Things I want to see next week:

• Carsten Höller’s slides at the Tate Modern.
• London in maps at the British Library.
• The Best of Proud collection at Proud Central. (That’s a load of classic music photography. I may have to leave my wallet at home so I don’t accidentally spend a few thousand pounds.)
• The Photographic Portrait Prize 2006 at the national portrait gallery.

All of the above are free, or one or two quid. (Assuming that you don’t make the suggest voluntary donation.)

I’ll be doing the above Monday, Tuesday and possibly Thursday, and yes, I expect to also spend time in the rest of the respective museums (where there is a “rest of the museum”) as well as the specific exhibitions.

Who’s interested in what, and free when?

So, I finally got around to a ten minute play with that myspacks account that I signed up for ages back, on a vaguely multimedia whim. I’ll say this: for a website that’s so clearly stalled in 1999, they do make the multimedia stuff easy…

Should any of you be so inclined, I’m at http://www.myspace.com/electricana – do please let me know where I can find you if you’re on there, so I look like a bit less of a billy no mates.

Secondly, and this one is important: why have I not seen it more widely shouted about that it *is* possible to stop other people’s tedious musical drivel from starting up just because you happen to stumble across their myspace page? anw and I were kvetching about this very thing the other night…

(You need to sign up for an account, and then it’s in the “Music settings” part of the “Account settings” system, should anyone not know about it, and be as annoyed as I am with the bloody stuff. Yeah, you do need to be logged in, but it’s not exactly a hardship…)

So, the Turner prize this year goes to Tomma Abts. Personally, I preferred Mark Titchner‘s work – his themes and his general approach are things I have a lot of personal sympathy with, but hers were a close second favourite. I thought Phil Collins (not that one) documentary was interesting, but I think I’d rather just have watched the documentary of telly, rather than get presented with it as “Art”. Rebecca Warren, well, think I see what she’s trying to do, but it’s a fairly old hat idea.

I do wonder if Abts won in part because her painting are closer to most people’s idea of conventional “Art”, and if the Turner Prize committee are trying to balance the scales a little, after least years Shedboatshed, and Jeremey Deller’s documentary the year before that.

So, I won’t be in Edinburgh before Christmas. Bollocks. There’s just no way to do it in an affordable manner that doesn’t involve hellish travel, a much shorter stay than I’d like, or risking my mother never speaking to me again if I miss the family Christmas in Belfast because a ferry gets cancelled, or anything like that. I’d rather try and come up for a decent length of time early next year.

So, instead I shall spend the week before Christmas kicking about London, camera in hand.

Weather permitting, I quite fancy doing at least one straight derivé – pick somewhere around say zone 2, plonk a glass on a map at random, draw round it, and follow the line as best as the roads/public spaces permit, something like that. Apart from that, and the the Slides at the Tate, what else should I go take pictures of? And does anyone fancy coming with me?

Christmas is coming, and frankly, anyone who doesn’t want at least half the items on this list is a bit suspect.