I've been using Streetcar for about a couple of months now and I'm loving it. I've had no problems with any of my bookings, I'm using a car much less now (that's for you momma nature) and it's costing me roughly what I was paying monthly in insurance.

The thing is when you own a car you find the things you left behind last time you used it. When you share a car you find whatever the last person left behind. Today that meant some yummy looking Organic Blueberry yoghurt from Sainsbury's. It was still fresh so I thought I'd help myself but I also thought that I couldn't take without putting back. When I got back to my flat I dashed upstairs and tried to find a like-for-like substitute. So I hope whoever has Streetcar Edward next enjoys the tin of Cream of Asparagus soup I left them. I'm calling it Streetkarma.

I'm just trying to be a better person.

I'm one of those people who, when they find a song they like, just plays it over and over and over again. Right now it's hype-surfing indie darlings du jour The View and their song "Superstar Tradesmen". It's not original or different or any kind of new wave but it's just great: it's what boys with guitars should be doing with their time.

10 seconds in and you already know that everything is OK with the world; when kids start picking up guitars and NOT wanting to make records like this THEN we are in trouble. It's got this infectious energy and this simple youthful rock mojo that makes me so happy. I love the fact that these schemey kids from Dundee can have me singing along (well, more like lip-synching to be honest) as I walked down the street this afternoon.

It's the sort of song that should be the entrance criteria for being in band. Guitar shops should refuse to sell guitars to hairy young boys who don't swear a terrible oath that they intend to make records like this. Girls should be asked the same thing with reference to Punka by Kenickie.

Wednesday was our snowday for the year. I still get a thrill at looking out of the window and seeing snow when I didn't expect any. Oh joy, oh rapture!

One inch brought the usual pandemonium to our hard-pressed travel network but it did manage to make the abandoned Mercedes outside my flat look nice, briefly..

I went with my friend Helen to see the London Art Fair today. I'd been sent free tickets courtesy of the gallery from which I bought my Callum Innes prints so I thought I would pop along. It turned out to be a great place to walk around and catch up with an old friend. There was an enormous range of work on offer, literally running the gamut from the sublime to the ridiculous (£20,000 for a plastic grenade anyone?), giving us ample opportunity to say "how much?!!", "I could do that" or "that's good!". There were a lot of very large pictures that seemed to be saying nothing VERY LOUDLY. You'd need an enormous empty loft space for this enormous empty work, not to mention an enormous (and soon to be empty) wallet coz art aint cheap. They might as well nail 10 grand to the wall: it would serve the same purpose. And lets not get on to the giant masturbating half-man half-stag statue. Believe me, you'd have plenty of places to hang your coat.

But there were lots of other things I'd have gladly found room for in my flat. I was very keen on a wonderful etching of Edinburgh called "Athens of the North" by Chris Orr, a lovely (and tiny) Craigie Atchison picure of a washing line (an artistic washing line of course!) and a splendidly atmospheric mountain scene by Mary Grant. There seemed to be so many great young artists out there, capturing and expressing something of the world we live in and not what renegades they are (q.v. Hirst D, Champman J & D, Turk G erc).

I'd given myself a small budget and I thought I would come back and get the Athens of the North. But in the end I left with something very different and unexpected. I came across a series of pictures by an artist called Rachel Merrington. I don't really know how to describe her thing so I'll leave it to what I've just found on the web:

Rachel Merrington's work is based on landscape and the objects found in it. The eroding of surfaces and the way artefacts become part of their surroundings is the starting point for the work. Using maps and text reminiscent of the place, she works in steel using etching techniques to erode spaces in the metal. From large scale outdoor sculpture to small, fragile wall based pieces, all the work has the feel of archeological artefacts.

I bought a piece called Billingsgate which shows the river, the houses and churches of that part of London.

I think it's fascinating in the way that old maps are fascinating but also because of the holes in the steel and the shadows and the textures and colours of the bits that remain.


Reading that bit about erosion and archeology really surprised me: that's one of the things I've always thought about Callum Innes. I love the way he works by applying paint and then turpentine. It's the act of removing that seems to leave things I like. Hmmm

While I was in Canada I saw a trailer for a most intriguing TV series on CBC. Has there been a better, more Zeitgeist-embracing title for a show than Little Mosque on the Prairie?

Last thoughts on my week in Fernie: it was great!

As well as seeing lots of friends


there was lots of snow


before the sun came out.


So I went cat skiing.


and then it was cloudy down low and sunny up above.





Beautiful. I think this might become a Christmas tradition

I have resolved to make the most of London.

(Let's see what happens.)

I had a happy new year - hope you did too. I spent mine with Kylie Minogue and an arena full of gay men. If that's not a good time then what is?

It was a fantastic gig and probably the must fun new year I've had. The support act was Bjorn Again which was a brilliant start to the show. Then Kylie appeared and she was superb. The highlight was an amazing, slowed down, sexed up version of Do the Locomotion. Imagine it as a raunchy number from Cabaret then you're there. She finished off with a singalong to Especially for You then after the bells she launched into Kool and the Gang's Celebrate - brilliant!