I am going to work on the train today for the first time in a week - not feeling good about this. I had a brief conversation yesterday with Phil Hancock who teaches engineering at Surrey University. He was interested in the conclusions from the Cz trip and able to confirm some of the points independently.

I was given �90 for the Highveld from sales of Plundafonix on the Tradecraft stall following Lynn's talk and Annie's endorsement - excellent. The choir released their CD and I bought a copy but have yet to play it. Sampling on my mind.

Robert preached about Waylands Smithy where he had been last week - about the sense of divinity the place conveys to him. Actually this was the starting point for a reflection on the lack of meaning in history.

I caused consternation by inadvertently deleting some e-mails which were not mine.

Jake and I went to look at the Silent Pool. Vita's class has an assignment to work in groups to produce a film trailer. Her group finished theirs last week but she has been engaged, as owner of a digital video camera, by another group who wanted to film at Newlands Corner. My aim in stumping up just over a year ago was that it might feed her interest in the visual arts - I got a SONY which was about to be replaced and which Peter Chatterton had recommended.

Newlands Corner is where an A road from Woking to Dorking makes its way over the North Downs scarp and in the 1920s where Agatha Christie's car was found when she disappeared. One of the early actions was to trawl the Silent Pool which is down the road a mile or so at the bottom of the scarp - two pools fed by a spring. I think this is where the permeable chalk - impermeable Gault Clay layers meet the surface. Jake and I walked up over the scarp from there. On the path is an old WW2 fortification - the kind of thing my dentist Peter spends his spare time researching. The pool is gradually getting clearer with care - as water running off chalk should be.

A coincidence about the Low symphony by P Glass at Meltdown - I saw a review in the Observer. I have a CD of his Heroes Symphony. I thought the reviewer was spot on - its hard to see the point of these works. Bowie is performing Low at the Meltdown finale it seems.

I listened to the Gil Evans Canonball Adderley set - which really ought to be better known - and the latest Casandra Wilson which has yet to pall.

In the evening I bumped into Robert Foster, a flute player from the DTI. He plays lead flute in the wind band that Yvonne's friend Pamela and Sue from work are in. We were beside a small lake in a garden designed by Gertrude Jekyll - Lutyens' collaborator. The house is not Lutyens although it is quite close to one of his masterpieces -Tigbourne Court - tnat is south of Witley on the Lower Greensand scarp looking like it was completed last week rather than over a hundred years ago.

The garden yesterday evening belongs to a house called Lower Vann which in Pevsner's words is " a mixture of 16C 17C and 20C all melted together with creeper to form a perfect prototype for Lutyens houses." Once a year there is q chamber concert in the billiard room which is part of the 20C block - a gallery, some great art nouveau details and two large amphora wired to the wall which look like they have come from the sea floor off Crete. After a few years of this one overcomes ones natural laziness/reserve and picnics in the garden beforehand as if one were a member of the Home Counties haute bourgeoisie. Last night the party inckuded two of Yvonne's colleagues and their spouses. We picnic-ed just by a mid 20C abstract bronze on the lawn by the edge of the lake to the north east of the house.

The concert is for charity - in this case the restoration fund for Hascombe church (a mid Victorian classic by Woolyer 1864 - which must be ginger Evans local place of worship). This year it was given by a String 4tet - they all looked about 19 - two of them had studied at Cambridge. I was sitting behind the first violinist about six feet from the centre of the group. The programme was Mozart's last, Debussy's most famous and Beethoven's first Raz Op59 no 1. B won as he often seems to at these events. I think one can safely say that this is a defining 4tet- you can see why comentators get so metaphysical about B.

I really liked the 3rd movement of the Mozart - and its not often I say that - plus all his endings (for which this 4tet is famous). The sound perspective was very unusual - in the music with more separation between the parts than usual - also a very dry acoustic environment so that the noise element in the string sound was clearer than usual which I really liked.

I had a LP of the Deb when I was a teenager but even so it sounded very fresh in that setting - the 2nd movement very hard to bring off. It was a very physical experience to hear it in that way.

Goethe quotes Beethoven - a melody slips from the arms of inspiration - I hasten in eager pursuit only to lose it in a riot of surging passions. I recapture it and abandon myself to an ecstacy of delight - I follow it up with modulation after modulation to achieve in the end the triumph of the musical idea.

I felt really envious of the people engaged in realising these ideas who so obvioulsy enjoyed each other and their work.