People talk about the light or the quiet and I get that, but for me the day starts with the smell of the box. Linseed oil, turpentine, a whiff of old wood that's soaked up thirty years of pigment. It's the first thing that tells me I'm back in the work, before my eyes are even properly open. My daughter says it smells like a hospital, which I think is the cruelest thing a teenager has ever said to me.

There's a tube of Naples yellow in there I've had since my atelier days. The label peeled off years ago, the crimp is barely holding, but it's one of the few paints I refuse to throw out. Not because it's good, it's gone a bit dull, but because I remember exactly where I bought it and what I was painting that month. A whole year of my life in that little tube.

I keep meaning to clean the box out. I never do.