I might say going back to work was quite interesting really - or that it exposed the utter futility of the way I spend a lot of time - or I might talk about something else.

My sister (Andrea) - 10 years older than me retired - as a local historian/archivist - was robbed on holiday in Lille last week and invited Yvonne to a strange event today. Originally Andrea and Moira (our cousin) were war babies in the same house - there are stories about teddies left behind and people going to get them narrowly escaping the blast. Moira's Dad got an OBE for something logistical on D Day - my dad worked in an aircraft factory. Andrea and Moira planned to celebrate Moira's birthday today with an unusual lunch but Moira got some malady - so Andrea invited Yvonne. Even though Yvonne had a prior with Pamela, former colleague mad Australian aesthete once hounded by the popular press, we agreed the switch was defensible. (Pamela is in the same band as Sue at work who looks after Shipbuilding.)

My sister is a loyalist-royalist - I think at her age it was that or Cliff Richard although to give her her due she imprinted Nelson Riddle's Sinatra arrangements on me when I was too impressionable to resist which can only have done me good and possibly set me up for Gil Evans in my teens.

She is retired and a Freeman of the City of London and a Member of the Stationer's Guild. It would take too long to explain why. So Yvonne's day was a morning service with the Stationer's in St Brides (1680) near the mouth of the Fleet, a lunch with Guild in the Stationers Hall (1670) and then while my sister did other business she floated around the art collections in Somerset House (1750?) ie most people's idea of a cracking day out with a lot of Restoration built environment plus a Georgian masterpiece thrown in. Yvonne is a Republican but she does not shrink back from first hand experience of the forces of reaction to better identify the weak spots and who wouldn't jump at it.

Meanwhile I read more of the Wayne Shorter interview on the way to work - some good Miles quotes about WS being in orbit round his own planet and looking like an angle but playing like a mother f*cker. Made me want to get hold of the late 60s masterpieces. WS records the precise point at which he became a Bhuddist - and maybe has the profoundest philosophy of improv of anyone ever. He and Trane would discuss eg the import of OM as a sound and the nature of the drone - its not as if Trane ever said much to anyone - so dropping that onto to someone who had already been advised to become a professional philospher! In fact this relationship could well explain how Trane got to read A J Ayer the logical positivist. As I have said before its not that we know 25% of what was really on Trane's mind.

When I next see Charlie and tell him what a magnificent mag Jazzwise is becoming I must mention a great article about jazz as a business. Of all music revenues jazz only takes 1 - 3 % and the share is probably falling. Within that the classic repertoire takes a decent share as it deserves too but the result is that most modern CDs sell very little indeed. Maybe this is lack of promotion but maybe it is that the figures of the present don't match the figures of the past.

Between 1945 and 1975 jazz went through an incredibly rapid evolution and then went into 25 years of what is quite reasonably called post-modernism - fragmentation and a lack of definition of the leading edge. Within that there was a strain of Neo-classicism - cf W Marsalis and a kind of oppositional position with J Zorn - downtown NYC versus midtown. The multi-media improv book I have been reading suggests no lack of creativity and innovation but very little of it seems to have caught the public's imagination.

I cite an article in the Guardian today for anyone who thinks my forthcoming trip to Prague has little to do with Blairite priorities. I reread my speech with a view to knocking out some keypoint slides - the itinerary arrived from the Embassy (I wish they all could be Easterneuropean grls). In fact the value will lie in writing it down as we go - its the one thing you learn. If it seems important or interesting write it down there and then.

Peter Chatterton mailed about the USB link which he thinks he needs too.