Review.

Museums
Saw the Velázquez exhibition at the National Gallery. Fair-sized exhibition, covering his whole career. Interesting to see his style develop from cartoonish beginnings to realism in the middle to sparse, almost-impressionistic brushstrokes by the end.

Not disappointed by the Rokeby Venus either.

Pretty crowded though, and expensive at £12.

Italy Trip
Screwed up with the health thing. They've changed the rules so you can't just grab a form from the post office, you have to apply in advance for an EHIC card, which I don't have time to do. Hope I don't get sick. Why didn't any of you guys warn me?

Was never good with languages, but I don't think I was ever this bad. Have been listening to a couple of "teach yourself" audiobooks as I wander around, and even on about the fourth run-through of the basics I can barely remember anything. I especially can't remember what vowel anything ends with. Biglietto? Biglietta? Bigliette? It just goes in one ear and out the other. Oh well, hopefully they'll all speak English anyway.

Robbery worries: already have a money belt, but the can be quite uncomfortable: either hanging loose or restricting your breathing, can get quite sweaty, can be fiddly to extract money from without hairy-belly exposure. So, bought an ankle-safe instead. Doesn't seem too uncomfortable, but can see it falling down into visibility.

Bag-wise: decided not to buy the two-part rucksack-with-foldaway-straps. Suspect that as with the last one the daypack would break beforehand, and the straps take up quite a lot of space and weight. Instead will go with the sausage bag, and bought a small collapsible rucksack to use as a daypack. The collapsibility isn't that useful, but the softness means it can be should be easy to stuff into available space in the bigger bag.

Consumerism: Shaving
For 16 years now I've been mainly relying on my trusty Gillette Contour II (Twin blades! Lubricating strip!) though I do use an electric when hungover, and finish with a safety razor for my increasingly rare job interviews and hot dates. It's getting harder to find the blades now though, so I tried out the Wilkinson Sword Quattro on special offer.

Am I just using it wrong or does that razor completely suck?

Even on the easy sideburney areas it doesn't seem particularly close. Certainly no closer than the Contour, and feels slightly worse afterwards. More importantly, with that huge plastic head it seems impossible to shave the tricky bits. Couldn't get under the nose at all, ending up with a half-by-quarter inch of Hitler moustache that I needed to go back to the Contour to remove. Also couldn't get a small patch to the side of my mouth despite a couple of minutes effort, though in that case it should have been topologically possible to get to.

Should I be using it from some strange angle or pressing a lot harder to take advantage of the Safety Bars? Because it just seems to be vastly inferior to its predecessors.

Update [2006-12-9 12:15:31 by TheophileEscargot]: Gillette Contour Plus ad on YouTube!