Workers’ playtime, London, 6 December 2016

I was offered this booking the night before by text message from Aless of The Moon and Nude. She would be facilitating an informal life drawing group at the offices of a communications company near Paddington, for their employees, when they finished work at half-past five. Having established that I could get there on time after finishing my own day job, I checked in at reception with five minutes to spare. Aless arrived a couple of minutes behind me.

We were led to a pavement-level room with one long wall of fifty-fifty clear and frosted glass facing onto a busy main road. It took Aless and her four artists about a quarter of the session just to fix paper over these windows, but enough glass remained clear to permit some splendid views from outside. I’m long past caring about such matters, however. Once everyone had settled I began with poses of 6-minutes, 3-minutes and 1-minute.

I stood twisting to my left, then stood holding the ceiling, then knelt. Next I sat down for 10-minutes, leaned back on a buttock-level shelf for 15-minutes, and sat again for 20-minutes more. All the while, artists were sketching and dipping into a large tub of chocolates. At the break, I too dipped liberally before closing the session with hands upon my head in a final 20-minute standing pose. It was a good gig and nice to have my first workplace booking of 2016 with just days of the year remaining.