Friday night Yvonne and Vita went to see a preview of Hecuba with Vanessa Redgrave in St Martins Lane - seems to have gone down quite well. All about killing children - echoes of Iphigenia. I have been thinking about the North coast of Crete where it can still feel unchanged since Homer�s time.

I enjoyed the Delacroix study on Saturday night - the more the programme went on the more I saw in the original - made me want to read 19C Fr poetry. I see now that Tom Verlaine gets mentioned in discussions of this topic.

Caught some Rice and Hannigan on BBC3. Went for a walk on a hill. Various e-mails about the infinity-trial.

9 people for lunch on Sunday to celebrate James� 21st the food turned out very nicely. The weather was kind - my sister said I looked like my father. Railway was unkind between Gfd and Leantown on Sunday evening. . Difficult getting going on Monday morning.

Got a better fix on Appel - he wants to emphasise the upside of 20C culture esp in NYC - the idea that European artists come to the US and get liberated. Mondrian is an excellent example. Yellow is an important colour. Matisse is an important artist. I listened to my collection of early Monk and decided he was just wrong about it being too difficult. Many brilliant compositions.

Somehow the connection grew in my mind between Appel and Gracyk - so much so that I have just ordered Gracyk�s second book. Gracyk wants to believe that despite everything there is a space for authenticity within rock music - that it can be justified in classic liberal terms. Gracyk and Appel might make an alliance - they are both American optimists from the 20th century. They are both modernists wanting to free modernism from cultural pessimism. Is this quixotic? Well in the 21st century its more quixotic than it used to be, Panorama interviewed some very pessimistic Americans last night.

My fridge is nearly empty.