I'm sorry to report that I can't get me no satisfaction. (That's one of Marlon's phrases: personally, I think it sounds a little bourgeois.) I've been on the telephone machine all day and I can't get any sense out of the people in Communist Party Support. What's the point of a "party line" if nobody on the party line knows what the party line is? If you see what I mean. Not sure that I do any more.

If I don't hear anything from the Politburo soon, I'm going to have to start making up policy on the hoof. Not that that's anything I haven't had to do before, of course. Some of the movement's best ideas were just inspired improvisations - in fact, the New Economic Policy was originally just a put-down to a particularly annoying heckler. (Ruddy kulaks.)

It's at times like this that I miss Trotsky. He was very accomplished when it came to sorting things out on the phone. He must have loved Vivaldi, that's all I can think.