I am writing this on the 31st of January but, honestly, it feels more like the 60th of the month. I haven’t had the best start to 2026 with a health scare, which I suspect was brought on my my HRT . I have made the decision to go cold turkey and stop taking it. Anyway, I went for a scan and all seems to be well so that is a weight off my mind.

I visited the David Hockney Exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art which is showing until the end of February. The gallery is located near Hanover Square. I took the Tube to Bond Street and then it’s just under a ten minute walk. The gallery is inside a handsome Georgian townhouse. Admission is free. Upstairs there is the “Moon Room” which shows fifteen paintings composed on an iPad. Each painting depicts a countryside scene illuminated by moonlight, there is a particularly gorgeous painting featuring a Christmas tree festooned with brightly coloured bulbs. They ae stunningly beautiful and luminous and were created in Hockney’s studio in Normandy, France. The walls of the gallery are painted in a deep midnight blue which perfectly sets off the artwork.

The paintings in the exhibition are absolutely brand new, the eighty eight year old artist is still producing amazing art although some of the brush work looks a little shaky. Downstairs in the gallery there are hugely colourful room scenes featuring mixed media where the perspective is intentionally “off”. The subject matter, chairs and flowers are of course completely conventional but nothing else about these works is. There are a series of portraits including a self portrait of Hockney in a wheelchair.

After the gallery my friend and I had lunch in the nearby John Lewis which was pretty awful. We then looked in a couple of shops in Oxford Street. I went into Stradivarius where I unnecessarily added to my stripy shirt collection. In this store there are a couple of security guards but I could find no actual shop assistants. The checkouts are self serve and you even have to remove your own security tags. Those jobs, traditionally filled by young people are all being done by technology. Who is going to employ humans who require paid holiday, national insurance contributions and pensions when machines can do the job? As the parent of young adults, it is very worrying.

The weather in London was abysmal, raining and freezing cold but it was a nice to have a change of scenery and to see my friend. When I got home I saw that my snowdrops had made an appearance, they never fail to remind me that winter is almost behind us for another year

Thank you for reading

Samantha