8.30 am. A little admin to begin. I often start Monday mornings by engaging a particularly irksome task, on principle. It helps to get me into first gear, immediately. 9.00 am. The beginning of preparations for the Abstraction: Practice, Theory and History, 1913 to the Present module, which will be delivered in the new academic year. First: the PowerPoint template is conceived (to the strains of Michael Tippett’s Concerto for Double Strings (1938-9). Once the module’s visual identity is established, its conceptual content follows more readily, I find:

10.15 am. To the School …

… where I’d received a postcard (apposite in the light of this morning’s work) from a former student:

10.30 am. I composed a feedback email to a PhD Fine Art student, to follow up a phone tutorial we’d had last week. Sometimes, better ideas for discussion occur to both the tutee and the tutor later, and on reflection. A momentary period of dizziness had me speeding for homebase. My blood pressure is borderline normal to low (which is very low by my standards), my respiration is impaired, head and limbs aches, ears are ringing, eyes are bleary, and energy levels, dismal. It feels like a viral onslaught. But, then again, so do my recurrent bouts of ME and allergic responses. Time will tell. To bed, until lunchtime.

After lunch and more bed (sleep was evasive), I sat in front of my computer … dazed and blank. Nothing was going to happen. I’ve only small bouts of concentration to spend at present; and these were better invested in reading, making notes, and dozing in my rocking chair, under the Velux, in the sunlight:

7.30 pm. An evening of physical repose and spiritual exercise.