I woke up quite early and started work on a pitch document for Hughes Hall � I decided to make the Jazzin with Nick element salient. I think I will send it from work.

Then I mailed Gilbert with an update of where I have got to on this and the 10SS front. I also mailed Andrew K with some thoughts on his feedback on 10SS. The basic point is that www.kwase-kwaza contains the most accessible account of how this music came to be. I am wondering whether to expand this at some point in the near future � but for the time being that�s what we have got. I think that unlike composition where sometimes �describing how you do it� is quite close to doing it, in this case Gilbert and I evolve music drawing on a lot of common assumptions from jazz and blues but against an agenda of breaking out beyond those assumptions

I have been thinking more about what Nick Brown said about the international situation. I picked up a commentary just now on Habermas and his grand theory of communicative action. He reminds us that utterances are often not in explicit speech when people communicate. One of the key elements of communication is its co-ordinating effect on action. Habermas�s basic model is that if one party makes an utterance then the second party has a threefold task � trying to establish the meaning, working out their line on the utterance eg yes/no/perhaps and then behaving in accord with that line. The second stage � taking a line � is rooted in the notion of reason-giving. When we take a �yes� line we tend to do so because we expect that if challenged the first person could come up with adequate reasons. This is quite a powerful model not least in the current situation.

Very crudely, France and Germany stopped thinking that the US could give adequate reasons for their assertions and requests. And so the action-co-ordinating role of dialogue ceased working on a global scale. Because of Nick�s unique access to people and events he can see the reasons in a way which most of us can�t. Iraq is almost certainly a pirate in the game of �meaning and reasons� � unwilling to be bound by any rules of consistency and pragmatic in every situation in terms of local advantage.

But the global suspicion of the US which most commentators detect is a real weakness in terms of a superpower intent on maintaining its hegemony

In the www.kwase-kwaza.org News Section there is some material from a really good initiative on the BBC site. The have asked an American journalist sympathetic to the Bush position to set out the case � readers can post comments and criticisms � and the author can then respond.

Anyway � for obscurely related reasons I had a burst of six string nostalgia and ended up putting on Linda Thompson�s latest- and then I stumbled into http://www.martin-kingsbury.co.uk/murphy.htm trying to track down Simon Prager for a project that AK has kicked off with me.

And there I found the following:

The release on CD of 'The Shelagh McDonald Album' completes her available discography and will add to her reputation as one of the finest undiscovered female singer/songwriters of the early 1970's.

After completing some tracks for her third solo album in late 1971 which are now included on the Mooncrest CD 'Stargazer' (CRESTCD 040), Shelagh McDonald returned to Scotland and disappeared from the music scene altogether. Suggested reasons for her disappearance included a bad drug experience and her general unhappiness with life in London. Since then she has not been heard from or made any sort of comeback to the music scene. Several common theories abound as regards her life after retiring from music. One was that she moved to the USA and her whereabouts have also been given as in Canada and also the Western Isles of Scotland.

Two children's books `Five From Me Five From You' and `No End To Yesterday' by author Shelagh MacDonald published in the mid seventies are rumoured to be her works.

Mystery still surrounds the current whereabouts of Shelagh McDonald. This elusive Scottish singer/songwriter has yet to return from obscurity. Her reputation rests on her two remarkable solo albums 'The Shelagh McDonald Album' arid 'Stargazer'. Shelagh McDonald's unique voice and personalised songwriting style rings down through the years with assurance, poise and clarity.

I have got Stargazer and it�s a real gem � the band is R Thompson and the usual suspects � there is one absolutely cracking solo of �Who Knows Where the Time Goes� vintage. Even at the time I bought it I thought the writing absolutely caught the spirit of the time and put it into the grooves. So here�s a bit more from another searcher:

Where is Shelagh McDonald?

Stargazer is the title track of Shelagh McDonald's second B&C album released and then pretty much forgotten in the early 1970s. Vic had the chance to replace his worn vinyl copy this year when the said album was released on CD. We now hear that the first Shelagh McDonald album The Shelagh McDonald Album is now released on CD. Mine was lost in the mists of time but thankfully we've relied on Vic's worn vinyl till now.

Shelagh McDonald played the Sloop Inn, Folk Club in Wootton a couple of times as did other unknowns like Billy Connolly (why even Jackson C. Frank 'Blues Run The Game', played the Anglesea in the Ryde).

The first Shelagh McDonald album features an Andy Roberts song called Richmond. Richmond is about Eel Pie Island, 'Jeff and the Tridents' in the song being Jeff Beck. Two well known Island musicians the late and great Tom Taylor and Cliff Maidment were in at the start of Eel Pie Island in the fifties helping Arthur Snapper who turned the place into a rock'n'roll legend.

IAndy Robert's excellent Nina and Dream Tree Sequence album was also released on B&C Records with Shelagh McDonalds Stargazer album. Andy Roberts plays on the first Shelagh McDonald album. Neither Andy Robert's or anyone we have spoken to knows what happened to Shelagh McDonald. It's said she worked in a bookshop in Edinburgh for a time and it was also rumoured that she went to America. All leads seem to draw a blank. But the albums remain and they are excellent. Nick Drake's friend and collaborator Robert Kirby does the strings on the first album.

A while back Geoff Owen contacted us after a search engine found a reference to Shelagh McDonald on our website. When it gets to Winter nights in Niton and the night sky is jet black and clustered with stars Vic will put the coco on and then load up the record player with Nick Drake or Shelagh McDonald. McDonald's Stargazer song is perfect for stardancing Anyway Geoff's been in touch again recently still trying to track Shelagh McDonald down. We'd love to know where she is too, just to say thanks for making Niton skies at night so damn perfect.

So there you are!!! Usual suspects indeed.