Seriously, if you’re in London tomorrow and you have an hour or two to spare drop EVERYTHING and get yo’ ass down to Sotheby’s, 34-35 New Bond Street, London W1A 2AA where you will see probably the finest free art exhibition in your LIFE.

They’ve got some major sales coming up, and they are exhibiting the paintings. Tomnorrow is the last day. I can’t begin to tell you how magnificent they are. They also (which is fascinating) give the guide prices for them. There are works by Moholy-Nagy, Arp, Duchamp, Dubuffet, Buffet, Utrillo, Grosz, Matisse, Picasso, Klimt, Kokoshka, Magritte, Riley, Moore, Schiele, Man Ray, Renoir, Monet, Pissarro, Richter, Miro, Emin, Saville, Kandinsky. Klee, Schlemmer, Dali, Schwitters and many, many more. There are six paintings by Utrillo, whom I adore, the cheapest of which was estimated to fetch £30,000, which is a little out of my league.

The star of the show could be said to be Monet’s Palazzo Ducale, a numinous work which made my catch my breath. I caught it a second time when I saw the estimated guide price of £30 million. It’s a stunning picture, but oh, please, Claude — get yo’ fenestration together! Look at the windows on the right! Is that what he really saw, or did he simply lose interest? For £30 mill I’d expect an accurate perspective at the very least. If the new owners get in touch with me after the sale I’d be happy to paint in the corrections for them.

Last June Ryanair cancelled our flight home from Palermo without warning. They put us up in a horrible hotel 90 minutes from the airport, and laid on a replacement flight the following morning.

In August I read an article which said that compensation for a flight cancellation was guaranteed by an EU directive, European Passenger Rights Regulation EC 261/04.

Ryanair had forgotten to mention this to us.

So we wrote to Ryanair requesting compensation.

They didn’t reply.

So we wrote again in September.

They didn’t reply.

So we wrote again in October.

They didn’t reply.

So we wrote again in November.

They didn’t reply.

So we complained to Aviation Alternative Dispute Resolution, and today we received a payment of £707.52 from Ryanair (€800). Thank you to Aviation ADR, which charged us nothing for extracting our money from Ryanair, and no thanks to Ryanair, which failed miserably in its attempt to unlawfully deprive us of our entitled compensation.

Yah boo sucks.

I wonder if the European Passenger Rights Regulation EC 261/04 will still apply to Brits once we leave the EU?