Invitation to the Nissan Social Club in Sunderland on Thurday � an absolute must. Outside work (where there are a lot of people to talk to) I don�t have much social contact.

I have a gig � for a piano clarinet and flute trio for 30 May � maybe about 10 minutes worth of music.

Listened to the Byrds Greatest Hits in the car. Had another crack at �So What� as a guitar solo � the D Graham homage.

Encouraging mail from Paul W on the 60s essay.

I put an interesting link up on www.kwase-kwaza.org - you can drop into a collection of mp3s from contemporary composers � work created in response to the Twin Towers disaster. Also in the News section some good articles including info about a conference in Cambridge on 23 April about AIDS and Education in South Africa. Very tempting - I mailed it to Peter Chatteron who had a round number birthday yesterday � happy birthday to him!

There are 13 million AIDS orphans numbers in the world at the moment and 12 million of them are in Sub Saharan Africa. http://www.unicef.org/pubsgen/children-on-the-brink/index.html will tell you more about it.

The clarinettist in the 30/5 trio is likely to be Ciaran Doran unless this gig disrupts the training schedule for his Race Against Time. He is riding his bike from Lands End to John O Groats in a week in mid-Summer to raise money for the Bishop Simeon trust. You can see what the trust does at www.kwase-kwaza.org. If you want a sponsorship form you can mail Ciaran at [email protected] or me at [email protected]. Its pretty easy to explain to people whats going on here � even if they don�t give you any money they are unlikely to wonder why you (or Ciaran) are doing it.

So far Ciaran has raised around $2000 but its such a brilliant idea there's obviously a lot more to be raised potentially. P>

I found a couple of good sources for views on how the musical evolution in NYC in the 70s and 80s appeared to participants � including one Minimalist whose first exposure to rock was the Ramones.

The response to the 60s piece (�Slightly All the Time� is the working title) has already pushed me 3500 words into is successor � which seems to be about the evolution of compositional agendas in New York and to a lesser extent the UK in the thirty years since 1970 - I might as well call it "Slightly All The Time Part 2". I find these things on on until they stop.

This made me go back to the nine tunes which Gilbert and I put in the bag (apart from the 10SS) in 2002. I wanted to reflect on this stuff in the light of some of these comments about the considered exploration of freedom which I have been pulling in from current NYC deliberations on the state of the art. I think I�ll just keep on listening and keep my counsel.