The wind woke me - as it will have done half the nation at least in the south east. Anyway it brought home that the clocks have changed. I started the day watching some political discussion on BBC 1 and then decided I ought to get the diary updated, As I write I listen to another of David Beardsley's microtonal guitar tracks on mp3.com - good but not my idea of easy listening.

Yesterday: I at last made a start on the set for WATCH a week today, with first of all rummaging through some lose music to see how much of it I could find as photocopy or even maybe the odd Fr Horn part. I found some trace of five of the six tunes which is a start. I have got the intro and the outro sorted - using a collection of Mediaeval and Rennaissance Canons which I got in Prague. I have set the intro in 5:4 - it's just four bars long with one syncopated phrase of the three and the opportunity for some seconds. The outtro is earlier and longer and has an ostinato for 2 parts whereas the canon is four part. The ostinato can be used as a ground - so there is quite a lot of possibilty in it. I thought we might start with that and then have the first instrument break off and play the meldody all the way through bringing the second instrument in at the first canon point in the second time through. I did a quick digital recording with flute and guitar to check the basics. It could be good.

This house has gone media mad. I see the new DVD player also plays mp3 discs and has a SPDIF co-axial out - which could for example link to the SPDIF in on the HiFi CDR. Have I mentioned that I have bought James' mp3 player off him? This is a hard-disc machine about the size of a CD walkman. After I had finished making the CD for Gilbert I ripped the whole thing into the portable and have now downloaded via the USB interface into the mp3 player as a kind of archive or reference.

I still haven't got round to putting up on the KK site some stuff about Tim Murray who will accompany Cleveland in a fortnight's time - I am dreadfully impressed by his Boulez connections.

I have been posting chunks of a speech by the UN AIDS Envoy for Africa which he gave in Washington DC a few weeks ago. This is the passage about orphans:

"Third, and to be dealt with briskly, is the question of orphans. As always, there are the hyperactive arithmetic calculations; fourteen million orphans now, twenty-five million by 2010. But whatever the numbers, we have very few solutions. If there really will be, at the outer limits, fifteen million AIDS cases in China by 2010, and twenty-five million in India, and eight million in Russia, then I ask you to reflect on the orphan problem down the road. We now rely primarily on grandmothers, and when they die, we're often faced with what are now called "sibling families". Communities, and foster parents, move heaven and earth to embrace these youngsters, but they all live in such extreme poverty, that another mouth to feed can push everyone over the edge.

We've been stymied by orphans, and now we're overwhelmed by orphans. Just last month, at a small gathering in Johannesburg, hosted by UNICEF with Carol Bellamy present throughout, attended by both Nelson Mandela and Graca Machel, plus activists and experts from within and outside Africa, an urgent effort was made, over the course of a day and an evening, to articulate policies which could confront the orphan dilemma and take successful models to scale. It's interesting that many of the recommendations focussed on Parliamentarians, religious leaders, national conclaves, and above all, the determination to launch a campaign to "Put Every Child in School".

I cannot emphasize strongly enough that education was raised by practically everyone. All of the Next Wave countries, indeed, all of the countries in the world, save two, have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Convention says, unequivocally, that primary education shall be free and universal. The same objective is embraced by the Education For All initiative, launched in Jomtien, Thailand in 1990,and reaffirmed in 2000 in Dakar, Senegal. The idea of the school as the centrepiece of the child's' life ... the anchor which gives a child the greatest sense of hope, confidence and self-worth - is now firmly entrenched in our international norms and our everyday dialectic. And yet, AIDS is playing havoc with the fundamental right of the child, especially the girl child --- gender again --- to education, and it's as though, seized by some perverse, passive compliance, we watch the havoc unfold and stand inert. It's unbearable, and it's indefensible.

I think and feel that progress was made at our meeting; I'm not sure how much progress. But of one thing I am certain: the next wave countries had better be concentrating now on how to address, nurture, embrace the orphan population. If the vast numbers get out of hand, the best clairvoyant on the planet won't be able to predict the consequences."

For more look at www.kwase-kwaza.org.

And here's the selling message - Cleveland's recital will raise money which will all go straight to the front line - into Grace and Lynn's harship fund which pays for shoes, bus fares, school dinners for children impacted by the AIDS epidemic in various townships. You can route your cash reliably in this direction - at the same time as listening to someone born in the Bahamas, musically educated in Texas and Venice accompanied by someone who has assisted Boulez - playing Mozart, Spirituals and "My Way" - do you know of a better offer if you are near Guildford on the 9 November?