Like I did last year, I asked Nick Serota for a ticket to the Turner Prize Dinner tonight. I wrote to him almost exactly a month ago, and the tickets for Lauren and me arrived soon afterwards. Back then, I was really looking forward to this event, albeit somewhat less eagerly than last year, when Tracey Emin spiced it up. The enthusiasm gradually wore off, though. Even my own impassioned attempt to endow the Prize with meaning by associating it with Dostoevsky’s parable of the Grand Inquisitor has affected no-one but myself. By this morning, my interest had worn off almost completely. When I told Lauren I would prefer to skip the whole thing and return to Reading earlier than planned, she was a bit disappointed only because she wanted us to spend the evening together. She had no interest in the event itself. In fact, she tried to persuade me to skip it from the very beginning. As I write, the guests are already crowding around the dinner tables at Tate Britain. They are examining the name cards by dinner plates in search of their seats. The only remaining pleasure in the Prize is to know that our name cards will mark our absence for the rest of the evening. Lauren and Ranko Bon—the harbingers of the anticlimax.