We ran the scenario event yesterday � the process stayed on the rails and we got some clear results which seem to align with an announcement last month on the way the country wants to tackle some of the massive confusion that surrounds sub-degree vocational education. Now we have to set up two events next week building on where we have got to so far. Fortunately the people I am working with are very inventive and energetic and so we might get there. We are just starting to get some friction from some of the interest groups that we are inevitably going to run up against,

After the scenario session I stopped off at the pub and went through the questionnaire results to get a picture of the emerging conclusions so that I would be able to come up with the next steps over night.

Before I went to the office this morning I did some more work on the MM piece. I ended up using a little Casio GM box that I bought for �25 a few years back. It is small and has a single MIDI in plus two jacks out and a headphone socket. I rather like patches 17 to 21 � I was just busking around on a reduced sized keyboard. Its alright for embellishments and I rather like the octave up and down buttons and the increment and decrement patch buttons. I also tried out some lines on the Leamington flute. Actually I like a lot of the timbres in the Casio and the pre-amp is cleaner than the Yamaha XG box � also the case is more robust. There may be only 128 patches but I know where they are more or less � so maybe I have been neglecting this device for too long.

I listened to Laura Nyro�s last studio album on the way to work. Ideologically its not very much my cup of tea but somehow it works. The Amazon review mentions Smile � which I think is a masterpiece � very much from the Pink Moon period � and then Nested which I still have on vynil (I think) � and is an interesting document of the early 80s � and apparently out of print. On this morning�s CD there is �The Descent of Luna Rose� which students of Pink Moon might see some point in - not forgetting how strong Imac is about this artist in The People�s Music. I am saving becoming a CD completist for some rainy day.

I wondered whether we have entered an era of muse desert? Whether the preconditions for being visited by the muse and responding suitably have become less common � not for me as an individual so much as for the culture generally? I was partly moved to this question by thinking about the VW song on Plunderfonix and how it came to be there.