In my early years I liked toy soldiers and I had a small wooden fort. One Christmas my father had bought it for me and carried it all the way home from Brixton Market, but on the way dropped it, smashing it, so he had to turn back and buy another one just the same. That's the story I heard. I can still feel the touch of those childish things though they are long gone.

I spent quite a while today lost in streets around the Stephansdom (the cathedral of Vienna). This area includes a house in which Mozart lived at one stage of his life. I wasn't concerned about getting lost because I had plenty of time before I had to catch my plane, but I was tired and suffering a little in the heat. It was lovely to be in the area, in spite of that.

A few days ago, I dreamed I was composing a new piece. I could hear the ending and also sense the kind of music that led up to it. The final notes themselves were in my mind and I saw the notation, so after I awoke, I could write the passage down. Although I quite often compose in my dreams, it rarely has this clarity.

Tybert (T): Can you tell me please, Rose, should a new and original kind of music be arrived at by thinking hard and planning hard, or in some other way?

Rose (R): If you put a question like that to anyone around here, they will probably dismiss it and tell you just to write down or to perform the music that comes to you from your imagination. For myself, I don't have an immediate answer to your question. I am clueless in so many things.

Nowadays I wake very early and begin to work straightaway in this little attic room above my apartment in Amsterdam, where there is a pleasant view of sky and treetops.  I practise the piano and compose. It is a dull day today and all I can see is grey sky and the branches of plane trees swaying in the wind.

My trip to Venice in October 2011 was in order to attend the premiere of my Concertino, which was written earlier in the year for the Ex Novo Ensemble. The concert took place at the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello where I had been a student of Rubin de Cervin and Sinopoli for one year in the 1970s.

An extraordinary day, yesterday, because of a remarkable dream in the afternoon. I drifted off to sleep after lunch, as I often do, but this time it was a long sleep of perhaps two hours. In the dream I heard the end of the piece I am working on and it was very different to what I had already written.

Finish your plate they said, because Chinese children don’t have enough to eat. Where was the logic to that? Anyway, we had to finish whatever bad-smelling rubbish they put on our plates.And once, one end of a trestle table we were sitting at collapsed and all the plates slid off on to the floor. Wonderful, but scary.

Over the summer I worked on a piece for Chinese instruments. It was a frustrating time, just reading about them and listening to recordings, yet not knowing the nuts and bolts in terms of tuning, range and fingering etc. I couldn’t compose with certainty. The sounds of Chinese instruments are absolutely beautiful, however the issue is how to write for them appropriately.

How often have I written here “Listen to your feelings”. The statement is an echo of one I learned from a very wise man. So I felt very good and also very bad in the Cologne churches and these feelings are telling me that the Church is very important to me. In one church, delighted with the atmosphere, I drifted off to sleep like some old tramp.

Hamish is my closest friend, albeit a fairly grumpy one. He has seen much of my joy and sorrow and commented on nearly all of what he has seen. There has been plenty of laughter along the way. It is now over 20 years since I left Edinburgh but the connection with him has grown stronger, not weaker.

How often have I written here “Listen to your feelings”. The statement is an echo of one I learned from a very wise man. So I felt very good and also very bad in the Cologne churches and these feelings are telling me that the Church is very important to me. In one church, delighted with the atmosphere, I drifted off to sleep like some old tramp.