8.30 pm. I overslept! I actually overslept! I never oversleep! If I’d been an undergraduate, I’d have missed the beginning of a 9.00 am lecture. Shamefacedness would be my complexion for the remainder of the day, I determined. Good job my first appointment wasn’t before 9.30 am — an off-campus, pastoralesque tutorial. 11.00 am. I held an MA inquirer’s discussion. It was sad to hear that the art provision at University of Wales Trinity St David is to close — both the BA and the MA studies. Henceforth, the university’s operations in this discipline will be based in Swansea only. 12.00 pm. I enjoyed a fruitful and genuinely inspiring MA Fine Art tutorial with one of Dr Pierse’s tutees. There are painters who make me want to paint. This was one.

Some principles and observations derived from the morning’s engagements:

• We perish for want of just one good idea.
• We perish from a surfeit of good ideas.
• Good ideas come to us either too soon, at the right time, or too late.
• Technical and methodical dexterity, an enthusiasm for and sensitivity to materials, an informed awareness of the context of our operations, great ambition and determination, and a sense of our own identity are insufficient. There must be vision also.
• We evolve as artists in fits and starts.

2.00 pm. I assisted my elder son in a photo-session to advertise the sale of his 100-watt Marshall stack on the second-hand market. She is a sturdy and noble beast:

2.40 pm. I returned to the Abstraction module, inserting further questions to the audience. I’m keen to explore new ‘rhythms’ of learning for the lectures; this intent began in the Art/Sound module. Music, as a formal and illustrative analogue to visual art, needs to be discussed in relation to each lecture theme too.

7.00 pm. I tested the connections between the turntable array and the newly established pre-amp to mixer connections, and updated the software on my Eventide modulation pedals:

Back at the Abstraction lecture no. 2, I edge my way towards an explanation of Impressionist music, atomic theory, and the notion of the Zeitgeist. All good fun!