I had lunch with Chris Read. We worked together very intensely on a project eighteen years ago - I know this because it was the year James was born. We had to investigate Companies House which is based in Cardiff but also has a London outpost and suggest how it could operate more efficiently. A few years later Chris left the Department to work in the telecomms industry.

That area of work came to an end earlier this year with all the turbulence in that industry globally. He has got a job in an IT services firm in Farnham quite near the music shop where my Fender and Tascam mixer came from. The point of the lunch was partly to get some ideas on how he might pitch at DTI. I think the chances are quite good - the product is suitable - supporting clients in taking on monolithic IT departments and their contractors. The client list is pretty impressive and they have just got some repeat business on a high profile project in the Department.

Chris is relentlessly cheerful and good at the detail of systems. Account managaing Government Depts is a good niche for him. He mentioned over lunch that he has been to all 50 US states. I am very envious. The last few included Kansas and Idaho.

After lunch I mailed Tracy sounding out one particular area of work and she saw the point immediately. I mailed Chris back and I think he was rather surprised that the lunch paid off so fast.

Personnel sent me a letter explaining the enhanced terms on which they are prepared to exit me from the organisation. I am so suspicious these days that I insist on seeing everything in writing. I mailed Graham in Birmingham about yesterday's meeting in Hatfield (not about the gamelan) trying as far as I could to suggest that this had suggested a lot more potential avenues to develop without actually setting these out in detail. I also got an e-m from Milan in the Czech Republic asking if I was going to use slides with my "keynote" speech on June 11. I hadnt planned to but if it helps I am happy to knock some up.

In the evening I got an impulse to work over BBacharach's song for the film Alfie. I put the Fender amp on clean channel into the PC using the amp reverb and took a part down into Wavelab where I added some effects and then sent the effected part into the desk where I added tuba and then some electric piano. I tried a couple of versions of the e-piano and each one has a different set of further effects on the main track although the piano is relatively clean. On one of these the tuba sounds a bit like J Pastorius (in tone - not in the level of invention).

I am still making my mind whether to bank either of these. Maybe this slow ballad trick has become a bit repetitive. Alfie is a nice song though - some very well place chords. One of the most important is a D7 and E7 played simultaneously in the last section. Also it finishes with a cadence I have never seen before - the song is in C. The final two chords are a C7 with Csharp added and a more normal C major seventh with extras that you might expect at the end of a jazz ballad. The C7 is prepared by a D minor chord which is what you would expect at the point in the song - indeed there is a fair amount of D minor throughout - but it ends without touching the dominant even though the fancy D7/E7 is doing the same job in the harmonic narrative that it normally does in songs of that ilk eg The Shadow of Your Smile.

I have always had loads of time for BB. I bought Dionne Warwick's Walk on By as a single as soon as it came out when I was a teenager. BB studied with an armful of composers - Milhaud, Martinu, Cowell - and also was on the NYC bebop scene as a teenager and very into Parker. Not a bad endowment. I have always liked the original arrangements too although the songs can be done in all kinds of ways. Wives and Lovers has always struck me as song which shows his awareness of the Coltrane quartet - swinging jazz waltz in the minor with the main theme making the most of the ninth - a great modulation in the turnaround too. If the main section is F minor (rising to G minor) the second section goes

C m7 F 7 flat 9

Am 7 flat 5 D7

Eb maj 7 ./.

D7 sus 4 ./.

Db maj 7 C7 sus 4 tacet bar

Clever stuff with a clear reference back to be-bop with the chromatic descents. With the modal blow at the front its a jazzers dream - but it also points forward to the Steely Dan (who like to refer back to jazz as well).