The worst snow for eighteen years, they say.

What would Colin have said? Undoubtedly, he would have made some pertinent comments about the media, and our penchant for a national crisis. But Colin is dead. And so, alas, there is nothing I can do but shake the snow from my wellies and enquire after Gareth, his health, and where he procured his rather fetching, undoubtedly new, bobble hat.

It was a bracing start to the day and yet it paled, quickly. Client L, for all her rosy cheeks, left the room having deposited, in earnest, a certain amount of the sexual shame she inherited from her demented, Plymouth Brethren parents. Oh, what matter? And yet it left a stain that attached itself to me, to my face, in fact, to my nose. Very slightly, it quivered. For a moment I had no control over my nose and, aware of the symbology, made a direct connection to Canova's Pauline. Clearly, this was all about my dick and my doomed, teenage groping of Pauline's left breast. I really must get back to Rome and finish the job properly.

The rest of the day I was restless. I tore a copy of Courbet from the shelves and stared at The Origin of The World for twenty minutes. Later, at home, I poured my flabby but bronzed body into my old wetsuit, slithered into the car and headed for the coast where I then staggered into the freezing winter sea. I roared into the waves as they annihilated, and yet affirmed, my burning body. Thank fuck for life, as they say.