Workers’ playtime, London, 19 December 2017

Secrets! Upon arriving for this after-hours corporate life modelling session at a London workplace, my first task was to sign a mutual non-disclosure agreement, pledging not to say anything about the company or its business. The circumstances were thus unusual, but the business of life drawing was the same: I would be nude, and I was to pose; five 1-minute poses, five of 2-minutes, and seven of 5-minutes up to a break.

The setting was wholly unlike typical art rooms, from which I return with feet darkened by aeons of charcoal dust. Here, a large square of fine mesh-like material, covered by two even larger plastic membranes, was taped to an immaculate floor of carpet tiles. I posed at the centre, surrounded by a horseshoe of chairs from which artists sketched me in silence. There were two poses after the interval: 25-minutes and 20-minutes.

I stood for 25-minutes with one arm upon the top of my head – by the end of this time, the arm became so numb that I was balancing it rather than raising it, but the evening as a whole was positive. Even better as it had been organised through City Academy, with whom I’d had a negative experience earlier this year. This was their redemption, such that I will happily recommend them to other models – insofar as secrecy allows!