Busiest Week Part 2

OK, so the last post covered up to Thursday lunchtime - but the day was far from over. In fact I managed to spend one whole hour at home between 8.20 am and 10.15 pm...
From the college I go straight to choir practice, two hours every Thursday afternoon with our (alternative) community choir. I then had an extra sing-through of an old number we want to revive, just to make sure those of us who've been in it from the year dot (1993 I think) could remember our parts. And a rush over to the venue where I run my poetry courses to pay some rent money. And off to the secondary school to catch my youngest in her first ever hockey team game. I'm not a standing-on-sidelines mum, as a rule. Fortunately it was sunny and not too cold, and I could give encouraging feedback on her goalkeeping even though they'd lost quite dramatically to the other school.
So my hour at home was between 5.10 and 6.10, during which time of course I had to feed her and bundle the games kit into the washing machine. And off to work again...
7.00-9.30 in a delightful village hall near the A303. Getting there was a bit of a pain. My chosen route takes me along a very narrow lane to reach an underpass, the most direct route to the village concerned. And for the first time ever I met a vehicle coming the other way. It was dark. The headlights dazzled me. I'd just come round a bend and down a slope, so assumed the other driver would back into the nearest passing-point. We both waited. No-one moved.
Eventually I decided to try reversing. Well, someone had to or we'd be there all night. Did I mention my clutch is at the end of its adjustment and will need replacing fairly soon? So reversing uphill and back round a bend involved stalling at least twice and a fair amount of cursing. When I finally managed to pull into a gateway I noted that the other driver was a woman (I'm afraid) - in a 4x4. And she could have backed into the farmyard just past where we met, really easily. Nuff said.
This particular group of artists are unfailingly charming and proud of their little hall with its community breakfasts once a month. This week there were only two of them, which made me worry a little for their future - but I did hear the Treasurer mentioning the £140 in their bank account so no immediate likelihood of credit collapse. For such charming people, they seem to require quite difficult poses, slightly longer than I'd normally like to hold them. I've learnt this now and argue back - no, I'm not bending forward like that for fifteen minutes, no matter how much you want to imagine me bathing... After the tea-break with its chance for general chat, we did two longer poses of 'general abandonment' on a table dressed to resemble a bed. They were very pleased at how abandoned I could look.
Friday was another whole day at the college. One of those evocative Autumn mornings with the mist rising like steam from the river as I crossed it, and dew so thick it was almost frost. A heron stood sentinel by a rhyne, large and grey and hunched in the morning's chill. Reaching the town I drove past an easy parking space, then couldn't find another one and was stuck in the traffic queues for ten minutes until I could turn round and take it from the opposite direction. The room was cold for the first session, two poses. Charcoal and chalk on brown paper, followed by a close-up of one body section using cardboard 'viewfinders' - a rectangular hole to look through while held at arm's length. They're really coming on, this class. Some good results.
Off to the other campus and again, plenty of time sitting around reading my book and drinking coffee before the students wandered in from their break. They were all knackered after a day in London traipsing round galleries the day before. I was feeling similar so we agreed not to push ourselves too hard.
The tutor kept dropping in with promises of marks to come soon - she and their other tutor were in the staff room upstairs discussing their progress. Otherwise we were pretty much left to our own devices. They complained a little at the lack of tutorial content (the idea was that they should be self-directed by now), so in the end I took over a bit, suggesting poses and times and even towards the end, telling them to get out their sketch pads and work hard and fast with a few short poses. I've picked up a lot of tips over the years it seems. They finally got their previous assignment back as I changed ready to leave.
And so to the weekend, which should have been relaxing but was in fact spent in a state of high anxiety over the 'practice session'I had to lead for my Diploma course on Monday.
As this is now Tuesday, I can tell you that all the obsessive sleepless thinking paid off. But it was most uncomfortable at the time.