FRIEZE and a twenty year old coup de foudre, with PATRICK CAULFIELD

Running round Frieze yesterday was a reprieve from  dealing with Cadogan Tate's removal staff, and their huge bills,  mounting up to about forty thousand pounds for picking up items from Chester Square, storing them for a year, and then delivering them to another London address.  It is a shame to have to waste this sort of money when there are art pieces begging to be in my new house.  I won't use them again, and a thirty year friendship has just flown out of the window.  I hate greed.   Moving is a stressful time in any case.  My housekeeper left after eleven years and I have to organise BT and dreary handsets, another rip off area.  I can't believe how slack England has become. It takes three weeks to get lines and you put in an order for blinds and that takes another four weeks.

Back to Frieze.  I had a coup de foudre at last yesterday, several in fact.  I spent a delightful hour on the Waddington's stand, dreaming about buying a painting by Patrick Caulfield.  I fell in love with it twenty years ago at the Summer Exhibition.  I sat happily talking about it with the charming Lesley who still had it.  I am going to take him out to lunch and one day I shall own it. It's bright yellow huge with a key hole and a pot of flowers.  I love this cheerful happy painting.  I met Patrick when I did the book British Artists at Work with Assouline and Franca Sozzani.  He asked me for a drink at 9.30 in the morning.  He also asked me how many artists had bitched him up, weird questions.  He was witty and interesting showing me his art.  Sadly he is no longer around.

Frieze has a wonderful mixture  of galleries, but I realise I only like some people's eyes - so with this in mind, it probably is not for me.  It is a glamorous supermarket for art with the world and his wife dressed in designer kit looking ravishing.  I would rather take a helicopter and have lunch at Cliveden and kiss my pals for lunch there.
The picture is not of the Caulfield I love because I don't want anyone to have it.