pete mcgovern

Having watched rather a lot of Francis Bacon videos recently I've been pondering attempting a triptych this weekend. I wanted to revisit a set up I had tried a few years ago with the camera centred upon the kitchen from just inside the adjoining room. Previously the two side images were the open white door on the left and a closed white cupboard on the right, relatively flat planes, with the middle having depth... but back then I decided everything would be out of focus, for reasons I forget. The downside of this plan was waking up, being unwell, and finding myself 93% unprepared to tidy up the kitchen in readiness to make it so there would be some semblence of a balanced messiness of life but not any actual distractingness of objects that might snag the eye. This would have required re-arranging shelves, clearing work surfaces, and possibly even washing up etc.  Then I noticed a fortunate alternative with no tidy up required, and the messiness of duvets at the end of my bed were p...

- Justin Tallis/PA

On Youtube there is an Estate of Francis Bacon channel where everyone and anyone who knew Bacon was interviewed about their association, presumably in anticipation that before too long they would be shrugging off this mortal coil. Looking at the numbers, hardly anyone watches them and subscribers are below the 2.5k after three years, but over the last week I've been finding them quietly addictive. This enraptured triptych of Colony Club hostess Muriel Belcher came up during a conversation with Michael Clark. 

Just scanning the opening of the auto-biography by artist Tirzah Garwood, 'Long Live Great Bardfield & Love to You All' , there is a you-must-buy-me-immediately winning line; 'In 1904, my sister Margaret, a very ugly baby with a large nose, was born'. A memoir penned while dying of cancer of the spine, and yet which she described as, 'the happiest year of my life', and written for her family's entertainment. I am sure the progeny of said sister would have heartily enjoyed such avenging wit.

The biggest tree (TBC) in the world is at my local park. It's snuck away amongst a bunch of less enormous grove-dwellers and seems to be often overlooked. It is so tall that it touches the moon when the orbit takes it directly overhead and touches its toppermost branches. The rustling of those branches scraping over the cratered lunar surface is unlike any other sound. Moon beetles take their opportunity and head earthward, returning a month later with news from above/below, and leaves as evidence. Today it was zero degrees and the tree was cordoned off with security fences. Signs declared storm damage. I have half expected the eventual end of the tallest tree since first discovering it a year or two after moving around here.  Local park risk assessments were always likely to end its ascent toward other solar bodies. Maybe that time has now come. Meanwhile a wood pigeon has taken to perching, solitary, on the corner of a neighbour's roof, surveying the feathers below of its par...