My friend Michael was a great linguist at school. While the rest of us struggled to turn the pages he quickly perfected his grammar and writing.

It was no surprise therefore that later he should become a professional translator firstly in Brussels and later at the UN in NYC.

On our occasional get togethers usually at some nice downtown Italian restaurant he would tell me stories of events at the UN and how it was so disappointing that men who could come up with so many fine words could speak so little common sense and do little to solve the problems they were tasked to fix.

Javolenus’s music allowed me to put words to thoughts on this and for that many thanks to him