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