It is fucking freezing in the House of Rats.

This week, the boiler keeps breaking so we wake daily to a cold water wash with a background accompaniment of Helsy’s hacking cough.

I feel like I’m in the 1940’s.

January is always bad, but not this one. Only a minor slump in the mood this year. This is probably due to the prevalence of love, frolics, poetry and hamsters in my life…

As protection from the cold weather coming in from Russia, I have been accumulating a comfortable layer of fat round my middle mainly gained from cheap, toxic alcohol consumed on raucous nights out with the rats. Cunning.

My working days are spent wrestling with lists, databases & art world politics and dealing with Peers of the Realm and rich New Yorkers. The tension is building as our exhibition draws near and I am surprised when colleagues say I seem calm.

I am making full use of my leisure time; spending lazy days with the curtains drawn, eating sushi off the sublime torso of my very own dickensian rock star...and day-dreaming of kissing the dust.