Just back from a week at the St Magnus Festival in Orkney. One of the highlights for me was Yuri Torchinsky and his wife Dina giving a devastating performance of the first Schnittke violin sonata, in the old schoolroom on the island of Wyre (pop. 15). Another was going for a post-midnight pint in Kirkwall's Bothy Bar, with Jennifer and Hazel Wrigley and some friends playing in the corner. Also, Peter Maxwell Davies's manager Judy Arnold was telling me about when his group the Fires of London started, and people wanted to know what category it fitted into: 'do you eat it with a fork or a spoon?' Great name for an album: 'Fork or Spoon'.

I just made it back to Glasgow in time for a final eight bars of Saint-Saëns. The first of the eight contained a moment of confusion - did the conductor (no names) skip a beat? Somehow all of the orchestra managed to miss out a note of The Big Tune. The short rehearsal was an almost total waste of time, with the exasperated leader taking over the reins at one point, to insist in vain that some useful work got done.

Anyway, I've opened some of my mail since I got back. The most urgent message was that the SAC have turned down our application to tour with Chris Norman in September, which is a shame, but will give me the chance to focus more clearly on next year's activity. As Alison pointed out to me a while back, rushing from one place to another is my default state, so a bit of proper thinking and planning wouldn't go amiss.

Meanwhile, if we can get it mastered in time, Spring Any Day Now may (may!) be released in North America on September 16. 

My walkman has been resounding to the newly re-released Joy of a Toy by Kevin Ayers (which I listened to in my youth when it was first re-released!), with its great David Bedford arrangements and a brief appearance by Syd Barrett - joy indeed.  Also to the new King Crimson album, The Power to Believe: if there's a better track than Dangerous Curves for walking in the rain I have yet to hear it, and it's proof that middle-aged men with guitars can do more than just crappy AOR 'dad rock', to borrow a term from the New Collins Dictionary. There's thrilling delicacy and violence in the old Fripp yet.