Sweeties, darling

Today I had a most enjoyable mission, which took me into just about every sweet shop in Edinburgh, and down memory lane as well. SALP (where I work) has a new campaign in November, called Bite Sized (all about reaching new learners by offering "bite sized" learning opportunities, short, sweet and free). I am writing to a bunch of people to encourage them to get involved, and decided to go with the theme a bit, and include a gimmick with the letter. My first choice, chattering teeth, were beyond our budget, but I decided that a couple of sets of Milk Teeth would grab the attention almost as spectacularly. So began my quest. I had no trouble finding penny shrimps, sherbet dabs, dolly mixtures, flying saucers, edible paper, drumsticks and kola kubes (yum, sucking on one now), but no milk teeth to be found. Still, I was pleasantly distracted. There's something fantastic about walking into a shop that can unlock so many childhood memories through its Pick n' Mix.

I have since tracked down some teeth - at the local UGC's candy bar (although it's probably called something different).

Andrew's busy listening to the miracle Italian CDs that he got from his work (they have a very comprehensive training library). "Michel Thomas" (the most sought-after language teacher in the world, apparently - he has taught Emma Thompson, Mel Gibson, Eddie Izzard & Princess Grace) promises "no pens, no paper, no homework, no memorising". 8 hours and we'll be set for Roma, I hope!

He's listening to it on our new home cinema system - we decided to get that rather than a stereo and DVD seperately. It makes a pleasant change from listening to everything on the PC or tranny - has everything, including radio, and can play MP3s and just about every other file format save .doc. The cinema part is a bit of a joke at the moment though - we don't have a TV yet. Not that we haven't tried. I have encountered some bad shop & restaurant service here, but so far, nothing compares to electronics retailers. They seem to specialise in stocking their shop with things that you can't actually buy, TVs without remotes, TVs without boxes, TVs that are "discontinued" and TVs that are out of stock. If you ask to see the picture quality, they show you a different brand and screen size and tell you that it will be just the same. Brilliant. I've actually lost track of how may TVs we have tried to buy.

Still, sans TV, we might get good at Italian!