Memories of Maggie Mental clearout as I took a lunchtime stroll down the river, and made a few decisions about future directions, and to get back on track with my own plans and schemes. Couple of bracing notes from Randolph today. Looking forward to seeing him again and putting the world to rights. He was saying that his current thinking is that he traces all that's wrong with, say, Opera and is that art is being ruined by intellect. He told me about going to a horribly spiky modern Opera at Glyndebourne and longing for the parole of intermission "and then everybody I encountered if they were ENJOYING it - a small straw poll, no doubt - but did not meet A SINGLE PERSON who said they were." More delays on the trains going home tonight. Home, and I watched a drama about Margaret Thatcher's last days in power, which had a great central performance by the slightly too gorgeous Lindsay Duncan. Much as I detested Thatcher, this showed nicely the loathsome lickspittles that ...