I brought Dr Domme out last week for a private viewing at a gallery in Peckham. I’d been invited as a result of my meeting the lovely and very, very talented Louise Thomas on a late train the week before. On our arrival, we were confronted by an intimidatingly beautiful tableau: a herd of the most quirkily dressed and effortlessly fabulous former art students to emerge from the London area in recent years. In a black trouser suit and impractically high heels, I looked a little out of place. However, after a couple of bottles of very nice red wine, Dr Domme invested in two paintings, one (my favourite) by Ms Thomas, and one (Dr Domme’s favourite) by the wonderful Jonathan Stubbs. Being a patron of the arts gives a person a sense of power and benevolence, I discovered. Much as everyone else present was young and had trendy hair, Dr Domme and I are the ones who’ll get to see the images again, and get to be drunk in their presence on many more occasions. We may no longer be quite as cool and youthful as we once were, but now we make up for it by being rich. We floated around the gallery and bar for the rest of the evening feeling like modern day Medicis. I thoroughly recommend it.

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2012 edit – Just read through this and realised I sounded like a bit of a douche. I’m definitely not rich, and wasn’t particularly rich then either. What I was, was drunk. Thought I’d better clarify.