doors from our friend's place stood a man in his twenties who asked us both if, "we liked to play games?" (Creepy in retrospect, yes?)

Having enquired what sort of games, we were inside his flat within twenty seconds when he said he had a football game we could try out. It simply never occurred to us that this might be anything other than perfectly normal. And there we soon sat, either side of a coffee table, battling with some unbelievably shite magnetic football game from the late 1950's, until Ian motioned to me with his eyes, to look in the direction of The Man. When I did Captain Creep was staring into space, as though oblivious to our presence. We stood up, and left.

We were lucky.

When I told my publisher about this in passing, during an e-mail she replied with a telling question: "What paedophile?"

Now isn't that the sort of title you'd like to see a local magazine have, to warn parents of their nearest dangers? With handy castration shears given free with issue 1, and a series of illumining articles: "This Years Balaclava - Knitting Patterns For The Worried Mother", "Confessional: the ultimate chatroom".

SATURDAY

I dread birthdays like Jeffrey Archer dreads the Truth. I don't mind other people having them, and love giving presents, but for me it brings only the possibility of personal embarrassment and an alarmingly red face. Not because I'm 46, as I am the finest 46 year old Mercer alive, I'll have you know, but I do get horribly flustered when people are burbling their well meant emotional drivel in my face.

Turning our usual morning ritual on its head, Lynda sprang from the bed, and not only brought me breakfast, but stunned me into silence by giving me a quite fantastic digital camera. What a fine example of love. Knowing how much I like to go around photographing churches with atmospheric graveyards this only increases the regularity with which such activities will occur, and she'll be with me nearly all the time. True devotion!

Of course this also sugared the pill of going to see her in concert that same night. I always enjoy seeing and hearing Lynda sing, because I can relate what she's doing, and how she's doing it, to her personality and emotionometer. It's the shows themselves that turn my bowels to cement.

Tonight's was just about the worst thing it could be. Not only did it involve Gilbert & Sullivan material, and songs from Oklahoma, but also "youth performers", for this charity bash involved many local groups, who have their own preferred styles/traditions, some of which could best be described as Untalented.

So yes, I got to see Lynda in her nice blue jacket and flouncey hat from Trial By Jury, and her sparky duet of I Can Do Without You from Calamity Jane delivered at alarming speed, as well as a part in a massed singalong of There's No Business Like Show Business, but Lynda can really sing. I also had to endure things that life hasn't prepared me for, including the sight of six local mayors in attendance, wearing their official chains of office, and although seated in the same row, they were discreetly separated by a few seats each.

Nobody wanted an ugly brawl.

Kids did songs and danced, men and women tried operatic duets, which fizzled and drizzled. Women who should have known better twirled feather boas and looked minxy, in their own minds, and one man who clearly enjoys a fine local reputation completely ruined a beautiful song from Les Miserables. Our compere for the evening, who was jolly in a slightly crazed manner, had the gall to do If I Were A Rich Man, which remains one of my all-time most hated songs and a bunch of old dears waded through a series of traditional Russian songs including the Kalinka clunker. But then something miraculous occurred.

This bloke in a flat cap wandered on holding a bizarre wooden instrument that was triangular like a balalaika, but only ten inches long, and played by a small bow, saying he would like to do a Music Hall number from the start of the 1900's, originally done by a man who would sing and play trumpet. "It struck me that singing and playing trumpet at the same time would be difficult," he noted sensibly, "so I will be singing and playing this psalter."

And so he began, with the instrument making a tuneful scraping sound, as they're weren't so much strings as wires. He went for a normal verse style, but the final words were never there, just a jaunty refrain, as he set each verse up for a smutty punchline, then left us hanging. The whole thing was bizarre in a wonderfully compelling way.

Did this change my feelings of deep mistrust for birthdays, particularly when with only 350 out of 500 seats full the event raised £5,000 for a local project to help children who have to give evidence in court? Did it bollocks! At one point the audience was tricked into singing Do Re Mi together, and that included your super-cool Mercer, whose dignity lay in absolute tatters by the end of the evening. (Lynda would later laugh long and loud at my discomfort, but in a nice way.)

The bar then turned out to be closed, despite me leaving vapour trails as I raced to its doors, and when we tried two local places for a nice meal together the posh Pizza Express had run out of dough (!) and when we got a seat in a lovely restaurant, there was a big fight on one table nearby about to kick off, so I steered Lynda into quieter surrounds.

Birthdays? You can shove 'em.

SUNDAY

Today we tried out the digital camera and I was astonished that even with just a couple of hours gawping at the manual and controls together, after hitting the nearest graveyards, we ended up with photos far better than anything I have managed since first waving an instamatic feebly about at Punk gigs in 1977.

That was in the days before autofocus, so my results weren't likely to be good, and we'd go in accompanied by some flash cubes which would shoot off the camera upon detonation, as I was always in the middle of a pogoing throng. I wasn't even that interested anyway, so I'd only take one or two then get back to enjoying the gig.

Photography was seen as something you had to do, to get a few images for your fanzine, and it took ages for me to begin to appreciate the simple logic that if you bothered to think about it slightly it did tend to improve the results. Eventually I was hooked of course, and positively thrived on documenting bands and scenes through the years, and now this! It almost ridicules what I have done before. It is art and beauty combined, with a dazzling quality that makes me go all weak.

As well as the churches we photographed giant fish in a nearby pond, a pub called The Bent Arms, and a remarkable looking, ash-grey cat who strolled into the pub garden we stopped at, gently installing itself under a tree in just such a way that I had to lie face down under a table to get a good shot, but it was worth it. He looked like a miniature lion.

© Mick Mercer 2003

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