London

I’ve climbed up and down the multi-storey Modern, strolled the Britain and beached up at St Ives so now I’m jumping onto the 14.17 to Lime Street to explore Liverpool’s very own Tate on the Albert Dock. I’m a big fan of Jake and Dinos Chapman and the gallery is exhibiting ‘the first thorough intellectual investigation of their work, revealing continuing themes and concerns and contextualising their art historically and critically’. So there.

But I am also that rare thing, an artist. Looking around the carriage I see most people have stocked up on the usual journey entertainment sources: magazines, crisps, iPods, playing cards, PSPs, abacuses, tapestries, laptop DVDs.

But for this journey I am unleashing my own raw, primal artistic energies. I’d thought of working on a virtual model through the CADCAM software installed on my palm, or even bringing some rough-weave paper on board and sketching some Chapmanesque edgy images using crayons and face-smearing charcoal.

But instead, with an ironic back-glance at post-industrial constructivism, I have plumped for building blocks. I seek concepts through the window: pylons and pig-farms, distant cityscapes and lowering clouds. But I also let the rhythm of the train inform my imagination, and the CD of Sir Paul’s latest masterpiece, ‘Ecce Cor Meum’, and find myself mesmerised by the passenger sat opposite me.

The building blocks become as malleable as clay and I build, piece by piece, a delicate, intricate, realist-yet-cubist image of the full-blooded human sharing this journey to the Port of Life. I’m thrown back to my childhood, and the innocence of play. Other passengers look on in bemused appreciation. But I am absorbed by my creation. Squint and all will be revealed.

Jake and Dinos Chapman: Bad Art for Bad People, Tate Liverpool, 0151 702 7400/ www.tate.org.uk/liverpool
December 15 2006-March 4 2007.

There are over 350,000 value advance fares available across the Virgin Trains network every week. Buy in advance and you could travel from London to Liverpool from as little as £12.50 one-way.