Getting ready for my trip to Brussels later today � I have left everything to rather the last moment. The week so far has been taken up with working on the national syllabus and advising colleagues on where we might be going next in our bid for EC funds.

Also lots of to-ing and fro-ing on issues to do with identity and poetry. It becomes clearer and clearer that the Plath-Hughes episode has elevated itself into a paradigm. This paradigm is being developed cumulatively by some excellent writers and critics building on each others� insights. It seems to me that this thing will roll on for a very long time to come.

Discussions with Paul W about the minimal and the narrative self � concepts which seem to bring together issues in critcism, robotics, psychiatry and philosophy. When you get to a certain point � say � in developing a robot you start to code a representation of where and what the robot is in relation to its environment and in that sense you begin to invoke the minimal self, The narrative self is a much richer creation built on the foundation of the minimal self � but between the two is am amazing gulf that all sorts of strangeness can occupy.

For example theorists of schizophrenia are beginning to account for what schizophrenics say eg about telepathy and thought control in terms of a fragmentation of the narrative self. Materialists think that if this model succeeds it will be possible to map parts of the narrative self to brain locations and functions. What is especially fascinating is that Deleuze came into this zone from his own direction � advocating the abandonment of the narrative self and the immersion in the flux of the minimal self. There is also the small matter of the relationship between minimalism and the minimal self.