Welcome to the new - ultra masculine - Self household! On Friday afternoon the girls left us for a two week holiday in Tanzania, and I think it's worth reporting that my first two meals afterwards were takeaway deep-pan pizza and hot dogs with heavy doses of ketchup. Heart attack beckons?

I have been rather productive today, actually, finally finishing In Defence of History. (To be fair I finished it ages ago and it was only the Afterword I got through today - uncharacteristically uninteresting seeing as it simply rebuts wrong-headed criticism of the original edition.) The book is essentially a reasoned and uncontroversial assertion that, yes, it is possible to do real and meaningful history even if you can't even produce The Glowing Incontrovertible Truth Of The World (TM). Which is lucky since I want to do History at uni

I would also like to brag at finally solving a network issue that's been bugging me (and Tasha, for whom it affects) for a long time. Hurrah! Now I can stream her utterly brilliant music folder across to my room. We are living in a material world, and I am a material girl... Yay!

Finally, I want to say how touched I am to be bequeathed things in Josie's will.