Workers’ playtime, London, 1 October 2018

A hectic month is ahead of me. On top of my Monday to Friday full-time day job, I’m usually content with just one or two life model bookings each week to help sustain a sensible work/life balance… yet somehow I find myself with nine bookings in the first fifteen days of October, evenings and weekends, taking me to all corners of London.

Day 1: the insanity begins in Kentish Town, at a corporate booking arranged through City Academy. I’ve modelled at this workplace a couple of times previously, and am familiar with the terrain, even if their main door is now on another side of the building. Five colleagues were staying after hours to draw me on this occasion.

The session unfolded in an ultra-modern multi-media production space – no windows, minimal furnishing and an enormously expensive collection of dark technology at one side. We work in complete silence, exacerbating the overall eeriness, yet the energy is high as poses are very rapid: five of 1-minute, five of 2-minutes, five of 5-minutes…

We finish the first half with a ‘long’ pose of 8-minutes. I’m then left alone in the space during a break for refreshments (yes, I’m offered water). When we resume, we closed the evening with two 20-minute poses. Amid all the computers I found a wooden pole, so I made use of that. And then I dressed and left; October’s journey has begun!