Personal and Impersonal Training

 Personal and Impersonal Training

 

I’m standing in a steady drizzle, on a surface of uneven and cracked tarmac. At least I am not wearing singlet and shorts but a fleece and cycling leggings. I am being told to do various physical movements, most of which I find difficult, if not painful. This has got to go on for an hour, unless the rain worsens. What age am I? Seven, or nearly seventy? In my head at this very moment not much separates the two.

Being a Zoom Student

Being a Zoom Student Many months ago, I signed up to a summer art history course at the Courtauld Institute: a week’s intensive study of Manet and Cezanne. The course would include guided time looking at works by these artists in the Courtauld’s gem of an art gallery in Somerset House. Alas, the suffocating blanket of Lockdown fell on us all. The Summer School was in jeopardy. The Courtauld decided to move some of the courses online, including mine, discounting for the lack of the real art. So it was, in mid-July, that some 20 students filed into a virtual lecture hall via their “devices” (the preferred, rather old fashioned, word for all our phones, tablets, lap and desktops).