I landed back in the UK on Saturday afternoon and my sister met me at Hounslow West . I picked up my car from her house and drove back to Gfd for 24 hours and then back to Leantown early Sunday evening. Yesterday evening I drove down to Oxford to give James an empty suitcase and put a one full of his clothes in my car. He had been in Cambridge at the weekend for the Selwyn Snow Ball for some sort of reunion. He is going back to Gfd later this week. Today I am going to Loughborough for a conference tomorrow. This is all very rapid by my standards.

Waiting for me at the office was a copy of Cusumano�s book about Toyota and technology platforms � I seem to have lost my original copy. Its about the way that Toyota organised technology and product development between 1990 and 1997. My suspicion is that Cusumano has been over-influential on technology policy on UK and Europe. I also suspect that Toyota have moved away from the arrangements he describes. My purchase order for the current bit of business has arrived � the product is nearly finished � about 60 pages along and it includes a section on technology platforms. This takes my earnings for the year pretty much up to target.

I wrote a submission to the Select Committee on Education and Skills a couple of months back. Yesterday it emerged that they have asked a further set of questions � which they want answered by 8 January. There was a headline in the FT yesterday that this week G Brown is going to revolutionise the UK skills system � it was a leak trailing his big statement on the budget. The claim is that the revolution will meet all the criticisms which industry have been making. There was a leak in the Observer on Sunday that he will abolish the DTI � my old department. I pulled down the position paper which the Treasury issued last week on the strategic challenges they think we face.

I did some follow-up work from Valentia � I need to get some specific ideas out to Hungary and Slovenia in the next day or so. I also I fished out a document that I picked up in Yokohama in 2001 which Jurgen at the Berlin University asked to see.

The video of John Martyn at the BBC was in Gfd . The brute innovativeness of the solo performances comes across very strongly. For some reason the impact on me is to start me playing electric guitar D/I and digitally recording the results � the Danelectro and the Electric Elf. There is something very personal about how a guitar is set up or selected � because guitar styles vary so much from person to person. The Danelectro suits my chording and the Electric Elf a single string blues style. There are a couple of pieces on the go as a result.

Steve mentioned that he saw Tony Blair address a conference he was at last week � what a good performance he put on � despite everything.