I woke up this morning,

and thought "Where the hell am I?". Comfortable bed: check. Pleasantly warm room: check. So it certainly wasn't my flat, anyway.

Then I remembered I stayed at Kate's after Faye and Donnie's engagement party. Claire and Dave were staying that night as well, so I got up to say good morning (or afternoon). Here's a blow-by-blow account of the next few astonishing minutes.

Minute 1: the search. I get dressed and wander through the flat looking for people. No-one there, apart from Suzie the cat, who wakes from her slumber.

Minute 2: disbelief. I put on my jacket and make to open the door. Shit, I think. It's deadlocked and I don't have a key. Starting to get hungry. The cat is looking at me with vague suspicion.

Minute 3: abject fear. I weep with abandon and curl into a foetal position, wailing "Why? Why?". I could really do with some breakfast to calm my growling stomach. Cat still there.

Minute 4: resignation. I phone Kate (who's in Aberdeen) and leave a pitiful message telling her that I've been locked in. Getting very hungry now. The cat is looking A) tasty and B) at me, with narrowed eyes.

Minute 5: any second now, a titanic battle for survival between me and Suzie is going to erupt. Man versus beast in elemental struggle. Fortunately my phone rings and Kate tells me that her flatmate Velma is coming back from work to let me out. I salute my feline nemesis and settle down to watch the telly until Velma arrives.

A tale unlike any you've ever read, I'll wager. Hard to believe it all happened, really.

"Das ist ein Unikum,"

exclaimed Joseph II on first tasting the Hungarian digestif in 1790.

"Dear Christ," I exclaimed on first tasting it, "that's utterly revolting."

"God, I feel terrible," I exclaimed rather more quietly the next morning as the Unicum (yes, really) wreaked havoc on my stomach, along with the other ingredients of the Monday night's arbitrary and enthusiastic boozing. Digestif my arse. All it helped me digest was my stomach lining.

Fortunately work on Tuesday was rather quiet, and it crawled by more easily as the day went on. TM got together for a...patchy practise that night. Had it been an album, it would have been the canonical difficult second album. Everything was present and correct: everyone turned up more or less on time; we played reasonably well, but the ol' magic just wasn't there. Christmas fatigue, I think. Still, we got another couple of new tunes (blatant crowd-pleasing ones as well :) sorted, and the gig looks to be on track.

Christmas Day was a damn sight less exciting than last year, although I was fairly happy for that to be the case. Ruth was working until early Christmas Day morning, so we drove back around 11 am and spent the day lazing around our parent's house, opening presents, eating and so on. I scarpered back to Edinburgh on Boxing Day to avoid the usual family merry-go-round that starts on the 26^th and lasts until Hogmanay.

The last two days have been a pleasurable blur of GTA, leftover turkey sandwiches and laughably execrable holiday season TV. All play and no work makes your host a dull boy, and I'm revelling in it, I tell you.

Next up: I spend five days straight watching Pimp My Ride and genuinely enjoying it.

A return to form, of sorts.

After a disjointed week (ironically so, because I'd actually organised things more than a day ahead of time) this week drifted back into a more familiar pattern: booze, practise in the flat, rehearse with TM, booze, see a film.

TM's first Big Practise started at 2pm on Saturday. The five hour session was supposed to let us record some backing tracks for Dave to practise vocals with and to get to know some of the new songs we've chosen for the gig.

The reality was that two hours of recording without a singer is soul destroying. It's like Tango without Cash. The sight of Dave singing directly into Doug's ear (silently to me, ear-splittingly loudly for Doug) so that he knew when to change the drum rhythm will stay with me for some time as despair embodied.

Also, a bass is fucking heavy if you have to wear the damn thing for five hours straight.

Despite all of this (and it was mightily frustrating at the time), it was worthwhile. We have the sans-vocal tracks out of the way, and at least a couple of new tunes are sorted out. Post rehearsal, we worked out a set list over some curry and beers, and now it's set in stone we have something concrete to aim for. Rehearsals should, from now on, be a damn sight more productive from an actually playing a gig point of view. Which is nice.

I tried to do a bit more Christmas shopping on the Sunday. I seem to have perfected Christmas-shopping-as-thought-experiment: I don't buy anything, but the act of shuffling zombie-like through shop after shop focuses the mind marvellously on anything at all apart from the gaudy trinkets I'm actually looking at.

Finally, on Sunday evening, I went to see Garden State with Kate. It's a good film - it's about the closest I've seen of late to be charming without becoming cloying or overly slapstick. Maybe Igby Goes Down is a good comparison. We had a few pints in Favorit afterwards, and it was good.

We had our office Christmas party last night

and it was completely uneventful.

Having planned to break at least seven of the Scotsman's ten office party rules, I didn't get much beyond two. And they weren't even the risqué ones. I'm losing my safari suited, colossal boozefest office party touch in my old age.

It's been a bit of a disjointed week.

Whereas I used to feel that I did stuff that I'd decided maybe the day before, the last few weeks seem to have been predetermined from some time in the past that I can't remember. I pick up my phone, look up the day's calendar entry and think "Oh. Really? I'm doing that today? When the hell did I decide to do that?"

Not that I've been up to anything particularly interesting, mind. It's not like my diary has entries saying "Defeat Godzilla, buy socks", or anything. It's more like "Cook tea tonight, buy socks". Which is less exciting.

Meh. Anyway.

I did manage, with Martin, to come up with a basic demo for TM's next song. We're planning to play our first live gig in January (get this - it's going to be invitation only. Ah, the conceits of rock and roll) and we're starting to get a little anxious at the lack of our own songs, hence the burst of creativity. The only problem is that the basic demo doesn't seem to lend itself to being anything other than a basic demo.

The weekend was fairly quiet. Marie has just finished her degree and her show is now up at the art college. I missed the original soirée in its honour (Wednesday, while Martin and I were plugging away at MonkeyThree), so on Friday night we had a few at the Phoenix. And that, strangely, was it for the weekend's boozing.

On Saturday, I mostly woke up the rest of the flat by playing Seven Nation Army until I was satisfied that it sounded just right. Took about three hours.

Sunday was marginally more productive - I dragged myself out of the flat to do some Christmas shopping and on the way back, had a look round the Masters of Design show at the art college. Marie's stuff was very good, along with a lot of the rest of it. Tobias'…er…Self Portraits With Furniture Built By Self were amusing, but his chairs-and-table combo was pretty cool. I may forgive him.

Well,

that was a spectacularly uneventful week off. Apart from going to Glasgow on Tuesday to watch Doug's plays, the rest of it was taken up by the following, in order of time spent on said activity:

1. Sleep. I slept a lot. Got up around 11 am each day, wandered through to the living room and flicked on the PS2, in order to…
   
2. Play GTA: San Andreas. Excellent game. It's absolutely huge and completely devoid of any kind of social conscience. Once I'd had my fill of car jacking, cop baiting and pimping, I'd have something to eat and then…
   
3. Booze. Not much to report here, apart from some drunken swing dancing in Teviot's Middle Bar on Saturday night. So classy.
   

Despite writing myself a list of Things To Do With Valuable Time Off, I spent the rest of the time trolling snowboarding shops for new bindings. I got them, set them up and then stared at them in impotent fury because there is no rideable snow within at least 600 miles.

Gah.

Spaced,

series 2, episode 7.

Tim: "Aren't you going to ask me how it went?"
Daisy: "How'd it go?"
Tim: "Really badly."

Apologies for brevity again, but there's not a lot about the weekend worth going into here. Once again a question of keeping personal stuff away from the unkind gaze of the internet. Maybe some other time.

On the up side, last night I watched three radio plays performed live by Doug and co. (Doug: "...metamorphosis,") and then we got drunk and ate kebabs.

TM records again

...and then buggers it up completely.

Saturday's session at the Brill Building went like clockwork. We all arrived near enough on time and set to work with military precision. Doug and Dave set up a borrowed 4-track tape recorder (hint: this motherfucking device is the unwitting villain of the piece) while I set up Doug's drums and Mart and Dom tuned up and twiddled with effects boxes.

The Grand Recording Plan was to feed the vocals and bass into separate tracks, and to have the room mic pick up everything else. From the last session we did it was apparent that the vocals and bass were the hardest to nail down and record consistently, hence this arrangement. We'd mix down the recordings at leisure in Doug's flat.

We were ready to go after about forty-five minutes (i.e. half an hour earlier than last time!) and battered straight into Neil Jung as a warm up. A couple of goes later and we started to record. I think it's safe to say we played at least as well as we've ever done before, and some songs were really starting to come together.

After recording a few tracks, the tape ran out so Dave flipped it over.

For those unfamiliar with 4-tracks, this is a Bad Thing. A few tracks later, Dave's face spontaneously fell. "Guys. I think we just taped over side 1." 4-tracks, you see, record on both 'sides' of the tape simultaneously.

Flipping the 4-track to playback mode, we listened to side 1. Yup. Run played backwards, with no trace of the first few tracks.

The faces of everyone else simultaneously fell.

We soldiered on. Nay, we turned defeat into triumph! We played All I Want To Do Is Rock - the first tune we ever practised - damn near flawlessly. Dave sang his heart out; Mart embarked on a long-awaited, feedback-laden solo, and even the one interesting bit of the bass line came off pretty much perfect.

We took a triumphant break. Dave and Doug wound back the tape, and were about to flip it to playback mode, when Doug said something like: "Was this always like this?", gesturing to the 4-track.

Yes. We had recorded the entire second tape in playback mode. We pressed 'play'.

The PA hissed for a bit. Silence.

The upshot is we've got one recording of Neil Jung played with cold fingers and straining vocals, one of Sister Isabel where Mart is too tired to play any more, and one of Run. Played backwards.

Postscript: to be fair, despite managing to utterly screw up the recording side of things, we did play well. Andy, an ex-workmate of mine and veteran of the live circuit (comparatively speaking - he's played some open mic nights), opined that our last recordings were good enough to get us a gig, and I'd be willing to bet that Saturday's Lost Tracks would have been even better...

Ah well. Next year will be the Year of the Monkey. As well as this year. Oh, you know what I mean.

Now, you may remember Jeff's birthday present to me last year. Yes, the speed dating. The speed dating. Jesus.

This year, he, Devon and Neil clubbed together to get me a present. This time, it was, and I quote verbatim from the gift voucher, a "seaweed mud wrap and full body massage".

Okay, I spend too much time buying clothes, but for the love of God, a seaweed mud wrap? I didn't even know what that meant. Anyway, I couldn't make it to the time booked on the voucher, so in the interests of not appearing to be an ungrateful bastard, I called the place and changed it to Saturday morning.

And then went out on Friday night to get unintentionally plastered. Come Saturday morning, I felt a little ropey, but dragged myself out of bed and along to the mud wrap emporium or whatever one calls such places. I looked for the reception desk when I arrived, and did a mental double take: for a split second, I thought that the woman behind the desk was actually a man in drag.

I was...unsettled.

Turned out she wasn't a man, but was still the one who was going to be doing my mud wrap and massage. Great. The magic happened in a small, dim room in the bowels of the place whose temperature would have been, to a non-hungover person, on the warm side of pleasant. To me, it was like a furnace. I mainly lay still, surfing an internal wave of nausea and trying to enjoy having the skin tone of my back improved by being smeared with mud and wrapped in clingfilm for 15 minutes, and then having a massage that lasted for a full hour.

It was, to be fair, actually quite nice. I only wish I hadn't been quite so under the weather, as evidenced by a hasty walk home to drive the porcelain bus.

Boo:

it looks like Tiny Monkey's stated aim of playing live before the end of the year won't come to pass. Dom is off to a trade show next week, so he's out of the country for about a week and a half. Just before he gets back, Doug then embarks on a marathon succession of voice acting, playing with his other band and then holidaying which takes him all the way through to Christmas.

<sigh>

And all this after I go and order myself a compressor to even out my bass's sound.

Ah well. I have a cunning plan to shoe-horn 18 hours of practising into a single week in January and to play, at the end of it, an open mic night. How's that for a New Year's resolution? Not very snappy, I grant you, but more likely to come true than "Eat less biscuits."

Preemptive update: Yes, Kate. Yes. I mean of course fewer biscuits. 5 points for spotting the linguistic cretin.

Vegas, baby, Ve-

So it was like Vegas' 7^th birthday last night and on Thursday Josh was all "we need some tickets for that," and I'm like "I'm so totally all over that," and I lay down sixty big ones for four tickets and I'm all "dude, I got the tickets," and he's like "sweet!" and we're both like "yeah".

So it's Saturday night and we're all Vegas'd up and looking pretty fly. I mean we're all looking good, but there's only one dude doing the whole black suit, black shirt, black tie gangster thing, you know? Yeah, you down with that, homes. You dig.

So anyway, we've been at Vegas for an hour or so and we've all had a few beers and I'm like "Woo! Drunk. Let's dance," and I'm actually dragging Kate towards the dance floor and then her strappy high heel explodes and I'm like "bummer," and we're like so totally out of there.

...

I'm sorry, I just blacked out. Did I write something? I'm off to watch The O.C. and play GTA: San Andreas. Prod me when it's time to go to work.

Fireworks!

So, Friday was Guy Fawkes night and Edinburgh sounded like Sarajevo, circa 1993. Kate and I had planned to go to Meadowbank to watch the fireworks, but a big meal and approximately a bottle of wine each took the edge off our enthusiasm.

Then, after watching the neighbours' kids running around the garden with sparklers, we thought "Sod it - let's find somewhere we can watch the Meadowbank fireworks from." Cue half an hour of wandering through gardens, thorn bushes and parks between Easter Road and London Road, culminating in an accidental B&E into Hibs' stadium, which we mistook for Meadowbank.

"Why are they football goals?"
"Where is everyone?"
"Why are there no fireworks?"
"Is it just me, or does that say 'Visit www.hibernianfc.co.uk' ?"

Go us.

After that, we met up with Dave and Michelle from work and got ver, ver drunk in the Café Royal, and then Pivo. So I'm told.

Top, top night.

So top, in fact, that I had to sprint a mile and a half at 7 am after about three hours sleep to avoid being (too) late to meet up with Jon and Josh so that we could go rafting up north.

We got to Tyndrum - a town that consists only of a hotel, a garage and South Africans - about 9.30 or so, to meet up with Rosie (Jon's sister), a workmate of hers called Mairi (amusingly, this was the same workmate that I harangued mercilessly on Hat Night) and Other Jon. We slurped into our wetsuits, were assigned the big red raft with the tendency to flip, and headed off down the river Orchy.

Apparently the Orchy has the most difficult rapids in Britain. Our crew, with my baggy, staring eyes and Josh's hungover countenance, did not look in a fit state to navigate through much in the way of danger. The previous rafting trip, on the somnolent Tay, had been livened up by our guides' desire to up-end the raft as often as possible, but we'd been reassured on this trip that the water was so cold that we'd be trying as hard as possible to stay dry.

What a load of claptrap. The only rapid we didn't flip on was the hardest one we had to negotiate. Just before the end, where we had to get out and walk past a truly frightening, Death Star-esque rapid, the guides offered us two ways to get back aboard: take 'the long way round' on the path, or a twenty foot jump into the water.

We all jumped, of course. It was absolutely freezing.

The last rapid (comment by our guide: "There's a fifty-fifty chance of flipping on this one. Comment by the guide on the second raft: "There's a five per cent chance of staying in." We flipped) caused us all to catapult bodily into the water, leaving Josh with a designer gash above his left eye.

A good day, I have to say. A fucking good weekend in all, really!

Update: Josh's blog has a rather fine photograph of the final spill into the river.

Coba Fynn(ish) in living colour:

Chris sent us all a photo from the 'Fynn's recent reunion. Apparently Doug and I have morphed into hobbits.

I'm getting into this band photo thing. More photos I say, and next time bring me a cigar to smoke in them.

TM in living colour:

tremble as we rock/smirk/smoulder for your edification. Pictures taken by Dave at last night's pleasingly rocking practise (dare I call it a rehearsal?).

These days

as I hurtle headlong towards death and life foreshortens before me, I find that truly stupid drinking is often beyond my capabilities. Luckily the odd pirate-themed, eleven hour H(alfway House)a(ssembly)l(ogie Bairds)l(ast Drop)o(z bar)w(histle Binkies)e(nsign Ewart)e(spionage)n(icol Edwards) 4-binge pub crawl comes along to reassure me that when absolutely required, I can still handle my liquor.

I imagine I'll be avoiding such things for the forseeable future, given that I am still too tired to think.

Apologies for brevity, but the combination of a mostly uneventful week and enough rum to fell an elephant has left me incapable of forming any more meaningful joined-up sentences. Here's to some non-drinking related fun stuff happening soon...!

Update: Now up, Josh's photos of the day's piracy.

It begins:

Josh now has also a blog.

Birthday bash v2.

Both Neil's and Devon's birthdays (happy birthday, guys!) fell on or near this last weekend, and so a combined bash to end all bashes was planned for Saturday night.

Of course, before we could approach such an endeavour with the (specific) gravity demanded of us, we had to warm up. On Friday night, then, the chief protagonists - a Mafia hardcore - went out for a gentle night's boozing.

Neil's summary the next morning: "7 pints, 3 bottles, 3 shots, a bottle of champagne: not too little, not too much". Ice cubes had been thrown/inserted. Neil had been inverted and had a lovely chat while upside down with a concerned passer-by.

On Saturday night, after a gleeful stag party of Irish farmers had vacated it, we turned up at the Brass Monkey and took up station in the back room. After a couple of hours, a thronging mass of Mafia and archaeology types, plus Neil's Glasgow crew, had filled the place entirely. It truly was a sight to behold, but as is my wont, I vanished off to the chippy at midnight to try to salvage the last vestiges of sobriety, and surfaced only at noon the next day. Ah well...

TM records.

We had a somewhat depleted practise on Sunday through at the Brill Building in Glasgow. With Dom and Dave both off on holiday, Mart, Doug and I were standing around in the middle of cavernous Room 2. Doug, fiddling with the mixing desk and his MP3 player, said "I'm going to try recording some stuff tonight."

Gulp. Really?

Oh yes. We played Reasons (née MonkeyOne) and Sister Isabel a couple of times, with a wobbly wall mic capturing it all for posterity. Some farting about with web pages later, the recordings turned up yesterday afternoon.

They're both hilarious and brilliant at the same time. The playing is actually relatively compentent, which is a relief: I'd be worried if, after a year of trying to play the bass, I still couldn't pull off a 4-chorder like Reasons with a degree of composure.

By the time we got to the second run through Sister Isabel, a few cans of Stella on an empty stomach had worked their magic on me. The intro is supposed to begin with some picked guitar and low-key bass, and then everyone comes in for the first verse. On the recording, everything starts off quite reasonably but then on the change to the verse I go apeshit, pounding away like mad to compensate for the absence of rhythm guitar and vocals. The poor bass amp is bludgeoned into submission, farting away with a hideous destroyed-cone noise while we batter our way to the next quiet bit.

A lot of fun.

Comments

have again changed. Haloscan seems to have become a bit flaky of late, so hopefully for the last time, I've changed the comments to Blogger's own system. At least this way the comments will only ever be unavailable if the entire blog is down, rather than relying on an external provider.

Update: It's not immediately apparent from the 'Comment Sign In' page shown when you click to add a comment, but you do not have to be registered with Blogger. Just click the 'Or Post Anonymously' link - if you want to sign your comment, you can do so in the comment itself.

Went to a party

on Friday night with Josh and Vanessa. Jeff's cousin Hana, newly installed in a flat with some other colonials, threw a C-themed party. The idea was to come dressed as something beginning with C, to eat stuff beginning with C and, although I didn't know it at the the time, fend off the advances of a drunk Canadian girl who was coming on to me rather enthusiastically.

The first dress idea to cross my mind - 'cretin', which wouldn't have involved actually dressing up at all - was quashed by Josh in favour of 'CIA'. Yup. Black suits and earpieces again. It's becoming something of a well worn trademark.

Vanessa était un chat.

It was all fairly sedate (apart from having some dreadful tequila squirted into my gob from a water pistol) until a load of young, voluble backpackers turned up around midnight or so and some drinking games began. We left about 1 or so; I don't think we were quite in full-on party mode. Also I was getting increasingly fearful of having my unwilling bones jumped by the aforementioned Canadian. We made like a banana...

...and split.

Birthday bash.

Friday: another birthday for me. Having felt a bit dodgy for a few days during the week (although mercifully not a repeat of last year), I was back to normal for the evening's festivities. The 8^th had been designated as a Hat Night for some time, so I was happy to subvert it to my own birthday ends again.

HN has traditionally been a chaps only event (frankly, I think we should get all and sundry to come along, but hey: why should hen nights get all the bad press?) so I went for a few quick pints with Kate before the main event kicked off. This was a mistake. Not because of the sparkling chat, nor the pleasingly autumnal setting of the Outhouse's beer garden, but because I was healthily on my way before even the hats were distributed.

My recollection of the evening goes something like this:

Once we were all assembled in the flat and a few rounds of - <blackness> - wait. When did we get to Medina? Why is it 3 am?

Fortunately, there is photographic evidence of the night's entertainment. Until Josh gets round to posting it, though, here is some of what I/we apparently did:

• We played Semtex Master. Not to be confused with Freeze Master or Thumb Master, Semtex Master involves the current Semtex Master shouting "Semtex!" at which point the participants must get under the nearest table. Last one to do so is the new Semtex Master. This earned us some dirty looks in the Phoenix.
  
• I tried to chat up a 19 year old barmaid with the line (repeated ad nauseum, I'm reliably informed): "You should come to our flat and play poker! So we can take your money! Poker! Play poker with us!" Smooth. Also, Jez stood on tables. Both of these things attracted dirty looks in the Blind Poet.
  
• There was a bit of playful combat between Jeff and I. Josh tried to separate us, at which point his brother Sam shouted gleefully "Pile on!" and proceeded to do so. This got us some dirty looks in Doctors.
  

And that brings us pretty much up to date. Good night, I'm told.

INT. BANANA ROW, EDINBURGH - NIGHT

TINY MONKEY are standing around in their accustomed positions. They are discussing what to play.

DAVE
I've written some lyrics and a vocal melody for MonkeyOne.

The world briefly wobbles on its axis. One or two bandmembers clutch nearby chairs/music stands for support. Mouths are agape.

ALL
What?

DAVE
Well, I listened to the MP3 a few times and worked out a melody and some words to go with it. It's called 'Reasons' now. How about we try it?

ALL
Right then.

They play MonkeyOne, complete with two guitars, bass, drums and vocals. It's a REAL SONG. It sounds really, really good.

Seriously, I thought I was going to pass out. We've written a song. It's Teenage Fanclub meets Travis meets Snow Patrol meets pop music in general. Maybe it's the musical equivalent of the face that only a mother could love, but my God: it sounds fantastic to me.

1. INT. CORE STUDIOS, GLASGOW - DAY

TINY MONKEY are standing around in their accustomed positions. They are joined by DAVE, who is 'trying out' as a vocalist.

KEITH
What shall we do then?

DAVE
Let's do 'Run'.

ALL
'kay then.

They play. DAVE sings. They finish.

KEITH
That was fucking great.

ALL make general sounds of relief.

CUT TO:

2. INT. 13TH NOTE, GLASGOW - NIGHT

ALL are wrestling with the fact that they've come directly from a rehearsal, laden with gear, to Glasgow's archetypal music pub and thus are in danger of disappearing up their own arses.

KEITH
So have you played in a band before, Dave?

DAVE
Yeah, I played keyboards and did backing vocals for a band a while back. You guys are much better though.

ALL
You're in.

And so TM takes another step towards transforming into a giant killer robot by dint of acquiring a vocalist. Nothing can stop us now.

Friday, 6.30 pm.

The Phoenix.

"Pint of Stella and a packet of peanuts, please," I say.
"That your tea, is it?"
"I hope not! Cheers."

Some considerably pintage later, my phone rings: Kate. "I've left my jumper in the Phoenix. Can you grab it and take it home when you leave?"
Me, utterly slaughtered: "Yes. What does it look like?"
"It's a black V-neck."
"Okay."

An hour later: I call back on the way home.
"Got your jumper. Black round neck, yeah?"
"Argh. No. V-neck."
"Hang on -" <checks label> "- oh yeah. This is a mens' jumper."
"D'oh."

At least that's what I remember happening. Perhaps this tale is actually one of my workmates trying to wrestle a jumper away from me as I stumble, minging, out of the Phoenix with my ill-gotten booty.

Nice jumper, mind you.

The week

has been notable mainly for the stuff I didn't do, which has all been pretty wicked. Here are some of the exciting things I didn't do:

• win at poker on Tuesday
  
• write an instantly catchy, Libertines-esque pop tune on Wednesday night
  
• go to a party composed entirely of enthusiatic, nubile undergrads on Friday
  
• go to Vegas on Saturday
  

Now look at that list and tell me that I didn't not have an exciting time last week. What I did do instead, was:

• come second (again) at poker on Tuesday. Incidentally...
  
• inadvertently plagiarise the bass line from the Soup Dragons' cover of I'm Free on Wednesday
  
• see a worthy but partying-free film on Friday night
  
• wimp out unacceptably early on Saturday
  

Rock.

Today was good, in a relaxed kind of way: I dragged Kate to Glasgow to help with a bit of shopping, had lunch in Bar Ten (an excellent place, by the way. Glasgow seems to have much better bars than Edinburgh. Also, is it just me or does having a pint at lunchtime feel like the sort of thing mums in general would disapprove of?) and picked up bass #1 from Doug's.

I'm worn out again. Despite failing to exactly live life to the full this week, I'm still shagged out. Getting old...

The Belgians have pretty much all arrived.

Along with the Kiwis and Germans.

Not content with buying the company I work for, we now also have a Belgian installed in the flat's box/server room*. Fortunately Vanessa softened the blow by bringing with her some astonishingly potent beer and some chocolate. Not sure how potent that is yet.

Jeff's NZ cousin arrived here on Thursday, and Louise turned up on Friday. We've had a fairly standard weekend of eating and drinking in different venues, albeit with a bit of an international flavour. Not much to report, really, apart from that Josh is in Munich and hence missed the opportunity to hobnob with our ready-made bevy of jet-setting young ladies.

Actually, given that they're all here for at least the next year, he hasn't.

Possibly I could write a more inane entry next time. Or not.

* Go on - try to guess which profession the majority of the flatmates work in.

Midway through a retox week:

holy heck. The company I work for has just been sold to some Belgians. Waxy, take note: perhaps you can aid me in navigating the treacherous waters of international relations with our new Flemish overlords. After talking at us in a Belgian accent ("I feel we haf shynergiesh with you guysh"), they plied us with ham, cheese, Belgian beer and chocolate. And it was good. I have no idea whether our hippie enclave of sloth will change much, but they got off on the right foot anyway.

I rolled home to blunder into second place - again - at poker.

I was sitting in the Phoenix on Sunday night,

having a drink with Kate.

"I was going to go to London to meet up with Chris and Leyla before they go back to Oz, but since I'm going out there in February I'll maybe give it a miss," I said.

"Why not go up Aberdeen and meet them there?" said Kate. "You can stay at my parents' house. In fact, I haven't been up there for ages. We can both go."

"Because-" <pause, grinding of mental gears> "Actually, I can't think of a good reason why not."

Cue trip to Aberdeen after work last night. Kate's excellent parents fed and watered us, and we met up with C&L in a local boozer. I'm really glad we went - it was well worth the trip to see them both before they leave again, and I got happily drunk and emotional.

My hangover is only now abating. A week semi-off the sauce has turned me into a laughable lightweight. We got the train back at 8.55 this morning, and it was a distinctly quiet journey.

P.S: I did the Water of Leith 10K on Sunday in 49 minutes - my fastest time thus far, which is rather pleasing - and it was a particularly nice way to get some exercise. The stretches running through Dean Village and Stockbridge are about as picturesque as Edinburgh gets, and I think I might make a Sunday run along the river a regular thing...

Midway through a detox week:

holy heck. Possibly I am an alcoholic. True, after last night's old skool Tiny Monkey practise chez moi, Martin and I did have 2 (two) pints but I'm going to discount them because I want more. Supposed to be going to a party on Saturday night - it'll be interesting getting through that one without throwing sobriety and propriety to the wind.

On Sunday night Ruth and I and a couple of her mates went along to Inverleith Park to watch the illuminated fog above the castle marking the end of the festival. We stood in a 20,000-strong sea of neds and watched a large amount of money being used to light up a bank of cloud to classical music, and went home.

...and then went back out, independently, to meet our respective chums at The Outhouse for a couple of drinks. The combined chat was good, the night was just cold enough to make it feel like autumn and it was a pleasant way to wind down after a hectic but otherwise top weekend.

Now, though, I'm making a conscious effort to get back into training in advance of the run on Sunday, so I played badminton on Monday night - rather badly, to be honest - and went for a run on Tuesday night. My good intentions to go running three times a week have suffered at the hands of rock n' roll living for the past fortnight or so, and at the moment I tend towards wheezing collapse rather quicker than is useful when required to run 10,000m.

Bring on Sunday, I say. Not for the run, clearly, but for the street-long row of pubs that awaits at the finish line.

P.S. Michelle was in Kyoto a while back as part of a work trip to Japan. She visited the same temple on the mountainside outside the city as I did when I was a kid, and she's just posted a load of photos of it. It's an incredible place: pagodas sticking up through a steep, green forest covering the hillside and all connected by shadowed walkways, gardens and staircases.

Barnaby also has a few shots from another work visit to Japan, taken with his bizarro hippie Lomo camera.

Normal service has been well and truly resumed.

Friday night saw some hot three-way action, with Chris and Leyla's arrival from London coinciding with pre-birthday drinks for both Dom and Kate. It was absolutely fantastic to see Chris and Leyla again; the last time I saw them in the flesh was almost exactly a year ago in Brisbane's balmy spring. Happy days, happy days. Roll up to see the 25-year old me gape at strippers and take to the water like a duck. To water. Ah. Bit of synchronicity with the rafting last week, but I digress.

We drank the night away in the Barony and then the City Café, and the craic was mighty.

Doug organised a Coba Fynn practise/jam/mess about session at the Brill Building on Saturday, so Chris and I got the train to Glasgow with my bass and some Irn Bru in tow. With Charlie living in London and Neil opting for a quiet, un-rocking life, it was just Chris, Doug, Davis and I. Despite my protestations of musical incompetence, it was in fact genius. CF's staple fare is bluesy rock - handy for me, because I can come off sounding good playing only 3 different notes per song - and we ran through some of their old stuff. Locomotive Blues, Glasgow Girl and Super Shuttle: I'd heard these played a few years ago in the Pleasance, and it was excellent fun to be able to join in this time around.

We met up with Kate and her friend Claire for some post- and pre-rock food: Kate, Doug and I had tickets for PJ Harvey at the Carling Academy* later that night. Claire wanted to come along but didn't have a ticket, so she tagged along in the taxi and we managed to exchange our 3 standing tickets for 4 seated ones on the door.

The gig was pretty good. I hadn't listened to any PJ Harvey beforehand; she's one of those artists/groups that I think I should know more about but never really get round to. Our new tickets were for seats in the mezzanine area, so we had a good view of a diminutive PJ Harvey dwarfed by her rather nifty Firebird guitar, belting out some nicely melodic punky songs.

Unfortunately, we shared the good seats with the exhaled breath and airborne sweat of everyone else in the place. It was a deeply...moist experience up there. I'd rather have been in the sway-gently pit**.

We caught the train back to Edinburgh to meet up again with Chris and Leyla. Neil and his harem came along and I stumbled home after walking Kate back to her flat (must start dealing with this 19th century politeness I seem to be afflicted with) to find them rocking out to Led Zeppelin in our kitchen. I rocked out with them for a while from a supine position on the floor and went to bed about 4.30 am.

God, what a rambling entry. I am completely knackered - still completely knackered, in fact; the knackeredness has been stalking me since poker on Tuesday and I think this coming week will be something of a detox for me ahead of the 10K on Sunday. So basically, don't be expecting any incidents involving hilarity/incompetence at pulling/rocking to be reported for a few days.

* Saturday was Kate's birthday - happy birthday, Kate! - and her present from me was the ticket for the concert.

A while back, the morning after going to see Buddy Guy, I'm recounting to Martin that I feel a small degree of pride in getting Kate into Snow Patrol (re humming of Chocolate and insistence on calling it Final Straw), and he mentions that he's going down to Birmingham to see them play the next weekend. This then makes me think hey! That'd be a great birthday present for her. So I check the website for Scottish dates. There are some in December. They're all sold out already.

Bah.

It is typical that the first decent birthday present idea I've ever had is crushed a month before the birthday in question! Seriously, ask Jeff. I'm shit at birthdays. I gave a friend of mine some tennis balls once, when I was about 15.

Tennis balls.

It's gone downhill from there.

** Indie kids don't really know how to mosh, you see.

Knackered.

Tuesday's poker match went fairly well: I got to the heads-up at the end with Peter, and managed to throw away a reasonably commanding chip lead with a few unbelievably close hands*. Unfortunately, I managed to drag out this process until 1.45 am.

Second thing dragged out was myself from bed at 8.30 the next day. Jon (another poker player) had organised some whitewater rafting for Wednesday, and Kate and I were getting a lift there with Eliza and Mark. Apparently when he suggested the rafting trip at a poker game, the responses went:

Guys: <non-commital mumbling>
Girls: "Woohoo!"

Way to assert your thrill-seeking manliness, guys. Clearly I would have replied "Woohoo!" had I not been elsewhere, rocking my fucking socks off with TM during that particular game. I did in fact reply "Woohoo!" via the medium of electronic mail sometime later, hence this exciting little story.

Once we were all kitted out in wetsuits and lifejackets and had run through the safety drill, we headed off down the river with two guides in the back of the raft. A fair amount of the trip was on relatively pedestrian stretches, so we were required to do some 'challenges' transparently designed to result in some or all of us falling in the drink.

Don't listen to all that crap about wetsuits being warm once you've been in the water. Complete rubbish. I'd agree with 'just about bearably tepid', but 'warm' is just taking the piss. Coincidentally, Mark urged us all to urinate in our suits to warm us up. Thank God no-one did. A raft full of voluntary incontinents wearing spongy, porous clothing doesn't bear thinking about.

The rapids, once we got to them, were good fun but pretty tame. I had been expecting something a little more exciting, but fair enough; the Tay isn't exactly Amazonian. Still, it was good fun, and the day away from work was a welcome relief.

That night, TM convened for a practise at Lighthouse Studios in Granton. We'd never played there before, and I suspect we won't be going back. While the kit was good (the Marshall bass amp was the best I've played with), the room was tiny, and soundproofing was limited to a square of carpet on the wall beside the door. A twenty-times life-sized poster of a baby's head staring at us with dead, dead eyes didn't lend much of a party atmosphere to the place either.

I think it's been a fairly exhausting couple of weeks for all of us. Couple this with a tiny, dim practise room designed around psychological stress tests and you have the Practise Of Which We Do Not Speak.

We went to the pub and got drunk.

* For the poker-inclined among you, at one point I was dealt A-3 off suit - not great, I'll grant you, but I could have sworn that Peter had something worse and I jumped at the chance to take him out.

"All in," I said.

5 minutes later, my eyes glazed over from watching MTV in the background, he replied: "Okay. I'll call."

We flipped over our cards. He also had A-3 off suit. Un-fucking-believable.

Neither of us came up with anything near a flush on the community cards, so we split the pot, ending up with nigh-on exactly the same as beforehand. Almost every hand that came to the flop after that point was just as close. I think I finally lost on a hand where I had K-Q suited, and he had A-10 off suit. To trot out an old cliché, it really did come down to the luck of the draw.

Next time, I will be the master now. Er. You know what I mean.

Births, deaths and marriages.

The funeral on Thursday came and went, and I think life at RF HQ is returning to normal. And by normal, I mean I went out to the pub, got drunk and generally revelled in not having to wear a suit.

Finlay came to the funeral. I think the last time I saw him was at his wedding and now it turns out he's a father! Bugger me. I remember when we still called him Finners and drove radio controlled cars around in his cul-de-sac in Liff. I look forward to meeting little Emily and holding her awkwardly until she cries and someone takes her away from me with a roll of the eyes and a suppressed tut.

If I was a sentimental type, I'd say something about beginnings-​endings-​circle-​of-​life-​yadda-​yadda, but fortunately I'm on the emotional mend and I think instead I'll just tell you a crap joke:

Two fish are in a tank. One of them says to the other: "Do you know how to drive this thing?"

I'm here all week.

My gran,

who had been in hospital for the last four months or so, died on Friday morning. It wasn't expected that she'd live beyond Wednesday night but in the end she was tougher than that and held on for a little longer.

I got a phone call on Thursday night saying, basically, that this was the penultimate one about my gran's condition that I should expect to get. I got the final one about 10.30 the next morning at work, from my Dad.

My family are innocents as far as this diary is concerned, so I'll keep them out of it. Suffice it to say that by now everyone is doing okay, apart from a little drama with an in-law which staggers me: how anyone could be thinking purely of themselves at a time like this is almost beyond belief, but thankfully it's been defused now. By my Mum of all people, who really shouldn't have to be dealing with stuff like this at the moment, but there you go...

Anyway, I wanted to say thanks to everyone who has been about for the past few days. The Tiny Monkeys' emails made a truly gash day at work on Friday more bearable. Kate, who was around for only a few hours the evening before and the day after, managed to keep me on the straight and narrow by being in the right places at the right times and saying just the right things. Also she made me laugh when my mind didn't know which way to turn, and that made things easier.

Josh, Neil, Jeff and Devon kept me occupied on Saturday night when I got back from Fife and handled my occasional bouts of ire and quietness as they always do: by prodding me with gentle mockery and buying me a pint. Which, incidentally, were exactly the right things to do. I wouldn't have taken being handled with kid gloves very well.

I'm feeling curiously okay now. I think having witnessed my gran's decline over the months - and especially after a CT scan made it apparent that this was something she wouldn't be recovering from - I understood what was going to happen a long time ago, and had time to come to terms with it gradually. The past couple of days have just been the final part of something longer. The funeral is on Thursday, and it'll be good to say goodbye properly and close the door on everything.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

P.S:

I forgot to mention that Friday's Vegas action was in honour of Josh's birthday, which had been on the 5^th of August while he was off in Rwanda. Have a read of his journal! It features neither a booze-laden, five-hour comedy gig with added funk goodness (as Saturday night did) or quiet late-night few in Pivo, bookending the weekend nicely (as Sunday did), but does actually has some real worth as opposed to self-promoting navel-gazing. Which I suppose might have a place in the world.

What a cracking couple of days.

Thursday's TM practise was, I think, the best yet. It got off to a shaky start - we've been playing some songs more or less since we started, and I suspect we're not as strict with ourselves when we play them as we should be. Once we got on to Sister Isabel*, though, everything just seemed to fall into place. Doug put together a drum rhythm after a couple of runs through, and we just basically fucking rocked, I am extremely happy to say. I cannot wait to play it live!

Towards the end of the session, Mart started to play something Zeppelin-esque - reminiscent of A Whole Lotta Love, but not quite the same - and I played along. Suddenly Doug joined in with an astonishingly good impersonation of John Bonham's drumming, and we were playing what I'm going to call MonkeyTwo until I can A) come up with a better name, or B) write some vapid lyrics that suggest a suitable title. Chris mentioned once that all you need to know about music is the twelve bar blues, and it turns out that applying this to MonkeyTwo magically produces a '70s rock tune that wouldn't sound out of place on a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club or Kings of Leon album.

Alright, maybe I'm getting a smidgen over-enthused about it.

Anyway, we retired to the pub and got healthily mangled. We got some deep-fried goodness from the Rapido (hell, it could have been any fish and chip shop in Edinburgh for all that I remember) entirely too late to stop the onslaught of beer and I crawled into work on Friday feeling simultaneously chuffed and dreadful.

On Friday night (after an unsurprisingly pointless day at work) the Mafia got decked out in our gangster finery again, this time for Vegas. Aside from the usual lounge lizard/swingers theme, on this particular evening - Friday the 13^th - anyone dressed as the undead got in free. Cue fake bullet wounds, bloody handkerchieves and burst noses. We got there about ten, picking up Kate and Eliza and some of Josh's Teviot mates on the way. The doorman wasn't convinced that my stylishly applied, single-bullet-to-the-temple wound counted as making me undead, so he proposed that we toss a coin to see if I could get in free.

I won :)

Naturally, as soon as we got in and had sorted a round, three women (Devon, Eliza and Kate), one after the other, all decided that the time had come for me to just fucking dance, and no two ways about. The following conversation was repeated almost verbatim each time:

"Oh, come on. Dance."
"I don't want to! I'm crap! Wait, what are you doing with my beer?"
"Come on."
"Oh Jesus. Alright then. On your head be it."

And of course each time I was dragged up, a small, pure evil part of my brain secretly enjoyed itself immensely. So, Devon, Eliza and Kate: <fx: mumbles>thanks</fx>. God, I hate it when someone actually knows me better than I do.

I actually ended up more or less "dancing" the night away with whichever unfortunates happened to be nearby, and was in the last lot of the Mafia to stagger out at 3 am. Bit of a turn up for the books, really, what with the total abandonment of self-respect and being the last out of a club, so something obviously went right (or so very wrong) with the evening.

Kate (not Kate, but the girlfriend of a friend of hers) and Ruth (not my sister, but a different person altogether) came back to the flat with Josh, John, Neil and I and we talked about cars and music until 5 am.

I'll say that again: cars and music. What a top night.

* Sister Isabel is a Del Shannon song that was covered by Frank Black & Teenage Fanclub a while back. This sort of collaboration yields incontrovertible proof of the existence of a benevolent indie deity, in my opinion.

Old and busted:

losing at poker on Tuesday night, receiving the poker nickname "Fluffer"*. New hotness: running 10K for the first time last night. Newest of new hotnesses: running out of stuff to write here. You lot had better pray something interesting happens to me soon. And by 'you lot', I mean me.

* For reasons I'm clearly not going to explain here. No, they're not sordid or titillating, just boring.

I'm finding it hard

to separate anything I did last week into a meaningful, discrete activity. Whenever I try to isolate a given incident, my brain does something like the following: <mental deep breath>​work-​french-​work-​bandpractise-​work-​running-​work-​badminton-​work-​boozing-​running-​bluesgig-​running-​visithome​<and relax>

It is doubly concerning to me that for at least half of the spare time I had, I voluntarily chose to do something either physically or mentally edifying and forewent the option of getting plastered.

About the only point at which I just sat back and joyfully did nothing was for a few minutes on Friday evening after work. I sat on the quayside at the shore in Leith, waiting for my next pint to be ferried back from the bar, listening to Grandaddy on the iPod - a track called The Warming Sun, coincidentally enough - and watched the sun set.

After the genius of Buddy Guy last weekend, I jumped at the chance to go to another free blues gig with Kate on Saturday night. It was Jason's birthday that day as well, so I dutifully knocked a couple back with him and then headed over to the Caley Brewery about 9.30 or so. The gig was never, I think, going to be as good as last Sunday's, but even then it was a little disappointing. The Caley's hall becomes sauna-like maybe half an hour into any given event there, and the sweat was dripping from the ceiling joists by the time we arrived. The audience had the look of hardened blues aficionadoes, displaying just that level of disregard for personal appearance that marks the true musical enthusiast. (The Buddy Guy crowd seemed more normal to an extent. Given that the tickets were £32 for the non-freeloaders, perhaps they were rich blues aficionadoes, dressed by personal shoppers.)

The band sounded just a fraction perfunctory, like they were going through the motions without ever really approaching genuine enthusiasm. We bought some drinks, headed to a table outside and soaked up A) the festival atmosphere and B) the haar.

Sunday has been a bit of a drag, to be perfectly honest. I went for another run, feeling fairly confident after a couple of 7K+ runs on Wednesday and Saturday, but my cardiovascular system wasn't really in it. I called it a day after 4K or so and headed back to the flat to stew in the muggy air for an hour or so. I got the train back home to visit my gran in hospital, had some dinner with my parents and then got back on a train bound for Edinburgh.

So after a good, if busy week, I'm left feeling a bit pensive and disconcerted.

Summer here?

I feel like I've had more of a cultured weekend than of late. We'll discount Friday night, which consisted of getting plastered and then walking an even more plastered, weepy Australian back to her flat at 2 am, though. That wasn't culture. That was drinking in the trenches.

On Saturday, I went out for a run. A while back, one of the guys on my team at work spammed us all with an invitation to run the Water of Leith 10k race in September. It's an alternative to the Capital Challenge 10K, done for charity instead of being a 'real' race, and this year it's on the same day.

I made a conscious effort to go running a couple of times a week last autumn and winter, mainly in an effort to get a bit of exercise beyond just cycling to work. Unfortunately, Christmas and the associated mountain of food and booze finished off my will to do so and I've let it slide since then. The 10K looked like a good target to aim for, so I printed out a training schedule and got to work. Saturday's supposed half-hour run went tits up when I got lost in Leith. And trust me, Leith is not somewhere you want to get lost while wearing 50% camp running shorts (they're nowhere near as '70s paedophile as Neil's, thankfully) and a 100% camp, clingy t-shirt.

On Saturday night, I went to see Before Sunset at the Cameo with Kate. (Yeah, yeah. We've been compared to bickering siblings and an old married couple by now.

"So how long have you guys known each other?"
"Oh, not long."
"Oh, too long."

No wonder I'm single - I'm already married.)

The film was great. It's incredible to watch a film that feels so authentic; once the scene was set up (two people meet up after a chance encounter nine years ago), it progressed more or less in real time. The acting was almost invisible, and the script - which was so good as to feel completely spontaneous - contained a ridiculous number of truisms from both sides of the conversation. It really is worth watching.

On Sunday I tried, rather more successfully, another run. I stuck to the cycle paths and managed a respectably timed 5K. The thought of doubling this in six weeks is a little daunting.

That evening, I went to see some random blues gig in the Queen's Hall with Kate (yeah, yeah x 2) and a couple of her mates. She'd gotten hold of some complimentary tickets through her job and so I gamely trooped along, having no idea what to expect. Turned out the gig was by Buddy Guy, apparently a bit of a blues legend. It was absolutely fantastic! I sat with a grin on my face the whole time: the playing and music were excellent and he worked the crowd - all clearly in love with him anyway - like a pro.

Seeing such an enjoyable show has given me a bit more of an impetus to 'do' the festival this year. Normally in August we just 'do' the Pleasance bar three or four times a week.

Coba Fynn

get their rocks off at Davis' wedding. Notably absent from the video's soundtrack is any bass whatsoever. Must remember to turn the fucker on next time.

I'm writing this in the yawning vacuum of an afternoon off work.

We had a TM practise at Banana Row last night from 9 to 12 pm. It went encouragingly well; we're starting to hang together as a band (read: we're nodding to each other before changing from verse to chorus) and actually sound pretty convincing. Apart from the lack of vocals, but we're working on that.

And lyrics. We're working on them too. I plan on penning a magnum opus based upon the Dragon Way incident, if only I can find something that rhymes with "inadvertent financial self-buggery".

Anyway, the four of us had a self-congratulatory post-practise pint in the pub next door, and then Mart and I met up with Jeff, Devon and Ally in Negociants for a few more*. Being the last people in there at 3 am wasn't good enough for us though, and so leaving Jeff and Devon to head home, the rest of us decamped to Ally's flat for some beer-impaired guitar playing.

This morning I arrived at work and was utterly, utterly incapable of concentrating. Even my web surfing wasn't up to usual standards. I stared at the screen until midday and then took the rest of the day off as a holiday. I can now spend an exciting afternoon watching telly, paying a council tax bill and playing Forbidden Siren on the Playstation.

I am dizzy with anticipation.

* Devon's sister Brenna is visiting Edinburgh at the moment with a friend of hers. Predictably, her friend is:

1. Funny;
   
2. Tres attractive;
   
3. Leaving at the end of the week.
   

I cooked tea for Neil and Kate on Friday night. We cracked open a few beers, played some CDs and generally hung out. At least I assume this is what "hanging out" is. Never been very good at societal staples like that.

Anyway.

I'd been out with some guys from work earlier, and the few beers then plus the few beers later made me a little tipsy. Something inside me was awoken: I crossed into a realm of Cheese. While a Teenage Fanclub song (Neil Jung, to be exact) was playing, I picked up my bass and, sprawled limply on a beanbag, proceeded to play raggedly along with it. This is something I've witnessed before - usually round at Chris's flat before he moved to Australia, often involving Chris strumming along to Wish You Were Here, and always after a colossal amount of various spirits - but never until now have I been overtaken by the desire to inflict my mad bass skillz on innocents. My rampant egomania has been given form, and that form is ROCK.

Curiously enough, Kate went home and Neil went to bed shortly after that, but hey: true genius is never appreciated until after you're dead, right? All this leads me to a single, inescapable conclusion: Tiny Monkey must play live, and we must do it soon. Mart! Dom! Doug! Are you listening? This is a call to arms!

(Wow. This is the first stream-of-consciousness post I've done and my word, gibberish is more fun to write than coherent diary entries.)

It has been a boozy, boozy weekend.

It kicked off with a solid session on Friday night with the usual suspects and continued on Saturday night, when we'd been invited to an 80s party. Out came the yuppie suit and red braces.

I'd decided that this was going to be the night of the German Beer Experiment. I've started to suffer from some truly evil hangovers of late, and I'd heard that German beer - made as it is from pure beer and nothing else, is a lot kinder on the old noggin the morning after.

Tesco didn't have any German beer.

They did have Grolsch though, which is pretty much German in style and execution, so I reasoned it'd be close enough. Also the advertising slogan 'Schtop!' is hilarious to repeat while drunk, so that more or less sealed the deal. We trooped off in power suits and dayglo pink leg warmers* once the Mafia were assembled.

The party was in a miniscule flat on Easter Road, and was fairly lively. I wasn't really on particularly good party form...extremely tight 80s trousers, some cookies of distinctly herbal provenance and a disciplined attempt to work my way through a 10-pack of Grolsch (2 of which acquired cigarette butts in them in before I could finish) were all contributory factors. I headed home about 2 or so and hit the sack.

The German Beer Experiment actually seemed to work. I wasn't exactly dancing around the flat the next morning, but I felt a damn sight better than I have done of late, after similar booze action.

Neil had been at a leaving do in Glasgow on Saturday and he came back with Waxy, Siobhan and Hannah in tow around 1 or so; I tagged along to the City Café with them for lunch and a couple of restorative pints.

Of course, a couple of restorative pints spread out to encompass the entire afternoon, then the evening, and before I knew it we were crammed into Waxy's Clio, clutching bottles of Miller** cajoled from Josh and heading for Glasgow. Things finally starting to unravel about 2.30 am, when drinking a 50/50 vodka and lemonade from a champagne flute with gilt edging and watching a School of Rock DVD with Russian dubbing and Arabic subtitles.

Siobhan and Waxy put us up in their ridiculously overblown, opulent flat and I got the train back this morning. It has taken me three hours to write this bastarding entry. That's what three nights on the sauce does to me nowadays. Just say no, kids. (Unless it's German beer, which is fine.)

* Fortunately no-one combined the two.
** Apart from Waxy, obviously. That would have been Bad. Waxy was a saint, really. Not only did she suffer our increasingly dire chat, she drove a car full of stinking borderline alcoholics sweating off around six binges each across the country and back to satisfy our foolish demands.

Waxy, I salute you.

¡Oh mi palabra!

Heh. Someone accessed the Roquefort Files through Yahoo's Spanish translator. It's cod-Spanish GENIUS.

What possessed them to do this, I wonder?

Chalky, not chewy.

I'm feeling a bit ropey today as a result of a Tiny Monkey practise and subsequent boozing. One of the guys at work, seeing me sprawled on the staffroom couch and hearing me quietly croak a register lower than normal, asked me if I'd like some painkillers.

Apparently he got into the habit of carrying painkillers after he broke his arm in twelve places while walking home from a party at the old flat, but that's another story.

Anyway, glass of water, 2 x paracetamol: down the hatch.

The tablets stuck on the back of my tongue and immediately started to dissolve into a gag-inducing chalky mess. Just about yakked in the office. Seriously. Huge gag. Utterly vile.

And I still feel dreadful.

Capitalism sucks.

The Roquefort Files' first foray into the free market economy came to a rather abrupt end today. Ali, Josh, Helen and I had been working on an idea for some mobile phone software (with grandiose plans to turn it into a "framework" once the sponduliks started rolling in) for the past few months or so.

Everything was going reasonably well. A business plan and prototype were in the works. Ali was talking to business advisors and enterprise agencies. We were starting to use phrases like "turnkey solution", "buy in" and "leverage" without making Doctor Evil-style quote mark gestures. Josh had stopped making jokes about post-IPO parties involving Russian hookers.

During a meeting with his boss earlier this week, it turned out that Ali's current employers, during the first 9 months of his job there, had been working on a project that pretty much mirrored our idea. If you were to describe their project as x, you could describe ours as x on mobile phones.

Bugger. Sound the Intellectual Property Shafting siren, cancel my internet bride and tell my dealer I won't be needing the ten grams.

Although Ali hadn't worked on x and wasn't even aware of its existence, this is the kind of issue that would have venture capitalists turning in their graves. If they were, y'know, dead venture capitalists.

So, to cut a long story short, we've called it a day, at least until we can work up the enthusiasm to have go at a different idea. Until then, I can go back to using my spare time for hangovers and channel surfing, the way it's meant to be used.

Finally! Something to write/rant about other than the crappy ads on Bid-up TV.

I went to see Fahrenheit 9/11 last night. I hadn't been sure whether to go or not; I read Fast Food Nation a while back after hearing so much about it, and I was rather underwhelmed. Given my cynicism about corporate behaviour in general, descriptions of just how bad every part of the fast-food chain were fell a little flat when they only confirmed what I had already imagined to be the case. Carry the same cynicism over to the Iraq war and add in having watched Bowling for Columbine and I wasn't expecting to be particularly surprised by much.

The film was mostly as I expected. The media coverage (at least in commie rags like the Guardian that form the majority of my news sources) of the Bush administration's preoccupation with Iraq and the post-9/11 cronyism stuff with Halliburton and the like meant that I had already been exposed to most of Moore's points of view.

What I wasn't expecting was the sheer, unapologetic profiteering hidden by a veneer of patriotism that was displayed by some of the executive types interviewed. The sight of a suited, gelled, 30-ish twat explaining how proud he was to be helping with the war effort turned my stomach. The contrast between the little fucker standing in an identikit hotel foyer with canapés and free champagne, and the charred body of a GI being pulled behind an Iraqi militia pickup truck was utterly appalling. The disconnect between the idealistic argument - however flawed in the first place - for waging such a war ("free the people", "war on terror" etc.) and the reality of dead soldiers, civilians and children is jarring enough, but when you remove any idealism and substitute rampant oil money-grabbing for it, things get even more revolting.

The film was a little weak on narrative, which was a shame. It started off implying some kind of Saudi/Bush conspiracy or nepotism but abandoned this partway through to concentrate on the cretinous decision to invade a country with fuck all ability to attack anyone apart from its own people. And once it did that, it became a damn sight more effective.

One almost surreal sequence had me oscillating between hilarity and incredulity, with a tank crew talking about how they piped nu metal through their Abrams's comm system while they blew stuff up, like an unconscious manifestation of Buffalo Soldiers' smackhead tank jaunt.

3/5 on the RF's drum-beating documentary scale, but worth seeing just to remind onself just how pear-shaped everything went after Bush won Florida in 2000.

/leftie film review + rant

Oh, and we had a flat game of poker on Wednesday. I didn't win, but by some combination of luck and idle curiosity to see exactly which cards were on the table, I came second. And didn't even buy back in. The future's bright. The future's...green. Er, like the baize on a card table.

I went out for a quiet drink on Wednesday night.

And to be fair, it stayed relatively quiet, even after we ended up in the Carwash, acquired Ray's double Nick and had a final drink in Espionage.

All well and good.

I woke up the next day feeling bad. And I don't mean hangover bad. Full-on, Exorcist-style bad. I spent the day fitfully sleeping and crawling to and from the bathroom to drive the porcelain bus. Four separate onlookers opined that I must have had a dodgy pint, and I'm inclined to believe them.

Apart from extensive reverse peristalsis, it's been another quiet week. The only other thing of note I did was to go to see Ju-On ("The Grudge") last night. It's a Japanese horror in the same vein as The Ring and it is undeniably effective. At least it was for Kate, who watched from between her fingers most of the time.

As we were walking back into town for a drink at the Cameo, we passed a doorway where a waiter lighting a cigarette on his break, preceded by his shadow, suddenly appeared.

"FUCKING HELL!" bellowed Kate as she recoiled from the hapless guy. The poor bloke was probably more shocked than she was. "Oh! Er. Sorry. Film. Horror. Sorry. Oops."

Middlingest. Week. Ever.

To whit:

• Tiny Monkey had our first full practise at Banana Row, with Doug coming across from Glasgow to play drums. It went reasonably well, even though we lost our way a bit towards the end, possibly by racing through the set without paying enough attention to each individual song. I had expected it to go flawlessly, for some reason - probably because Coba Fynn got stuck in to each practise with a fairly businesslike attitude - but I forget that Mart and Dom have never played with drums and huge-ass amps before and there's a bit of a learning curve to getting into the 'rehearsal' mindset. Still, it bodes well for future practises and we'll just have to concentrate a little more on getting things just so before moving on to the next song...
  
• I've only been out once (er, I think only once, anyway) this week and even then it was fairly low key: I suspect my subconscious is taking charge and demanding a sensible week for a change.
  
• Ray gave me a lift across to Fife this morning to help my Dad out with a vintage car rally he runs each year. Turned out there were already enough people there, so we came back after having a bacon roll in a Cold War-era amusement arcade (I played GTI Club for the first time in years) and staring listlessly at the disused power station that towers over the place.
  

And that was that; a week that just idled along without ever deciding to really get going. Conclusion: must try harder.

Update: I did manage to go and see The Cooler on Sunday evening, which upped the weekend's average from uninspired to moderate. Quite a good film; breezy and dark by turns, impressive acting and that good ol' Vegas movie atmosphere. 4/5 on the RF's indie movie scale.

Another breathless weekend?

Yes please.

Alright, I'm being a bit melodramatic. Last year, Josh, Ally and I went through to Glasgow to meet up with Josh's siblings for the art college's degree show party thing and had such a good time we decided to go back again this year. The two other Casswells were there as well, with Josh's brother having flown back from a work placement in Austria just to get in on the action.

This time, Ally dropped out but Luc, Marie and Kate came along instead. Josh and I collected some beers on the way to the station and we settled down to knock a few back during the train journey. Except, of course, that none of us had brought a bottle opener. Skint knuckles and helpless, resigned hilarity ensued. Josh eventually levered one open with a karabiner and a keyring, and there was much rejoicing.

Once we got there, Kate & I headed to Doug's flat to collect him while everyone else went straight to the party. We met up again with them and the junior Casswells around 10 pm, by which time, of course, the street party was winding down and everyone was herding towards the union. A mercifully unguarded side door let us in without too much hassle.

A few beers later, V-twin (one of the bands I managed to see last weekend) played a shortish set and then the music went...a bit mental.

Turns out your correspondent and dancing emphatically do not mix. I suppose that I've always usually had some alternative to (very, very badly) shaking my indie white-boy booty in a given venue, whether it's been to hang about with other Mafia refuseniks, meet up with friends at some alternative venue or just pick a reasonable vantage point to suck back a beer and enjoy the atmosphere. Occasionally, when plastered, I will attempt to dance like a freak. Usually these occasions are the ones where my goldfish memory shields me from the worst of it until someone gleefully recounts my antics the next day...

Anyway, hard house plus an intense aversion to hard house do not play well together and I didn't exactly revel in the latter part of the evening. Doug, Kate and I left around 2 am. A brief bout of self-examination (seriously, try a dance-ectomy and then stand immobile in crowd of people who are really enjoying it, and try to avoid wondering why exactly you don't like dancing) and some late-night bhajis later and I was more or less back on mental track. My weeble-esque mindset usually recovers from this kind of prod with a minimum of fuss.

Which was good, because the next day, Doug and I embarked on a four hour pub crawl/philosophical journey back to the train station. Doug's company always brings out the introspective in me (if that's not a contradiction in terms, and it's certainly a laudable trait on his part!) and we spent the afternoon sifting through, among other things:

• my aforementioned dancing idiocy
  
• the usual 20-something neuroses concerning the opposite sex
  
• which is the best Zeppelin album, and
  
• about five pints
  

In fact, I've come to the conclusion that everyone has an inner Doug, looking something like the goblin in the current Sprite adverts, that provides philosophical guidance (but no straight answers, of course :) in the same way that Disney cartoons assume the existence of an angel and a devil, one on each shoulder, providing moral guidance.

But I digress.

To sum up: something of a voyage of discovery this weekend, mixed in with a dash of rock, a slap of hard house and a considerable amount of amateur psychoanalysis. And now, I'm just fucking knackered.

I was about to cycle back from work this evening

and it was uncharacteristically dark, looking like it might rain. I left my sunglasses off and headed home. When I came to the bridge over the cycle path I use to get home, I slung the bike on my shoulder and went down the stairs to the path. Almost immediately after getting back on and starting off, I thought "What's that on my foot?" and lo, it was a piece of dog shit. Handily smeared all over the pedal by now.

Arse.

I wiped my shoe on the grass and then looked back at the shitty pedal. Fuck. I took out my hankie and wiped most of the crap off it and set off up the path, cycling one-handed, with the odorous hankie dangled from my spare hand.

Heading back up the path, looking for a bin, I changed up gear. The gear lever made an ominous 'crack' noise and refused to lock in place, leaving me weaving up the path with a shitty hankie in one hand and the gears making the kind of grinding noise that, when I hear someone else's bike making it, makes me roll my eyes in a kind of "Honestly, can't you use the gears?" type way.

And then it started to rain. Just as I was coming up to a little park I knew had a litter bin in it, I copped a bit of airborne grit in my right eye because of my lack of sunglasses. Because of the bloody rain clouds. Shortly after the first bit of grit, I copped another in my left eye. Eyes streaming with the irritations, I wobbled into the park and flung the hankie into the bin. A woman was walking her dog nearby. I glared (as best I could with eyes closed to watering slits) at the bastarding thing as it happily gambolled away, no doubt planning the optimum place for a covert dump.

Devoid of my feculent hankie, I was at least able to hold the gear lever in place so the gears didn't persist in filing themselves away to nothing. Nearing the end of the cycle path, my nose started to run in sympathy with my eyes. I reached for my hankie only to silently scream when I remembered it was in a bin half a mile away, covered in dog crap.

Once I got to the flat, I locked up my broken, shitty bike, took a near-solid beer out of the freezer and watched the Swiss (my team in the flat Euro 2004 sweepstake) get beaten by the English.

<fx: cradles head in hands>

I woke up at 6.58 this morning, thought "This is too early for Sunday" and turned my alarm off.

Woke up again at 11.01, thought "That's more like it" then said aloud: "Shit." Sleeping patterns one, RF nil.

What a debacle...

after hearing last week about the open-air gig organised by Belle & Sebastian at the Botanic Gardens in Glasgow, I excitedly mass-emailed everyone to see if any of my jockrock-friendly mates wanted to go and see them. A few emails later and I had A) managed to convince a few of them to come along and B) been reminded about a previously organised going away party that night in Edinburgh.

Cue a day of walking, underground-ing and train-ing to and from entirely too many different venues, flats and pubs. I managed to miss B&S, arrive late to the party (although that wasn't wholly my fault, just another random spanner in the works) and spent the final hours of the night hurtling from pub to pub in an effort to see everyone I had promised to meet up with.

<fx: exasperated roll of eyes>

A royally frustrating Saturday.

Paradoxically, this post is entirely about doing bugger all.

Tonight will be the first night in almost two weeks that your correspondent will be able to put his feet up and revel in lassitude. No pub quiz, no band practise, no French lessons and especially no random pub maniacs make the RF a dull and extremely relieved boy. I may have a cup of tea. I might watch some TV, or have a lacklustre bass practise. The possibilities are limited and all very attractively banal.

So, until I do something interesting/dangerous/stupid/embarrassing, adieu.

Hot damn.

I'm typing this while slouching on the Jeff's skanky old couch, currently in my room to add a bit of bohemian style to the place, over our shiny new broadband connection. Through the flat's wireless network, no less. This will no doubt increase the quantity of RF updates at the expense of the signal-to-noise ratio. Thought it was trivial thus far? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

As a side effect of selling our collective souls to Telewest - for this week only - when, at the end of The O.C., the announcer says: "Enjoying The O.C.? Turn over now to catch the next episode on E4," we will, in fact, be able to do so. I am giddy as a schoolgirl with excitement.

Last night

took me to seven nights boozing in a row, which is a little worrying. Even more worrying was the random Botswanan girl that attached herself to us (Ray, Kate & I) in Pivo.

We wandered in around 12 or 1 or so, and Ray (I think) went to get us some drinks. My eyes did the scan-the-pub thing almost as a reflex, and I vaguely registered that a girl on the other side of the bar locked eyes with me briefly. Meh. I was drunk and disinterested and attempting to convince Kate that no, I wouldn't be dancing because I dance like a tool.

Imagine my surprise when said girl popped up beside me and said "Hi there, do you mind if I hang out with you until x?", where x was something reasonable like "until my friend turns up" or "for a while" or something similar.

x should in fact have been one of the following:

1. you realise that I'm a Christian fundamentalist mentalist
   
2. I freak you out so much you'll want to get the fuck away from me
   
3. both of the above
   

At this particular moment I was alone: Ray and Kate were both elsewhere, buying drinks or at the toilet or whatever. I said "Yeah, sure. No problem." When they arrived, I gave them an I-have-no-idea-who-this-person-is look. We all chatted away for a bit. All seemed okay.

And then the conversation turned to reincarnation, as it does. It became obvious that this young lady was a bit of a nutter. Her phone rang at this point, and she answered it. I was now staring wide-eyed at Ray and Kate hoping that someone would have some kind of plan to get the hell away from this lunatic. And then I had the distinct sensation of someone kissing my arm.

I looked incredulously at her. And asked quite reasonably, I thought, "Did you just kiss my arm?"

She didn't answer, because she talking was on the phone and didn't appear to have heard. She wandered off towards the toilets and I stared, aghast, at Ray and Kate. "Did you just see that? She kissed my arm! Let's get the fuck out of here."

In doing so, I leant back on the bar for some much-needed support, whereupon someone planted - accidentally - a lit cigarette on the selfsame arm. It hurt.

"Right. Let's go." And we did.

Chillin'.

I've just had a pretty damn-near perfect couple of evenings of gentle summer boozing. On Friday, after work, I wandered down to the shore with some work chaps. Having forgotten to bring money with me, I cadged a couple of beers from Jason and DaveM and we shot the shit for an hour or two on the quayside. Later on, Neil and I met up with Jeff and Devon in the St. Vincent, a marvellously cheap boozer on Cumberland Street, and nicely close to the flat. Ray turned up, so we had an argument. Just like ol' times...!

On Saturday, Kate and I went to see Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (after fighting off a truly evil hangover. Neil thought the St Vincent's lines were unclean. I suspect I'm just a lightweight). Excellent film! Thought-provoking, well acted and made. Funny enough to avoid being melancholy and affecting enough to avoid becoming trivial. After that, I had intended to cook a bad-ass, RF speciality stir-fry^TM for everyone but by the time I got to Tesco - 8.30 pm - it was shut.

WTF? Closed at 8.30 on a Saturday? I'd rather not be pressured into adopting a semi-realistic timetable by a branch of Tesco, but it looks like I may already have lost this one.

Kate and I went for a meal on Broughton Street instead, to a Greek place called Santorini. It was absolutely fantastic: the food was pretty much faultless, the wine decent and the chat flowed like - well, like the wine. We found the rest of the Mafia in the Star Bar over in the New Town. I'd already settled into a pleasantly woozy, love-all state with a bellyful of great Greek food and wine and a big smile plastered on my face, and a couple more drinks in the beer garden/close/alley finished everything off nicely.

Conclusion: this new flat is going to be great.

We've moved,

and while that may sound like a happily done and dusted, self-contained utterance, it required tediously large amounts of effort. In fact, I say 'done and dusted', but the new flat was, if possible, more dusty than the last one. (Ho! There's nothing like a smooth link, and that was nothing like a smooth link.) The previous tenants must have been either continually moulting or collectively suffering from some rampant skin disease.

And on that note, let's leave the dust topic.

On Friday night, Dave and Michelle invited me along to a(nother) curry night at their friend Lee's flat. There have been a couple of six degrees of separation-style revelations recently; at Davis' wedding, I found out that Charlie, Coba Fynn's singer, went to school with and is friendly with Tim Wheeler (of Ash) who in turn is the brother of Pat Wheeler, one of Katie's art college mates. Then at Lee's the other night, in between vigorous consumption of too many beers, it turned out that Lee knows Ally, Katie's brother, through Japanese embassy/TEFL connections.

After the curry fest, we headed out to meet up with the rest of the Mafia. This is roughly where my actual memory of the events starts to break up and where conjecture and hearsay take over, so I'll summarise by saying that the only thing you need to know is that I fell messily down the stairs on the way out of Teviot at 3 am.

Post hangover, I hired another van on Saturday so we could complete the move from Devon's to the new flat. It all went remarkably smoothly and thankfully there was little of note worth elaborating about here. We cobbled together another superset of the Mafia that night for a mini pub-crawl up Broughton Street - our new 'hood - but I flaked out around 1 am. A week of recuperation is called for before any further attacks in the War on Beer can be attempted.

Sunday seemed to last forever. Neil, Josh and I IKEA'd in the van, picking up odds and ends like wastepaper bins and lightbulbs. Josh bought a desk (called Årsehöl or something) for his decks. Homebase was next; I got some compost to re-pot my two long-suffering houseplants, neither of which has been fed or re-potted for the last four years and yet incredibly still cling to life. They've suffered enough: new flat, new gardening responsibilities.

Having said that, when I got back to the flat I couldn't be arsed. They'll have to struggle on for another day or two.

I managed to miss half of The O.C. but was too knackered to get particularly annoyed. I'm glad that we've finally moved; with any luck, the next week will be a very, very quiet one.

Katie (or Cate as she's known in the biz) is the Diageo Young Photgrapher of the Year! Here's an example of her portfolio: it's Tommy Sheridan speaking at an anti-war rally last year, if memory serves. Note the juxtaposition of flag, cloudy sky and banner to create a pre-war Iraqi flag: extremely cunning, n'est-ce pas? Nice work, Katie.

<blues>
Woke up this morning
Dm7-G-Dm7-Em-Dm7
feeling terrible.
Dm7-G-Dm7-Em-Dm7
</blues>

Katie is putting Josh and I up until we move into the new flat on Saturday. I kipped on her living room floor and had weird stomach cramps when I woke up. I walked like a half-shut knife. Having a shower was painful. I kept expecting to let go one gigantic Death Star of a belch and to feel better but it didn't happen. It just subsided gradually until I was able to cycle to work. Fun fun fun.

It's been an odd week. I hadn't sat still for more than five minutes until last night, where we had a celebratory meal round at Katie's flat (and which was probably the source of the morning's stomach pain excitement). I've spent a day packing; driven our stuff to Devon's flat¹; cleaned and hoovered the old flat for two mind-buggeringly dull evenings and generally been running around like a blue-arsed fly.

This weekend is going to see the cracking open of more than a few cold ones, you can be sure of that.

1. 1.9 turbodiesel Transit. RF verdict: 4/5. Lacks the low-down grunt of the 2.4, but spools up nicely once the revs are higher.
   
   Just so you know.

T minus 50 hours: my phone rings. Well, it vibrates its way across the desk.

"Hey, Davis. How's it going?"
"Hi there."
<cue ten minutes of finest Davis rambling>
"...so cut a long story short, Charlie hasn't managed to get his driver's license sent up yet. I was wondering if..." (here it comes) "...you could maybe..." (the wait is excruciating) "...drive the van to the hotel for us?"

And there we are. Enter your correspondent the roadie.

T minus 37 hours, 10 am: I drag myself out of bed. I sheepishly call the office to ask for the day off, given that 2 hours work is unlikely to constitute the half-day I was hoping to do. I'm picking the van up at 1 pm but before that, I have to lay my hands on a gig bag for my Jazz bass. With a heavy heart, I'd decided that I was going to use it for the gig instead of the mighty T-bird. The T-bird's very mightiness means that it's tiring to play for anything more than a few songs, and given that I wanted to avoid ruining Davis' wedding, I plumped for the weedier but more ergonomic J-bass. I'd borrowed Martin's Bass Pod - a bass effects box, basically - to make the J-bass sound a little better, of which more later.

T minus 34 hours, 1 pm. Arnold Clark Hire: They're giving us a Ford Transit.

"A Transit? Can't we have...I dunno, a Renault or something? I forgot to bring my pies and a copy of the Sun. And my wolf-whistling just isn't up to scratch."
"No. They're fast, you know. 2.4 litres."
"Ooh! Really?"

Turns out it goes like a bat out of hell. Enter your correspondent the crazed White Van Man.

T minus 26 hours, 9 pm. Marine Hotel, North Berwick: After a pleasantly straightforward afternoon (picking up the PA system on time; getting to the final practise session on time; playing our set twice through with reasonable success; setting up the PA without breaking anything, even the hideously expensive and fragile valve amp for Davis' guitar), we finish up our sound check. I'm in a pretty good mood. The bass sounds fine; I've managed to find a setting on the Pod that bulks out the sound a bit and the stage floor shakes in a truly rock fashion on the low notes. We leave the van in the hotel car park and Doug gives me a lift home; our work here is done.

T minus 11 hours, 12 pm. Day of the wedding. RF HQ: Shit shit shit. I've got nothing to wear. What the hell does one wear while playing in the band at a wedding?

T minus 8 hours, 3 pm. Princes Street: Shit shit shit. The Captain is coming to pick me up in an hour's time and I still have nothing to wear. Propelled by a feeling of sartorial doom, I buy A) a chocolate brown shirt (oh yes) and B) the most expensive pair of shoes in the universe.

The Captain arrives with Waxy, Fat Pete (you couldn't make this shit up) and Jacqui. We drive to North Berwick.

T minus 5 hours, 6 pm. North Berwick: I get dressed for the evening. Christ. I aimed for Franz Ferdinand and wound up with 70s ned/pimp. We, the johnny-come-lately evening crowd, wander into the centre of town to get some food. North Berwick is an odd place. It appears to consist solely of expensive looking Victorian-era townhouses. Each and every car is something impressive like a Range Rover or a Porsche. Then you hit the centre of town, and the neds. Slack-jawed, angulated cap-wearing, full-on neds that gape at anyone not wearing a tracksuit. Loads of 'em.

Odd.

We head into a local hotel, eat, have a couple of drinks and go back to the Marine. I'm determined to stay sober as a judge until we play, having discovered last week that three pints are enough to remove all vestiges of bass-playing ability from me.

T minus 2 hours, 9 pm. Marine Hotel: We've arrived at the wedding and said our hellos. The ceilidh is over; the buffet is winding down and Davis has started up some music for a disco type thing. I'm clutching a glass of water and starting to feel a bit nervous.

T minus 0 hours, 11 pm. 15^th May, 2004. North Berwick, Marine Hotel function room: The music stops. Coba Fynn take the stage and incredibly, there is applause. Davis' dad joins us and tells the crowd about the 'Fynn's five year mission to rock and coaxes the attendees onto the dance floor. He helpfully does not say: "And by the way, the copiously sweating bassist has never played live," and leaves the stage.

Doug starts up the drumbeat for Jumpin' Jack Flash. We play.

It hangs together by a thread at times, but it works. Everyone is dancing. Halfway through, playing Stuck In The Middle With You, my arms are knots of uncooperative muscle, and I'm just about holding the bass line together from verse to verse. There's a brief respite as Jenna, Davis' new bride, joins us for Twist And Shout. My forearms have calmed down by the time we're ready to restart and miraculously - for the bass part to this song is about as challenging as I can handle - it goes brilliantly. We finish on Crossroads with Davis hammering out a blinding solo.

T plus 30 minutes: We finish. It's over almost as soon as it began. I take off my bass, lean it up against the amp and realise that it had been on standby the whole time.

Oops.

I'd forgotten to flick the standby switch when we got on stage. Luckily enough, we'd set it up so that the amp was slaved to the Pod and the Pod's main output went straight into the PA, so the crowd at least got the benefit of the RF's patchy live debut.

The bar beckons. We get drunk and bask in a veritable ocean of relief.