That Was The Week That Was — 8th February 2026

This week started with a trip down to London for a meeting with Mila Askarova, owner of Gazelli Art House, who've been representing me for the last few years, to plan things for the coming year. Mila and me ate at the always wonderful Charlie's at Brown's Hotel – in my opinion the best hotel in London and somewhere that's a real home from home these days. Work has now started in earnest for something in the later half of the year. As someone who has zero art qualifications, yet has somehow found myself in this world, I never get complacent about being represented by Gazelli.

The train down afforded me some good reading time. In The Land of the Cyclops by Karl Ove Knausgaard is the first thing I've read of his. I'm kind of enjoying this collection of essays though it's very Nordic centric and at times meanders beyond what I think an essay should be.

New on the turntable this week was Everybody Digs Bill Evans in a gorgeous red vinyl. Most of my jazz collection is centred around Coltrane so it's great to add this classic record to the collection.

I'm also working my way through a backlog of LRBs, reading Donald MacKenzie's short piece about the scale of the data centres needed to power AI. The size of Meta's Hyperion is the equivalent of the edge of Soho in Manhattan to the uptown edge of Central Park which is insane.

My film watching had taken a dive recently, mostly due to not renewing my BFI subscription, so I rectified that and very much enjoyed Odyssey – the latest from Gerard Johnson following on from Hyena and Muscle. As I had come to expect it's a gritty tale of an estate agent's life spiralling out of control followed by a bloody redemption. Had a kind of "kill list" eerinesses to it and fans of the Safdie brothers movies are bound to love it.

In between these moments of consumption I played around with creating data streams of live TV broadcasts.