I phoned Nick Brown � he greeted me with the news that he is getting married in June in Greece � I congratulated him, of course. My next question was whether the arrangements for the wedding had quite obliterated all other considerations eg those flowing from his involvement in the Hughes Hall Cambridge Music Society � my current target for exposing England to the astonishing live assault of Gilbert Isbin on the ND oeuvre. No the window of opportunity is open . My next task is to do the pitch.

Inevitably the international situation loomed large in our subsequent conversation. Nick was quite strongly pro US in an interesting but eccentric manner. What especially intrigued me was the hermeneutic dimension of his viewpoint. One can start with the easy agreed point that the US is bad at getting its point of view across. But it follows from that there is a significant task termed �sympathetically trying to understand the authentic point of view of the USA post 9-11.� And its is this that Nick devotes his intellectual powers to � in the face of the rest of the world� incomprehension. I found that the most intriguing part of his exposition was to do with authenticity � a US view that international agreements are inherently inauthentic and that this existential base provides a rationale for their current position on all those vexed questions of international compromise.

I suppose my first response to this is to think of Brian Jones in the terminal phase of the Rolling Stones. He had strong emotions about what was happening given that he had been a founder member and visionary. And for a while Mick and Keith used their empathy understanding and knowledge to accommodate and appease him � and then their patience gave out. Nick�s proposition means that the rest of the world has to do the Mick and Keith to the US�s Brian Jones and keep on doing it � because the US/Brian can�t get it together to explain where they are really coming from � because its all too much. Strange fails by a long chalk to describe the oddity of this state of affairs.

I phoned Tracy at the DTI and resolved that it was in the organisations�s interest to buy her a pretty decent lunch somewhere in SW1 before we are all very much older.

I am listening through to the Island ND compliation � just now its Poor Boy � enough said on that matter I think. It opens with Cello Song and I couldn�t help thinking back to that amazing anniversary concert where AK put together the string section with the vocalist from the Albion Band and we all gave it our best shot.

I still have designs on Time of No Reply � listening to it just now I am struck by how conversational it is.