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.