np - This blog entry is entitled "the media trap"

Yesterday I may have lost my job as a lecturer!

I ashamedly bent the truth and wangled a day of work to attend the media review at the Turner Prize. It was a frenzy of activity, Nicholas Serota was there, looking out of sorts, forlorn, a fish out of water? He kept peering over shoulders pulling the notes of note-pads, he has always struck me as a art version of Alaister Campbell. Anyway it was virtually impossible to see the works without getting in the way of someone's photo or in the shot of a T.V crew and presenter. It was then that it struck me I could be in the press myself when I'm supposed to be at work ......SHIT....! I dashed around shielding my face, avoiding the clicking cameras and the boom wielding interviewers desperate to get out. This is a hard enough task without Nathan Coley putting traps in my path, and Nelson creating a perfectly mirrored installation which had me going around in circles, finally the dark at the end of a white walled, strip lightened tunnel, I burst into the back rooms into a luncheon headed up by our long faced friend Nicholas Serota, arts movers and shakers in attendance. What I really needed then was Wallinger's bear costume. So in a trance like the Zarina Bhimji film in the show, I left the Albert dockside, and I proudly congratulated myself on avoiding the chance of me being in some background shot on channel 4 that evening when I bumped into the foundation teacher from work - what are the odds of that? He was on a field trip to the Tate.

So I've got to hold my breath now and hope that they don't put two & two together or indeed read this blog entry.