We're having a Colombian party tonight! La gente started rocking up after 10:30 (for a 9pm start) and are still streaming in with food now at close to 1am. I had no idea our apartment could pack in so many people! And all with big, happy characters.. who generally take up more space.

It's nice just Ana and myself at home at the moment. We are on the same wave most of the time - she knows just the right moment to suggest some chocolate ice cream, and I can usually pinpoint the music of the moment.
We had fun decorating the house and I'm presently having a break from all the Latino noise flying around, but in general it's really nice to fiesta with such fun people. There's lots of banana being eaten too.

So that's it, I think.

Yeah well, no pretty photo captions yet, but you should use your imagination every once in a while to put two and two together..

• Autumnal colours in Richelieu
• Haydenwith our petit voiture
• Tim, Hayden, Ang and I doing silly things when we went OUT last weekend
• Ending the night with the obligatory hot chocolate and churros at 6am
• Displaying the fruits of our scavenging - Alfie sitting comfortably atop a resurrected table
• Lunch on the roof - the before photos (camera ran out of batteries for the during ones)
• Visitors - it was great to see Jill (with her mojito at the cuban bar) and Chloe (in front of Gaudi house). Ben was there too, promise
• Bunch of French tourists learning how to use segways - jajaja
• Up on Tibidabo - picnic on the steps in the sun, and views of Barcelona

See, we don't just make this shit up...

We went out! Twice! In two nights!
First we went to see Jill (one of the awesome foursome from JMWO's the summer of gin and tonics) play viola in La La La Human Step's modern ballet performance all about swans. I love having friends who are doing exciting things! The company are doing an enormous 4-month tour of Europe and since Jill has already had a fantastic tour of Barcelona when we came here with JMWO last year, we had fun being very domestic - shopping at the market, cooking lunch, wandering the streets of Gracia and having tapas, coffees and mojitos. We also went up to Tibidabo, but this time brought with us a sandwich picnic and a bottle of cava, which we enjoyed in the sun on the steps of the church.

Sunday night we braved the handful of finglish (and surprisingly numerous bogan skippies) to see my love Gruff and the Super Furries perform. It was a good old fashioned gig - no backdrop, props, cartoon animation - just the boys and their guitars. It was wierd seeing lots of mildly interested Spanish people, who just didn't get into it and lyric mime like those English fans can. Noticing it was quite subdued, Gruff put on a power rangers mask for bits of the second half, and sang with the mic slotted in through a hole in the visor. Oh Danni how I thought of you!! Gruff doing his thing holding a microphone to his eye a la Noel Fielding. I was overcome with love.

We don't have an electric kettle here - which is only mildly inconvenient, boiling water in a saucepan isn't that much of a pain. It also means that my previously rushed morning coffee ritual isn't so rushed any more.

However Elisse's friend Jill is in Barcelona at the moment and got us a proper stove top whistling kettle - which is fantastic!

We're having Sunday lunch on the roof!
How cool is that?!

Elisse and I went scavenging on Tuesday night, when all the hard rubbish goes out in Barcelona - or at Gràcia at least. We managed to find a half decent desk and a really nice book shelf. The book shelf was actually a cabinet, but after we took off the remaining door it quickly became a bookshelf.

Now we have a decent work space.

Well we made it. 3,600km later we're back home in Gràcia, and we've got all our boxes up the five and a half flights of stairs. They're now filling our room to the point that the table has been relegated to the balcony.

For now we've just unpacked the important things (in no particular order): good voodoo knife set, another decent sized pot, coffee plunger, coffee grinder & slippers. More on these, and other exciting exploits, at a later date.

Grrrr just drove into work (Southwark) to pick up my beloved Alfie and other voluminous geek textbooks and it was by far the most tedious and nerve-wrangling part of the journey.

It's been strange being back in London. Everything is so familiar, but I feel like an outsider now, being on the better side of the College line. It makes me nervous being here - especially commuting and just standing on Oxford street getting dizzy watching all the busy busy people. I can feel my muscles tensing up again.

Aside from that, as soon as we got off the ferry and entered the island of drizzle and misery, I felt like a hearty autumnal soup. I've been cooking for Claire for the last few days, and whipped up a big batch of butternut squash soup. Now I'm stuffed full of wintery food, and can last on the Spanish stuff until summer. Funny thing trying to get into Sainsbury's car park though - swearingly realised a bit late that I in order to get a ticket in and out, I had to hand-break, scuffle over the passenger seat and make a big mess of getting the ticket, fumbling back to my seat and driving in. It made me laugh though.

I'm leaching wireless from the road in Holborn somewhere - trying to get into Southwark to pick up our stuff from work. The traffic is horrible.

How could I not write a post about the fact that Leopard is being released on the 26th of October, and just a few days before I get back to London where we have a site licenense.