Yesterday the weather did not agree with my nose and throat and they did not agree with each other either . I managed to get almost to the end of the paper � before I decided I needed some time and some unfuzzy brain space to settle the matter. Fortunately when I woke up this morning it was cooler and my throat was back to normal. So I have managed to get to the end of section 7 this morning.

Yesterday I rediscovered EAX - which has a facility to play mp3s or WAVs faster or slower without shifting pitch. I knew I had this capability somewhere but I couldn�t remember where. Someone in the office has been enthusing about the I-Pod and so I was reading around its specification � in particular its use of a hard-disc. This led me to the fact that the Creative Nomad also has a hard disc. Then I found a review where a sound engineer explained how he uses the Nomad for live hard disc recording.

I bought James� Nomad from him because he didn�t seem to be getting on with it � unaware that I was getting a portable hard disc recording device. So I dug it out this morning and had a closer look at the EAX area which indeed does have a far amount of functionality � including the slow/fast play feature. The Nomad also has Ten Short Stories which with this EAX feature can become Ten Slightly Longer Stories.

Somehow in the midst of this prankery I shifted guitar from El Maya to Crafter. I have been using the former for a few weeks and have particularly been enjoying the sound it makes with the Korg Pandora � even though that little box is pretty ancient now. It had never occurred to me to link the Crafter (gutstring electroacoustic) to Pandora � until this morning.

Drake hypothesis no 554. The start of Hazey Jane 2 is influenced by the opening bars of the Lerner and Lowe song Gigi. They are both over a II chord and involve a descending scalar pattern and this linear/harmonic musical device is used to express tension between integrity, identity and confusion. In Gigi the singer is expressing his anxiety and confusion that the eponymous girl has blossomed into maturity taking on a new identity without him being aware of the transition until the moment he bursts into song. In HJ2 the song starts by listing the threats to individual integrity and in particular the flooding in of stimulus which Jane might overcome by making herself part of the family and starting over again.

I was looking for the lead sheet for Last Tango � I thought it would be in paperback over movie themes. I found Gigi instead � also The Crying Game which is a stunner plus Alfie which is more than masterly. Fancy ending a song on the tonic seventh with a flat ninth.

There is a piece on the go. It arises from the Box Music and a flute part that I put onto the Dell - which I extracted a section from into Wavelab and enhanced in various ways � thickening the line at certain points. I took this out onto a MD and have been playing it this week as a loop on the Tascam machine, trying various additions eg on keyboard, guitar and this morning on flute. I managed to record one such enhanced version through EAX onto the Nomad. It remains to be seen if I can upload the WAV to a portable. Realism says perhaps not. There�s more work to be done on the level setting in EAX � I tried a second recording but got clipping on the guitar chords.

I took the Denon tuner-amp in to be serviced. Somehow it over-heated during Vita�s birthday party. At the moment I am using the Yamaha power-amp to drive the Bose speakers in the kitchen and a Yamaha three speaker rig for the sitting room as substitutes. I really have it in mind to use the Yamaha and the Bose on some stands a as a little PA sooner or later.

On the way to work I listened to a reading from Stephen Spender�s biography � about his time with the poetic crowd in Oxford and I noted that he ended up being invited to Garsington. I imagine this must have been Lady Ottoline Morrel � friend of D H Lawrence, Bertrand Russell and Aldous Huxley. It rather reminded me of the Caius Loafers which R Kirby and P Wheeler belonged to � ND was a non-Caius member I believe.

I bumped into Peter Chatterton this morning and we compared notes on the rather unusual Saturday evening we spent at St Martins.

I see that Paul�s song Govinda has appeared in KK stats.