Dredged around in the budget papers for colleagues � looks like the White Paper is on for next Tuesday. Mark Rylands was magnificent last night in the Kelly re-enactment � absolutely stupendous � up there with Emma T�s ex doing Heydrich at Wannasee. Just as well as I am not invited to No 11 � I�d have to kick someone. Last time I was in Downing St I nicked an ashtray. It was ages ago.

Steve and I drove down from the upper red standstone to the Jurassic to meet Helen who had come North for the occasion. Steve was pitching hard the ACE business I am doing. I started getting some questionnaires back and Captain Peter sent the OIM stats. At least no one else is doing this stuff. We thought we might have lunch next month with Helen�s boss Richard who seems to be good at leveraging funds out of the system.

Steve and I began to play with the idea of working some of the participants over in our own inimitable way. Interrogate the product until it confesses � as they used to say in the Covent Garden ad agency in the 80s.

Imagine my surprise when a fellow Moral Sciences student showed up on the Culture Show having won some 60 grand. Here s some of the business:

I'll sing you a song like a river
flowing,
give you the sea that grieves in me
like broken things forgotten.
I would stir the earth for you
Like a great wind blowing.
But I am going where the moon
Goes now
When she has finished sewing up
The sky
And sits and eats stars
On the other side

You don�t need me etc etc etc