I cut more of one of the apple trees � maybe I will eventually get it into the shape that I want � without any of the thin branches pointing skywards. They say apple wood burns with a sweet smell when it is dried out. We sometimes have fires in the living room � the people who had the house before us put in an art-nouveau-ish fire place to match the house�s age so maybe I can have a fire with a scent that suits?

Also on the domestic front - I cooked pork for lunch - in pieces in the microwave � a new method for me. Draining off the fat to go on Jake�s biscuits I browned the pork slightly and put them in with orange and yellow peppers and carrots that I had fried separately adding a little soy sauce. This seemed to preserve the flavours of the vegetables well. The pudding was apples from the garden cooked with brown sugar served with mixed dried fruit.

I tried matching Gilbert Isbin�s guitar part with the Fifths core part � very easy � and then putting in some of Robin�s vocal part as a kind of extra ambience. This is amazingly exciting. The formal possibilities are almost overwhelming. One way through is to rely very heavily on instinct. Working like this is something I have never done before - especially with a voice element � which seems to be infinitely malleable.

Deleuze says that the billowing folds of baroque round the saint are a sign of unseen spiritual power. This certainly true of Bernini�s Mystic Ecstacy of Saint Teresa. Terea is my sisters middle name - my father was raused as a Catholic. I don�t have one. My children have two � all with same initial � James Jerome John, Vita Venetia Violet. The final names in the list are grandparent�s . I chose Jerome because of Bring it Jerome by Bo Diddley � I think Yvonne chose it because it�s a saint�s name. Though it turns out that Vita plays the bass and is hard to persuade that Venice would be a good place to visit.

More Glemsford news � web site owner Steve Clarke has joined the kwase-kwaza.org Forum - I guess running his site - http://web.ukonline.co.uk/stephen.clarke/ has made him an active participant in cyber ventures. And he�s buying a copy of Plundafonix. There�s a new page on kwase-kwaza.org all about Robin�s song �You are Here� from that CD � incuding an extract from the sheet music that Robin is making available. I can recommend using the music - I had great fun with it and came up with a heavier more onbeat guitar version of the tune with bass pedals rather than the running bass which is on the CD.

I made a copy of Serious Music for Jonathan Hugo � an old friend from schools � in fact we went to the same schools throughout. I am meeting him for lunch on Tuesday. Robin writes a great piece today about how the stuff one produces now often relates to issues from decades ago. That�s certainly true of a couple of the songs I put on that CD � although they were written in my 40s they develop musical ideas from the 1970s. Robin refers to Ted Hughes� Birthday Letters as an example of this process at work. I was so struck by this book that I set the first poem in exactly that way � picking up a musical idea that had been maturing for twenty years. I put these songs in a mental file called The Airburst Suite.