venta

Well, the landlord is home. Only for a day or two, and he's quite benign really.

A quiet evening in, tonight. I came home from work via Tesco, and bought assorted bits to make a lamb, aubergine and pepper casserole, absently buying enough for Andy, too. Which was fortunate, since he was not only in, but seemed to have acquired a stray

metame as well.

So, I cooked casseroley things, which Andy and Metame bravely ate, despite me descibring it as lamb-and-couscous-slop. It was OK, though frankly turned out nothing like what I'd been aiming for - then again, maybe if I'd had a clearer idea what I was aiming for, it'd have turned out more like it. Less couscous next time, I reckon. I'd also like to point out that I did not drink an entire bottle of red wine, most of it went in the dinner.

In between times, I listened to random anecdotage from Metame's travels, and highly specific swearing from Andy as he tried to get the NtL cable modem to behave. (At present, it will work with exactly one of his and my laptops, but never both. However, it's currently working on mine, so I win). Metame seems to have dropped seamlessly back into life here: everyone should make sure they prod him and demand proper Traveller's Tales.

And I made some Christmas cards. On the whole, I don't give cards to people I'll see, and everyone else gets whatever looked nice in the charity cards this year, but I thought I'd inflict something home-made on a few people. I've located some card, and had reprints made of a photo I thought would make a reasonable picture, so was assembling them. I came to put captions on them, and thought I'd go wild and crazy and break out the decent writing. So, a quick rummage in the writing desk, and out came the nice sepia ink and the elderly dipping pen. Sadly, elderly is the word - and the nib was behaving rather strangely. I beat it into submission, and was halfway through the second card when there was a strange *splotch*, followed by half the nib breaking off and pinging across the card. Bugger.

Fortunately, at this point I remembered the lovely glass pen

condign brought me from Venice earlier in the year, which was more than equal to the occasion. Less fortunately, my copperplate has gone completely down the pan, and anything more complicated than writing my name seems to be beyond me these days. Note to self: am typing too much. Must write more. Calligraphy has always been my one sop to artistic ability, I need to get back in practice.