I’m just back from a meeting with the design team. This is the group of consultants who work for the Bluecoat on the building project including the architects, project managers, quantity surveyor and some engineers. We were going through in as much detail as we can the schedule of works the builders Kier have put forward until completion. While this gives a finish date to the work it is not straight forward as the document comes with two pages of itemised risks that all might delay the works. Most of these are minor but some could have significant consequences.

I’m on the train to Brighton going to Professor Norbert Lynton’s funeral. Norbert, who was variously art critic for the Guardian, curator at the Hayward Gallery, art history professor at Sussex University and author of numerous books was also my chair for six years when I was running Charleston, the Sussex home of Bloomsbury Group artists Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant.

It’s like Christmas everyday at the office right now. We are holding an auction on November 29th and have invited all the artists who have been connected with the Bluecoat in the past to make and donate a work of art to us. The list of artists is impressive and so when the post arrives there is sudden excitement to see what has arrived. As the packages are opened I can, just for a minute, imagine them on my wall.

Half our office didn’t get in to see the Turner Prize at the private view last week as the queues snaked out from the Tate, across the bridge and back to the Maritime Museum and it would have been over by the time they had got in. I’d been lucky enough to go the night before and there was a real buzz in the building. The Prize was in Liverpool and a marker was being put down for 2008. It felt substantial and a little glamorous.