A lot seemed to happen today. I got a message for Lynne Coull in South Africa - part of it as follows:

"On 15 June, Florence and I left the East Rand at 5.00 in the morning to travel to Mayflower for the start of a five-day counselling course for caregivers of the Mayflower home-based care project (we were responsible for training them in home-based care in February of last year). It takes about 4 hours to get to Mayflower. It is a long day. We are up at four and get home again around 8.00 p.m. in the evening.

On the first day of a course I take all the food, refreshments and course material (flip chart stand, paper, pens, register, programmes, folders etc.) with me. My car is loaded. I bought stewing steak for the first day, chicken pieces for the second. The trainers buy meat and vegetables for the remaining three days. Usually training is conducted in the language of Zulu but this time the women requested that the trainers speak Siswati which was not a problem. Our Anglican priest, Father Peter Mbatha, is the chairperson of the committee managing the group. He is assisted by Joana the trainer and a local social worker called Thembi and together they support the caregivers.

There is a little conflict going on within the group at the moment between the co-ordinator of the project and the rest of the group and this is being attended to. The caregivers are very poor people. Forestry in the area provides very limited jobs. At the moment the caregivers are receiving a small incentive of R200 from the Department of Social Development but Thembi says they may lose this. For most caregivers this money is all they have coming into the home.

I am still waiting to hear from the Department of Health about the proposal I submitted to them for the mentoring and support of the projects we have trained. This will enable us to pay each caregiver a small incentive.

I have a very good relationship with the trainers and people in the area. This enables me to come back on the first day and get on with HIV/AIDS related other work. On the last day of the training, Wednesday 19, I return to check on how things were done, hand out evaluation sheets and pay the trainers, people who did the cooking etc. We also plan for the next training event. A lot of clothing, shoes and blankets had been donated by our parishes and so I was able to take a load of these items with me to Mayflower on the last day. Travelling on the first and the last day enables us to save on accommodation costs."

Home-based care is all that there is for people who aren't middle class in South Africa and who have AIDS. Putting in and developing home based care makes a big difference. R200 is about �17. I need to check the map to make sure I have a clear idea of where Mayflower is. I think we may have driven through that area last Summer.

I found a photo of Cathy Bell's father (Paul) on the net. (Cathy sings on both the Highveld CDs). I think he is about 14 in the pic and it is of a band that he was in at a public school in Wimbledon - I think its called Kings. I know two other people in the photo - Richard Fry who now lives near the bassplayer of Fellthru, the punk-ska band on Plundafonix and who leads the design of circuitry on mobile phones and Jon Cole.

I have been trying to track Jon down for over 5 years. The problem is that his name is very common and his band - The Movies gets mistaken by the search engine for things I don't want. The Movies had a percussionist called Diggle and of course that did the trick. It led me to The Movies site which has some good material on it (as far as I am concerned - well actually its got a link to an article I wrote!).

Jon is an extraordinary person - he has a PhD in Classics from Emmanuel Cambridge and got a lectureship at Trinity Dublin. But gave it all up for the music business. On the Movies site he includes his account of an episode which most people have heard of - Sandy Denny's fatal fall. John lived near and he was the person who found Sandy and called the ambulance. In his account he reflects on the fact that Sandy was instrumental in getting his career started.

We were in a band called White Unicorn that got to top the bill over Fairports at Wimbledon Town Hall in early 1969 and which went down well with the local crowd. The Fairports suggested to their label - then Polydor that they call us into their studio to make some demos. It was certainly my first time in a studio and I think it was probably Jon's. So he reflects on the irony of how the links between Sandy and he concern both beginnings and endings.

It was especially strange for me to read that account. Not to boast but I had met Sandy a year earlier in Soho when Tintagel played Cousins with Dorris Henderson. But the thing that was odd for me was that I had written about both these events in a great rambling piece which is on the Iguana ND site about the Cambridge years. So I had been trying to track Jon down for years and when I do I find he is on the net talking about the same stuff as me.

I could go on a lot both about that gig and its various consequences and Jon and his extraordinary talents.

On the Movies site there is a newspaper article trailing the gig - it talks ominously about the flashing lights that will accomapny the music. I think there must have been a bit of a scare about strobes.

There's also a link through to a pretty big rock family tree about Cambridge bands which may well be the one that Mark put up a couple of days ago.

Back in the real world there was a very good article in the Times Business Section by the ex Chief Economist of the World Bank about Globalisation - about the very narrow interpretation of global capitalism that reigned for the last 14 years or so.

James and I watched a programme about the Tiger tank which didnt really (in my view) do justice to the T 34 (no surprises there then). 40000 T34s and 1300 Tigers - says it all.