I used the Duosonic for the first time ages today � short scale and single coils live with a 70s Roland �clean� amp. Lately I have been playing full-scale, humbuckers and virtual with an overdriven valve sound � and I really enjoyed the change. Fortunately the freedom that an overdriven sound allows hadn�t made me too sloppy. The other half of the act was Margaret Hennesey-Brown who used to teach music at a local school and is very fast to adapt to any particular situation. Another rehearsal 9.00 am tomorrow morning.

I bought James a couple of pocket introductions for Tuesday � one on Postmodernism generally and in my view a much more helpful one on Foucault. I think he will enjoy the way that Foucault starts with the philosophy of physics and ends up with a completely novel view of history based on looking at the history of the theory and treatment of madness � it is an extraordinary intellectual feat . To have revised the history of medicine would have been enough but to be a revolutionary in terms of society�s understanding of itself! There is also lots of sex and drink and a bit of politics thrown in.

I did some Christmas cards � obviously in the wrong mood � each year I feel more and more that the very tight format of the card demands subversion. In the simplest terms � the process of making marks on the card and its envelope ought to be in the spirit (say) of Dan Graham � the tight convention needs to be edged out of � not utterly but sufficient to make the identification of the limit and the marginal play part of the totality.

Peter Buckle came over to deliver me the pack of Steve Pheasant�s flute (and other music). There are some really interesting things in there � Varese�s 21.5 for example written in the late 30s. So interesting to see it in the light of his impact on Miles� producer Teo and in parallel with the birth of bebop � some of it to me looks clearly rooted in the blues. Also a Penderecki score and two solo Maxwell Davies pieces. To have inherited this stuff feels as if brings an obligation to have a crack at performing it.

On the way through the bookshops to get this material I picked up a volume on the musicology of pop and rock � by one of Peter�s colleagues � Alan F Moore who is professor of pop music at the University of Surrey. He is interested in how meaning works in pop and rock � and seems (at first pass) to build a lot on the local history of the form in the UK in the 1970s � how progressive music was apparently �trounced� by punk pushing development or variation into areas like rhythm or timbre. Would his conclusions run with the USA I wonder where punk is much less of a clean break in the 70s and returns � again without such radical disruption with Nirvana at the end of the 80s. More later on this.

I found myself playing the acoustic piano today � especially �standards� � Pennies From Heaven, Night and Day, the Way You Look Tonight. I should explain this kind of �Broadway� music is all that I can play on the piano � but the piano is ideally suited to solo jazz explorations of this kind of stuff.

I got some material from Tricia Sibbons who is church warden at St Martins � where Ricardo has performed � Tricia has just come back from South Africa and has sent me some photographs of the Highveld. I really regret not being able to get to Ricardo�s performances - the link-up would have been really excellent.

There is some first rate material in today�s Guardian Magazine on HIV in South Africa � personal testimony plus the work of a photographer who has devoted himself to documenting the pandemic. We must try to get selections of all this material onto www.kwase-kwaza.org.

Vita had three friends to sleep over and they took over the back room and the big screen. James Yvonne and I retreated to his room to watch the programme about the impact of the First World War defeat on the German psyche � the other two kept blowing raspberries at the historiography and alluding to how this would all go down with the German ambassador to the UK.

Buoyed up by the feedback by Mark and Paul I thought I ought to get back to mixing and re-mixing in Cubase but really felt too knackered.