Back up to London to meet Mum and Mase. I'd planned to visit the Poetry Library in the Royal Festival Hall, but discovered this vast building to be wrapped in a humongous sheet and the man at the door said it was closed, mate.

So off early to my rendez-vous with Mum and Mase only to bump into them on the platform at Sloane Square tube as they were also early. Rather eccentrically Mum was armed with a large bag of nuts in her handbag which she fed to the three of us during the afternoon. Before embarking on the Affordable Art Fair, we sloped downstairs into the cafe bar in Sloane Square for a quick drink. Mum said she had begun writing down the funny and spooky stories of her life (and leaving out the miserable ones) in a set of memoirs.

Mason was defending MJ by saying bugs in America were worse than here and needed to be exterminated. And these yellow jacket bee things were particularly unspeakable and had bad attitudes. Mum said it had been good for Mason's karma coming to England as he didn't have to exterminate so many insects.

Then a few hours in the Affordable Art Fair -- basically a massive art exhibition with everything priced "affordably" i.e. under £3,000. Visual overload... There was so work stuff there.

As with the recent show I saw in Manhattan I got the occasional wave of impatience with the regurgitation of images I feel like I've seen a thousand times. But there were some standouts for me. For me there were these landscapes by someone called Christopher P. Wood. Wonderful use of colour and strange landscapes that made me think vaguely of a less rugged Max Ernst, and an mystical/aboriginal feel to them too, with the rocks in the pictures being covered with markings as if signalling to sky gods. You can see more of Wood's stuff here. The one below Oasis of Love was, I think, at the show but this image does absolutely no justice to his work.

Also enjoyed seeing four Roger Dean prints, particularly Tales from Topographic Oceans. The fish were brighter and greener than the version that used to decorate my teenage bedroom wall.
Then by bus to Leicester Square where I snapped, in passing, the silhouette of Eros at Piccadilly Circus. We went to a Mexican restaurant in the Square, which was pretty poor but it was good to sit down and eat things that weren't from Mum's handbag. Fond farewells, then sleeping on the train back to Brighton despite it only being 7:30pm.

Above Eros, and below Christopher P. Wood.