The Cambria, London, 21 October 2015

Two large glasses of dark wine. Upon invitation, I conveyed them to the table of three artists who’d been drawing me earlier. We were in the main bar area of The Cambria pub. Having provided short poses upstairs the previous week, I’d returned for the long pose session and – I hoped – a nice little drink to round off a pleasant fortnight.

Within a minutes the second glass was held by Tatiana – organiser of Camberwell Life Drawing. She’d been packing away and, whilst it had been moot whether my earlier attempts to help had been more of a hindrance, we certainly reached a point where the most useful thing I could do was get the drinks in. We all clinked glasses and bantered.

The session had been comfortable, which is never taken for granted when the poses get longer. My only affliction had been one numb arm during the final pose. In truth, none of the poses had been tremendously long. We warmed up with three 2-minute poses, then went 15-minutes (seated frontways), 20-minutes (seated sideways) and 15-minutes (standing) up to an interval.

The final pose after the break lasted precisely 37 minutes – all the time that was left until our 9pm finish. As pose times increased, so had artist numbers. When the first 2-minute pose began, we had but one artist in attendance. Fairly quickly this rose to six, but it was nonetheless briefly a matter of concern for Tatiana. Artists seem to be evaporating across London.

Downstairs everybody could relax. For Tatiana it was another ‘job done’; the artists for their part had produced fine work and seemed rightly content; I was pleased simply to have my freedom of movement restored without a legacy of aches and pains. Together we enjoyed our cups. Aside from the satisfaction of creativity, life drawing can provide a grand night out. Have you still not tried it? You really should, you know.