To London and the Hockney Exhibition at the RA. We’re lucky enough to have been invited to a private viewing by our good friends at Welcome to Yorkshire who have launched a Hockney Trail which takes in some of the locations of his current work in the Wolds. The great and good of East Yorkshire are present including Mayors of Hell, Hull and Halifax (well, Goole, Beverley and Brid) clanking around in all the metalwork. The curator gives a little talk and I get a sense that she’s really enjoyed working on the exhibition – but mostly travelling to Hockney’s house and discovering a part of the country she’s never been to before. For the uninitiated, it’s beautiful, quiet but about to get considerably busier if WTY have anything to do with it. Our friend who’s in charge of the press had a hell of a job getting London journalists on a train north but once they’d adjusted their breathing apparatus they enjoyed themselves. Anyway, we were watered well with fizz and fed even better with Whitby scampi canapés before being unleashed into the gallery and 10 rooms of glorious, vibrant, jaw-dropping paintings, drawings and iPad renditions of rolling Wolds. Do whatever you have to do to get tickets. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime kinda thing. And he’s one of us.