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.

To borrow a phrase from a recent comment:

dear Holy Jesus. The next two weeks are going to be a living hell, without even the prospect of getting shitfaced at any point to break them up. My gran is in hospital suffering from advanced decrepitude, Davis' wedding gig is looming large in the foreground and we have to move flat in a sort of extended military operation lasting an entire week.

<sigh>

I liked it better when my life was a yawning void of crippling emptiness, I can tell you.

The summer boozing season is open for business

and the decent weather (neither raining nor windy) meant we could sit outside for a few beers after work on Friday and soak up the cloud. Three pints and no food later, I weaved home, had some pasta and sat stupefied in front of the box until I sobered up a little, then went to find Josh in Teviot. I had started, so I'd damn well finish. And finish I did, playing drinking games until 2 am with three no doubt uneasy students to whom I attached myself for the rest of the night.

Hungover to fuck (that's a technical term), I had to get to Glasgow the next day. We had a practise for Davis' wedding at 3 pm. Suffice it to say that my playing was...adequate that afternoon, without ever exceeding mediocre. We have a 6-hour marathon session tonight, so hopefully I'll be a little more confidence-inspiring.

Post-practise, we decamped to Pancho Villas for some food and subjected the marvellously reasonable waiting staff to an hour of raucous chat. (I've worked as a waiter in a couple of places and frankly, I'd have thrown me out.) Sated and, in my case, amusingly stained with meat fajita juice, we met up with Waxy and the Captain in a boisterous local dive. A pub-rock band was enthusiastically plugging its way through some guitar staples. Waxy fancied the bassist because of his cheeky smile and bass technique; I instead admired his tortoiseshell Fender P-bass, and his bass technique.

After that, we all just got hammered. I crawled off to bed at 2 or 3 am and slept the sleep of the very drunk.

Sunday, unsurprisingly, was a bit of a write-off.

Josh has posted some pictures of the last party. Car off to the big garage in the sky¹; the flat sees its last party². It's all getting a bit morbid, isn't it?

1. For 'sky', read 'Fife'.
   
2. Until after we move out, at least. So I suppose it's not really all that morbid. Can't resist a bit of dramatic license, though.
   

Hmm.

Looks like http://roquefort.blogspot.com is more reliable than http://www.roquefort.blogspot.com. If you're mad enough to have a bookmark to the RF, I'd update it.

INT. CORE STUDIOS, GLASGOW - NIGHT

DAVIS stands by a microphone stand with a red guitar. It has green knobs and trim. NEIL is hovering by a guitar amp with a more conventionally coloured guitar. KEITH is holding a bass in such a way that clearly indicates he'd like to be considered to be 'wielding' it, but that in reality just looks uncomfortable. DOUG sits behind a set of drums.

DAVIS
Right, shall we do "Everybody Needs Somebody" first then?

ALL
'Kay then.

They begin to play. DOUG, NEIL and DAVIS play with nonchalant skill. KEITH wrestles with his bass. Astonishingly, it actually sounds pretty damn good.

They finish.

KEITH
Wow! That was alright. I can't believe it.

ALL make general sounds of relief.

And so the first combined wedding/Coba Fynn comeback gig practise I had the honour to attend started off. I'd been practising like a demon for the past few weeks, and fortunately, I managed to acquit myself reasonably well. I'm starting to look forward to the gig!

Tiny Monkey is going to have to set up a 'real' practise sometime soon...

Update: just looked at the Coba Fynn website. Am reconsidering my involvement with these jokers.