I seem to have finally found my feet churning through Javier Maria's translation of a novel, Your Face Tomorrow. Initially rendered irascible by the ornate and convoluted linguistic epithet, I now not only find vehement pleasure in consulting the dictionary once every other page, but have embarked on my very own journey of self-instruction. Commencing with a reference to Orwell's Homage to Catalonia of which I began reading an online transcription, I migrated to the History of the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) which brought me to rectify my puerile ignorance of the involved regimes: Socialism, Communism, Fascism and onto Marxism, Trotskyism et al. Thanks to Wikipedia and the internet in general, I'm expecting to glean from this novel a resulting slightly more sophistocated and educated update of myself than can be expected from your average yarn.

Bah humbug!

Tomfoolery aside, we went to the Brick Lane festival yesterday which is a big mess of curry stands (mm), live music and strange people. I took Hayden to see my latest interest - Acoustic Ladyland who performed a great set. In the audience was none other than Julian Barratt, legend of the Mighty Boosh. Which means we've been out thrice in a weekend! Stupendous!