Nine easy pieces

You look for red and find it everywhere, bright, distinct, independent, almost; it's even there on the hat of a gondolier, as two dogs gaze out in contemplation.

Venice, city of dreams, always disappearing in the mists, is the perfect city for Turner. The blue paintings in the sketchbooks, the 'unfinished' paintings, the wonderful 'two strangers in a storm', silver and blue (which is really Whistler), the balance of structure and the void, Parliament burning, the interior of a great room in which light and nature invade and objects lie upturned or unused, abandoned, difficult to pick out (a clock within a clock, half a mirror)...why do you think these are all variations on a theme?

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This painting is something I couldn't stop looking at. Reminded me of my childhood. Those inner lights and hidden worlds amid the darkening skies, the coldness of November, the lack of time...

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Samuel Palmer: the gleaming field, the enclosed world at dusk, each leaf distinct...there's something dark and medieval here, a folk story perhaps. The curvature of the land..does that rely on circular time, you wonder?

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Bonnington died at the age of 26. Frank Ramsey at twenty eight. The latter was, I think, Wittgenstein's supervisor. Not bad for an economist!

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A young girl on the bus talks with a softened American accent..you imagine her getting into the real swing if she were talking to an American friend; instead, talking to some clod on the phone she's mellowed down:

"Well, it ain't easy to say..it could just be lust...y'know, we're still only four months into it and so I can't say it's love, like, it's too early."

She looks Asian and maybe only 16 or so. It transpires she's 19! She doesn't want to have a baby-not just yet. The other passengers are thrilled to learn this.

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Down on Charing Cross you notice a book in the basement of the second-hand book shop by Defoe called 'Roxana'. Apparently it's about a fallen woman. I couldn't stop laughing!

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Near the charity shop, near Mark Anthony's, a middle aged man, balding and twitchy, wearing faded jeans and trainers turns to me and says: "Oohh, I only want to eat when I'm really hungry." He looks across the road to Mr. chippy and is undecided. He starts to talk to himself. London has a disproportionate number of mad and/or lonely people. Or, perhaps it is just that a disproportionate number of crazy people want to talk to me. Yes, that's probably it: I have one of those faces, I guess.

Further up the road, at 'Resul's Food and Wine' (Rasool being the Arabic word for Prophet!) the Turkish man-who usually gives us things for free (hurrah for the brotherhood!) starts yapping away about the current riots: "It's no good. He has double face. Not speak honestly, I tell you. Why he not go?" These few 'sentences' are repeated for the next twenty minutes.

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The great dilemma of western civilisation: to put butter on a hot cross bun before or after it's been in the oven?

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Patches of light. Saskia's sleeve. The brief moments of our lives.

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Metaphysical brevity. Fragments, quotes, texts ripped out of context, epigrams, notes, underlined words whose meaning remains half buried, broken words, a falling bird outside the south window.

At Victoria you think to yourself: Elizabeth Bowen, Edna O'Brien. If you were stabbed you probably wouldn't notice. A wound, a wound like this: nothing new. Perhaps I've been wandering in these dark tunnels all my life.

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Safe Love:

'Between him and her: the child on the examining table, the office itself, the staff, his wife, her husband, his stethoscope, his beard, her breasts, his glasses, her glasses, etc."'

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A life in numbers: an old woman tumbles out of the W14 at South Woodford. She's not sure where she is or which year we're in. She shakes her head to get rid of the terrible confusion. Sparks and dust fly from her head, stars from her mind. Other old people crawl out, lending her a hand. She stands next to me, wheezing, on the verge of saying something to me. She collects her thoughts, gathers her strength, picks up her plastic bags and hobbles tentatively down the road in her black trousers, black socks, and black slippers. If you can walk, you can forget.

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Outside Tate Modern, a patch of grass. We sit down, broke. A fetching blonde woman lies down nearby. Tight black trousers and a silky black sleeveless top, the straps barely clinging to her shoulders. Her skin is tight, smooth and well toned. She looks up toward me. Don't kid yourself!

The art inside doesn't seem very appealing all of a sudden.