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 :)