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.