James has been offered a place at York University (he already has an offer from Exeter where Yvonne studied) and called to interview at my old College on Dec 17� it seems that the postman failed to deliver the interview call. I have said I will drive him up to the College � he is very very keen that this past involvement is kept from those deciding whether to let him in� probably quite wise in the circs.I have said I will ask Nick Brown for some background on the three historians who are going to interview. He has had a warm-up at Peterhouse and so he knows what to expect.

I mailed Peter C about the symptoms on the first draft of the Cleveland CD � he came up with an avenue to investigate as a way of correcting the WAV I am using as master. Paul W mailed about thoughts that the world was going to the dogs � a view which he is always (eventually) able to counter. I tracked down Will Hutton�s thoughts about New Labour and John Rawls and mailed them to Laurence

Gilbert mailed to say that he thought it would be fine to release 10 Short Stories as part of the Highveld series.

I had explained to him that the stats suggested that the volume of traffic on the musical parts of the www.kwase-kwaza.org site had fallen relative to the interest in the News section and also the interest in Derek�s pictures. These are pointed up by some sites which speciliase in free �screen-savers� In my book this is all fine � the purpose of the site is to bring in traffic and to offer the opportunity to become more aware about certain problems in the world � and finally to explain that something can be done about the issues � even at a low level. It is encouraging that where we are putting new material on the site � someone somewhere is noticing.

But I think we need to refresh the musical offering � and the two extremes of Shortstories and Cleveland at the URC make a good way of doing this. They cover a pretty wide span from Schubert through Broadway and spirituals to modern classical and postmodern jazz.

I put up some material today on www�kwase-kwaza.org about the Times Christmas appeal which is going to two organisations, one of which is about trialling antiretroviral drugs in Uganda so that women who are HIV positive don�t infect their unborn children. I believe there is an inter-action between macro-initiatives like this and low-level ones like Music for the Highveld site and I am sure that exposure to one can make someone more likely to support the other.

I did some more work on the Procurement NVQ � I was sent the detailed requirements by the orgainsation that is temporarily responsible for them after the founders went broke and I mailed these to Geoff along with a list of six colleges that we might work with and a list of issues we need to decide on the way forward

. I talked to Stefan about a meeting he had had with the Birmingham Learning and Skills Council earlier in the day and with Keith on his meeting with the Sector Skills Council last week. I think we are more and more agreed on the existence of a gap between these too that we can move into. I updated Graham on the procurement stuff which he seemed pleased about and gave him my leadership questionnaire and a pretty good article from Saturday�s Guardian about the Modern Apprenticeship scheme

I really enjoyed reading Robin�s entry about the poet she used to know whose autobiography she had been reading and Andrew�s stuff about Syrinx and evolving a critical language for evaluating performances. I was interested in Robin�s idea that at certain points one might take decisive steps to safeguard one�s talent.

If I look at my own case, my feeling is that I have been rather haphazard about looking after whatever it is that I might still have. So I am surprised that within the ambit (say) of jazz, I still have a strong motivation to push the interpretation of �standards� to a new place. I see the point of departure as being �Cooking at the Plugged Nickel� in 1965 and I think there are some clear steps beyond which I want to take with a few chums.

Why would this still be an ambition and did I do much to ensure that such ambitions lasted? If I were highlighting key points they would be Steve inviting me to join his 5tet in 1975; when he gave that up through ill health circa 1984, joining the sidhana band and getting a piano; then investing in computer based music heavily from 1989 (and getting a new flute at the same point). In the early 1990s I used to talk to Rob about the apparent futility of the path that I was on � why keep writing and exploring and then boring your friends with the stuff - but there is a point at which one�s past becomes an asset. The surprising thing is that one doesn�t just live off it � but I think that is probably down to really random factors.

One useful step was getting myself to be the musical co-ordinator for Worshipspace � an experimental liturgy group � something I have had to give up since moving to Leantown. Tonight it is my turn � in the sense that I am the co-ordinator of the event. I have not been going into much detail about what I have out together � but has now reached the �Master� stage. I have decided which pieces I am going to use � the first is a version of One Point Two and the second is a kind of drone field made from a sample of Cleveland singing �deep� and bits of Gilbert�s guitar. If I had to say what the point of the event � well its about the liminality of the Festive Season � the idea that these days the place to look is at the edge rather than the centre eg Advent or indeed Epiphany. It incorporates text from Wittgenstein on what it is to expect something and from Pascal on the relationship between the infinite and the mundane.

So � what can one expect from the intersection of the infinite and the mundane and how would local factors influence these expectations? To help with this there are some tropes with seriality � taking a familiar hymn in a different order � with more repetition � and also with the Gospels. Crudely I have taken the opening of the Four Gospels and shuffled the verses for people to listen to � but I have got them to say en masse some hermeneutic principles like - We should think about the author of the text - can we know what the author intended to say or what they said in other writings? So whoever turns up acts a bit like a Greek chorus.

There is a kind of subtext about the relationship between cyclicity and linearity. What is called salvation history looks like a linear process � but maybe it isn�t � maybe the linearity of salvation history is a myth � the kind of meta-myth that influences say the later idea of secular progress (this is quite a respectable thought in terms of say, the Enlightenment). So as we abandon the idea of liberal progress � you only have to look at the history of the Soviet Union between 1990 and the present � maybe we should abandon the notion of a linear salvation history � not least because there isn�t actually a unified doctrine of salvation anywhere. So maybe it�s a repeating or cyclic process rather than a linear one � if so then Avent expectations now aren�t some kind of echo from the real show � they could actually be the point � I suppose you could call this the salvation groundhog day perspective.