In last night’s dream, I defended the inhabitants of a small town in America from hostile assailants who were determined to level their properties. I’ve never been an ‘action hero’ in my night-time adventures before. 7.10 am: The sky wept:

8.30 pm: Sometimes, I walk – as I would’ve done when a child – the paved path that undulates along the promenade towards the Old College. Paths ought to be honoured; ‘Follow the yellow-brick road’:

I held two extended PhD fine art tutorials, which took up the greater part of the morning. The focus in both was upon writing and, in particular, how to dissect a discussion about one’s work into discrete (albeit related) topics. Cutting the cake into segments, in other words. The problem of writing the PhD’s thesis element, to begin, is the shear complexity of the thought processes that have gone into making the artwork, as well as the many lines of investigation, potential contexts, associations, and histories that both arise out of and touch upon it. In isolating a single strand, the discussion is made more straightforward.

Carmen’s studio. A suitably ecclesiological outlook:

A visual metaphor. PhD fine art writing looks a little like this:

12.00 pm: Back at home, and a hitch. I’d take two zinc supplement tablets which proceeded to severely irritate my stomach lining. I felt as though I’d swallowed acid. I was flat out on the bed with a temperature until the burning sensation had receded. (I won’t try that again.) An afternoon at home, was advisable. Some of things that I’d planned to do after lunch required the installation of a new VPN software. ‘Simple’, I thought. NO. I attempted the procedure on three different computers, but without success. It installed, but the application was nowhere to be seen. (Sigh!) That was half-an-afternoon down the shoot. I sent up a flare to our computer bods on campus.

4.00 pm: I attended to postgraduate and other emails. There’s always something to do when playing the waiting game.

7.30 pm: An evening of teaching prep. and admin: