i have always loved the paintings of lucian freud. many of them at any rate. along with the pictures of peter blake and david hockney, they were the first exciting contemporary paintings i had ever seen (not very recherche; but i came from northampton; a scuplture by henry moore and a painting by graham sutherland in st matthew's church were the only modern artworks i can recall in the town). freud, of course, also painted portraits.

the sunday times asked several writers for a 50 word short story last week. then said it didn't want them after all. here's mine. 

10 storeys

two hundred kilos of explosives. some grey councilor pushes the button and the whole shitty block comes down. for a couple of seconds smoke clings to the ghost of the building and I see the kids we once were running down corridors of air not believing they will ever fall.

at the risk of seeming too proud of my own achievements (but this one was rather leftfield, if that's any excuse), i won an award last night (the st cuthbert's mill award, no less) in the rws contemporary watercolour cometition at their bankside gallery. very very satisfying to win a prize for something that's not a book (wonderful as that kind of award is). the picture is a portrait of stu west. professor stu west indeed, despite the potentially wrong-footing tattoo.

i've just finished reading a proof of patrick white's novel, which he left unfinished at his death (due, it seems, to old age, fatigue, the demands on his time created by the recent publication of his autobiography, flaws in the glass, and by the relatively smaller effort of a play he had been asked to write). backstory: thirty years ago, white was the first contemporary, living, modernist novelist whom i read, loved and wolfed down in great quantities.

recently i put my name, if that doesn't sound too grand a statement, to the campaign, inspired by the booker's controversial swerve towards 'readability', to establish 'the literature prize' which would be awarded to novels which were simply great literature irrespective of their accessibility, an idea of which i wholly approve, partly because i enjoy being challenged and stretched by novels and partly because 'readabie' novels are well served by other prizes.

i really wanted to like this. i love hockney's early drawings, etchings and paintings. i love his photographs. I love his writing about photography and i am indebted forever to his book on the uses of lenses and mirrors in art which completely changed the way i look at many paintings. i love his eagerness, his breadth, his hunger for experiment, even his avuncular curmudgeonliness. but the works here are bland and facile, sunday-painterly in places. in many places, actually. precisely how and why is highlighted by a small gallery of earlier handscapes works.

i am constantly amazed by our ability to become rapidly blase about technological near-miracles which would have seemed mind-bendingly inconceivable a few years previously. yesterday i watched puss in boots with my son and a friend of his (it was, by the by, rather good and i iaughed out loud on several occasions). there was utterly convincing fur. lots of it. there was an utterly convincing bowl of milk hurled onto the floor in close-up. there were utterly convincing mouths of which we saw the utterly convincing interiors.

second serving (see gaylord draxo below; and apologies to speakers of any language in which any of these are acceptable and humdrum names and therefore not funny at all):

byrom gorner,  derrin dorrit, ramon babcock, farlay peebles, fransisco hee-sub, christof pup, ginger dupree, bordy nora, baird olvin, anurag moose, humus grub, flavius shu, grubbs homan, pollock dusty, lalo mundeep, cinderella clementina...

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