Extra Salt & Sauce

For all those who spent long family evenings hunched around the board with sulky mothers and sullen sisters, lovely article about Scrabble in the weekend's Guardian.

Bear in mind that this is for teenagers, right, but a really charming interactive story-telling experience can be found here. The masterpiece you always wanted to write without any of the effort. And then you can email it to your friends and family. Perfect.

We took to the streets of Edinburgh yesterday in the name of our summer party. Though the weather wasn't very summery. It started raining promptly as we clambered off the coach to wander through the picturesquely cobbled streets to our destination. Having failed to warn our hosts of our superhero theme, we received some rather startled looks when we streamt, capes flowing, through the door.

As ever, the costumes were spectacular.

Here are us planning girls (and boy plus a couple of hangers on!).

And my favourite image of the night was captured before it even started when Paul sat down to brief Danger Mouse.

We have a corporate membership here for the Filmhouse Cinema. I'm a bit of a cinema junkie so have been to see all manner of rubbish courtesy of this membership. My high point (or low point) was a film innocuously called My Mother which culminated in a fine scene of simultaneous incest and self-harm. Films like this always scare me off the Filmhouse temporarily but Pavlov's dogs-like, I faithfully return.

And now and again, I see something really lovely. So last night for example, I saw a movie called La Antena which means The Aerial. It's an Argentinian film, made in Spanish, but largely silent so the language is pretty immaterial.

It's an extraordinary thing. Like a more optimistic version of Tim Burton meeting a 1940s silent movie and having a strange slightly surreal but adorable love child.

Most surreal of all, it's directed by a guy who started out directing Shakira videos.

It's about a city whose inhabitants have lost their voices. It also manages to be a cunning allegory for Nazi Germany.

I shall not say much more than this as I wouldn't want to ruin the surprise but catch it if you can. It's on for a precious couple more days I think and then it's gone. So be quick!

I'm loving the (relatively) new VW ad by the way.

Street art in fact.

Fuelling my obsession with grafitti, I came across this great little image from a New York metro station. Courtesy of street artiste extraordinaire D. Billy. Lovely stuff.

For all those of you that guzzle IRN-BRU from the trusty glass bottles, be aware that your rewards are now greater than ever before. A stonking 30 pence per returned glass bottle rather than the previous 20p. A great initiative from AG Barr. (Not that I'm biased in the slightest.) The full delightful story can be found here.

Rain rain rain. And it's the middle of July. Great.

To cheer myself up, I've been spending a little more time than I should playing this particular competitor's game. It's both slightly confusing and very addictive. A compelling combination.

I'm not sure I agree that this is awesome beyond words but it's certainly a very smart idea. And ripe for all kinds of eggcellent puns.

loving the new Orange campaign. A drive up to Glencoe at the weekend gave me ample opportunity to 48-sheet-spot.

I finally caught the TV ad last night and thought that was slightly disappointing. It feels a bit less quirky than their posters had given them license to be. But I can't have everything...