9.00 am. I began the day with The Who playing in the background:

The Who Are You (1978) album cover looks dangerous and intimidating: oozing high voltage, LOUDness, and power. The drummer, Keith Moon — seated on the chair labelled ‘Not to be taken away’ — was taken away three week after the record’s release. He died of a drug overdose. Inadvertent prophecies about the future probably litter our present lives. But they can be deduced only in retrospect.

On with the figure inserts. The final day for this activity (I hope). 11.00 am. A walk to town, where I’d continue Project Body work at the physio. This is the longest period of backache that I’ve ever endured. Today, I was strapped up with blue gaffer-type tape across my lower back. It’s helpful to have a physio, like Clare, who can converse about the complexities of muscles and joints articulately and at a level that I can understand. My appointment left me feeling confident and determined.

I stopped off at the School to sign off on postgraduate admin before returning to homebase to continue with the booklet. This is now three times it’s anticipated size. The works, which are many, require explication and analysis. Some artists write into order to obfuscate their practice, others, to compensate for a deficit within the work and, yet others (and I’m one), to illuminate it. Nothing visual can fully interpret its own intent and significance. A paratext is required. The whole of art history is a commentary and gloss upon art, in this sense.

Throughout the afternoon and into the evening I inserted and captioned the figures. By 8.30 pm, all were in. Now begins the second pass … from the very beginning of the booklet, once again.

As part of Project Body, I’m pursuing a weight-loss regime. I don’t consider myself to be over weight. But, by the same token, I’m not my ideal weight. (I’ve felt better, lighter.) To reach my ideal, so the tables tell me, I need to lose just under a stone (6.3kg). My numerous interactive allergies and intolerances already preclude me eating quite a number of otherwise fattening foods. But diet is insufficient. A regime of exercise will need to be established. It’s simply a matter of taking control. Discipline begins on the inside and works its way outwards: from the soul (our inner-most part) to the heart to the mind to the body, and into the environment.

I ended the working evening with PIL’s Flowers of Romance (1981) playing in the background: