your bassline is shooting up my spine

There are an awful lot of beans in my life right now. It seems as though every time I turn my back on the bean plants for five minutes, another four beans appear. I am not complaining. I like beans. I am a fan of the bean.

Go and see the BP portrait award at the National Portrait Gallery. It's amazing. I don't exactly agree with the first prize (for no reason other than it's black and white and a bit small), but the standard of all the painting (except perhaps one which I thought looked a little...greasy) is exceptionally high. It's all very skillful, some of it photographic to the point where I had to push my nose 3mm from the canvas to ascertain that it was indeed a painting. I admire this enormously, as I couldn't possibly paint like that. Personally I think that the march of technology makes these paintings all the more amazing, as one would have to be so tremendously obsessive to make them when you could do a similar job in less than a second with a cameraphone. I love portraits, as you have not only the painting to admire, but also the reason for the portrait and the personality of the sitter to contemplate. Sod conceptualism.

Mole and I sat post-sushi in Soho square this afternoon and criticised the pigeons. Things have come to a pretty pass when the only thing one can find to criticise is pigeons, but really they were a fabulously dishevelled lot. It's all connected with the ennui of the British, dontcha know. (Oh, apart from the portrait painters). Even the bloody pigeons can't be bothered...what is the world coming to.