Sunday, 30th January 2000

18.25
Deepest Dorset.

The Little Horse is upstairs working. We are back from walking the (country) block, past trimmed hedges & old trees, with the orange lights of the two nearest towns (7 & 12 miles) visible from the height of the back road above and behind this village. The village street slides down one of the rolling hills which surround us and hide us away from much of the world.

There are no street lights here: the cottages and houses put on their own outdoor lights over their front doors, and this serves as the village's street lighting. David Singleton once asked his father, now a non-stipendiary minister & formerly the headmaster of a public (ie private) school : "What change do you most notice in your lifetime?". John Singleton, David told me, most noticed the absence of darkness as the streetlighting spread from urban areas into the surrounding countryside & illuminated night skies.

What struck me in the Cotswold villages around Sherborne House (this during 1975/6) was the clarity & crispness of the darkness. It is probably not possible to convey the degree to which the English countryside has radically changed since my youth (1950s) & teenage years (early 1960s). This part of Dorset was still medieval in 1980. Everything began to change after 1982, or so it seems to me (and that is a longer story).

Backtracking: Bill & Frankie Rieflin invited several BTV chums to dinner on Thursday evening. The extended family in Seattle is a support to treasure. Frankie had the intelligence to leave for a smoke when the new Crimson album was played.

Friday morning: a key BTV meeting before Bill R. ran me to the airport, leaving David & Steve to continue more of the same. I had a small seeing while venting my coffee in the bathroom of the office on the 37th. floor. BTV has a whole series of offshoots waiting to develop.

Friday lunchtime: Bill Rieflin ran me to Seatac airport, en route for Chicago & the UK.

Saturday morning: into Chiswick, drive to Deepest Dorset, lunch & dinner in the village inn.

22.55
Toyah left for London around 21.00. A fabbo weekend playing with this lovely little person. A flurry of e-mails waiting now mainly discharged as the Devil invites me to a close embrace. The man on the other side of the aisle to London was sneezing & coughing in my direction. May warts encrust his hairline. This is not the time for me to fall over in another heap.

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