I got into Gfd about lunchtime nursing my hangover. James was out at his Christmas job and Yvonne was out at a mosaics class run by an old friend. Vita was doing her homework and I cooked a spot of lunch for us both. Louise arrived in the evening and I took Vita off to yet another party via the off licence..

I had been listening to Coltrane�s Ole on the way down � especially the Dolphy contributions. There was a Christmas card from Paul W with a copy of Red Blues inside. Gilbert plays some blistering guitar on the first track. I spent the afternoon dozing on the settee and listening to the CD. I had already heard six of the tracks but it is strange how different they all sound when they are shuffled up with other material.

There�s a striking track that I haven�t heard before � Recipe � it mixes bossa and country rock. (Paul has always been into Tropicalia). It seems to be about gender/age issues and it follows New Age Aquarian Home which is clever parody. Recipe on the other hand is, I think, meant to be taken more seriously. This leads into Loop the Loop which I remember from decades ago was a transition in Paul�s writing from the Totton-Wheeler era many of which ended up in the Ghosts repertoire. In this production the Cajun flavour is especially salient.

The next track is Govinda which might have been on the previous CD and indeed I took a manic hack at that one along with some of the others on that CD off an early demo. I think he has softened the lyrics on this version � taken out the bits about November 1974 � �a quietly closing and quietly opening door�.

I have been involved in Paul�s creative output for nearly 35 years. In fact I first met him in December 1968 so that is exactly 35 years ago � at the end of the first term which is where James and Louise are now. I heard Paul play at the Union and I could tell that musically he was from the same bundle of influences as myself.

Paul�s first CD stretched back over a lot of this period, whereas Seachanges, his second, had a much tighter focus thematically. I loved the first because it had so many tunes on it that had been part of the fabric of my life plus some others that I missed. There�s a review of it somewhere on the ND files by Suellen who lives on the outskirts of Nashville. Indeed Frostie on Serious Music for the Highveld is off that one and is a good example of what Paul�s producer Chris can do. You can hear that on www.kwase-kwaza.org.

Ghosts is on Red Blues which is the eponymous tune of a post Television band we had in the 70s, This version is softer than the way I usually take it � somewhere in the archives I have done a cover which is in my Lee Marvin voice. �It�s the thin end of the wedge that�s keeping us so much on edge/You need to be so sharp these days/If you want to stay ahead/Stay ahead.� �When you lay your money down/Its only so it passes round/When it all comes back to you � that makes it hard to stay ahead/Stay ahead�. Roughly the same area as the Laura Nyro track about Money.

Red Blues also has a track from that era which used to be called Blue Grey Uniform. That ended up on an LP by Phil Manzanera�s band � which also had Ian Macdonald�s brother Bill in it.

Last night James had an invitation over to Ciaran�s for some Christmas drinks with his peers which he declined. I was thinking about the time a few years back when Ciaran was sent to Paris for a year or so by SONY. He worked with SONY introduced their professional range of condenser microphones to Europe. There was a Gfd farewell party and his wife Gillian gave me seven days notice to put a band together.

The final version was Charlie Alexander on guitar, Geoffery on bass and Philip Spencer who lives locally on keyboards, The drummer was a guy from the other side of the hill who does renewable energy and who I met through Gillian Lloyd who was my kids music teacher � she lives at the top of the hill. It transpired that we had all been in student jazz-rock bands at the same time � Charlie in Edinburgh, Geoffery and I in Horn and Philip and the drummer at Oxford. It was a good evening and towards the end I even gave the Telecaster an airing. That was before I knew Ciaran that well � I had just done some shows produced by Gillian, Ciaran�s wife, with Margaret (who I played the Debussy piece with earlier this year.)

Pete Crowther phoned yesterday about Charlie. Steve�s partner had phoned him to say that Charlie had a gig in Battersea and that it would be nice if we all met up, If I hadn�t just got in from Leantown I would have done gone. I sent Charlie a copy of Lullabyes this week in the interests of getting his contribution to the next iteration.

For new readers I should explain that I met Steve a few weeks before I met Paul W � he and I co-founded Horn with Geoffery a few weeks later. So I guess its soon the 35th anniversary of the that band. It was through Steve that I met Peter. Peter is buying his daughter a Yamaha flute for Christmas � his wife seems to be getting over her serious illness.

There is a thread of mortality � Steve died in 1996. Paul introduced me to Ian Macdonald and Pete and I last played together at the memorial for Regan - indeed we had played at her 50th birthday party not so long ago. This what my doctor calls �tiger country�.. This week, I went back to the review of the 1999 memorial concert that Andrew K helped organise in Leyland. That really was an amazing evening � at the moment that�s something like my model for 30 November 2004