They say the house is much cleaner without me walking in and out of it so often. I picked up Vita last might from the cinema in the new car and she seemed rather impressed with it. I thought it would be too old fashioned for her. Oh well you can never tell with teenagers. She had her high boots on and looked about eighteen.

Yesterday afternoon a new portable PC arrived as well � which gives me a new work e-mail � plus something else to fit into my personal digital music regime. It has one USB port and a CD writer. Industry Forum�s strategy is to archive onto CD � can�t be bad � but it means some new technology to learn. I have also decided that I will buy back from James the mp3 player � he will find the cash more useful. This stores an enormous quantity of mp3 which it takes in digitally via USB.

I am thinking of loading Cubase-Go onto the portable though maybe I will wait a bit before doing that � there is an issue about how to get Cubase files and the associated digital recording files from one machine to another which I need to think through carefully.

This week I quite got into the idea of having a MIDI based studio in Leamington. This technology has got stacks of life left in it � and I have a number of Midi synths � two Casio hardware, two Yamha hardware, a Roland softsynth etc. I have never really mastered the patch editor on the AWE32 � Vienna soundfont � and I rather fancy using this on the part which I owe Mark for BBC500. Anyway that little cluster was bubbling away in my mind as a manageable unit.

I suppose the trouble with technology is that it creates opportunity.

I listened to Piano Phase, Phase Patterns, Pendulum Pulse and Four Organs on the drive back from Leamington to Guildford. What extraordinary music � post Its Gonna Rain but before clapping and drumming. It was really radical stuff � and paralleled the release of In C , Rainbow in Curved Air and Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band. Reading Potter has taught me how to listen better to Four Organs � it is so funky � like an energy burst every time the chord kicks in � I am speechless with admiration. Apparently there is a debate about whether it really caused a riot at an early playing in a conventional programme. It deserves to have done.