Well, I had my first Italian lesson yesterday, so I'll blog about it rather than read Love and Responsibility (Monica and I have been reading books on relationships, including Christian Courtship in an Oversexed World - overly extreme, but lots of food for thought - and Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus - helpful, despite a barrage of criticism from academics and a wishy-washy style)

I had to experiment with the buses a bit to get there. Checked out traveline (a brilliant concept for a web-site, what the web was meant to be like I think) and headed over the road after work to get a D bus. I got on it at the wrong point, and was treated to a bizarrely insular route around a small housing estate near Tescos - I'm pretty sure we doubled back on ourselves. No matter though, as I had plenty of time to kill. That took me half way, and I thought it was probably simpler to just keep walking than walk along a perpendicular line to the recommended next bus stop. Saw lots of Exeter tonight that I'd never seen before.

My classes are at the new St. Lukes High School, which is, I believe, a sports and something else college. Anyway, it looks like a fortress. Not an unfriendly one - if they were ever under siege, I think what they'd probably do is continually pour little cardboard cups of cappucino on the invader whilst wondering what heading the situation fell under in their vision statement.

I had a feeling, justified as it turns out, that Exeter College (who are running the course) screwed me over by telling me that it wasn't on last week, and not telling me when they found out it could be. So I shall complain.

Anyway, it was fun. I've got a definite headstart, though I shouldn't have thought it's much of one, as I don't have much practise at conversation. There's something nice about being in a room full of adults cheerily trying to learn something new whilst trying to avoid making complete fools of themselves. It was all stuff I knew already really, but it's good to be in it with some other people, and I'm not properly au fait with it anyway - ordering drinks and food, asking and giving names and where people are from, counting to 10, hello, goodbye - all that jazz. Fun. Also, someone I knew was there, Tom who was doing RCIA at the same time as Ben.

I stood at the wrong bus stop for a while, but using stagecoach's clever, though expensive, SMS system I found that this was no way to get home, so I walked on a little longer and caught the K home, had a beer and a shower to fix my rancid hair and went to bed in a good mood.