Flaneusing

Yesterday I met Gina on the Tufnell Park tube platform (our usual meeting point) and we travelled down to the National Portrait Gallery to see the Francis Bacon exhibition. I was really taken aback by (a) how varied his work is and (b) the emotional impact it has. For some reason, most of the work we see is the most 'smeary' and distorted work; he himself said that he imagined a snail crawling across the paintings. But in this exhibition there are paintings of his fleeting salesman lovers in their suits and ties, and a very moving triptych of one of his lovers dying, where a huge, carefully-painted matt back shadow seeps across the canvas in despair. Bacon was a master of indication. Look closely at some of the paintings, and all you see are apparently random brush marks; step back, and the brush marks evolve into a carefully-painted polished shoe. There were crowds of people there, but it still managed to be mesmerising. I particularly liked the rather cruel painting of Van Gogh. Bacon had a streak of parodic humour in him, which you also don't realise till you see these paintings.

Afterwards, I introduced Gina to the joys of Bills restaurant. It was perfect for a dreich day, and we stuffed our faces before heading to Carnaby Street where there's a Jeanette Lee punk photo exhibition, a collage of large black and white photos from back in the day. I photographed now-Gina next to then-Gina.

Last of all we popped into Third Man, the label she is signed with. They were listening to the first mixes of her new album, by coincidence. It's all yellow and black in there, very stylish.

When I got home, I did an interview for Josh Gaffin for his afternoon show onWTSQ 88.1 FM in West Virginia about The Chefs compilation. He actually played Thrush on air! It was 1 p.m. in West Virginia and 5 p.m. in High Barnet; we had a good old chinwag about songs, bands, music and all sorts of otehr stuff. It will go up on Mixcloud soon and I'll share the link.

Isn't it funny to be this old and still be doing this? Making records, getting them played on the radio, writing songs. Speaking of which, I need to learn some of the songs from my new album. I have three more gigs this year, all with Rachel Love and the Loveables, and two live radio interviews too.

I'm going to do that now.