A hectic couple of days. We spent most of yesterday in the boardroom doing medium term strategy and then a bit of time on the business objectives for 2004. I had spent most of the previous day assembling my analysis of key skills for the next decade which grew to about 25 pages long � it�s a kind of bottom up exercise. I have got to the top level and I have started to think about who I am going to bounce it off.

I have started with Keith and my boss.

I spent the evening at Nuthurst Grange � an Edwardian house about two and a half miles East North East of Tanworth in Arden where there was a reception hosted by Frances. I bumped into Nick B who I had last seen at Wolfson College a couple of months back when we visited the Cambridge Manufacturing Leaders course where he was giving a guest presentation. The 25-pager is partly an input to the morning which Keith has asked me to put together for the auto specific version of that product.

I have only ever driven a Jaguar two seater once � it was three years ago and it was fitted with a radar controlled automatic cruise control so it literally had a mind of its own which added to the novelty of the experience. I bumped into the technologist who had hosted that event and we found an area that we are both thinking about currently.

I gave Frances a copy of Lullabyes to try out on his daughter. He had invited me to join him and his colleagues for a meal after the reception which I have to say was exceptionally good. I have never had Sancerre as a rose before. I was sitting next to someone who owns a canal barge. One of the things we all talked about was the Big Read.

It was around midnight as I started to drive back over the ridges of the Forest of Arden. There was no moon but it was a clear night and the stars were out. A planet with a reddish tinge was on the horizon. I had Paul�s Red Blues playing and I wondered whether to take the right turn and go up to the churchyard but concluded that would really be pushing my luck too far.

I could go on a lot about Red Blues. Its got quite a bit of flute on it � Paul�s partner Carole is a fantastic player with an incredible tone and this is the first CD where she is featured. For me this pushes parts of it in the direction of the Tumbler � the John Martyn album which has one of Paul�s songs on it and one of his poems as a slieve note. One of the songs with Carole is a rocking 6:8 like Frostie which is very visionary. The album finishes with Easy Time which goes back a long long way. I put it in the same bracket as All Along which was on the previous CD and was one of Ian M�s favourites. And then of course there�s the eponymous Ghosts which always has me singing along on the chorus.