8.50 am. A vitalising Autumn morning, with a low raking light that draws one out-of-doors:

9.00 am. An inbox cull and a diary reshuffle. My aim was to compress similar activities into the same block of time, and to, thereby, create a space in which to think and act in relation to one thing and not to others also. 10.00 am. The first MA fine art tutorial of the day. 11.10 am. Vocational Practice:

A ‘fake’ seminar debate on the proposition: ‘One day, digital art will replace traditional, manual mediums such as painting, illustration, photography, and printmaking’.

Some principles and observations derived from today’s engagements:

• Art is a game that we invent and play with ourselves. If the rules are not sufficiently difficult to follow, the risks sufficiently great, and the prize worth attaining, we lose interest.
• Participation is an indicator of confidence in ourselves and of our commitment to the community.
• Artistic growth involves the perpetuation, extension, and variation of what we do best.
• Every idea that we have is of significance: either now or in the future; either as a contribution to, or a consolidation of, or a distraction from, our present trajectory. Discernment is everything.
• We’re apt to hit around the nail before we hit upon its head.

2.00 pm. The second MA fine art tutorial:

3.00 pm. I finalised arrangements for tomorrow’s outing to Liverpool with Helen, one of our stalwart secretaries, before heading home to work. The smell of spirit-based paints drifting in from outside the building, where the decorators were at work, had made me woozy. 3.30 pm. Some email, bitty admin clean-up, schedule adjustments, and teaching prep for Thursday.

6.30 pm. I watched a TV programme on Sir Alex Ferguson: Secrets of Success, which looked at his approach to leadership. I’ve as much interest in as knowledge of football, but one should recognise and applaud greatness and success in any field of human endeavour. The one thing Fergusson didn’t (in all likelihood) do as a leader was study leadership technique. Instead, it emerged from his personality — one that had been shaped by the values of his upbringing.

7.30 pm. I returned to the small-grant application, which I’d completed in draft form on Saturday. Having received comments from colleagues, I was better able to bolster its claims and deal with dimensions of the qualifying criteria that I’d not yet addressed.