My sleep pattern is still a bit erratic � maybe even getting more erratic.

Part of my role in the organisation is as an information scanner, filter and provider. There is an organisation which we have a particular interest which is the Quango which gets a bigger budget than any other in the country and indeed 2004-5 is going to see its biggest ever budget. At the end of last week a letter was published which explained what these enormous funds are to be spent on. I took a copy off the net and circulated it to colleagues highlighting the elements which are most likely to be to our advantage. I also got hold of a 125 page report which the Treasury issued last week which has implications for other aspects of our work. Keith and I worked on a short term assignment from our boss mapping out another domain where we hope to increase our influence. Stefan I repeated to each other our mantra about this being a unique window of opportunity.

Bob is on secondment to us from a major German car company and I talked to him about a meeting we have got on Thursday in Portland Square which I set up with some people from our retail equivalent.

Keith and I had a long talk about different styles of project management � something I am a bit of a bore on. I found some additional information for him from an organisation that I used to work for and which I am trying to re-engage with.

I got hold of some corporate Christmas cards which I sent of to people that I want to link up with again. I sent one to the Czech Republic to someone I met the Summer before last. I am working up sending one to the woman from the German Federal Ministry who I met in Milan last week.

I sent Charlie Alexander at Jazzwise a copy of Lullabyes and to remind him that he said he might do one and sent Trisha a few thoughts about the 30 November concert.

I explained to Charlie that I had arranged to be given a subscription to Jazzwise for my birthday.

I didn�t explain that this was my second choice. Last Christmas I arranged to be given a subscription to the New York Review of Books and I have to make up my mind whether I am going to keep it up. In the last issue there was an article about Ezra Pound and I sit here looking at a copy of his selected poems wondering whether I am going to try again with it. You have to remember that despite everything he cut down the Waste Land to what we see today.

Just now on R4 they are talking about the refurbishment of Hendon aviation museum. My sister sent my father�s recollections of his career in aviation to them after he died. When he was a boy in the first world war the Russians were learning to fly from a nearby airfield. They would often crash and my father would visit the crash sites and pick up bits of bi-plane. That was what started his interest in planes and my grandfather who was a professional soldier arranged for him to go into the training scheme for the technical elite for the new RAF in the 1920s. My dad was in the same class as the person who invented the jet engine � surname Whittle.

I thought I might ask my sister to buy me that 600 lines CD, or maybe the new CD-DVD by Steve Reich. I also saw on Amazon that the 600 lines crew had bought out Music in the Shape of a Square. This was the piece I thought when I saw Bruce Nauman�s video of walking around a taped square in his studio.

On radio 4 this week the 7.45pm reading is from the letters between John Middleton Murray and the Catherine Mansfield. I have a vague memory that they are portrayed in Huxley�s novel Point Counterpoint. I don�t think AH liked JMM at all thinking he was a rotter.

When I was in my boss�s office I saw he had bought Brave New World for the organisation�s library so I warned his secretary that I could bore for England on this subject, There was also a copy of Porter�s analysis of Japanese competitiveness which I borrowed and scanned a little this afternoon. Porter is the strategy guru from Harvard. Strategy used to be a very abstract and general study � based on some broad logical principles. Porter�s big idea is to bring more richness into the account of how an organisation relates to its environment. His main analytical tool for this is his �diamond�.

Japan is a good case study for this theory because it is a country which mixes very competitive firms � like Toyota from successful sectors like automotive - with less successful sectors like textiles and clothing. Furthermore the basis of Japanese success in the 1970s and 1980s has been eroded and the best firms have evolved new strategies. Part of the reason I was sent to Durham a month or so ago was to get some of the latest Japanese thinking on what firms should do to be competitive. That was definitely a good investment.

When I was in Milan my ex colleagues were having a big exchange with the Japanese on automotive technology. I have had more of a dialogue on this Japan vs Europe issue than on any other subject since the Dept and I parted company.