Iain Cameron's Diary
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2002-06-18 - 5:58 a.m.

The trains are always worse in the heat.

I listened to Eno's Music for Airports to try to keep calm.

At work I spent some time getting together some links with the Skoda Auto College. Graham is already in touch and I mailed Peter Bullen at Hertfordshire U and Frank Nigriello at Unipart U about what they are up to.

Today was the day for the lunch between Tracy and John Gambles at Shad Thames and after that I spoke to John about the Skoda venture - a brand he has a long association with in the UK. As I was leaving I pressed on John the idea of trying the Cassandra Wilson album which has not shifted in my affections.

In the cab on the way there Tracy talked about how one of her twins had developed croup in the middle of the night and how she ended up in A&E. I told her similar stories about James as a baby and she asked why it was that the handbooks didnt explain that this happened to most parents of young children. Good question.

Paul Wheeler mailed me a chunk of material about Islam's contribution to the development of science esp in the centuries before the Renaissance.

I also got a mail from Marianne Neville-Rolfe's secretary trying to re-establish an afterwork drink-chat. Generally I have the feeling that I ought to be reviving plans B and C. Realised that one of my assets is the global perpsective.

I heard a track from the live H Hancock/M Brecker album of Miles/Trane music - My Ship by Kurt Weil - very compelling. When I got home I stuck my head round the door of Vita's room to find she was listening to a track from Blue - she explained that she had been listening to Big Yellow Taxi which she really liked. Well I never.

I came across a really interesting late 60s almost free track by Wayne Shorter which sounds like its got John Maclaughlin on it - specifically it sounds as if he is using the same guitar as he used on his great debut album Extrapolations.

I bought a couple of newspapers to try to get some sense of how the climate of opinion is shifting. In the Evening Standard Osborne was explaining how he is not simply a right wing propagandist. Peter Kellner was translating the situation into the Blair-Brown relationship especially as a strengthening of the latter. Lots of people seem to think that the electorate has quite simply withdrawn its trust. At this point I could drop into my standard pov on the Ecclestone F1 affair but I think I'll spare you that.

I read an article about the public sphere and the nature of communication - mainly drawing on Habermas but also on someone called Frankl that I don't know of. It is good to have an ideal of a communication-situation which has liberating potential which you can you use to assess the gap with whats really going on.

Met with Hiliary Cotton (Robert's wife) Annie and Heather (dancer) to plan our contribution to the Summer School event in 4 week's time.

I got a mailing from a long distance health survey that I am involved in which started in the 1970s. Its has already thrown up a lot of new observations but they clearly feel that they are into some important new territory and so they wrote to those involved to keep them interested. The new data is about the impact of retirement especially early retirement on health and the link between that and the different activity patterns people adopt post retirement.

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