I drove to Hoggwarts leaving Leantown at 7.30am, loaded the car then drove Gfd trying to avoid a very congested M25 � with limited success and so I ended up fairly driven out. The early part of the driving was relaxing, the latter part less so. This weekend looks as if it will involve too much driving.

I listened to Chelsea Girl and thought what an interesting album it is for 1966 � very carefully produced � electric guitar mostly, strings � possibly a quartet � and a flute. Songs by Cale, Cale and Reed, Jackson Browne and Tim Hardin. One long abstract piece that reaches forward. I would like to get hold of Laura Nyro�s More than New Discovery and make a comparison which come out on Folkways the same year I think. You can�t help wondering about Jackson Browne especially in terms of his subsequent impact on John Cale and the way that predisposed Cale to get interested in ND almost exactly 34 years ago � or indeed of Browne�s subsequent impact on his wife. Larry mentioned that he lives in the Santa Barbara area.

Cale and Browne seem to have shared an ambition to disrupt the conventional lyric position. In fact it would be good to look at the lyric stance in all the Chelsea Girl songs.

On Desert Island discs, Cale told that muse story about hearing She Belongs to Me for the first time and instantly recognising the source. Oh yes I should have mentioned that Ill Keep it with Mine is on the album.

Last night I decided to sketch the view from the Saxon Mill down the Avon towards Guy�s Cliffe. Seeing me drawing ome people came over to chat and we ended up talking about the manor house at Edge Hill which belongs to the founder of Prodrive who has invested massively in it � partly with a firm my acquaintance is involved in.Prodrive own the test track on the watershed between the Avon and the Blythe. My interlocutor�s partner mentioned a Saxon church in Coventry which she went to as a child and I will have to pin down. When I got the pencil sketch home I started to do some additions using chalks.

I have got MTTM onto the Dell and taken a first cut in Wavelab. But another pathway has also materialised quite by surprise. I have linked the old Escom with the AWE32 to the Yamaha Box via MIDI and they seem to get on very well � sharing tempos and some pitched information. I was surprised and delighted � this really does open up possibilities � I hope � especially given all the modern sounds and beats which are in the box.

Strange facts about Santa Monica no 43. In the early 1950s Walter Hopps organised an exhibition of paintings on the merry-go-round at Newcome Pier and hung works by 24 Californian artists. As the revolved music by John Cage and a jazz score was played.

Hopps subsequently organised performances of Lamonte Young at the Pasadena Museum of Art.