The (un)shaggy dog story: The Friary School’s caretaker found a stray dog on the school grounds, so Hannah volunteered to sort it out. She called me as soon as I got home to take the dog to the local Vet. That dog was male and somewhere between a Lurcher and Weinerana, a beautiful looking dog with a calm disposition. He seemed quite unflustered as I put him in the car – more fascinated by the scent of Poodle than worried that I was taking him away.

Anyway, it turned out that the dog had got ID chips embedded and was registered at that very Vet’s surgery, his name was "Storm".
The moral of the story is to make sure I get my two hounds chipped. The Owner was on his way as I drove home.

In-class demo: these can go terribly wrong, but the picture below was done with a very small group and that makes concentration easier. It seemed to have a good effect on the kid’s work too, she was trying to complete a painting that had been worked on for months and not really going anywhere. Materials: acrylics (white, flesh, burnt sienna & burnt umber) onto cheapo brown sugar paper. Not bad for 10 minutes while I was talking to someone.

Michael Finnessy: Mars + Venus; the CD was delivered to me unsure that it would be like the stuff played by BBC r3. Having only played it once, I can’t say a lot, superficially it sounds like some of the Edgar Varese stuff bought a few years ago, and popularised by Frank Zappa. I don’t really have a method to explain it, but there is a vibrant space in the sound, the clusters of piano and other "classical " instruments, it mixes frantic energy and calmness closely vying for the stage. I need more of this kind of thing. Thanks to Here & Now!