The Finborough Arms, London, 25 June 2016

Esther and I finished our drinks at the Troubadour pub, in Old Brompton Street, and walked round the corner to The Finborough Arms. We prefer Troubadour for a quiet drink as it doesn’t have a TV blasting out a constant stream of live sports; for us, the magic of The Finborough Arms lies downstairs in The Cellar, which hosts a film club, open mic nights, live music and – now on Saturday afternoons – life drawing.

We’d both posed here individually for The Moon and Nude at their Sunday evening slots, but now we were honoured to have been booked together for their first session at the new time of 3pm on Saturday. Aless and Mandy were organising, and already had set out drawing materials for the artists, along with a table for cheese and wine. Seven artists joined us by the time we started our poses of 10, 15 and 20-minutes.

The football fans upstairs were making a racket, watching Switzerland play Poland at Euro 2016. Downstairs all was serene, however, as we concluded after the break with poses of 15-minutes (a reverse Pietà) and 45-minutes (seated hip-to-hip). The artists were happy and so were we. Hopefully the numbers will pick up and this will become established as another great group on the London life drawing circuit.