The website I am working on www.kwase-kwaza.org (built by Peter Chatterton) is named after a school in the Alexandria township in Johannesburg. This school is run by Grace Sibeka who I was lucky enough to entertain to lunch along with Lynne Coull about a month ago at my house. Two days later Grace was meeting Michael Parkinson in South Africa. Here�s Parky�s account of the meeting - as published in the Daily Telegraph. He writes:

"That ever-present contrast between those who live in the land of luxury and those who live on the very brink of existence is nowhere more stark than in Johannesburg. Twenty minutes away from the hotel, in our crew bus accompanied by an armed guard we drive alongside the Alexandria township, where more than three million people live in a hideous shanty town of bric-a-brac and tin. It looks like a gigantic scrap metal dump.

We are stopped by a road-block and politely but methodically searched by the police. Our guard�s gun is taken away and then returned because his permit is in order. We drive into the shanty town of Zama Zama. We are here to film a team of women looking after victims of AIDS, not just the sick but also the children orphaned by the ghastly pandemic. Nearly five million people South Africans are infected with HIV/AIDS. Every day 1,500 more people are infected.

In the hut where the women meet, an undertaker�s list of coffin prices is pinned to the wall. Grace Sikeba heads the team. She was a cost clerk before she was made redundant at the age of 40. Since then, she has dedicated herself to working in the community.

She takes us into the tiny rented room in a dilapidated garage that is used as a nursery for children aged between two and six who have been orphaned by AIDS. The disease has orphaned 800,000 children in South Africa; Grace has 50 of them. More than two thirds of them are HIV positive.

It is impossible to be the dispassionate assessor, the balanced journalist in such a situation. The children sing and dance for us, grab our hands, show off, tumble and chatter - like children do. They don�t know the trouble they are in. Not yet.

We know but we feel so helpless. I am so angry that I buy the premises. Now they don�t have to worry about the rent and we can start building a proper school.

(From the Daily Telegraph 10 July)

The social event last Friday was with Lynne�s boss - Bishop David Beetge. He was very pleased that Parkinson had got involved in a project in the area he was responsible for not least because the purchases of the school is a problem solved.

As a Gemini, I like to stay in touch with a wide range of points of view. The Situationist newsgroup piled a long meditation into my mail box, from the end of which I quote:

"Modern activism - worse in the post-christian anglo-saxon world then anywhere else - begins with the conceit of moral superiority, argues and condemns on the basis of an abstract Right and Wrong. It rises no further than a vacuous and offensive condescension towards the politically correct set of "victims" and bases its power upon the same conceited premises which it inherits from a discredited Western Church - stripped of any convincing claim to Divine right or scientific merit. It is inherently dishonest and tyrannical; essentially bourgeois in its patterns of manipulation and self-worship."

Paul Wheeler mentioned to me that he was glad that this kind of thing hadn�t totalled disappeared off the planet. No shortage of pitfalls set out in this quotation.

It was kind of Robin to mention Blossoms in her diary - from the Plundafonix CD. Gilbert (whose piece Blossom is) likes the HORN drone piece best on the CD. I used to worry about this part of Plundafonix as it contained no songs and more experimental instrumentals, like the Sufi Moonheart. Fortunately Ayesha, the discoverer of this piece has given it the thumbs up. So maybe I should relax about it and let the tracks get on with it while I think about something else.

The post-Fifths piece progressed a little today - it has a kind of motoric pulse typical of middle period minimalism - not necessarily a good thing. I put some improv D-Horn into Cubasis through the MIDI port and have been playing live flute against that for a bit. I rediscovered a second post-fifths piece as a WAV and I started fooling with a guitar part for this.

A major step. I programmed Gilbert�s new piece - Faces - boy was I in the mood for that. I can't wait to hear what his recording sounds like. He likes 3/4 : 6/8 cross rhythms and on this one has woven in some the fairly "out" harmony - utterly irresistable. Tomorrow I must post him the Fifths CD which I have made for him and put a note in about Faces.

I mailed Paul Bell to tell him Cathy's name was in an news item on the Nick Drake files just in case they found this an amusing quirk of fate.

I am glad to hear that Mark's drum machine has turned up.