Depressed and with a performance imminent, they sit down at keyboards and improvise for a long time, only then finding that they do speak some kind of piano language.The novelist Lawrence Norfolk has been struggling with the complex structure of In the Shape of a Boar for what feels like forever and has already missed five deadlines. While swimming, he thinks about a forthcoming lunch with his editor “I’ve been writing this book for four years. Do I really want to rush the last 30 pages to make a publication schedule? The public doesn’t read the schedule, only the book.” As he lucidly exposes the novel’s difficulties, Norfolk has us biting our fingernails over whether he’ll make his deadline. This diary is one of the more dramatic pieces of writing about writing I have ever read.The performance artist Bobby Baker gives us an exhilarating sense of the pressure she’s under as she tries to find the solutions she knows are somewhere in her head to conceptual problems that feel unbending. “Resort to washing duvets to keep mind at bay,” she writes.The playwright Shelagh Stephenson, engaged in revisions and casting of her Ancient Lights while working on new plays for the National and the Abbey, is another mistress of the delaying tactic. Her dog must be one of the world’s best-walked and best-clipped. She also portrays brilliantly the artist’s sense that everything heard or seen somehow “glitters with relevance” to the work in hand.The poet Jo Shapcott records her “intimate tussle” with Rilke, whose French poems she is not so much translating as responding to in her inimitable way.

She also documents a festival appearance from hell in an unnamed foreign country and the beginnings of an artist’s column on computer games. It’s clear that there’s nothing as good as “machine-gunning thugs with that great girl Lara to raise your spirits” after nasty reviews.There’s still more to this absorbing and often humorous book: Tim Supple directing Shakespeare in Germany, the sculptor Richard Wentworth curating a show, the composer Errollyn Wallen working on her second symphony, the choreographer Shobana Jeyasingh putting together Surface Tension, a new dance piece. It feels strangely salutary to be reading the makers rather than their interpreters.The Gulbenkian Foundation has done well to commission these diverse diaries. If you find this volume, lurking modestly behind its minimalist covers, jump at it.The reviewer’s latest novel is ‘Sanctuary’ (Bantam). The driver of a busy Virgin train took the express to within yards of a potentially disastrous collision after passing through a red signal, it has been revealed. The driver of a busy Virgin train took the express to within yards of a potentially disastrous collision after passing through a red signal, it has been revealed.
When he realised he had passed a red light, the driver slammed on the brakes and narrowly avoided hitting another busy Virgin service, which had stopped in front.The 7.10pm from London Euston to Wolverhampton came to a halt just 30 yards behind the 7.05pm train to Holyhead.

The near miss, on Wednesday night, comes amid deep concern over the increase in the number of signals passed at danger (SPADs). Ten train companies – not including Virgin – have been ordered to tell the Health and Safety Executive by today how they intend to improve their record on SPADs.After the incident, the driver of the Wolverhampton train told officials that he thought signal WJ84, just north of Hemel Hempstead, was set at green when he first looked at it in strong sunlight. But when he looked again it was red and he applied the emergency brakes – stopping one train-length past the signal.As Virgin Trains and Railtrack began their investigations, it has emerged the driver of the Holyhead service had stopped to report a fault with signal WJ84. He had noticed the signal change from green to red as he went past it and stopped the train to telephone the signal box, as instructed in the industry’s rule book.Railtrack last night issued a statement that signal WJ84 had suffered from a power surge as the Holyhead train passed it. The fail-safe mechanism meant that the light changed immediately from green to red. The signal was still set at red when the Wolverhampton train approached it and the driver is thought to have misread it.Railtrack said: “Whenever there is a power supply issue, the signals are automatically reverted to red as a fail-safe.

The second train came along and didn’t abide by the signal, which was showing red. It appears it is a signal passed at danger.” No passengers were hurt.Virgin trains said the second train is being tested to see if it has any faults that may explain it passing the red signal.Among the 10 companies instructed to tighten procedures for preventing trains passing red lights are Thames Trains and First Great Western, the companies involved, respectively, in London’s Paddington and Southall disasters, which were both caused by SPADs. It was thought that strong sunlight might have caused Thames Trains’ driver to misread signal SN109 leading to the Paddington crash.The other train operating companies on the HSE’s hit list are Great North Eastern Railways; Anglia Railways; Merseyrail Electrics, First Great Eastern, Cardiff Railway, Scotrail and Wales and West.* Services on Eurotunnel are in “great disarray” because an increasing number of asylum seekers try to gain illegal entry into Britain, according to a leaked memo.The letter from Eurotunnel management to staff tells of train delays almost every night and the “injustice felt by staff faced with the constant, relentless and organised illegal intrusion” of asylum seekers into the terminal on the French side.Eurotunnel claims the problem is made far worse because the Red Cross centre for refugees at Sangatte, is close to the tunnel entrance.. Michael Portillo’s campaign to become Tory leaders is under renewed pressure after his two rivals, Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Clarke, closed the gap in the re-run first round of the contest. Michael Portillo’s campaign to become Tory leader is under renewed pressure after his two rivals, Iain Duncan Smith and Kenneth Clarke, closed the gap in the re-run first round of the contest.Mr Portillo, the early front-runner to succeed William Hague, won the votes of 50 MPs, only one more than he managed in Tuesday’s ballot. Some supporters feared the shadow Chancellor had failed to achieve the momentum he needed.Mr Duncan Smith won 42 votes, three more than in the first ballot, while Mr Clarke won 39, also up three.

Michael Ancram, the former Tory chairman, was eliminated from the race after coming last with 17 votes. He was only one vote behind David Davis.The first round had to be held again because the two men tied for last place. Mr Davis rejected pressure to withdraw from the race last night but is likely to be eliminated when the 166 Tory MPs vote again He is then expected to back Mr Duncan Smith. An intense battle for the votes of the 35 MPs who supported Mr Ancram and Mr Davis yesterday broke out immediately after the result was announced.A very close finish between Mr Portillo, Mr Duncan Smith and Mr Clarke is in prospect in the crucial third round. This will decide the final two who go into a ballot of party members, with the result due on 12 September. For a place in the run-off, a candidate needs the votes of 56 MPs.Tory MPs believe Mr Duncan Smith, who has performed more strongly than many expected, will qualify next Thursday, making the real battleground between Mr Portillo and Mr Clarke. Some MPs fear a “nightmare scenario” in which Mr Clarke comes third but finishes only a few votes behind the candidate in second place.