Went back to the Tate Britain and took djelibeybi along this time to have a better look at the Rothko/Turner exhibition – it really is extraordinary when you look at the Rothkos from his recommended viewing distance of 18 inches! Then met up with pocketsteve and we wandered across the river for drinks, then had a pub dinner with a vast amount of marvellous conversation and exploration of brand-new iPhones. A fabulous time was had.

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I’m staying with a friend and collaborator of mine and she was going to this seminar, Who’s Afraid of Artistic Research?, on practice-based research, at Dundee Contemporary Arts, so I decided to tag along. Some interesting presentations, lots of notes taken. Brain is now some sort of soft, smelly cheese.

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at Tate Modern as a little birthday treat to myself. Interesting. Now I want to do things with lines!

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I felt the time had come to finally work up my “Guardian of the dumb idea” doodle into something a little more official. Woollyjitters says he looks like a trout playing golf. I don’t know that he’d take very kindly to that. At any rate, I’m fond of him.

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The horrors of this week all got too much for me, so after spending the morning finishing reading Murder on the Leviathan I decided to give myself the day off and spent the whole afternoon on the couch, listening to music and messing about in my journal – I completed 6 entire spreads! Plus added a bit to a few more. I don’t think I’ve ever done that much in a session ever before. Definitely feel better for a little random creative thought, although the headache is as bad as ever.

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to liven up the rubbish drawing i did when in france. it didn’t work very well so you’re not going to see it, but hey, it’s the effort that counts, eh?

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At the National Gallery. Interesting. I didn’t really know his work, but some nice stuff there. He seemed a bit uncertain as to what to do with the English light or lack thereof in the earlier ones, but the later Welsh seascapes are beautiful.

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Only had the morning really in Brussels before needing to get lunch and go and check-in for my train, so I went to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts of Belgium, which was absolutely fantastic and huuuge and worth a good deal more than the measly €5 they charge to get in. Had a last wander round the Grand Place with my lunch when I was done, then bought specaloos and some PIMs for John from the supermarché near the hostel before collecting my bag and heading to the station.

Knitted on the Eurostar on the way home and a French lady opposite told me my scarf was “très jolie” and that she’d always wanted to learn how to knit, so I told her it wasn’t very hard – only 2 types of stitches to be learnt. Nice to have a good exchange in French, however small.

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Went to S.M.A.K. (contemporary art gallery) and then the normal art gallery in Ghent. I wasn’t that taken with anything much in S.M.A.K. but it was marvellous to see a gallery devoted entirely to the work of living artists, and there was a very nice wonky stool made by some Italian chap which I rather liked. The other art gallery was fabulous, especially the modern section – mostly Belgian artists I’d never heard of, but some beautiful pieces there.

Had frites for lunch, then boarded a train back to Brussels and went and wandered around the Grand Place for a bit, visited the Manneken Pis to see what he was wearing (nothing at all, but apparently earlier in the month he’d been dressed as a dentist) and then went and indulged in a hearty and not too expensive spaghetti bolognaise for dinner. Yum! More knitting when I got back to the youth hostel.

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I’ve ordered in a hardcover copy of the Rothko exhibition catalogue cos there’s a couple of articles in there I want to read which sound like they might be relevant to the piece I want to write (and they were selling the hardcover version for the price of the paperback because they’ve sold out of both and are recalling some hardcover ones from the US and will post to me for free. Oh, and I got 10% off too for being a member ), and bought some Rothko postcards too to stick up on my wall and remind me what I’m working from. And found The Dada Reader in the Tate book sale – £4 down from about £17, plus 10% off again. Yay! Goodness only knows where I’m going to put this immense library of visual art books I’m accumulating, but I’ll worry about that when I get to it.

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