Ah, Brighton Festival. Yesterday evening I did this thing where they strap a small device with a screen to the handlebars of your bicycle, give you ear buds and a little microphone, and send you out (oh god) into the community (jesus) to be art. You could stop wherever you fancy, and somehow the magic spirit box was able to tell you the names of others who had already visited the same place. Then you could choose to answer a question asked over the headphones, or press names on your screen to hear responses from the people who had just been there.

I wanted to foam with contempt for the whole enterprise because I sometimes mistakenly believe that this is what makes me happy, but I ended up eulogising the sea and the piers, and doing the story about when Tim locked himself inside an empty police car on the way home from the pub outside the Open Market and started the sirens wailing, and nobody could get him out. I realised in the telling of it that I don't know what's happened to Tim, and I got quite choked up.

Naturally there were some vomit-inducing recordings to listen to. "What do you lie awake thinking about?" "I think of my father being eaten by dragons, and my fight to stay above the surface, and worry that I will never provide enough for my beloved children." But there was non-drivel too - people speaking in tantalising ways that made you wish you could actually meet them. The special bicycle-mounted machine made me ride very fast from the library to Lower Rock Gardens against a soundtrack of wheedly, tinkling music, and then asked me to talk on the subject of Leaving And Never Coming Back. I fell into the confessional mode. It was impossible not to involve yourself.

And this is exactly what these bastard community artists want.