The Old Dairy, London, 20 April 2016

The Moon and Nude at The Old Dairy remains the only drawing group for which I’ve stepped in to act as a facilitator rather than model. On that occasion the model was called Edward. Fast forward almost two years and it was my own turn to be modelling at The Old Dairy for a stand-in facilitator… called Edward. I wondered whether it would turn out to be the same chap but, no, this Edward was the partner of Julia, one of the regular co-organisers.

I had been told that when my booking was announced to the group a week before, the news was greeted with a couple of “woos”. I interpreted this as enthusiasm rather than sarcastic dismay, and arrived full of encouragement for a good session. Pose lengths adhered to the traditional format in the first half: 5-minutes, 4, 3, 2, 1-minute, then 10, 15, 20-minutes. There must have been 20 to 30 artists present – not the largest crowd I’ve seen here, but still very good numbers.

Julia looked in unexpectedly during the interval, which was nice, but all was going well with Edward at the helm. She set us straight that the final pose should be 30-minutes rather than 45, and I felt inspired to close out the session standing. Afterwards, I took photos of drawings and, as always here, enjoyed having a chat and some laughs with the artists. I very much look forward to returning here at the end of June for duo poses with Esther. It remains one of my favourite places to model.