8.30 am. I set up in readiness for my morning’s lecture at 11.00 am, before beginning the first of my second year painting tutorials, which would be centred on feedback tutorial follow up:

A spate of absenteeism without prior notification. Not good! ‘Begin as you mean to go on’, as the old saying goes. That advice comes from an age when duty, obligation, and responsibility were commonplace virtues, regardless of your class or background. Some principles and observations derived from today’s engagements:

• If you get on top of your obligations at the start of the semester, you’re likely to stay on top for the remainder.
• The vision determines the work, determines the effort, determines time spent.
• If you’re undertaking two fine art modules this semester, beware the danger of sacrificing the one for the other. Apportion your working time equally from the outset.
• You’ll find your own subject matter only when you find yourself. They share the same ‘geographical’ location.
• Do anything rather than nothing.
• Make a mark (any mark), then another, then another. Look! The work has begun.
• Painting is, essentially, the application of paint. No other delimiting conditions need apply (in my opinion).
• How good do you want to be? How good will you allow yourself to be? What will it take to be that good?

11.10 am. The first British Landscape class. I’m back to the attendance numbers that I experienced when I began teaching this module. I suspect that this may be its last voyage. 12.00 pm. Further fine art tutorials until lunchtime.

2.10 pm. The first Art in Wales class. Now this one really takes me back. I can barely recognise myself in the text. Ultimately, one must cut loose from the moorings of old ways of thinking, enthusiasms, and subject orientation. Or, put another way, the ground needs to be scorched, in order to rid it of weeds and prepare the soil for new plants:

3.00 pm. Two further tutorials before the final session of the afternoon, which was dedicated to module and postgraduate admin.

6.30 pm. An evening off to see NT Live’s performance of Christopher Hampton’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses.