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.