Apparently everyone is an artist these days. I’d recently had my hopes of an artistic epiphany dashed when I attended an exhibition at Cosh Gallery on Berwick St which had been sufficiently hyped in endless trails of promotional emails to make me think there was some substance in the works by artist Slinkachu. The collection, entitled 'Ground Zero', depicts tiny figures in an apocalyptically enormous world. Each photograph contains much the same composition: minuscule model of man/woman on street plus normal-sized car/dustbin/building. One female figure sits naked from the waist down for no possible reason other than shock value, three pictures in a row feature a figure clutching a can, a pill, and a rolled up note. Formulaic in the extreme.

Better was the E17 Art Trail’s exhibition at Vestry House. An annual series of events, workshops and performances take place throughout the borough of Walthamstow this month, under the name 'With Love From Walthamstow'. I had been invited to the private view of the exhibition which featured works by various artists, amongst them ‘Aftermath’, simple, yet hugely complex and poetic images by Iranian photographer Pirasteh Gourang, inspired by the atrocity and destruction of the recent Iraq war. Photographs with shards of glass glued on them, a hand painted green bush in a black and white landscape, anti-war posters stuck on a never ending wall, plastic flowers in a broken window, hope. At last some meaning, and it was in a local museum in an East London suburb, and not in a trendy gallery in Soho.

A couple of days later I caught David Holmes DJing at a free gig at the Lock Tavern in Camden. As well as being responsible for the soundtrack to Oceans 11 and its sequels, he was the object of a late teen crush, his obvious talent for producing records like Bow Down to the Exit Sign, eloquence during interviews and overall coolness setting a benchmark by which all future suitors would be measured. To promote his new album, The Holy Pictures, rather than tour the usual ticketmasters he chose to do a couple of free gigs at smaller venues alongside DJ Andrew Weatherall, and the Lock proved to be perfect for his selection of punk, electro, blues, and cinematic records.

We managed to wangle ourselves seats on a sofa right in front of his turntables, and as I was perched on the arm I was literally centimetres away from him. Black and white 50’s propaganda footage and feature films played on the walls as he spun, and I let my friends chatter as I took everything in. Then, all of a sudden, he lifted his head from his music and looked straight at me. He smiled, a great, warm, beautiful smile which lingered for about five seconds while I reciprocated. As he lowered his head again I slid down the arm of the sofa to tell my friends what had happened, wishing they had seen what I’d seen. I practically skipped home that night, taking with me a moment I will treasure forever, a feeling I will never forget.

Perhaps I should do an installation piece on it.