The art gallery is fairly unchanging at present, so I just popped in for a coffee and a quick look at old favourites. Then to the Whitworth, which is constantly changing, and another coffee.

Current (small but perfectly formed) exhibitions at the Whitworth include 1960s textiles by Shirley Craven for Hull Traders. My view hovered between “bold” and “over-emphatic”, but there was no denying the exuberance of the designs. They shaded into gimmick and tackiness with the tomotom furniture of her husband, Bernard Holdaway – but you could still sense the crater left by that blast of creativity all those years ago. I may have dwindled into neutrals with age, but I still recall the wonderful arrival of vivid colours and big patterns during my childhood.

Another exhibition was “The ‘death’ of the life room”, looking at the changes since the 1950s in life drawing classes as part of formal art education. Life drawing had come to be viewed as a barrier to innovation and experimentation and was dropped. “Something’s lost and something’s gained” and the world probably doesn’t need any more meticulous recreations of plaster casts of ancient statues . . . but I couldn’t help comparing drawings by Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore with one I’d seen at the Tate exhibition by Minnie Hardman.