8.00 am. Soul searching. Resolution. 8.30 am. A little website management before my ambulation to the School on a bland, still, and overcast Autumn morning:

9.00 am. I had occasion to prepare for the the today’s and tomorrow’s teaching, chit chat with staff (the busyness of our lives makes theses exchanges too rare), and a chance answer correspondence. 9.30 am. A BA Dissertation tutorial on the topic of Abstract Expressionism and Bebop, followed by a PhD Fine Art tutorial with Eileen, who is nearing the conclusion of her extensive tapestry based on the troubles in Northern Ireland:

12.00 pm. The School of Art Management Committee. During the next three hours, we trawled through a consideration of most every dimension of the School’s activities: research, teaching, and administration. 3.15 pm. Un déjeuner tardif. 3.30 pm. A tedious but necessary scrutiny of my CV, websites, and university profiles, in order to discern what needed updating in terms of publications and such like. The remedial action will take some time. 

6.30 pm. Practise session 1. 7.30 pm. I made a start on a sample art history lecture, to be delivered at Saturday’s Open Day:

I need to kill three birds with one stone: 1. Explain the nature of the discipline, 2. Demonstrate the discipline in action; and 3. Enthuse students about its study. And, in tandem, I turned on the propaganda machine — issuing Tweets and Facebook posts in advance of the day. I received, from one of our alumni in response to the advert for the sampler (above), a lovely anecdote about what must have been my lecture on ‘Minimalism in Art and Music’, from the old Contemporary Art 1 module: