Getting your Tates mixed up

(SATURDAY. 10am) -- Failure is always the best way to learn, so the song goes. Last night I found out that ‘Late at Tate’ happens at Tate Britain, not Tate Modern. Unfortunately this pearl of wisdom didn’t arrive till I was stood outside the later venue on the phone to Casual Rob, who politely pointed out my error.

One underground trip later and installed in the correct Tate with drink in one hand and the other hand poised thoughtfully on chin, I started to unwind.
One of the large rooms off the main hall of the gallery had been given over to the event. At the far end of the room a DJ was playing a set with a 19th century landscape as her backdrop (that's her above). Lots of smartly dressed types, some old, some young, milled around talking smartly among the marble busts on plinths and at least one seascape by Turner. It was like being in the most expensively-decorated pub in the world.

The bachelorettes were evading me so I went to have a look at some Francis Bacons in the gallery’s permanent collection. Probably not the best tactic on reflection. Were I to meet the woman of my dreams, the sado-masochistic musings of Bacon could sour the mood a tad.

Still, the man was a genius. Casual Rob’s friend Dolly told me that Bacon was one of the last modern artists to be trained to draw in the classical style, and that somewhere within those distorted images is a Renaissance painting pulled out of all recognition. This is how Bacon himself described his work: "‘What I want to do is to distort the thing far beyond the appearance, but in the distortion to bring it back to a recording of the appearance." Can you see what he means?

Later back at Dolly’s flat in Hammersmith we feasted on bacon sandwiches (in homage to Francis) as she read to us from a book of London trivia she’d bought in the Tate’s souvenir shop. A highlight was a selection of memorable loudspeaker announcements by tube train drivers down the years. Here’s one: “To the man who has just amusingly exposed his bum to me when getting off the train. Can I suggest he leaves the station and goes straight to a gym so he can do something about his unsightly behind.”

Good to know those train drivers are not too afflicted by the subterranean blues to lose their sense of humour.