I met a number of people at Milton Keynes whom I haven't seen for a while.

Normal Hall from the North East who I last spoke to in depth through a cloud of alcohol in a bar in Canada after a party with people from Tennessee and Mississippi in the Detroit Club - always a wonderful venue. Stephen Bates ordered a copy of Plundafonix which was most unexpected. He and I drove up to see Norman a few months back and I learned about Stephen's interest in orienteering. (he put us up in a castle!). Marianne was there who was my boss ten years ago - a person who is not scared to go out on a limb. The speakers at the seminar were pretty good - especially a Spaniard who has been working on economic clustering for ten years.

I went to Milton Keynes by normal Watership Down route to the M40 then via Bicester and Buckingham across the watershed. I decided on a different return journey through the Chiltern Hills via Aylesbury and Great Missenden. On impulse I stopped at the Bells cottage. Paul and Betty were away on different bits of business but Cathy was there revising and looking after the cat.

I asked her about practical criticism and she agreed that it was a subject that was hard to pin down. One approach is to read I A Richards book she suggested. She also thought that as a group activity it was still the case that men seemed to have natural advantages in terms of assertiveness and self confidence. I was really surprised to hear this. She is currently being taught by Ian Patterson - who was one of a group of poets including Paul Wheeler, Nick Totton and maybe Peter Ackroyd. Ian was a member of the first ever Stoney Ground venture which Steve Pheasant took to Edinburgh.

I mentioned to Cathy that I sometimes accompany Helen Lee who lives a few doors down the street from me and who was in her time also a Choral Exhibitioner at Caius. Helen remembers singing a choral work by Steve Pheasant. Cathy said she would check the Caius music library for this. If it turns up this will be quite a find and I will make sure that Peter Buckell - Steve's literary executor who lives in the same street as Helen and I gets a copy. It would be wonderful to get it performed here.

Cathy has a minidisc of her latest recital which includes Wolf Strauss and Holloway - but she is just working up to hearing it. I think she will pass it to me so that I can make a CD for Paul and Betty. Holloway is the most important composer writing in Cambridge for some years. I don't know much of his work but I looked him up in the Oxford Dictionary and he seems to be a neo Romantic.

As we talked about the future it seemed to me that Cathy could think of being a specialist interpreter of modern compositions. She can hit high E - over two octaves above middle C - a note which is no fun even on the flute. She can sing highly chromatic stuff virtually on sight. We talked a bit about graphic scores and also Meredith Monk.

Her Part II disertation is about time and language in the late Shakespeare plays. The way that sharp discontinuities in language relate to narrative progression. I have never looked in detail at this but I can well imagine that it is a rich vein to mine. That kind of thinking fed into some metaphysical modern compositions could really be a good mixture.