I was in bed all weekend with a horrible cold which I still have; post NPO hangover probably. And spent the time thinking about everything I had done the previous week which included seeing some really great exhibitions the highlight of which was Hannah Höch at Whitechapel gallery, alongside Camille Henrot at Chisenhale, Benedict Drew at Matt’s Gallery and Martin Creed at the Hayward. I was also puzzling over various things and thinking a lot about people. One of those people was the artist Rose Wylie who I was sat next to at a dinner recently. I sort of vaguely knew her work but hadn’t realised that she is really quite old. In fact she’s 80. It’s impossible to place an age on a person by looking at their work, but somehow I had imagined her to be much younger. Though talking to her I was impressed by how involved she is in contemporary life; we discussed film, Nicole Kidman (she’d just finished a painting of her that she was very happy with), Kylie, Jonathan Meese, Stewart Lee, living in the country(side) - Stewart Lee in-joke there - and life in general. I was really happy to have had a chance to talk to her because she had such an incredibly positive outlook on life which I found very reassuring. Somehow that humour and lightness comes across in her paintings despite their often dark subjects. I’ve since found out that her husband of 57 years, the painter Roy Oxlade, passed away only last month. I wish I’d known.

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