I got an e-mail today from David de Froidmont who is just starting a thesis on Huxley�s Point Counterpoint � I am not sure which University in Belgium he is at but doubtless I will find out. He wants to look at the use of musical ideas in structuring the novel and he put a query up on the main Huxley site. I mailed saying that I had studied Huxely about 30 years ago and was quite interested in music.

So I set off to see if the local bookshop had got the new Huxley biography � no luck there but I did find a new Miles biography in the sales and the paperback version of the Ted Hughes biography. At one stage I was in touch Elaine Connell who runs the excellent Sylvia Plath Forum. Her business is a bit like Mark�s I think � except she does it from the a literary base having written a study of SP and domesticity. She sent me a poem � from one of her collaborators � about Heathcliff in the tropics � and I actually got as far as setting it but I never made a decent demo of it. Anyway I went back to her site � partly to see if there was any fugue stuff there � no luck. This was all partly brought about by reading in the Observer an article about Ms J Rose who has written about SP and the popular mind.

I left early to drive back to Leamington � the drive was fine � but a fuse had blown in the flat which meant that it was very cold.