Gwyneth's personal blog

Maundy Thursday 21st April, weather same as it was twenty minutes ago, possibly even a little warmer.

How The Light Gets In, the Philosophy and Music Festival at Hay on Wye, last weekend in May first weekend in June, is open for business. What's it for? I'm not totally sure, but it slightly reminds me of those Cyberfuture happenings at Warwick U., way back in the early nineties, strange cyborg goings on, live body modification and rough-cut neurological experiments, partnering deep and knotty Edge of the Future debate. Here morphed with a tentshow Music Festival... Almost sounds like Rivermead, in Bold As Love; except without the squalor. Or the violence, I assume. Check it out, the line-up is amazing.

I'm going to be there, panel-talking beside the illustrious about the ordinary and the fabulous (I think), and about particle physics if you can believe it (well, I can be the silly one, and I do have a tenuous imaginary connection). Don't know if I'll be sleeping in a tent.

Back in Brighton again. The sun is shining, it's incredibly warm. I should be making hay, but I think I'll stay in doors and work at my desk.

When did I last cry? This morning, when I read a report of the systematic abuse of doctors and nurses who are treating wounded protestors in Bahrain. I write letters for Amnesty International Urgent Action: to put it bluntly, that means not the most urgent or dreadful abuses of human rights, more those acute cases where the Urgent Action team senses the possibility of movement, if a rush of protests can be organised. Somebody just got snatched, or some evidence has turned up about the detention location of a long-lost disappeared person (or a body) etc. But nothing like this, this is powers beyond. This is the heart of darkness doing what the hell it likes, while the so-called West sc**ws around in hapless Libya, by arrangement.

Precious Bane. I wish it was gone, I really do. AND YET I still drive my car, occasionally.

At least Bradley Manning is out of his torture cell.

And Avaaz is gaining ground, global grassroots

If anyone in our so-called government has the gall to send me one of their Happiness Quizzes, I am definitely going to spoil my ballot.