Most people I know are ambivalent about modern art. And having seen a fair amount of it through the years, it's a position I find difficult to disagree with. I grew up staring lovingly at paintings like Christ Of St John Of The Cross by Salvador Dali, given pride of place at the end of a long corridor at Kelvingrove Art Gallery. Or the bewitchingly beautiful J D Fergusson that hung in the Hunterian. Or the odd Ramsay portrait on a wall in a professor's study.
All the paintings I saw as a wee boy, as a young man, were about something. It was a man being crucified, some naked folk dancing around a fire, or an Earl. One could talk at length about the subject matter, the use of light and the technique. You
rarely found yourself wondering what it was you were looking at and consequently what it was you were meant to think. I hate that notion that any of us are "meant" to think anything. Surely the point of a personal artistic reaction is that it is exactly that: a reaction that is personal. In much modern art it seems that we are expected to work out what a piece is saying, yet when we do express a personal opinion we are often told that we are wrong.
With this caveat in mind, I ventured into my first art collaboration last week. I'm working with an amazing young artist, Ben Ashton – we were introduced by the art impresario
Simon Oldfield. Ben is 25 years old and paints nothing but images of himself.
At first, this might seem narcissistic, but once you realise that he is exploring the notion of identity, and that Ben can actually paint beautifully, the work takes on a whole new set of meanings. It's an open, honest and vulnerable journey of self-discovery.
I am interviewing Ben as part of a potential video installation to accompany his show later in the year, attempting to help him uncover more about himself. Maybe at the end of the process I might even learn a bit more about myself, through finding out more about Ben. Isn't that the point of art: self-discovery?
Eight's company with an octopusI cooked octopus on Monday night. Octopus presents a single problem when it comes to cooking. The multi-tentacled beast must either be barely introduced to a searingly hot pan or cooked slowly for hours, allowing the flesh to tenderise with time. I chose the later approach. Tomatoes, garlic, shallots and chilli came with me on this journey of culinary exploration, this being the first time I'd cooked it. The results were surprisingly good, enhanced by a handful of freshly chopped oregano after two hours in a moderate oven.
There is much to recommend octopus. The soft white flesh, tender and delicious almost melting into the richly reduced sauce. There's so much to recommend it, but perhaps the single aspect that makes it most appealing is that each of my eight guests all got a leg. That doesn't happen with chicken.
When the world really does revolve around West BromA good friend of mine, Paul, is a West Bromwich Albion football fan. In every other way he is a hugely successful man, travelling internationally, striking multi-billion-pound deals and generally being suave and elegant. Yet he still insists on his masochistic following of WBA. You can take the boy out of West Brom…
He kindly offered to take me up to the Black Country to watch Arsenal play his team at his place.
For some folk, giving over all of my afternoon and evening to travel a round trip of 250 miles just to watch my team would be construed as an utter waste of time and money. And maybe they are right. But such a commitment, and such a journey is nothing to Paul. He
was in Boston when the Twin Towers in New York were destroyed. He knew that because of the security crackdown he would never be able to board a flight back to the UK in time to see West Brom play Watford.
Instead of dithering, he drove for six hours, crossed the Canadian border and made it to Toronto Airport.
He paid for a first-class ticket and travelled back to Blighty on the first plane out of North America. He made it to the game. West Brom won 2-1, finishing the match with 10 men. Now that, my friends is footballing commitment.
Loneliness is a dish best served before sundownThere's an art to solitary dining. It's not an ability an individual is born with. Some people don't like food nearly enough to face the ignominy of sitting opposite no one across a dinner table, no one but the rest of the room, and all the other diners and staff. It took me a long time to be comfortable with solo lunching.
Let's be clear: a sandwich shop sandwich, a smash-and-grab soup, a quick in-and-out pie is not solitary dining. Neither, technically, is a café. My definition of solitary dining requires the following three prerequisites: table service; menus on the aforementioned tables; and toilets on the premises, as opposed to using some in the pub round the corner. It is only after these criteria are met that one can accurately and confidently claim one is dining à un.
It was my love of dim sum that forced me to face my demon of oneness at lunchtime. At first it wasn't easy, with the staff always assuming you were waiting for a fellow diner – who never arrived. However, the more often I went, the more practised I became, as did the staff. After more than a decade of loyalty at New World, the staff's default is that I will be requiring a table for one. Their instinct these days is to clear the second place setting. I can say with some degree of certainty that I have now mastered the 1pm solo meal. My own company and parcels of steamed delight are all I need to carry me from morning to afternoon.
The evening repast is an altogether more challenging routine, a routine I have yet to master. The quiet stillness of certain restaurants can be as imposing as the noisy, brashness of a buzzing evening café. Either way, its a big ask. Get beyond 10 or 11 o'clock and I am back in my zone of comfort: late at night I can shovel Chinese food in a canteen-style restaurant into my large coupon. Ask me to sit at a fancy restaurant of an evening with nothing but my own thoughts and I'll scrabble for the pizza delivery number. Solo on a sofa seems so much more sensible.
