It was an unremembered dream and led me down the stairs and sat me at my table, half asleep, staring again at the Nude Maja. Within the beneficence of my half consciousness, I saw what I wanted. A woman posed, luxuriating within, the wisp of light rising from the plexus to a blaze of numinosity over her breasts. I was then, as yesterday, as complete as the Maja. But as I made coffee and had an unresolved shit to the wailing of a godawful Stockhausen, the irritant that woke me stirred again. Was she really so numinous as all that? There's a sharpness, a working intelligence in her eyes, a consciousness of self that has no connection whatever with her wonderful, naked body. And yet, as I went back and forth from the print to the toaster, I could never agree on the extent of this duality. It differed every time I looked. So, stuffing the print in my bag, I drove to work and tried to think of Helen instead. And, of course, all of this was very likely about Helen but, frankly, I was now more concerned with Goya and knowing I had rendered my projection, made no difference.

It was hopeless. Between clients I stared and stared again at the print. I heard Helen's footsteps around the house, but failed to imagine her. All day I was lost in the hinterland of that picture, assuming a subjectivity in the Maja, negating it, only to honour it again, negate it again.All the while my dick stirred and I did nothing. No thing. What I did instead was spend four hundred quid on two tickets to the Prado, Madrid. Thom and I fly out in the morning. We'll return to the source, the original, and I'll have done with the duchess who has ruined my peace.