My daily diary writing is out of its normal pattern because of my trip to Manchester. In the War Museum there I bought James a book which looks at the extent to which Germany lost the 2nd World War as a result of decisions that Hitler took � he seems to have taken to the volume as it surfaces the issues which he enjoys both in terms of the strategies of the participants and the historiographic questions of causation . He was reading it before he went off to work this morning. He said that he thought that by the end Hitler had concluded that the Russians were the stronger race and therefore deserved to win. I would say they deserved to win because they designed and built the T34 in vast numbers.

Vita is working on part of Lichtenstein�s Whaam � apparently it counts towards her GCSE. I would like to have heard what Rolf Harris had to say about Klimt.

I think ShortStory 11 needs more work. Maybe it needs some keyboard. Maybe I need to ripoff some P Glass ideas.

I have felt quite tired most of the weekend � although I have enjoyed walking the dog in the grey November weather. Last night we watched a DVD of the first Harry Potter film � nice enough but I didn�t really get through to the metaphysical elements that are supposed to be lingering. This afternoon we watched Grease � I think this must have been the follow-up to Saturday Night Fever (which I like) but I just find Grease bizarre apart from John Travolta � maybe its just pure mythology whereas SNF is the start of the 80s.

I finished off Potter�s book on the four Minimalists � realising how little I have heard of the stuff Philip Glass wrote between 1967 and 1975 � reading about it is interesting enough by recordings of the pieces themselves are few and far between these days in most record shops � I will have to look on the net.

I read an article about Rauschenberg and how he placed objects between abstract formalism and Surrealist tease � and another about Cy Twombly making nascent marks. I would really like to see a decent retrospective of CT. The article also referred to links with Mary Kelly who maybe lives quite close to Robin. Apparently MK is fed up with being analysed from the point of view of Lacan.