Vita always opens her presents with enthusiasm. In the evening she went out on the town with a group of friends and came home around midnight.

I spent the day lisening to my own tracks from the last two months and re-reading New Media in Late Twentieth Century Art which I last read about a year ago. Re-read the Mick Beck article in the Wire - he has taken up bassoon because there are many fewer bassoon players in the world compared with tenor players. He says he is going to keep at it until dexterity goes or it is too heavy to lug around. I suppose thats a realistic perspective for an improvising musician in their 50s. He also refers back to a philosophical tussle with Derek Bailey over the issue of non-idiomatic improvisation.

There is a really interesting review of a Cage festival in Berlin. They punctuated the festival with various interpretations of 4 mins 33 secs eg solo pianist, string quartet - on the hour. I found this idea very moving. They also offered creative reinterpretations of works like Fontana Mix.

I decided to inflict my composition Fifths on Andrew. I can think of noone better qualified to try it out.

The Potters Bar train crash is truely horrific. I was on one of those trains on Tuesday - but I expect other diarists may use them more frequently than I. James probably has a better view of the physics but I wonder what kind of event can have created the moment to turn the last carriage through 90 degrees. In most train crashes any rotation is about the axis of the motion of the train.

I have been more and more annoyed in the last month at the terrible ride quality on my regular daily train journey - 90 minutes of daily hsaking and buffeting is wearing. Now it will also be alarming.

Vaguely hung-over this morning. A good walk on the hill with the dog may be what is needed.

I listened to a jazz trio from NYC on Radio 3 - alto electric bass and drums. They were original and impressive without being inspiring. In the interview one of them spoke about growing up in NYC when people like Fred Frith were gigging around. What does that make me I wonder - having taught improvisation with Fred before he went there following a period when we jammed more days than not for a few months. Old must be the answer. Probably explains why I keep on thinking about Miles permanent revolution.

The Wire has a great letter from someone who knew Cornelius Cardew which points out that he is the only British composer ever to be banned from the House of Commons. The writer links his views on Ireland and the manner of his death. One might add that he died at the times when that wasnt the only incident of strange security related deaths in the UK involving members of the middle classes promoting unorthodox views. Part of a great British tradition - cf Lawrence of Arabia and Alan Turing - (possibly).

I think I have got two back-to-back versions of Alfie which I might bank. I have started on a cutdown loop from several minutes worth of remix from Summer Lawns - she could see the valley barbecues. Its sitting in Wavelab at the moment.

Great excitement about A Beevor on the telly last night. Interesting to see him and some of his research team. Obviously you cant give a decent historical explanation of the Battle of Belin in 50 minutes. You especially can't explain the behaviour of the Red Army. A German Jewish survivor of Berlin made a good point comparing the German behaviour in USSR with the Red Army in Berlin. The Red Army knew the population was starving and immediately had trucks of food arrive - even while the phase of rape and pillage was underway. One member of the Red Army was interviewed who said that when he got to Berlin they gathered together the survivors froma group of three hundred and sixty men who started the war together - there were six left.

Stalingrad and Kursk have to be the more interesting battles. The outcome of Berlin is not in doubt and its really a question of why the Russians used such wasteful tactics. In Stalingrad there is the conflict of titans and absolute military brilliance in the encirclment - the spearhead of tanks breaking through the weak part of the line and charging across the snow covered steppes at night to capture the vital bridge. The point is that the Soviet system could engender that kind of collective action in addition to the Maoist human wave tactics used in Berlin.

Then there is the way the battle is perceived in Germany - no way that the leadership can spin its way out of disaster. Hitler sees it as a world historical conflict between two cultures - in his mind the Soviets prove themselves to be superior to the National Socialists - from there on the belief grows that the German people deserve their destruction.

Have just started to read Baudrillard who is going up in my estimation. EG

`The "political economy of the sign" was still conceptualised as the result of the extension of the commodity law of value and its verification at the level of the sign. Whereas the structural configuration of value puts an end to the system of production and political economy. All of this along with the code migrates into the realm of simulation.......This is the end of the signifier-signified dialectic that permitted the accumulation of knowledge and meaning, the linear syntagm of cumulative discourse.......Art and industry can thus exchange signs: art in order to become a reproductive machine (Andy Warhol/The Factory)...and production to lose all social purpose and exalt itself as the last hyperbolic aesthetic sign (the logo).`

I was once responsible for introducing a new logo at DTI.