What’s the difference between redundancy and resignation?: In the former instance, they get rid of you; in the latter, you get rid of them.

8.00 am: I felt the onset of Spring for the first time this year. 8.30 pm: I took to the road, and headed for a local eatery to buy something that I could look forward to eating at lunch:

9.00 am: I had an hour before my Personal Tutorial drop-in. What to do? I’ve learned not to give my best energies to minor tasks. Those can wait until an evening session. I waited for my tardy computer to reboot after what must have been a tiring night of upgrades. (I wish that I, too, could do admin in my sleep, unconsciously, rather than during the daytime.) 9.50 am: While making a beverage in the office, Mr Iliff introduced me to a colour wheel for illustrators, which he’d lovingly constructed in the most disciplined manner. A discussion about the spectral colours’ intrinsic lack of tonal uniformity. You can balance the hues for saturation, but you can’t equalise them for tone, without compromising the purity of the colours. Fascinating:

10.00 am: It was a ‘dry’-day drop-in, which enabled me to inch forward the on-line article that I’d begun yesterday.

11.30 am: The beginning of a more-or-less unbroken series of third-year painting tutorials, which would conclude at 5.30 pm. The governing motifs of the day (those that I wished to impart) were: pace, forward momentum, defining and accomplishing short-term goals, and determining immediate obstacles. Some principles and observations derived from today’s engagements:

• You must work as though every day counted, and as though every part of each day counted. Ask yourself: ‘What am I doing now?’ ‘Is it what I ought to be doing, now?’
• Don’t fritter away your time on small and easily achieved activities that’ll have little consequence for either others or yourself later. Rather, conceive of the large, ambitious, and long-haul projects that’ll push you beyond your limits to new heights.
• When art is not a struggle, only then do you need to be anxious. Problems are among the necessary ingredients for success.
• One day you’ll achieve a competent sufficiency (as distinct from a sufficient competency), which will permit you to work without being conscious of either your deficits or the process of learning.
• T: ‘My hope is that, one day, I may be able to produce something that’s tolerably good.’
• The painting embodies your fascination; it’s a response to your curiosity.
• The painting embodies the time that was taken to produce it.
• You don’t necessarily determine what you wish to paint, and then paint it. Sometimes you paint in order to discover the subject. It’s the same with writing: you have to, first, string words together in order to discover what you’re writing about.
• The work should demonstrate: efficiency, economy, necessity, and (sometimes) simplicity. But it should never appear easy.

Over lunch, baguette in hand, I pushed on with the article, drafting ideas and asking myself what on earth I was writing about.

The afternoon always feels like I’m travelling up Primrose Hill (the steepest incline in town) in a VW in second gear. The rake of the late winter sun through the building, which glows like the Christ’s lamp in Holman Hunt’s The Light of the World (1851–3), was a solace:

5.30 pm: Homeward. 6.30 pm: Sock coupling. There’s nothing remotely exciting about the concept. Some pairs have now been separated for several washes. I’ve declared them: ‘missing, assumed dead’.

7.30 pm. Returning to work on Thursday evenings is always a challenge. A settee and a doze always appear far more compelling. It’s not a session for beginning things or heavy work. I pressed on with my on-line article, therefore.