Working quickly and easily on new poem on the train this morning. I was listening to the radio the other day about Ted Hughes. Someone was saying that they thought Hughes exaggerated how easily he wrote The Thought Fox.

I didn't agree. Occasionally, like one of the two first poem I got published, a frightening 23 years ago, they come in one blurt. There seems nothing strange about this, sometimes ideas gestate without you being aware of it happening, and they just seem to write themselves.

Keats often wrote very quickly.

Brief work lunch with a few creatives and two eager and offensively talented new starters straight from college.

Work and then quit for home as soon as decently possible, and then at 9.00pm after eating went out to find Anton in the Great Eastern pub at the bottom of Trafalgar street in Brighton. Had a good night with him, and some of the dads from his and Anna's ante-natal group. Nice bunch of guys.

He has had a letter published in a hi fi magazine, but refuses to tell me which one, or anything about its message. After a while Anton and I left and had an absolute bloody final in the Eddy before I returned home to burble happily and at length to Mary Jane.