A Year of Learning Ahead

For the last few years I've been allowing the old grey cells to slowly stagnate in work-related ennui as well as melt away in a minor lakette of Bordeaux.

I'm not doing a great deal about the minor lakette of red stuff; there are limits, you know. I can't do a great deal about the mind numbing monotony of what I do for a living - let's be honest, any job is better than no job and in the current climate I should be bloomin' grateful to be earning, for these parts, a fairly decent whack.

BUT - with the permanent departure from these shores getting ever closer (spring/summer 2011 and counting), it's time to re-awaken the latent learning circuits.

To this end, The Millbrooker Towers household, in association with Dong, Shazzerooneypoos and Slocombe (look - it's outrageously expensive, so we're sharing, ok?) is now the proud owner of the Rosetta Stone French levels 1,2 and 3 course.Our purchase was begun by piracy. I got given a pirate copy of this course; tried it; liked it so much that, rather than put up with the pirated copy's glitches and annoying habit of requiring re-installation every five or so modules, I wanted the genuine article.

Mrs The Millbrooker and I are working our way merrily through level one at the moment (pretty basic, but good background even for those of us with a modicum of the language). The other financial contributors will be having it installed onto their hard drives very soon.

Anyone thinking of using the Rosetta Stone method can see how it works here: http://www.rosettastone.co.uk/personal/demo/demo-info (click on the right hand "demo" icon, fill in the simple registration and have a go. It's remarkable.

Add to that a promised beginning to guitar lessons (from the ludicrously talented "Flash" Alik of ludicrously talented Freshly Squeezed fame) in September and that should keep Alzheimer's at bay for quite a while. Huzzah!