Managed to use that benchmarking stuff about Germany on Dave from the Sector Skills Development Agency in Birmingham so it paid off to some degree. Graham seemed happy with the way things were shaping up. (The Academy was the headline in the Birmingham local daily - not necessarily a good thing.)

Everyone is fed up with travelling and looking at alternatives. The drive up was OK except for a gesture from a lorry driver as I left the M4 in Berkshire to go North. The car today has a CD player that works and I listened to the Velvet Underground Yellow Banana album with Nico. At the time this first came out I was into Country Joe and the Fish - ND's first appearance was at a Country Joe event in London and at that time I made a particular point of getting to them. But of course I can't be sure - not in the same way I can about the RFH appearance.

I explained to Graham some of the ideas that came up yesterday on trying to put an overall shape on developments integrated systems for powering vehicles. This is a possible source for Academy material.

We also spoke about John Gambles and Quadrangle and Graham seemed rather interested in that avenue. As John said on the phone this week there is a definite sense of gathering momentum. (Graham has a purple 40 watt Marshall combo in maroon from the mid 70s - he would certainly drive a hard bargain.)

Back here I copied a couple of bars of viola drone into Wavelab and Traktor and set the two turntables so that they were spinnning at 25% different rates. I was hoping to get a harmonically rich drone where the component notes were largely rational distances apart. I recorded the two Wavs playing simulateously at different rates and loaded the result into Wavelab to try some plug in FX. The chorus could make a big difference to the sound for a small shift in parameters. More study needed.

I built the sound field up piece by piece as I recorded it adding some stuff out of a rhythm box and a low pedal from the CZ101. Its quite easy to see this kind of method in terms of certain approaches used by abstract expressionists.

Rachel Bamfylde rang and reminded me that I said I would host a lunch for Lynn Coull in two weeks time. She is the mainstay of the Highveld project in two weeks time and visiting the UK from SA. Yvonne and Vita are away that weekend. This is about the right lead time for something like that - and it is a Sunday so I will have decent preparation time. Apparently the plan is that people bring food. Well that will be a Sunday to remember.

We got a letter from Buhala Lodge which is on the southern borders of the Kruger on a terrace overlooking Crocodile River - it tells of a fight between a crocodile and a leopard on the bank of the river - SA is a country of great contrasts. .

Even though Yvonne went out to a fair-trade seminar last night - which I ducked - neither of us can wait to get back to Buhala and its utter colonialism.