I had two classes on this date. One at The Fiddler's Elbow and one at The Standard. And after the previous week's disaster, I was very concerned about both of them.
During the week, I made repeated visits to The Fiddler's Elbow to check on the progress of their renovations, and to make sure that they were definitely going to be ready in time for the class. If it had been even remotely possible, I would have found a different venue, but there was nothing available. On my final visit, I spoke to one of the management staff, who assured me that everything would be ready.
On the day, I arranged for Qba to be the model and Ayusha to be the tutor at The Fiddler's Elbow, while I went to The Standard. I got my room ready, sat in a corner and started to quietly stress about everything that could go wrong. Ultimately, I only really relaxed when my girls turned up. I couldn't call Ayusha, because I didn't want to interrupt her class, but when she didn't call me to tell me about anything going wrong, I figured they must be going right.
This wasn't my best class ever, but none of it went particularly wrong this time - at least, there was no reason for anyone to register any kind of a complaint. The sad thing was that it wasn't really all that much of a success, either. It felt like one of those classes that occasionally are a bit misjudged - where the person who booked it didn't really consider that it might not be to the tastes of her friends. This has happened maybe twice before (which isn't bad, considering I've been doing these classes for four years now) and on each previous occasion, I've managed to get everybody to enjoy themselves after a while. But not this time.
Even the point where I asked for two volunteers was met with complete resistance; something that has never happened before. In fact, it seemed to provoke a bit of an argument among the girls, about who it was that would have the burden of volunteering. Normally there's a bit of banter and some mild trepidation going on while they work out what they're volunteering for, which is all part of the humour. But this time the request was treated like an actual ordeal, so I let it go and moved on to the next challenge instead.
(The good thing was that while I was responding to the difficulties of this class, I realised that I was still maintaining a sense of humour and I was still handling every well - and I realised that I'd done the same thing the week before. I realised that during that terrible class, I'd actually done a lot of things right and that I'd been very hard on myself since then. I should have been congratulating myself on being able to deal with a very challenging situation and salvaging something from it, rather than condemning myself for not being able to make it perfect.)
I persevered with the girls in this class and managed to make it work. A genuinely frustrating moment that I had to deal with was watching one of the girls - in what I can only assume was some sort of passive aggressive protest - steadily work her way through an entire sketchpad, use it up, demand a fresh one and do the same thing all over again. She doodled something onto every single page of both pads and all I could do was observe this and wonder how to handle it when she demanded a third. I wasn't sure if I should take a stance and simply refuse to hand another one over. Ultimately, I did give her a third one, but told her there weren't any others. I always carry a couple of spares, and there were more available, but I kept them hidden.
It wasn't the most enjoyable experience I've had with the business, but at least it wasn't a failure. Probably the best thing I can say about this class.
Oh - and Qba and Ayusha had a fun class with fun girls at The Fiddler's Elbow.
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