Christ Church Methodist Addiscombe, Croydon, 6 June 2022

It’s not often one starts a long-pose session knowing the UK might have a new prime minister at its close. Such was the case, however, on this evening of life drawing with The Croydon Art Society. I would stand for one single pose from 7:30pm to 9:30pm with a break for tea. At 6pm, Conservative MPs had begun voting on their confidence in atrocious hypocritical law-breaker Boris Johnson. The result was expected at 9pm.

Johnson is, and always has been, an odious self-serving liar without ethics, empathy, compassion or care for anybody other than himself. His only interest is in possessing the power, wealth, sexual partners and sycophantic cronies that he believes to be his innate entitlement by virtue of class status and personal privilege. He is a disgraceful fraud, utterly unfit for any position of responsibility. Tory MPs backed him 211 to 148.

I have never understood how my fellow working class voters can allow themselves to be seduced by such transparently empty promises on their behalf, while in plain sight his actions serve only to feather his own nest and those of his hangers-on. Some say “he’s the kind of bloke you could enjoy a pint with down the pub“… well, there are lots of people with whom I enjoy having a drink, but I don’t want them running the country.

Session organiser, Evie (“livid and embarrassed by our Tory leadership and cabinet“) and I grumbled about politics during the interval. Either side, the pose had gone well. My angled arm went numb after 30 minutes but I recovered feeling with back-of-neck finger-wiggling. By such discreet methods I avoided the need for stretch breaks, yet I had a very stiff back by the end… As with this government, I endured it.