After school, I spent the afternoon putting together a new solo programme which I'll be playing in London at the end of March, and an ensemble that Zan and Bill and Viv and Giles and I will be doing in Leicestershire weekend after next. It was an afternoon of programme planning. That's always great fun, almost as much fun as practising solo repertoire. These are the aspects of the business that I really enjoy.

In fact, at the moment, I'm enjoying practising more than actually giving concerts. There are complex reasons for this. In a nutshell, it's like this: I'm now halfway through the training, and the way I use myself is changing drastically. My thinking and my physical movements (my �thinking-in-activity�) are quite different from the way they were a year or more ago. It is becoming the norm now for me to work in a much more mechanically efficient way in my everyday life. But it takes time and mental effort, and room to breathe, if I am to work in this way. When I am practising at home, I have this space, and am able, increasingly, to play the lute in a way which does not cause too much wear and tear or other harm to the system. But in a concert, particularly a somewhat stressful one like Thursday night's concert in Manchester, for instance, I often find I have to fall back on old ways of doing things. These old ways have now come to feel extremely uncomfortable, thanks to the changes I've been making in the quality of my use. But sometimes there's no choice. My new ways are not yet evolved enough for me to be able always to trust them in stressful situations. (I know intellectually that I can in fact trust the new ways, but I have to know it experientially, with my whole self, before it actually starts to happen consistently.) My old way of playing the lute stood me in good stead for many years, but I'm in the middle of evolving a new way now, one which has much more potential.

I'm at a halfway point, where there's no turning back. It's uncomfortable, but I can see beyond it to exciting new prospects.