A Christmas anecdote:

Pauline (the sister of the ex-Gladiator) was telling us about a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert she'd been to in Australia. She'd only been able to book a ticket in a seated area, and when the band came on, she stood up in a giddy haze of excitement only to become aware of general discontent behind her: "Can't see", mutter mutter etc.. She turned around and said heatedly: "Well stand up then!".

Everyone in the row behind her was in a wheelchair.

Oh how we cringed.

uPdate: I've just ordered a FireWire card for my iPod, instead of paying though the nose for an Apple-branded USB cable. HAH. Take that, Jobs.

Proper CrimBo v2.

I was at home over Christmas. All clichés were present and correct: eating; drinking; merriment; impromptu Riverdance-esque dance routines with an ex-Gladiators contestant. Usual stuff.

On Christmas Eve, I gave my sister a lift home and then we met up with some old friends in the newly-refurbished Caledonian in Leven. The Caley used to be a typical grim-up-north dive: sticky floors, ageing locals dressed up in their gold bling and 80s togs. Now it looks like a Wetherspoons. I can't decide whether it's actually improved or not.

The evening was slightly unusual in that I didn't meet many old schoolmates; normally it's a veritable orgy of awkward reintroductions and desperate attempts not to ask them amiably: "Why the fuck do you still live in this backwater?".

Christmas Day was great; we wandered down to Leven again to spend the evening with a family we've known for years. We brought our complement of two grannies to keep their two grandads occupied and everyone got disgracefully drunk, occasioning the aforementioned Riverdance spectacle. Jacqui (ex-Gladiators competitor!) seems to border on ADHD half the time and she gleefully made Ruth play the one vaguely ceilidh-ish fiddle tune she could remember, while she and I pranced around like maniacs. In front of our bemused parents.

<fx: shudder>

Anyway, a top night.

Boxing Day was good fun as well; we had the same family friends up to visit our house, along with Ally and Katie's family (and Antonio, who'd spent Christmas Day at Jeff's and then been ferried down the road) for more food, drink and some 'fun' boardgames. Cue inevitable hijinks as no-one can remember the rules and inter-generational one-upmanship takes hold. Oh, how we laughed.

All in all though, a good Christmas. I scarpered back to Edinburgh on Saturday evening and enjoyed a blissful Sunday of doing nothing but playing Rogue Leader.

In other news: iPod, therefore iRock. Except that world + dog has realised that they need a USB cable to plug their shiny new toy into their PC and have all rushed out to buy one at once, leaving me unable to get one for love or money. It's just sitting there, looking utterly cool and being utterly useless.

Proper CrimBo.

We had the annual (no shit! Annual? Get away) flat Christmas meal yesterday. We started cooking (and drinking) about 5 pm, which then turned out to be about an hour too late to have anything whatsoever ready for zero hour of 6 pm. (Okay, the turkey had been in the oven since about 3, but we'll gloss over that.) We invited Megan, Vassiliki, Katie and Kate round to bolster the flat inmates and by about 7 we were ready to rock and roll. Jeff made some soup to start and then we moved onto a veritable bonanza of turkey and not so much all the trimmings as the EU trimmings mountain. Top stuff(ing)!

Post meal, we got stupendously drunk (was there absinthe involved? Christ, I can't remember. Certainly something was aflame. Probably a pudding-related conflagration) and played the Rizla game. I was the Littlest Hobo, as chosen by my sister. Can't argue with that. Then a cigar, and finally to a deeply unsatisfying drunken sleep. I got to work at 11.30 am this morning...

...only to find that today we had a mini Crimbo booze-fest organised by the office manager and endorsed by the management, who gave an marvellously vague speech ("moving forward", "excellent year". Notably missing was "whopping bonuses for everyone") and which has now rendered me incapable of doing any work.

I am a bad man.

Your correspondent went on a date a couple of weeks ago. (No, not this one. Although that particular date went down like a lead balloon, at least I made a friend out of it!) It went pretty well; we seemed to get on reasonably well. Not like a house on fire, but well enough.

Anyway, I said I'd call her sometime. Which I did at the beginning of the next week; the problem was that she was busy all that week and then I had the Amsterdam trip at the weekend, so I said I'd call back sometime later.

I didn't.

I spent Monday to Wednesday procrastinating, trying to decide whether I actually wanted to go on another date with her. By Thursday I had decided not, but I ended up watching a film and by the time it had finished it was too late to call. On Friday I then found myself beyond any reasonable calling-back window. I'm aware that this isn't earth-shatteringly evil, but I feel bad not having had the common decency to at least phone to explain what was going on.

Summary: poo.

There is very little to compare

to the fear experienced when the slowest-emptying urinal you've mistakenly chosen is inexorably filling up and it starts flushing.

Pics

of Amsterdam and Vegas courtesy of Josh.

Okay, so my bag was maybe a smidgen big for a weekend.

Schtop! This holiday is not ready yet.

Back to work after a weekend in the 'Dam1! The Roquefort Files and flatmates took a sly day off2 on Friday and jumped on a sleazyJet flight to Schipol at lunchtime, after a preparatory traditional fry-up.

We met up with Cristina, an Italian friend of ours, after we finally found the hostel. An inability to navigate was a recurring theme over the weekend - Josh's GPS, not only earning him a telling off from a steward on the flight over, then failed to be of much use whatsoever in finding the hostel. Typical Conversation #1, repeated ad nausem:

"So where is it?"
<Josh waves GPS receiver around a bit>
"We should be there. It's only ten or twenty metres away."
"Which direction?"
"This way."
<cue walking in a random direction for a minute or two>
"We've been here before, haven't we? Remind me again why we didn't bring a map?"

And then he left it turned on all day, so that the batteries ran out.

Anyway, Cristina had been boozing and smoking since she had arrived at lunchtime, so we left her sleeping it off and headed out to get some food before the evening's entertainments. We managed to acquire an American bloke called Adam - the only person, apart from Andre Agassi, to actually come from Las Vegas - while discussing where to eat in the bar. Adam was pretty far gone. Typical Conversation #2:

"So where do you come from, Adam?"
<30 second pause>
"Uh. Like, uh. What?"
"Where do you come from?"
<30 second pause>
"Uh, like, dude! Las Vegas, man."

Honestly, I shit ye not. We were talking to the canonical stoner. Still, he was a nice chap, so we forgave him his mushroom- and weed-addled state. After we had some dinner, our Dutch acquaintances started to arrive at the hostel and we headed out en masse.

We started out at a nice little pub/café type place in a square not far from the hostel. I really liked Amsterdam pubs in general; the nicest were slightly worn around the edges but had a well lived-in feel to them that too many identikit style bars lack across here. Also, the buildings tended to be fairly original inside, as opposed to the Edinburgh tendency to refit a nice old building with a new interior but leave the listed exterior as is. We moved on to another (staffed by a karaoke nazi barman that sang the whole time we were there. Jasna tried to talk him into letting other people sing but he was obviously enjoying the attention/power rather too much) and then a club called Café Meander. There was a fantastic band3 playing, and even the dire hard house that came on after they had finished failed to dampen my near 100%-proof enthusiasm.

The next morning (actually, afternoon), everyone was a little more subdued/ill. The air conditioning in our room had been set to something like 26° the night before (quite possibly as a result of some drunken messing around with the controls) and I was practically stuck to my sleeping bag, which proved to be a little too warm for an Amsterdam winter. Once we'd all dragged ourselves out of bed and finished sobering/throwing up, we decided to try some touristy stuff. Some random observations from our afternoon's "sightseeing":

• One novelty bong/condom/knife shop is enough.
  
• We went on a tour of the canals, with a multilingual commentary played over the boat's PA. Once we were out into the main waterway, it felt almost like being on the Volga in communist Russia in the 1960s; a grey sky, a hydrofoil skimming past and cubic, industrial-looking buildings. It was great!
  
• Ensconced in a café after our tour, we were sitting in front of some ex-pat American residents and their visiting friends. The conversation was absolutely hilarious.
  "I'm like serious, dude."
  "No way."
  "Yeah, like totally."
  "No. WAY."
  "Way."
  "Seriously?"
  "Yeah, dude."
  <pause>
  "Woah."
  

Later that day, we were sitting in the hostel bar. A guy wearing a t-shirt with the legend "1977" on the back was playing table football. I was instantly reminded of this.

On Saturday evening we managed to cajole Jasna and Elke to come out again (impressive work by them; they travelled from Leiden both nights to come out with us). They suggested that we head to the Melkweg (Milky Way), a sort of multidisciplinary club/venue/cultural centre on a square somewhere to the south of the hostel.

Cue an hour of Typical Conversation #1, interspersed with visits to increasingly odd pubs.

We got there in the end, only to find that it was another 'hard' music club night on, and the troops were looking a little the worse for wear. We settled on a little rock pub round the corner, and carried on with the epic beermat flipping contest that had raged like the Hundred Years War since lunchtime that day. Jeff and Cristina crumbled about 3 am and headed back to the hostel (frankly, a wise decision - this had been another fairly full-on Night O' Booze) while the rest of us soldiered on to 31 beermats (left-handed, eyes closed for Josh. Impressive) and a drunken visit to Burger King before giving in at about 5.

Check out was at 11 am. Not fun.

We met up with Margo again on Sunday and had planned a leisurely wander around to see some of the city from a Dutch perspective, but the weather wasn't cooperating, so we had a couple of tostis (toasties! What a great language) delivered at a staggeringly leisurely pace in yet another theatre/café multipurpose thingy and worked our way back to the train station via - for a change - some pubs.

All in all, a great weekend and since it's 6.40 pm and I want to go home, that's it from me.

Update: Josh has put up some photos of the trip.

1. I'm allowed to use this cheesy contraction 'cos I've been there, you see.
   
2. 'Sly' because I don't have enough days holiday left to cover the Christmas break, let alone arbitrary continental booze cruises.
   
3. Admittedly we'd been drinking (and smoking a bit) for about ten hours by this point so 'fantastic' may well be a reflection of my state of mind as opposed to how good the band were!
   

Urgh.

We had our work's Christmas do last night. Here's a brief timeline:

• 8:00 pm - arrive at Howie's
  
• 8:05 pm - get stuck into the 50 litres of free wine
  
• 1:00 pm - wake up with colossal hangover
  

Quite a good night then.

I have just read the funniest thing in the world.

I've started using my phone as a sort of diary/to-do list type thing and I found an entry on Sunday morning that says, unhelpfully: "evananecenencd". Now I imagine this is some kind of reference to the execrable Christian-rock abomination that is Evanescence*, but I have no idea why the hell I'd want to write it down.

Actually, I remember now.

On Saturday night, it was Ally's birthday, and he'd organised a meal at Thaisanuk in Marchmont; Jeff, Josh, Devon and I were reprazenting the Mafia. It's a great little restaurant - reminds me of Bonsai, except that it was actually busy. So busy, in fact, that they had to have two dinner 'shifts': 7-9 pm, and 9-11 pm. Ally had booked for 7 so they basically kicked us out at 9, but never mind: the food was excellent and we happily knocked back a shedload of wine to wash it down.

We all wandered off to the Blind Poet afterwards, where a friend of Ally's was playing the bass in the band there that night. He was, I will admit, somewhat better than this aspiring bassist, but the increasing quantities of beer I consumed put paid to any lingering jealousy. At about 12, we left the Blind Poet to go to Henry's Jazz Cellar across towards Lothian Road. I don't feel entirely qualified to give any sort of coherent or worthwhile review of this part of the evening, because I was completely blotto by this point. Wine then beer may make you feel queer, but drink enough of it and it'll get you quite spectacularly lashed as well. Anyway, the bits of the singing (by Niki King) I remember were excellent, and it was over far too quickly.

Finally, Ally, Sam and I headed back to Marchmont with some friends (I assume!) of Ally's. They were all terribly nice, and made us cups of tea and so on. Even had quite a nice bedroom, so I settled into a chair and smiled beautifically when anyone asked me a question. The dude with them eventually picked up a guitar and started playing away, while either or both of the girls periodically joined in with some singing. I asked at one point if he knew any Violent Femmes stuff (thinking of the excellent Blister In The Sun), and he said no, he didn't. The combination of this plus my sighting of some book about practical Christian faith or somesuch got the alarm bells ringing; I gave Sam a quick wide-eyed glance and we got the hell out.

Anyway, there you go. "Evananecenencd" is my attempt to type "Evanescence" into my phone while completely hammered, to remind me to rant on about Christian music. Obviously it worked.

And I did bugger all on Sunday.

* "Originally, it was released in the Christian and secular markets; however, the band's use of profanity during an interview with Rolling Stone prompted its label, Wind-Up Records, to recall Fallen from Christian stores." Ahahaha. Help! Profanity! I am sullied!

\m/

Tiny Monkey had another mini-practise the other night - we played (well, Mart played, I fumbled my way through) Mart's Take It To Heart and my word, it sounded rather good. Dom is currently sunning himself somewhere nicer than Edinburgh and when he gets back I predict that the fully armed and operational Tiny Monkey will become UNSTOPPABLE. Expect to see us on Top of the Pops sometime in 2012 or so.

In other news, I've acquired Mart's bass from him. Well, acquired pending me giving him some wonga for it, but in principle anyway the Roquefort Files are now 100% more axe-rich than before.

God we rock. Move over The Darkness. You've got nothing on Tiny Monkey*.

*Apart from tunes, an absurdly high falsetto and legions of fans. But are they really happy? Tcha. I bet not.

Vegas, baby. Vegas. (And PIE!)

We (the people) went to Vegas on Saturday, but not before we gave thanks for a second colossal helping of pie earlier that evening. Megan, one of Jeff's office mates, had a Thanksgiving dinner/party type thing and the boys in black headed along to check out the security (and pie) arrangements before the main event. Lots of top chat, food and (in retrospect) possibly too much booze set us up for the partying ahead.

Vegas was typically swinging and the Mafia, consisting that evening of world + dog, were all looking pretty fly. We were, in fact, money. We had five (count 'em) MIBs/bodyguards (including Annabel, who while technically not an M nor actually IB, managed to upstage the rest of us by generally carrying it off marvellously), an Audrey Hepburn (Devon, in a fantastic costume. Not presumptious in the least, Devon!), Andy (World's Smoothest Man) and a gaggle of Irish girls. I suspect the latter are compulsory for any real night out.

And I danced. Firstly in the queue for the bar to Little Green Bag, the one song guaranteed to make me twitch in a rhythmic fashion and then again once I was too mortal to really care, although Annabel's exhortations to stop being so self-conscious, while well-intentioned, had of course the opposite effect :) I'm going to be in therapy before I'm 30. Bet you I am.

Random party observations from a minor obligatory bash on Friday evening:

• Brazilian street performer music, while edifying in itself and indicative of a well-rounded musical education and sophisticated taste, sucks balls when compared to Tom Jones to really get a German party going.
  
• All Greek girls appear to be named 'Vassiliki'. Try it; ask a Greek girl her name and it'll be Vassiliki. Guaranteed*.
  

Oh, and one last thing: witness Bob the Invulnerable Cricket, as seen clinging to our kitchen wall.

*Based on an exhaustive sample of 2 Greek girls.

Pie pie pie! (thanks)

Last night, Devon and Annabel had a sort of hybrid Thanksgiving dinner/soirée down at their incredibly swanky and clean1 flat. I'm a little hazy as to the real meaning of Thanksgiving (something about slaughtering indigenous peoples or somesuch), but I was certainly giving thanks for the sheer variety and quality of PIE available. Pumpkin pie, pumpkin pie with a hazelnut crust (I know. Luxury!), apple pie and some other kind of pie-esque thing that I didn't have the intestinal capacity to try.

On a completely different tack, a friend of mine is moving into a new flat soon, so I felt I had to show her this.

1. As opposed to our flat, which is furnished entirely in brown, and can most accurately be described as 'dank'.
   

BOB IS ALIVE! Turns out Jeff found him and let him go outside. Josh took a picture of him though, so with any luck I should be able to prove I'm not just making this shit up.

Praise Jebus! The weekend wasn't as catastrophically awful1 as I had predicted. So much for the power of science.

On Thursday morning I was woken up from my post-Scotland-defeat hangover by a text message that said, rather succinctly: "Do you like classical music?". A few painfully slowly typed messages later and I had been invited to see Madama Butterfly on Friday night with Kate and a friend of hers. It was my first opera, so I was intrigued to see what it would be like (beyond the classical music and sung narrative, I mean). The music and singing were really impressive; the acting less so. I'm aware that an opera singer's first love must be with the music, but dear God: it was like watching a daytime Channel Five soap. Much agonised wailing and gnashing of teeth. Anyway, regardless, it was definitely worth it. We all had a few drinks in the Basement afterwards and chatted about it, like honest-to-God adults. Scary.

After farting around with the binding angles on my board more or less continuously while I was in France last winter, I hilariously managed to strip the thread of one of the inserts, so I took it into Snowlines on Saturday to have it fixed. I am now positively gagging for a bit of snow-based action.

On Saturday night we went to yet another ceilidh, this time for the birthday bash of a friend-of-a-friend. I (and most of the Mafioso that came along) was pretty knackered, and, crucially, stone-cold sober. This is not a good way to approach a ceilidh. The band were good musically but seemed to have a "let's do obscure dances" axe to grind. A few of us were press-ganged into dancing with some Scottish girls (okay, they didn't have to ask all that hard) and even we (as natives) had bugger all idea of what was going on. Couple this with a maybe 40% foreign crowd and we're talking about a ceilidh that redefines the notion of chaos.

Anyway, regardless of this, it more or less turned out all right in the end; we all wandered into Negociants for a couple of eye-wateringly expensive beers, and all was right with the world.

So: another mixed bag, but kind of a luxury selection of Thornton's chocolates as opposed to a cheap-ass Woolies pick 'n mix.

Oh, I almost forgot. RIP Bob the Invulnerable Cricket. Sometime last week, probably of starvation or overwhelming nausea at the sea of rotting pasta behind the cooker. No flowers.

1. Admittedly, I'm at work as I type this, but I'm in a fairly love-all, serve-all state of mind, so I'm being philosophical about it.
   

Last night the Roquefort Files helped save the world, while the Scotland football team failed to save anything.

So we got drunk, and it was good.

This weekend was something of a mixed bag. Statistically speaking, next weekend is probably going to suck the big one. To wit:

• Mon Sep 01: "Bit of a fun-filled extravaganza over the past week or so..."
  
• Mon Sep 22: "That was a fine weekend, I have to say"
  
• Mon Sep 29: "Another decent weekend for the Roquefort Files...".
  
• Mon Oct 06: "...it seemed like a good idea at the time. Actually, it was".
  
• Mon Oct 13: "Another good weekend. Something is definitely going on". This is the point I get wise to inevitable doom.
  
• Mon Oct 20: "The weekend: good and bad". Uh oh.
  
• Mon Oct 27: "...a pretty decent weekend". Bucking the trend for a last gasp of happiness.
  
• Sun Nov 02: "I'm off to do some work". Ah. Working at the weekend.
  
• Mon Nov 10: "Summary: gig good; everything else standard issue". Uh oh x2.
  

If I was anal enough to plot this on a graph, I think it would show a) I'm in trouble next weekend; b) I'm incredibly sad.

So I won't.

Anyway, back to this weekend. On Friday, Jeff randomly bumped into Nina, a Dutch friend of ours that we're going to visit in Amsterdam next month, which is a bit of a coincidence. Josh was in a beer monster type of mood, so we recruited some of the usual suspects and went on a minor bender with Nina and her boyfriend.

I was woken up the next morning by a text message arriving on my phone from Kate, who'd just got her bike back from being repaired, and wanted to go for a ride somewhere. I scrambled out of bed, had a shower and met up with her on Leith Walk about 40 minutes later. (I'm still vaguely in shock that she doesn't burst out laughing every time she sets eyes on me.) We cycled down to Newhaven and had a couple of pints in a nicely cosy little pub and then a couple more in a pub near my work, and then I cycled home. Illegally, I suspect.

That night, the Mafia headed to a party (with a supposedly French vs. Greek theme - your guess is as good as mine), but I was still in the throes of one of those afternoon-drinking hangovers that you get if you don't just keep on drinking, so I wasn't quite on top form and I headed back fairly early.

Josh and I went to see The Matrix Revolutions on Sunday night. Hmm. I'm in two minds about it - it was certainly much better than Reloaded, but if you, say, use the rest of the cinematic oeuvre as a yardstick, it was really pretty awful. The sheer spectacle of some bits was incredible, but a paper-thin story didn't help matters. On the way home though, I saw possibly the funniest thing ever. There was a heap of full black rubbish bags on the pavement, with a note pinned to them reading:

"WHAT PART OF 'DON'T LEAVE BIN BAGS IN THE STAIRWELL' DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND, ASSHOLE?"

So not a total loss.

I was making a cup of tea the other day and I heard what sounded like a grasshopper or cricket chirping somewhere in the kitchen. I circled about, trying to find it, and it sounded like it was behind the cooker.

What the fuck? A grasshopper behind the cooker? It stopped chirruping whenever I got near it, and started up again when I moved away.

This was four days ago and it still seems to be there, obviously surviving off those bits of stir fries that get enthusiastically stirred into the air and down the side of the cooker. I'm calling it Bob the Invulnerable Cricket, or Tenacious B.

I went to see Grandaddy (of the criminally under-represented electro-country future-shock pop/rock genre) at the Carling Academy in Glasgow on Friday night. I got to Neil's flat a bit late, after a slightly frantic hoon to Renfrew to pick up some tickets from Mart and then back into the city centre. We met up with a couple of Neil's mates and then headed to the gig.

I managed to miss my second support band of the week, but hey; I'd already seen them. We had a couple of pints - not Carling, thankfully - while we were waiting for Grandaddy to arrive and then wahey! Straight into the fun. It was an excellent gig - they're not a jump-around-the-stage band but they'd picked the set from their most straightforwardly crowd-pleasing tracks, and the crowd loved it. The venue was packed, and the audience obviously all wanted to be there, unlike the slightly odder Snow Patrol Liquid Room gig. The screen above the stage was showing suitably quirky videos and it all came together really well. They played two encores and finished off with He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's The Pilot, which, apart from having a cracking name, is probably one of their best, most Grandaddy-ish tracks.

Top stuff. I'd definitely go to see them again.

After the gig we wandered into Barfly, just across the river. (Hannah bought a pie en route, and kindly left me a bit. I have never enjoyed a pie quite so much. Post-gig euphoria + lots o' beer + hunger -> pie is great. Mmm pie.) Apparently Death Disco was on that night but Alan McGee wasn't and being the like, really cool dudes that we were, we left.

This was a mistake. Neil and I ended up in some hellish dive that cost an arm and a leg to get into. Coupled with the fact that we were by now completely trollied, it was time to go home.

I drove back around lunchtime (after watching the slightly depressing Scotland-Australia game that morning with a particularly evil, lurking hangover) and stuck some Jimi Hendrix on the stereo, which made the M8 almost bearable. Saturday night was pretty standard; we met up with one of Jeff's archaeology mates, the two Allys and my sister for a few drinks, but nothing spectacular. Sunday was one of those lost days...I didn't do anything in particular but seemed to spend the whole day occupied with pottering around the flat.

Ah well. Summary: gig good; everything else standard issue.

Party update #3:

Some of Michelle's pictures, hijacked by your correspondent.

Sour cream update #1:

Still clogging up the fridge, only now it's gone off.

The Roquefort Files went to see the mighty Snow Patrol last night at the Liquid Room. I managed to remember my ticket once I was already half way there, so after going back to the flat to get it I got to the gig about 8.15 pm or so, missing the support band. Apparently they were crap, so no great loss.

Dom's Gig Summary^TM: "gig: great. starfighter pilot (the song they always finish on): good. beer: expensive and shit. strange people pointing and clapping: odd.". The best bit for me was Gary Lightbody's solo An Olive Grove Facing the Sea; a nice song, and actually better with just the one guy performing it.

I've been to see them three times now (sad, I know) and the audiences at the gigs seem to age about five years between each one. The first time I went to see them everyone looked like little nu-metal kids; the second time they'd graduated to early 20s indie-dom and last night seemed to have a typical pale Scottish indie scene crowd - mid 20s onwards. Weird.

Embarrassingly, I'm going to see SP a fourth time tomorrow - they're supporting Grandaddy at the Carling Academy in Glasgow. I must be getting west coast withdrawal or something.

Party update #2:

Andy's photos of the party.

Party update #1:

Who's the baddest gangster?

Mmm. Hmm.

Josh's take on the party.

< fx: Orff's Carmina Burana >

Saturday witnessed the event - nay, the phenomenon that is the semi-annual Hat/Comedy Facial Hair Party. We're getting pretty good at this by now, and the whole flat moved like a well-oiled machine throughout the day to buy fucking shitloads of booze and mixers (a good 100 big ones' worth) and to rearrange our embarrassment of chairs into a more party-friendly configuration. We borrowed an extra record deck from a friend and Josh set up the trademark two-deck one-CD bad boy DJ booth that has served us well in the past.

I had the old pre-party anxiety after about 9 pm (yeah, I know. Too early. I'm a square) when the only people there were the ones that really had no choice but to come (flatmates, girlfriends, you know who I mean), but a brace of beers sorted that out and then, as if by magic at 10 pm, the place just filled up. It was briefly astonishing to see the sheer number of people that turned up over about an hour or so. Zero to par-tay in record time for us!

Party observations:

• Whisky sours: just say no. Have a white russian instead.
  
• Further to the previous comment, bringing a bottle of kahlua will make you the favourite party guest, at least until someone else turns up with an even bigger bottle.
  
• Open a fridge onto your forehead hard enough and it will hurt. A lot.
  
• Cigars make you look cool. Steal them if you have to.
  
• Vodka sours: just say yes. Especially after a few white russians have softened you up. Also, the alcohol will dull the pain of your throbbing forehead.
  
• Teeth marks go away surprisingly quickly if administered in a 'playful' manner. See also previous comment about alcohol/pain relationship.
  
• My left arm hurts. I am not entirely sure why.
  

There were perhaps marginally fewer people than last time, but it was still enough to fill the entire flat (minus Josh's room, which was already filled with everything breakable or valuable we own). Up on last time, I reckon, was what I'm going to call the friendliness ratio. It's especially gratifying to see a good mate get acquainted with one of your own previous lady friends while one discovers that the date set up by said mate actually wasn't the crushing disaster that it had first appeared to be.

Which is nice.

A load of new people turned up about 3.30 am, including a couple of DJs to relieve Josh of his duties for a while, and things finally started winding down around 5 or 6. I flaked out about 5.30 (I think); getting completely hammered on a variety of expensive, complicated drinks will do that to a man.

This morning (ish) I was rescuing my CDs from around the flat, and some brave soul had compiled a set consisting of:

• Mogwai
  
• Jesus & Mary Chain
  
• The Thrills
  
• Looper
  
• The Charlatans
  
• Teenage Fanclub
  
• Primal Scream
  

Obviously trying to commit some bizarre kind of musical party suicide.

On a final note: coming to work just as it starts getting dark the day after a good party is quite possibly one of the most soul-crushing experiences it's possible to have. And so ends this rambling, not-entirely-coherent account of the weekend's entertainments. I'm off to do some work, or possibly hold my head in my hands muttering "For fuck's sake. It's Sunday," a lot. Haven't decided yet.

INT. KEITH'S ROOM - NIGHT

MART, DOM and KEITH stand among a morass of cables and music kit. A huge bass amplifier dwarfs a tiny practise amp sitting next to it. There are too many chairs in the room.

MART counts in on his guitar. They begin to play "All I Want To Do Is Rock", looking variously at each other, each other's instruments and much-annotated bits of paper lying around.

KEITH
Fuck! Sorry, stuffed that bit up.

DOM
Me too.

MART plays an impromptu guitar solo.

KEITH
Was that a Mogwai song?

MART
No, I just made it up.

And so Radioplay Magna Doodle Tiny Monkey was born.

Last night we were having a couple of friends round for tea at the flat, and it was my turn to cook. As the day went on, extra people were added on and it turned out I was cooking for six in total. Fair enough, I thought. Josh suggested that I do a tradition Roquefort Files' pasta thing with bacon, asparagus and cream, and I concurred.

So far so good.

I couldn't find any asparagus in Tesco. Or in Scotmid. I was walking back to the flat wondering exactly what to do and I thought I'd try a couple of the small grocer-type shops on the way home. Handily enough, the first shop had some asparagus, so I got some cream to go with it. Just as the guy was switching it all, I realised I'd picked up sour cream instead of single cream. "Ah! Rats!" I said, and made a sort of I've-gotten-the-wrong-stuff gesture at the cream. "It's okay," he said, so I grabbed a couple of cartons of single cream and stuck them on the counter.

He then just added the single cream on to the shitload of sour cream he'd already switched. I sort of looked at him, trying to see if there was any glimmer of jest in his eyes. Nope. What the hell did he think I was cooking? I had something close to a litre of sour and single cream, and a haystack of asparagus. Was I planning to feed some romantic target enough aphrodisiac to render her speechless with lust and immobile with bloatedness, then drench her in a biblical flood of cream? I couldn't understand what the guy thought was going on, so I gave up, paid, and left.

Jesus. If anyone is planning to feed a Mexican five thousand, I've got enough sour cream to capsize the Titanic in my fridge. Let me know.

Well, after a fairly non-blogworthy week, a pretty decent weekend. In fact, further to my "Shit! I've grown up" epiphany documented here a few weeks ago, I think I've probably just worked out what life is going to be like for the next, oh, forty years: weeks = dull, weekends = good. Can't believe it took me this long to realise.

Anyway, on Thursday we went to see The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. If you've read the comic1 and profess to have any respect for Alan Moore, don't bother going to see it. It's a pretty frustrating experience. Too much is crammed in (two extra gentlemen for a start, and do they really have to go to Mongolia?) and there's just not enough of a victorian feel to make it even slightly authentic.

It was Neil's birthday on Thursday and I drove through to Glasgow on Friday evening to go out with him, Doug and a load of his mates. All terribly good fun, but unfortunately having failed to eat anything since lunch, I got a little too drunk a little too quickly, and rather too much of the evening is a something of a blur. I did bump into a friend of mine from Fife who moved to Glasgow a year or two ago, which is about the only anecdote that I can remember clearly enough to be writing down :).

The next day I woke up about 2 pm, feeling pretty dire. A bacon roll and a wander through Kelvingrove Park sorted that out. It was a nice, clear day and I felt oddly like I was on holiday. It was probably just the fact that being removed from Edinburgh had removed all of the little responsibilities of normal life that are associated with a given place (who's going to make tea tonight? When am I supposed to be at this or that place? Did I remember to phone such-and-such?), but it was a nice change, if only for a few hours.

The Mafia plus the usual suspects went out for Devon's birthday that night. We went back to Bonsai again (which pleasingly hasn't gone out of business yet, and actually seemed reasonably busy) and then on to a ceilidh at the Caledonian Brewery. A piss-up in a brewery! Top stuff. There was a bit of an army of us, with, I think, four complete flats plus assorted Edinburgh mates and visiting foreign friends, and all in all it was a pretty good night. And I danced again. I can now almost pretend to waltz, which is a bit of a turn up for the books.

Sunday was nice and sedate; a bit of faffing around on the bass and then a decent run around the Meadows. In the evening we went round to a friend's flat for a meal with a load of the folk from the ceilidh the night before, and it was a nice way to end the weekend.

Forthcoming attractions include an account of the first Radioplay whatever the band's going to be called practise session, which promises to be a comedic masterpiece. Stay tuned.

1. okay, okay "graphic novel" or whatever. Sorry, sorry.
   

The weekend: good and bad.

Good: went to see Mogwai at the Barrowlands in Glasgow. They're a fantastic live band; quite a lot more rewarding in person than on a CD. And they kicked off with my two favourite songs as well. Bonus! We went out for a few drinks afterwards and then watched the Bullitt car chase sequence at Doug's. Repeatedly.

All in all, a fantastic evening.

Bad: "Friends zone?...I'm the fucking mayor of the friends zone. Look, I've even got the three pointed hat.". Quote courtesy of Josh.

I've been roped into a band. Fancy that. Can't even play anything.

I got some cool presents for my birthday - a chair, a mug, a bottle of kahlua and a rather spiffy bottle opener. Somewhat more chillingly, the day after my birthday, I got a garbled phone message about speed dating when I was wandering about in a haze of illness. I duly dismissed this as Jeff or Josh pulling my leg and went back to bed.

Man, that was a mistake.

That afternoon, Jeff handed me a couple of bits of printed paper while struggling to supress a smirk. I unfolded them to find out that he had, in fact, booked me onto a fucking speed dating session. Christ on a crutch - okay, it's been a while (well, not that long but for the sake of argument it's been long enough), but speed dating? Argh. Argh argh argh.

He'd also booked Josh onto this. Turns out Josh had been complicit in this as well (I suspect he sneakily wanted to go to it) and he was my official moral support. So, on Tuesday evening - the hour of my doom - I was heading for my bike (which was taking on the aspect of Charon's ferry at this point) and I got a text message from Neil, intimating that- well, here we come up against the limits of who I'm prepared to incriminate in public, and the young lady concerned is an innocent as far as the Roquefort Files are concerned, so let's just say he intimated that a girl we both know might actually want to go out for a drink with your humble correspondent. Which turned out to be the case, so as a small digression from this otherwise cringeworthy entry: woohoo!

Back to the eye-rolling-so-far-as-to-inspect-back-of-socket prospect of speed dating.

We got to the Three (abandon all hope, all ye who enter here) Sisters a bit early, so I chucked a Guiness and a G&T down my throat and we wandered/jittered in. We were definitely among the youngest guys there, and probably among the girls as well. The hostess (who had a bizarre tic involving shaking her head vigorously whenever she said anything) told us what the idea was: the girls all sat down at numbered tables and the guys would move between them in order, with three minutes for each 'date' and a couple of breaks in between. If you wanted to meet up with someone, you ticked their name on a scorecard. A whistle (!) went and we all started.

After a bit of a stuttering start, I actually got into the swing of things. I had to stop myself from trying to work out why a given person was there, and whenever I was asked it felt a little awkward explaining that it was actually a birthday present. Conversely, though, it made people more at ease, and I was genuinely surprised a few times at how short the three minutes were. Most of the people seemed to be likeable enough, and had fairly decent chat, but at one point a girl actually made the mistake of saying: "So tell me about yourself,". I couldn't resist. Somewhere in my mind something snapped, and I smiled back: "Well, I'm annoying, abrasive and I like snowboarding. How about you?". I suspect she didn't tick me.

The irony about the whole experience was that of all the people I met, I'd have happily gone to the pub with a lot of them for some standard-issue boozing, but I couldn't pick a single one I'd want to date. Kind of handy really, given the eleventh hour reprieve from singledom that I'd been granted half an hour before I arrived!

Roquefort Files etymology #1:

Main Entry: Ma·fia
Pronunciation: 'mä-fE-&, 'ma-
Function: noun
Etymology: Mafia, Maffia, a Sicilian secret criminal society, from Italian dialect (Sicily)
Date: 1875
1 a : a secret criminal society of Sicily or Italy b : a similarly conceived criminal organization in the U.S.; also : a similar organization elsewhere c : a criminal organization associated with a particular traffic
2 : what Devon calls your correspondent, Josh, Jeff and our various buds, and a handy shorthand for "us and our mates".
3 : er, what Annabel called your correspondent, Josh, Jeff and our various buds, like, way before Devon did. Sorry, sorry. Carry on.

Ahoy diddley hoy hoy, readers. After whingeing about feeling ropey last Wednesday, I then basically stayed in bed for two days. Now I use cloth hankies (a grandad-esque habit picked up from both of my grandads) and Thursday saw me use up thirty-three of the bastards. I became home to the EU catarrh mountain. I seriously could not believe that I could secrete that much mucous...

Friday was slightly less nasally challenging - I went down to a more respectable eleven hankies (still about twenty-two time more than usual).

Saturday held Neil's long-awaited housewarming party in Glasgow. Devon had given me a bottle of Kahlua as a birthday present, so the addition of a bottle of vodka and a jug of milk sorted out the old booze requirements and the Mafia (plus my sister) headed west in a two-pronged pincer movement. The party was really quite good and for a change I actually bumped into a load of people I knew, as opposed to the traditional stand-around-looking-lost strategy I usually adopt at parties.

Amusingly/embarrassingly, just about the first person I recognised was a girl called Kate. I know Kate because she used to work with Neil, and another girl called Faye, at Beanscene on Clerk Street. Faye turned out to be at the party as well. Now, about a year or so ago I went out with Faye, Kate, Neil and a load of their friends for Faye's birthday. So far, so good. Everyone was getting fairly trollied, as one does, and I rather unfortunately decided to ask Kate, who is funny, attractive and generally the antithesis to your narrator in every way, out.

She quite rightly told me where to go.

Anyway, the rest of the night passed reasonably uneventfully. The next time I saw Neil, he gleefully told me that I had also asked Faye out that same evening. Oh sweet Jesus. I didn't remember this, but by Faye's look the next time I saw her, it must have been true. The next time I saw Kate, it was her shouting "Hey, Casanova!" across Beanscene's crowded floor. I physically shrank to about 50% of my normal size.

Anyway, the residual embarrassment has been dropping steadily to the point where it doesn't rule my life any more (only took about six months :), and I actually got on quite well with Kate at the party. Which was about as big a relief as it was possible to be.

At the end of the party I wandered to some other random flat with Faye, Kate (wouldn't have predicted that in a million years) and Doug, where we played Soul Calibur II, drank whisky and watched This Is Spinal Tap until about 7 in the morning. I retrieved my sister about 2pm (after a couple of rather plainitive messages from her - sorry for abandoning you, Ruth) and we drove back to Fife across the Kincardine Bridge and then along the coast. At home, we had a sort of birthday meal type thing with my parents and grans, and then headed back.

Another good weekend. Something is definitely going on.

What an anticlimax. Today is the Roquefort Files' birthday. Now usually this would be a minor cause for celebration (survived another year and all that), but today was screwed even before it began.

I woke up from ('regained full consciousness' would be a better description - I slept so badly that 'sleep' seems an overenthusiastic way to describe it) an excessively bizarre dream about trying to secure the Labour leadership for Gordon Brown. Fair enough, we had watched a video of The Deal last night, but for God's sake: dreaming about a Labour leadership contest? That shit is fucked.

Anyway, I dragged myself out of bed, feeling pretty dreadful. It's the whole 'almost ill' thing again. I can't put my finger on any explicit symptoms - I just feel a bit off. This wouldn't ordinarily be too bad; normally we get a day off work on our birthdays, but because of my fondness for extended trips to the colonies I need to carry mine over until Christmas, to cover the office's seasonal shutdown.

Gah.

Oh well, my birthday now coincides with that of Christ. Coincidence? I think not.

Hat Night: it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Actually, it was. The Mafia and assorted cohorts have done this a couple of times before. The concept is simple: get healthily uninhibited through the drinking game du jour and then go out wearing an assortment of frankly ludicrous hats. This all started after the first epic cocktail party at cosa nostra, whereafter the flat was littered with, amongst other things:

1. a fake beard
   
2. 'interesting' hats
   
3. vomit
   

Item 1 is still stuck to a tile in the kitchen; item 3 was scrubbed off the floor beside my bed with extreme vigour and items 2 gave rise to the phenomenon that is Hat Night. Friday was also nominally a birthday night out for the Roquefort Files, so I helpfully got completely and utterly wankered. At some point in the evening, I clearly felt a need to share this with Ian. Loudly.

Anyway, after dancing1 the night away at Medina (of course) we called it a night. On the way home, Jeff employed some kind of WWF smack-down type manoeuvre on me and subsequently locked Estelle out of her flat.

All in a day's work.

Update: Now up, Josh's entirely more coherent and visually pleasing chronicle of Hat Night '03.

1. I still get the odd involuntary shudder.
   

Just a quick update to note that comments are now available per-post, and have disappeared from the sidebar. You can now direct your scathing put-downs with surgical precision.

You know the score - you're looking for an old email and you come across a gem like this:

"Every now and then, the sheer enormity of my unfortunate situation last night hits me. Argh. Why, why did I vomit on your jacket and not get her phone number?"

Those were the days...

In fact, that was specifically the day when the Roquefort Files:

• got spectacularly blotto
  
• tried to schmooze their way into the affections of a young Norwegian lady
  
• failed rather comprehensively by boaking on Chris' jacket in the middle of a thronging pub
  

Another decent weekend for the Roquefort Files (I'm starting to get suspicious. It's all going to come crashing down at some point).

As if my impending birthday wasn't enough to hammer home my advancing decrepitude, I went to my first proper friend's wedding on Saturday. I've known Finlay for as long as I can remember knowing anyone and he always struck me as a bit of a career bachelor, so it was doubly weird to be attending his wedding. The wedding took place in Craigsanquhar House, situated approximately a light year from civilization in what can only be described as the depths of Fife.

I must admit to being a bit misanthropic when it comes to weddings. You start with a load of people who would never normally get together and stick them into a marquee/social pressure cooker for twelve hours. After the initial warm glow of seeing the bride and groom get hitched fades away, make them listen to a DJ that introduces Robbie Williams songs as "Something for the laaaaadies now" as his homebuilt disco lights cause flashbacks to the 70s and miscellaneous epileptic seizures.

This is not, to my mind, a recipe for a successful social gathering.

Thankfully, this turned out to be the first wedding I've ever unreservedly enjoyed1. The service was conducted by a canonical (heh) "genial minister" type, complete with the odd endearingly stumbled-over word in the vows from Finlay and Louise. The meal wandered by pleasantly, with a typical "Oh! You're a war criminal? How interesting!" wedding conversation that was amusing rather than cringeworthy. I met a few people I hadn't seen in years, turned out to still get on with them, and generally got tolerably mangled.

The band, initially looking like a bunch of past-it old buffers turned out, surprisingly, to be a bunch of past-it old buffers that rocked. So long as they could put a swing beat or a country twang into a tune, they belted it out with the enthusiam that belongs to those clinging to a Just For Men'd youth. They threw a few ceilidh numbers in as well, finished off with Auld Lang Syne and managed to be a pain-free as a wedding band could possibly hope to be.

And that was basically it; somehow, a load of disparate people and things coming together to make up something that was genuinely worthy of a couple getting married, instead of the discomfiting car-crash socialising of your run-of-the-mill wedding.

On Sunday I headed home, found out that the exhaust on the Capp seems to be slowly trying to escape, and went for a run in the evening. I can encapsulate my state of mind as tired but happy.

And subconsciously adding another £300 to the Capp's repair bill, obviously.

1. okay, okay, maybe if the best man's staggeringly attractive and elfin girlfriend had been, say, not his girlfriend then things might have been marginally better, but you can't have everything :)
   

(Belated) Random Oz recollections #3:

A few nights into the Roquefort Files' inverted holiday, we wandered along to a predictably sprawling pub/restaurant for some marvellous pub grub. The Brisbane river festival was due to begin a few days before I left, and this pub (the Regatta) was hosting its own warm-up mini-festival called, inevitably, Regattafest.

The most mind-boggling thing about this, for a wide-eyed naïf like your correspondent, was the fact that they were holding a beauty pageant in the bar. Tossing aside for the moment the incongruity of bikini-clad girls strutting up and down a catwalk in what was essentially an Australian-based Wetherspoons, this was an uncomfortable thing to witness. It's possible to get away with just about anything in the name of ironic social comment, but there is just nothing remotely ironic or postmodern about a load of smashed blokes hooting at semi-nude women competing for the loudest cheering.

Pity we forgot to take a camera, mind.

Today, the Roquefort Files are having a self-congratulatory "look how cool my friends' websites are" day, hoping that some of the reflected glory will add to my own tarnished lustre. On with the sickeningly accomplished show.

First, witness the humbly named jjcasswell.com. See the Mafia at work and marvel at our no doubt Freudian tendencies to dress up.

Next up, some tasty multimedia. Martin McDonald, aka Radioplay, is a guy at work who pathologically lies about being unable to sing. Take It To Heart is his latest (and to my mind, best) track, and it rocks. It rooooocks.

Blog Shol is an über-blog, ready to crush the Roquefort Files under the sheer weight of its technological superiority. Smoother than a smooth thing sanded with increasingly fine grades of sandpaper to reveal a hitherto-unrevealed smoothness. The Roquefort Files' miserly Blogspot hosting looks shoddy and plebeian by comparison.

And of course, Craig's own Oz blog, complete with added Orangutans.

Josh, Mart and Michelle have cool pictures of themselves, whereas I have to be content with hiding behind a pint while one of Chris' friends pretends to fellate an imaginary penis. Where did I go wrong?

A few of us went out last night for Annabel's official birthday (like the Queen, you see) to a little Japanese1 restaurant called Bonsai. It's a tiny little place, but it was still completely empty apart from us. The chef was reading the paper when we arrived. No doubt it'll fold like a cheap suit just before anyone realises it A) exists and B) is actually quite good. They made a fairly decent effort to incorporate a bit of a Scottish flavour into some more traditional Japanese dishes. At least that's what I assume was going on with the deep-fried cheese, anyway.

1. I was in Japan briefly with work2 a couple of years ago, staying in a dormitory belonging to the company I was visiting (let's call it Bingy Corp). Very odd - it was a student residence sort of place, and was populated entirely by junior engineers that worked for Bingy Corp. Anyway, I digress. It had a beer vending machine. This, I can attest, is genius. Typical after work thought process:
   
   
   
   1. Mmm. Could murder a beer.
      
   2. I shall buy one from the beer vending machine.
      
   3. Hot damn.
      
   
   
2. argh. Almost typed "on business" before I caught myself.
   

That was a fine weekend, I have to say, even if the travelling was restricted to the slightly damp north-east Lothian coast, and involving absolutely no pubs whatsoever.

It kicked off with a rather boozy party for Annabel's birthday on Friday evening. Devon had hired a tank of helium (astutely hidden in her room for the duration of the party) and the ceiling of the hall of their flat was festooned with balloons dangling streamers down to about head height. I spent half the party trying to work out the word on the tip of my tongue meaning "visually arresting spectacle", but what with the beer and White Russians the most eloquent I got was "Wow. Cool". After that, my conversation degraded rapidly.

We got back to the flat about 4 or 5 am, and Josh, Antonio, Veronika1 and I stuck on some tunes and blethered for a while2. I finally hit the sack at about 7.45 am. It was getting light outside...

On Saturday, Veronika had asked me if I could take her out to Rosslyn Chapel, so we headed off about 4 pm, after a semi-traditional post-boozing fry up. I've been to Rosslyn three or four times now, but it still never fails to impress me. Living in Edinburgh (when compared to, say, Brisbane), does convey a sense of permanency through all of the 18th/19th-century buildings and tenements, but Rosslyn is 15th century, and in a different league entirely. The 19th century additions (a rather tacky statue of the Virgin Mary and the organ loft) just look clumsily...I dunno, sanctimonious when seen with the rest of the stonework.

Anyway, the chapel closed at 5 pm, so we drove out to Gullane beach. We wandered along the beach for a mile or so, chatting about nothing in particular, and I had a bizarre "Shit! I'm grown up!" epiphany. I mean, for Christ's sake,

• I've got a car. I've got a sodding mid-life crisis car, regardless of how much I love it.
  
• I'm wandering along the beach with a lovely young lady, and actually having a proper conversation. About grown-up stuff. I'm not even - Jebus - trying to be clever or charming.
  
• I'm 26 in exactly 16 days. I justify this part of the "Shit! I'm grown up!" experience as follows: if I were to go out with someone 4 years younger than me - i.e. 22 - then that seems fine. However, if a girl (ha! A woman) of 26 was to go out with me, and they were still 4 years younger than I was, then I'd be 30. Dear God.
  

There is no hope for me3.

I combatted this by taking the roof down on the way back, and grinning like an idiot whenever the turbo started to whistle on the way out of a corner. Pity it started raining about 5 minutes after we set off. There was water on the inside of the windscreen. How the fuck did it get there? Was it raining backwards? I have no idea.

The rest of Saturday was more standard - food, a bit of faffing around and a couple of videos (The Life Of David Gale and Two Weeks Notice. Both surprisingly good) with Jeff, Devon and Veronika.

Sunday was a fairly undemanding day. Apart from a bit of computer maintenance (probably better categorised as the spending of £120 on failed computer maintenance), we watched another couple of films - Pitch Black (still very good on a second viewing) and Dead Man (very Jim Jarmusch. Weird but good). I'm filmed out at this point.

And so, dear diary, back to work.

1. Veronika is a young Slovakian lady staying in our boxroom, although not for much longer. When she arrived with her stuff six weeks or so ago, I answered the door, recognised her and said "Ahoy!", as is my sailor-inclined wont.
   "Ahoy?", she immediately replied.
   "Er, yes. Ahoy. Why?"
   "Did you know that 'Ahoy' is Slovak for 'Hello'?"
   
   Well, bugger me. 'Ahoj' is indeed Slovak for 'Hello'. Who'd have thought it?
   
2. for "a while", read "another three hours". Josh pointed out (correctly) that it was getting a little ridiculous when we couldn't work out how to turn Jeff's idiosyncratic stereo down at around 6.30 am. We decamped to my room, and turned my stereo down to approximately the lower threshold of human hearing, which seemed eminently more reasonable.
   
3. actually, despite all the whingeing about getting old, Gullane beach was lovely - Fife just visible across the water, the sun setting as we drove back. When I got home that evening I stuck on some Fountains of Wayne and Teenage Fanclub and frankly, everything was all right. I am a hopeless sentimentalist, and it's great :)
   

Craig, a genius ex-colleague of mine, has just jacked in the rat race and jetted off to the land of Oz for a year. So far (T plus 4 days), he's seen giant orange monkeys, drunk beer and made a young lady friend, which are three interesting things that failed to occur in the entirety of the Roquefort Files' sojourn there.

Still, Ulysses1, eh? Damn, my holiday reading habits are fly. Beat that, Craig.

1. post-Oz progress: gave up on chapters 1 & 2, went back to wilfully, impenetrably academic introduction in vain hope of understanding what, exactly, the fuck Joyce is on about.
   

The Roquefort Files' next trip to foreign climes/pubs has come to fruition: Amsterdam in December for a spot of pre-Christmas carousing. After that, a few agonising months away lies WINTER, and thence snowboarding. Hot damn...

Jesus, I'm definitely back now. Winter in Brisbane (a most civilised 20° - 27°) has given way to late summer in Edinburgh (something godawful like a low of 10° and a lack of any visible light).

Random Oz recollections #2:

The mighty Brisvegas, as seen from a speeding ferry. Actually, now I think about it, all of the water-borne transport in Oz seemed capable of absolutely caning along. Fast boats, big pubs and an innate ability to cook steaks well. This is a fine country...

Is this me or Doug? - it's almost TOO FAST TO TELL. How much faster could we be going? The answer is none. None more fast.

And finally, proof that booze was partaken of. Thankfully, I'm on the left.

Just a quick post to point out the spiffing new 'comments' link on the sidebar, helpfully provided by enetation.co.uk, a free web annotation service. I'll tidy up the format to match the main page once I get the hang of style sheets.

See? Shorter and less interesting. Everything is proceeding as I have forseen.

Random Oz recollections #1:

Chris and I were watching The Sopranos one evening, and some homie type character actually had a line consisting entirely of the word "Word". I haven't laughed so much in ages. The conversation went something like this:

Mafia dude: "So you'll do it?"
Homie #1: "Yeah, G. We'll wax the mofo. Aiiiight. Bo. Check me one time."
Homie #2: "Word."

Complete comedy genius.

Back to normality (or at least work) now. I expect that these entries will steadily diminish in A) excitement value and B) length from now on.

I got back after something like 30 hours of travelling and waiting around in airports. The last flight, from Singapore (#Apore!# Ha! Bad joke. Cheers Chris) was the worst - I was in the middle seat, so neither legroom/aisle or good view/window. The aisle seat was occupied by a largish old woman with limited mobility to say the least, who, by the end of the flight, was smelling uncomfortably like stale urine. The bloke on my right had been in jail for carrying a spent shell case through Singaport Airport, so at least had an interesting story to pass 5 minutes of the 13 hour journey.

Still, smelly old women and criminals aside, that was a pretty bloody good holiday.

I finally got back to the flat around 1 am and dragged Annabel off to the pub for a drink. Nice to note that the default booze volume is once again the mighty pint, and not a freakish Aussie half-pint 'pot'.

PS: Chris was kind enough to burn me a CD of all the photos he took while I was in Oz, and I'm tempted to see if I can display some here. Not sure if Blogger/Blospot will host remote images yet...I must try to get my Freeserve web space back up and running to host some photos (and possibly this blog if I can). Mmm. Techie crap.

Singapore airport at 5.23 am, I can reveal, resembles every other airport I've been in at any time of day you care to choose, except that I can't shop for Gucci and Rolex because the duty free shops (catering exclusively for the stupendously rich) are closed. It does have free internet access until 6 am though, so fair play to it.

My last few days in Oz were pretty low key; I drove up the coast to the Sunshine Coast, a kind of retirement-home mirror image of the Gold Coast. Less ostentation, older people but otherwise much the same, and consequently not entirely enthralling. Still, I spent an enjoyable few hours wandering around and reading1 on the beach.

Actually, scratch "pretty low key". On Wednesday night, Chris and I went whoring, as his affectionate term for crawling round strip bars goes. I'd never been to one of these places before (and I'm twenty five - talk about late starter) and it was a bit of an anticlimax really, although I suspect we weren't really pushing the upper limits of class for Brisbane's adult entertainment venues. It was pretty odd - each time we rocked up in a new place, the novelty wore off in about ten minutes, and after that we might as well have been in any other marginally seedy, squelchy-underfoot bar you care to imagine. Minus the naked young ladies, obviously, but there you go. We did meet a garrulous lawyer called Mel (hi Mel, sorry we ran away from you) who proceeded to latch on to us (hi Chris, cheers for inviting him along :). He decided to buy me a green, $29 cocktail - presumably, my pretty far-gone state wasn't far gone enough for his liking - which I choked back. Next bizarre drinking buddy was a goateed maniac called Patrick, who gave me a cigarette and pushed me over the nutter threshold for the evening. I grabbed Chris and we buggered off as fast as the cabbie would take us. Lucky to get out of that one alive, I reckon.

My inevitable boak the next morning was green.

So, after feeling absolutely bloody dreadful for most of today (yesterday?), I'm on the way home.

1. at last count, I've scythed through two Christopher Brookmyre books, Dead Air and Espedair Street (Iain Banks), Fury (Salman Rushdie) and a whopping two chapters of Joyce's Ulysses, which is the most unimaginably obtuse book I've ever tried to read.
   

Bit of a fun-filled extravaganza over the past week or so - water sports (and a lot of dubious pirate lingo) aplenty. First up was a trip down south to the Gold Coast, a bit of a surfer's mecca startlingly resembling Miami as portrayed in GTA: Vice City. Interesting when video games get to the point when they can be used as a point of reference, isn't it? No? Fair enough.

Anyway, the Gold Coast is this town/city whose appearance coincides exactly with Miami Vice and Cocktail; luxury yachts and high-rise blocks of million dollar flats all over the place. Someone had mentioned hiring jetskis the day before, so Leyla drove Doug (another of Chris' itinerant Scot accomplices) and I up there. Leyla dropped Doug and I off at the beach on the Broadwater (basically the mouth of the river running through the Gold Coast) and a couple of semi-mullet'd blokes picked us and ferried us across to their floating jetski houseboat/boat house affair anchored in the river.

They gave us lifejackets and waterproof anoraks and plonked a couple of jetskis in the water. I was simulataneously raring to go and slightly apprehensive at the fact that they were going to dump us on these aquatic motorbikes with absolutely no instruction, but they did anyway. I think my assigned mulletee said this to me: "Right, plug this in. Hit the start button. If you fall off, let go. Off you go then." So I did. They turned out to be incredibly easy to drive; turning the handlebars caused the thing to lean into the turn of its own accord, and the hardest thing to do was just hang on - I don't know how fast they went, but it must have been 30 mph at least, and flicking it into a turn at that speed challenged the old arm muscles a bit. We hooned1 about for our allotted half-hour and then wandered around the town for a while. I can almost imagine living there; it had an odd ski-resort feel about it, as I suppose any town purpose-built for spending holidays does. I suspect the 40° C heat in the summer might be my downfall...

Anyway, the next day we headed up the coast instead, so that Doug and I could go whale watching. This sort of thing always struck me as being a vaguely superfluous new-agey points-scoring exercise, but it was actually geniunely enjoyable. The tour company ran a boat called the MV2 Eye Spy that was eminently capable of hooning (main discussion on outward journey: could a jetski keep up, and where would it run out of fuel?). Once we got to the far side of Moreton Island, the boat slowed down and we started seeing the whales - first just the mist of water as they spouted (thar she blows) and then their backs and dorsal fins as they went under. I think I was slightly underwhelmed by the size of the whales - the boat was reasonably big and the decks high enough above the water so that it was hard to really get a sense of how big the whales were, but it was still a pretty impressive sight.

On Saturday, we took Doug back to the airport. He'd been on a four month trip more or less around the world and was heading back to the UK. Note to self: do something similarly irresponsible. Saturday night was a birthday party for the brother of Chris and Leyla's next door neighbour, in a cavernous (all pubs in Brisbane are cavernous, by the way. Cavernous taverns) sports bar. It seems that everyone in Oz has a better half, whether husband/wife, boy/girlfriend or whatever. Being single is usually great; absence of financial/behavioural responsibility will do that, but I felt unnervingly weird amongst the happily almost-married crowd. Ah well, we got drunk and someone threw up, so otherwise pretty standard issue boozing.

The next day, we hired a two-man kayak and headed for a nearby river. I drove Chris + Leyla's 80s Mazda 626 for a while - it felt like a tank compared to the Capp and I had to restrain myself from jumping on the brake with both feet when we came to traffic lights, but apart from that it was reasonably straightforward. Chris and I kayaked up the river for an hour or so. It was a warm, calm day and it felt like a pretty damn fine way to travel. Not sure how it would translate to Scotland (cold + midges) but I reckon I might give it a try.

That's probably everything up to date. More on my triumphant return to Edinburgh.

1. it turns out that "hoon" is actually a noun in Oz, meaning "ned in tastelessly souped-up car". Genius. Hoons therefore hoon a lot.
   
2. obviously an acronym for "muthafuckin' vessel"
   

Okay, it's quite warm here. Certainly warmer than the Edinburgh summer, and warm enough to warrant buying some shorts, which I don't think I've worn since I was about 7. I wandered into a surf-type shop to get some trainer socks to go with my sick new shorts, picked some, and took them to the counter. I gave them to the girl with a smile, and she took them, saying "Needing some new socks?".

My eyes boggled only slightly. "Yes." I gave her my credit card.

"Credit?" she said. Eh? YES1. I signed the receipt and came back to base. After proudly prancing around in my new dude-wear, I fished out a pair of eye-wateringly exciting socks to complete the Bill & Ted look, only to find them still security tagged together. I look forward to explaining this at the shop today.

1. okay, this turned out not to be quite so moronic on her part. Apparently in Oz, one card can access savings, credit and cheque accounts. Chalk one up for local culture...
   

Well, I'm in Australia, visiting Chris and Leyla. I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of sitting largely immobile in a space reminiscent of the inside of a coffin for 36 hours before, so the new experiences started thick and fast. I had that odd 'pre-illness' feeling you (or one or at least I) get before you actually get ill1 for about three days once I got here, and rather disturbingly woke up, one night only, actually dripping sweat into the unfortunately pristine sheets.

Fortunately, I got better, helped no end by a colossal dump that left me feeling both empty and fulfilled. Marvellous.

On Friday, I wandered around Brisbane a bit and had a seat in the central square type thing, whose name rather unfortunately escapes me. Obviously, sitting there and reading my paper wasn't good enough for God, who sent a messenger in the form of a bearded evangelical 'Eastern Christian' to interrupt my solitude and unwarranted good humour. Thankfully, after a mere hour of eye-rolling logical vacuum, some random film student turned up and (thank fuck) asked us to pretend to fight each other for the camera. My hippie friend left pretty sharpish, which was nice.

More later!

1. once (recently, notably) followed by a day spent wallowing in buckets of my own sweat and ruining an otherwise perfectly good weekend. I felt absolutely back to normal, crucially, by 9 am on Monday morning. Thank fuck; the week's work might have been otherwise irretrieveably damaged.
   

Wahey! Enter the Roquefort Files. Currently, am neither enroute to or from, nor am ensconsed in a pub, so this'll be a short entry.

Very short, in fact.