Apparently Charles II has slept in the inn the bar of which I am sitting in, writing this in Warwick. They happen to be playing �On Broadway� by the Drifters just now. Last night, the eccentric gardener, Monty, chose a track off Pink Moon as one of his Desert Island discs. So it comes and goes.

I have sent PW a seasonal CD - an ecological reflection of a sort. We had been exchanging a few ideas in the Thursday Afternoon piece and I said it was hard to break out of that basic outline. When I was looking or a blank CD to put the vid on I stumbled across the PJ Harvey CD about the city and the ocean which I have stolen from James and it made a good accompaniment as I dragged myself into the office.
When I got there, there was a Christmas card from David who had chaired the panel in Valentia � I was very touched.

I met Steve at lunchtime to discuss a research call from the ESRC which one of Francis� new staff picked up. Its dead centre in the area that Steve and Francis have been working on for the last year with occasional disruptions from me. Steve said he would pitch it with Prof Phil at Cardiff. There is a degree of frustration that to get the dosh you need more academic cred than I can muster. Nonetheless Steve came up with a good wheeze � a conference in Slovenia in May 07. I mailed our contact there with a suggestion for a paper I might give � the fashionable theme in the big EU research programme I looked at yesterday.

Then Mike came by and we discussed our approach to Poland � I mailed the academic contact I acquired via the Loughborough meeting last week. I think its likely that I will experiencing central European Winter at the end of January/early February 2007. In the wake of this I started digging deeper on how Poland has been progressing since it became a liberal democracy. I also ordered a research report on central and eastern European automotive from an Indian company. I looked again at the Australian film, Ister, about central Europe and the philosophy of technology � its only a matter of time before I stump up the 60 australian dollars.

Francis hasn�t come back with a plan for what we will present at the Leicester Space Centre tomorrow. My main challenge will be waking up early enough to get to the Leicester Hilton in time to get the coach to the Space Centre � compared with that sounding credible on the subject of global competitiveness will not be difficult. I said to Mike that the more I think about the �end of an era� elements of this event, the more emotional I become.

I mailed some stuff off the to the development agency � my 60 page monster analysis and the note for the meeting next Monday. I went into the NOMIS database � my license is about to expire and I have submitted an application for renewal to the Office of National Statistics for a further year. I found a new time series for vacancies and mailed some of this data to Julia as an extra for Monday�s meeting. She used to be a dancer and has danced with Kylie and Tom Jones.